In the News (from The Times Online): Sex discrimination is destined to continue in the scorching fires of Hell, according to a study approved by the Vatican.

The men, it seems, are the ones whose souls end up being pelted with fire and brimstone, while the women’s souls are more likely to be broken on a wheel… Men are likely to have indulged in lust and gluttony [whereas] women are primarily occupied with pride, envy and anger.

My Comment: Now I’m really scared: I’ve been touched by a breath of everlasting darkness, cold and stale like a cellar, and I was overcome by fear… But then I thought: “Monsignor, I beg your pardon, but doesn’t anyone go to heaven?”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Heaven Is the Feeling of Delight from Being Similar to the Creator
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Two questions I received on “neighbors”:

Question: Can we begin to think of all of humanity as our “neighbors” instead of just the Bnei Baruch group? Maybe then our thoughts will make the world change?

My Answer: What you wrote is true: Everyone in the whole world is our “neighbor.” However, right now my “neighbors” are the people I can draw closer to mutually, through our common aspiration for the common goal. In other words, these are my friends in the Kabbalistic group. But gradually, this will come to include the whole world, to the extent that this desire will be revealed in everyone.

Question: What does it mean to pray for my neighbor if I’m the one who is uncorrected?

My Answer: By praying for your neighbor, you develop your connection with him. And to the degree that your prayer is sincere, you will uncover your own egoism. As a result, your prayer will turn into a plea for personal change. This is why in Hebrew the word for “prayer,” Lehitpalel, means “to judge yourself.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Hope for Peace
Laitman.com Post: To Pray Means to Judge Yourself
Lesson: “Unconditional Love”
Shamati #103: “Whose Heart Makes Him Willing”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Peace in the World”

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In the News (from The New York Times): “Our Greatest National Shame” Our No. 1 priority must be education. That makes the new fiscal stimulus package a landmark, for it allocates more than $100 billion toward education. Education Secretary Arne Duncan argues: “We have to educate our way to a better economy, that’s the only long term way to get there.”

My Comment: It’ll be a real pity if this sum won’t bring any improvement. And chances are – it won’t, because in order to create a new education system, it’s necessary to create the right environment for every student – one that will elicit new, altruistic qualities in them (see the article “The Freedom”). In other words, schools must provide a full day of classes, and the children should only go home in the evening, to spend time with their parents and to sleep. In addition, the interactions among the kids should be organized according to a new, integral program that will teach them how to connect with society and to take every member of society into consideration.

However, in the above case, the money will be spent on the kind of education that turns children into various specialists, whereas the real problem lies in upbringing – how to turn a child into a Human Being.

(The above picture shows me together with my son and daughter.  Both were raised in a Kabbalistic education system and now have successful careers in Kabbalah.)

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Schools Should Teach Children How to Become Human Beings
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Kabbalah for Children
Baal HaSulam Paper: “The Nation”

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In the News (from The New York Times): “The Unintended Consequences of Changing Nature’s Balance” In 1985, Australian scientists kicked off an ambitious plan: to kill off non-native cats that had been prowling the island’s slopes since the early 19th century. The program began out of apparent necessity — the cats were preying on native burrowing birds. Twenty-four years later, a team of scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division and the University of Tasmania reports that the cat removal unexpectedly wreaked havoc on the island ecosystem.

With the cats gone, the island’s rabbits (also non-native) began to breed out of control, ravaging native plants and sending ripple effects throughout the ecosystem. “Our findings show that it’s important for scientists to study the whole ecosystem before doing eradication programs,” said Arko Lucieer, a University of Tasmania remote-sensing expert and a co-author of the paper.

My Comment: We, too, must learn all about the system in which we exist – the forces influencing us as well as the forces through which we affect everything – before trying to change anything in the system. Because the system is integral, we now have a domino effect on the global scale, where any small, particular error causes a systemic, global collapse.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Ecologists Should Take a Kabbalah Course to Learn About Nature

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In the News (from The Economist): “The integration of the world economy is in retreat on almost every front” Globalization means the global integration of the movement of goods, capital and jobs. Each of these processes is now in trouble … the process is going into reverse. World trade has plunged. In December, says the International Air Transport Association, air-cargo traffic (responsible for over a third of the value of the world’s traded goods) was down 23% on December 2007 – almost double the fall in the year up to the end of September 2001.

A poll in 2007 by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that majorities in 47 countries saw international trade as good for them; majorities in 41 out of 46 welcomed multinational firms. [However,] a CNN poll in July 2008 showed that, for the first time, a small majority of Americans saw trade as a threat, not an opportunity. The economic meltdown has popularized a new term: deglobalization. Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, is among those who fear the results will be bad.

My Comment: He’s right. In fact, this may even lead to a world war. Therefore, it is necessary that we find a way to connect with everyone in our “small global village.” And the only way to create this connection is for everyone to recognize that we are absolutely interdependent.

