It Is Natural For Obstacles To Emerge Along The Spiritual Path

longerThree questions I received on desires and emotional responses:

Question: I am addicted to computer games, but I have heard you say that we should not suppress our desires. Will my addiction to computer games and TV be corrected by the Light?

My Answer: All you need to do is study Kabbalah – read, listen, and watch our materials. The studies will correct you without you having to force yourself. You have to force yourself to study and not be lazy, but don’t try to “break” your qualities, because only the Upper Light (Ohr Makif) can correct them.

Question: Is there a connection between Kabbalah studies (the lessons, work in the group, and dissemination) and a stronger sexual desire?

My Answer: Yes, but try not to pay attention to this as much as you can, or to other interferences that arise. Focus only on advancing toward the goal. Then, everything else will happen as necessary. It is natural for obstacles to emerge and it happens to everyone.

Question: Why is it that when I listen to Kabbalistic songs or watch the animated films, tears stream from my eyes uncontrollably and my heart fills with longing. What is happening? How can this be explained?

My Answer: This happens out of joy from an encounter with the eternal and perfect, and the foretaste of the future fulfillment.

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Everything Studied In Kabbalah Is A Law of Nature

advice1Two questions I received about studying in groups:

Question: A few months ago we formed a virtual group, consisting of various territories, including Germany, Estonia, Israel, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Tell us, is it necessary to separate the virtual group into male and female parts when reading Baal HaSulam’s and Rabash’s articles?

My Answer: No, it’s not necessary. It should happen only by consent.

Question: Our group has a great desire to reveal the inner connection between us. Some people aim to strengthen our connection with each other, while others aim to demonstrate the nuances of the correct inner examination in order for the group to advance. Others still just try to feel the desire for a positive attitude and the right focus. However, we were told that these tactics impede the progress. If this is the case, why then do we feel a need to do this, which we shouldn’t? Is this a normal phase in our development?

My Answer: I don’t understand exactly what you mean. No one is against connections within or between groups. Could it be that you are doing something that isolates you from others? If so, you will be violating the principle of equality and the general connection. Please describe the problem to me in more detail.

We strive to achieve unity, which Nature (the Creator) demands from us and from all of humanity. The unity must happen among the entire mass of people studying in the framework of the worldwide Bnei Baruch group. This is no one’s whim or invention; everything that’s studied is a law of Nature, and the students apply it to whatever extent they can. Therefore, there are no leaders, but only people who explain.

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Women Value The Quality Of Relationships More Than Men

friendIn the News (from The National Post):Women bear brunt of bad marriage woes, study says” Men and women in bad marriages both feel depressed, but women are the only ones to suffer from high blood pressure, abdominal fat and other high risk factors for heart disease and stroke. But the same wasn’t true for their husbands. “Women tend to value the quality of relationships more than men do, and perhaps, even more important, they pay attention more, so when it’s not going well, they’re aware of it and more concerned about it than are men,” says Tim Smith, the study’s co-author and a psychology professor at the University of Utah.

My Comment: Men are less dependent on women and less attached to them. This is Eve’s “condemnation following the sin,” which says: “Your yearning shall be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

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France Is On Strike

strikeIn the News (from msnbc News): “France hit by new wave of nationwide protests” A new wave of nationwide strikes by angry workers demanding that French President Nicolas Sarkozy do more to fight the economic crisis hit France on Thursday. Sarkozy told ministers at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday that he “understood the worries of the French,” but said he had no plans for additional measures. Some 200 protest marches are planned Thursday around France, according to the powerful CGT union.

My Comment: But the real crisis hasn’t even begun yet. People aren’t starving, living on the streets, dying of epidemics, and so on. But the crisis will continue, sometimes increasing and sometimes subsiding, until humanity will understand its cause – the lack of connection between people.

I recommend reading the chapter in the Bible about the Egyptian plagues. Each plague comes and then subsides, and this continues until we are completely ready to escape from our egoistic nature – to run from it and do anything to escape it for good!

We have just entered the period of coming out of egoism. At the end of this process, we will all unite, becoming similar to our global world, either consciously or against our will.

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The Meaning Of Learning The Global System

the-meaning-of-spiritual-and-physical-tearsA question I received: What does it mean to learn the global system?

My Answer: Speak with system specialists and they will tell you about the laws that govern a closed system. Speak about multifunctional systems with biologists, physiologists, computer specialists and people who work in cybernetics. I think I still have formulas from college, showing what a multifunctional system is.

There are many elements that people study in order to understand how to interconnect these elements in order to bring the entire system to operation through the mutual interaction between the elements at any given moment and in the various states that these elements strive to. Based on this, you can derive a formula, and without the formula, you won’t be able to construct anything.

Let’s say you have a submarine that has to rise from the depth of four hundred meters to two hundred meters. This isn’t easy to do. In order to do it, you must we aware of every possible factor, such as the depth and equilibrium – there are thousands of parameters you must keep in mind. And every parameter changes in a specific way depending on the depth. It’s a very difficult task.

So what do we have to do? In the same way, we have to learn what an integrated system is and why the condition of “love thy neighbor as thyself” is the law of Nature. This notion must be explained in a way that’s easy to understand, in a way that’s simple and close to ordinary people and organizations. This is what we have to understand, learn and teach.
(Excerpt from the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article “One Precept,” on 03.05.2009)

Why Is Marx So In Demand?

angryIn the News (from STV):Global crisis sends east Germans flocking to Marx” Marx’s 1867 critical analysis of capitalism, “Das Kapital,” has risen from the publishing graveyard to become an improbable best-seller for academic publisher Karl-Dietz-Verlag. “Everyone thought there would never ever again be any demand for ‘Das Kapital’,” managing director Joern Schuetrumpf told Reuters after selling 1,500 copies so far this year, triple the number sold in all of 2007.