This is exactly what the wisdom of Kabbalah does: it helps us reveal our interdependency. At first we reveal it from the egoistic side, which enables us to recognize that our egoism is evil. And then Kabbalah shows us how to correct our egoism, how to transform it into attitudes and relationships of kindness in “our small village.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Gordon Brown Warns of the Threat of Deglobalization
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Here are some fond memories of the 2009 International Kabbalah Congress held just a few weeks ago

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In the News (from The Earth Times): Czech President Vaclav Klaus, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, was quoted on Thursday by a French weekly as comparing the 27-member European Union with the former Soviet Union. “One thing is sure, just as it was in the USSR, very important decisions are not taken in the countries that they concern.” Klaus said he hoped there would never be the single European super-state that is the goal of what he described as “Euro-nihilists.”

Klaus said the upcoming G20 summit in London was a bad idea. “The crisis is an economic phenomenon with its own internal dynamics,” he said. “It is a mistake to want to change the world in order to resolve it… I don’t think that you find a solution by organizing a summit with 20 leaders.”

My Comment: The fact that people are criticizing the “European Union” indicates that they desire real integration. Many are already beginning to understand that the changes have to be made inside the human society, and they shouldn’t be political or economic, but purely social.

We have to start by recognizing that our nature is egoism and it is evil. The next phase will be to correct our nature by ascending above it: “moving away from evil” and “doing good.” However, this can only be accomplished by means of the force of correction, which affects us while we study the system of the world that’s revealed to us by Kabbalah. And actually, even the “recognition of evil” is impossible without studying Kabbalah, because otherwise we can only reveal our own, personal evil, rather than the evil inherent to the whole system.

Indeed, what we have to reveal is the evil that prevents us from uniting. We should realize that this is the real evil, rather than all the things that may be bothering us. In short, in the future the G-20 will have to study the structure and system of the world as explained by Kabbalah. Only then will they find the correct solution to the crisis.

Related Material:
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A question I received: My eight year old daughter is asking, “Why did God create death?”

My Answer: He did it in order to encourage man to search for immortality, and to attain immortality even before he dies.

This is not achieved by prolonging the physiological life of our physical, protein body, but by developing a new, spiritual “body.” The spiritual body is made of the will to bestow instead of the will to receive. When one has this body, then instead of desiring to receive everything “inside of oneself,” one desires to bestow “to the outside, away from oneself.”

Therefore, this body (or these desires) exists forever. One’s desires do not get annulled by the pleasure as soon as they are fulfilled. Through these desires, a person feels eternal and perfect life, and never ceases to develop and be fulfilled.

Related Material:
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A question I received: One of the principles of Kabbalah for inner work is the “recognition of evil.” Should there not also be a recognition of evil in the collective? You wrote,

“There is only one single opportunity in our world for us to influence the events: by continuously creating a better and better environment (society) that will influence every person. This environment will change everyone’s priorities from corporeal (receiving and using others) to spiritual (bestowal and love).”

Very true. However, the sound principles of Kabbalah will never be institutionalized because all education, economics, media, government, etc. are controlled by the Federal Reserve, IMF, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements that have taken over every segment of society with the exponential power created by the issuance of fiat currencies.

My Answer: The crisis will wash everyone clean, and then everyone will turn into “good boys and girls.” It’s because we are nothing but a desire to enjoy, and when we feel bad, we can become anything and anyone. We will do anything to feel good, without hesitating to give up all our principles. This is why it’s easy to control us, or our egoism.

You will see something happen that has never happened before: suddenly everyone will turn into “good boys and girls.” People will become altruistic in order to survive. And then everyone will start to understand the higher value of love for one’s neighbor. But people won’t just value it because it gives them comfort and safety; they will value it in and of itself. In fact, people will value it so much that even if you offer them all the riches in the world, they will take them only in order to use them for the benefit of others.

But there is another, quicker and easier path to the same result: we can reveal the Creator, the Upper World, and the connection between us by studying Kabbalah. When people see the interdependence of everything in nature and of all people, they will immediately start to act correctly – and then the crisis will disappear.

Related Material:
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Two questions I received about how we sense the  Creator:

Question: When I take part in feeling the world’s sorrows, don’t I accuse the Creator?

My Answer: No, not if you interpret the world’s sorrows as being the Creator’s invitation to unite with Him. If you are willing to help the world do the same, and if you understand that perfection is attained only from its absence, then you will justify the Creator, and in that case, all that remains for you to do is to help the world.

Question: Today during the lesson you said that the lower a person’s level, the more pleasure the Creator feels from the efforts that person makes. To me, this sounds like a groundless assertion. How can I verify this in order to check whether you’re right or wrong?

My Answer: First of all, this is what Kabbalists tell us, those who have already traversed this path. Secondly, even in our world we can see that parents receive the biggest pleasure from the tiniest baby, and the more the child grows, the less delight he evokes in his parents.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: On Pleasure and Suffering
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Baal HaSulam Article: “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 48

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