My Comment: Everything Marx wrote was based on Kabbalah, but he was misunderstood. See what Baal HaSulam writes about him in the newspaper, “The Nation.”  Basically, everything is happening according to Marx. But he can only be understood once people begin to understand the basic concepts of Kabbalah.

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Why Was “Facebook” Attacked By Hackers?

In all life situations, your behavior should be determined only by the spiritual goalA question I received: You are saying that nature demands that we reach the right kind of connection between us. This week hackers attacked and almost destroyed a web community, Facebook. If nature, the general system of creation, desires to establish a connection between people, why doesn’t it support this network, which reveals a connection between people?

My Answer: Maybe Facebook has exhausted itself in its current form. Instead of trying to protect Facebook from hackers, we have to change it. I believe there is a time, place, and purpose for everything. If forces of opposition are emerging, it means the phenomenon needs to change or disappear. These are just forces of influence, and there is nothing artificial in the world. We have to accept that this is how change and development take place. We shouldn’t react negatively to anything, but rather treat everything as the revelation of evil. When new states cease to emerge, it is a sign that you have reached the Final Correction. However, before that, even the worst state to be revealed isn’t bad in and of itself, but rather, it only reveals the evil to you.

This is how we should view everything. Our greatest enemies reveal the evil in us, and they are not evil on their own. Still, for now you have to eliminate them in order to have an opportunity to perform corrections in our world as quickly as possible. You must eliminate them because they don’t allow you to be corrected, and not because you hate them. You should hate them because they don’t allow you to perform the correction. Then your actions will be justified.
(From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 03.05.2009)

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Can the G-20 Establish The Right Power Balance?

power-balanceA question I received: What kind of power balance should be established in the world? The G-20 leaders want to create a better power balance between different countries to make sure that no country will be able to control the others. How do you envision the map of the world’s power balance, when done correctly?

My Answer: I do not see this as a good situation. Any action that’s based on the human ego is ignorant of the needed inner changes in people’s relationships to each other. Therefore, even if it’s done for the sake of balance, it will lead to the recognition of evil and will manifest in a negative form. As a matter of fact, people will not otherwise recognize the evil inside themselves. If we won’t bring about a correction of interpersonal relationships, then it’s worthless to create any new regulator. It won’t help and will only bring us to a more corrupted state.

Our world is abundant: it has natural resources, developed industries, machinery, technology, economy, a banking system, and agriculture. Everything is 100% fine-tuned. We only lack a connection between us. That connection cannot be attained by means of a regulator, which the G-20 leaders hope to employ to solve our problems on the corporeal level. They are thinking, “Let’s create a special computer that will make all the right calculations.”

But the fact is, the calculations that need to be made are inside us, and they have to be done for the sake of our neighbor! What does Baal HaSulam say in the newspaper “The Nation?” He writes, “There must be fair distribution between everyone! Oil, gas, metal, and everything in the earth belongs to the whole of humanity in equal measure. You cannot have something if someone else does not, because it belongs to everyone equally!”

All the people must work for each other’s benefit, and do so willingly, rather than because of some regulator. Using a regulator to achieve this would be similar to the KGB in Russia. This has to happen because of your own desire!

So what is that point of reference we should now start with? It is education – learning where the problem comes from. There’s no need to do anything in the world except man’s inner correction! Even the climate will change because of this! We have no other way out of the situation. And the purpose of our dissemination is to make this fact known.

The G-20 leaders are like children who will gather at their summit and play it out as if they have a solution in their hands. They will then start to carry it out in the world, and it will fail just like all the previous ones did. They will all fail.

There are many programs like this now. For example, the Japanese government began giving out money to its people. But people won’t spend it; they will just save it for a rainy day. Yet the government presumes that people will immediately run to the stores to spend it. How can I spend the money if I don’t know what is going to happen to me tomorrow!?

The entire world is in a “frozen” state. Everything has come to a halt. And the only reason this is happening is because our intentions are not aimed at benefiting each other. So let us hope that we will be heard.
(From the lesson on the Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Freedom,” on 03.13.2009)

Prophets Are Those Who Help Us Find A Way Out Of The Labyrinth

when-will-suffering-disappearWhen you reveal to someone what will happen tomorrow, whether it’s good or bad, and you direct him to the path based on your knowledge of the system which isn’t yet revealed to him, then you are like a prophet in relation to that person, because you are one step ahead of him.

What does it mean to ascend up the spiritual ladder? In our world, it means to move forward “in time.” But what is time? What does it mean that a Kabbalist accelerates and “sanctifies” the time? It means that he ascends. In other words, he has already attained the state that the world will reach several years later. This is why he speaks to the people and warns them: “Be careful!”

It’s like a labyrinth, where some people have entered the labyrinth and are lost there, but he watches them from above and directs them: “Go left, go right, now this way, then that way.” And this is how he leads them out of the labyrinth.

There are several labyrinths in the world that have been specifically designed for us. Once you enter one, you cannot find your way out, as each one is a unique kind of adventure. But our adventure has become dangerous, and those who are above, those who have already gone through this path and who know the method and the program, plan, map, or compass; those who have mastered this entire system, all its lanes and laws, and everything that happens in it – these people are called prophets in relation to everyone else.

You can’t be a guide unless you have already gone through several degrees of this path. Otherwise you will not be able to lead those who want to follow you down the same path.
(Excerpt from the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 03.18.2009)