Opinion: (Michael D. Intriligator, Professor Emeritus of economics, political science and public policy, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)): ”Globalization is a powerful real aspect of the new world system, and it represents one of the most influential forces in determining the future course of the planet. It has manifold dimensions: economic, political, security, environmental, health, social, cultural, and others.” It contains within itself both the force of repulsion (increases competition and leads to international conflicts) and the force of attraction (the potential of global cooperation).

“The challenge is to create a new world system …The key to such a world system will be cooperation among the nations of the world…Overall, the challenge of globalization will require truly cooperative efforts of the great nations.…

It will be necessary to reinvent existing institutions and/or to create new ones so as to deal with economic challenges, such as the problems of distribution and mutual vulnerability stemming from globalization. These institutions must have global perspectives and responses and they will require substantial resources and enforcement mechanisms, including some elements of supranational decision-making and authority, along with appropriate transparency and accountability.”
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Question: I cannot understand the meaning of creation and the existence of our world. Is this the creature’s fault or the Creator’s design? Who is to blame for this misunderstanding?

Answer: No one is to blame here. We are in a state where instead of the world of Infinity, immense and perfect, we see our world and ourselves as imperfect. So, let’s make an effort to view everything in the light of bestowal, rather than in the light of reception. Then, we will see that in reality, we are completely corrected, in a vast and perfect sphere filled with the Light, the Creator.

There was nothing else. It was just a misunderstanding of where we existed. We exist in this beautiful realm now, just as we did in the beginning. So let’s put our efforts into making this a reality.
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From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 7/10/2011

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Question: Is it possible to extend our corporeal existence in this world by attaining spirituality? Does one affect the other?

Answer: A person needs to aspire to complete his spiritual path in this corporeal life. Attaining this state means that his life really was a success. This depends on him.

The number of years of his existence does not depend on him. Filling his existence with corrections does. Regardless, one’s corporeal path is such that it allows one to attain his or her correction over the course of these years. This opportunity is given. The rest depends on a person.
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From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 7/10/2011

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Question: The daily lesson is divided into five parts. Should the intention be the same throughout?

Answer: Of course! That’s all there is since the entire Torah speaks only of the connection between us.

The first part of the lesson focuses on how we should relate to the connection between us and use it to reveal the general quality of bestowal: the Creator. It’s like an introduction before actualization, like having the rules of the game explained before it begins. That’s the first part of the lesson.

The second part of the lesson is the game itself. Here is where we should genuinely try to do the following:

• To always think about the network of connection between us;
• To always listen to what The Zohar speaks of;
• To combine and to connect The Zohar’s text to the bond with the friends that you imagine so that the connection with the friends will assume the form that The Zohar describes.

Naturally, The Zohar speaks of the bond between us at very exalted degrees. But as we imagine ourselves at these exalted degrees, in those states, we will grow, as children do when they imagine themselves being adults, since the upper state described by The Zohar will influence us.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/12/2011, The Zohar

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In the News (from huffingtonpost.com): “Approximately 48 percent of Americans say they think that a Great Depression is either very or somewhat likely to occur within the year according to a CNN Opinion Research Poll, the highest percentage of respondents that have stated that level of certainty since CNN first started asking the question in October 2008. Respondents’ fear that they would soon become unemployed also spiked to an all-time high of 30 percent….”

“‘That’s not just economic pessimism,’ CNN polling director Keating Holling told CNN, reflecting on the polling results, ‘that’s economic fatalism.'”

The nation’s overall unemployment rate sits at 8.8 percent and the rate among white Americans is at 7.9 percent. 15.5 percent of African Americans are out of work and still looking for a job.

During the global recession (1929-1939), later called the Great Depression, the highest level of unemployment rose to 23.6% in the USA.
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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Truma (Donation),” Item 503: “You shall make a table.” A table stands inside the tabernacle with a high blessing upon it, and food for the entire world coming out of it. This table need not be empty for even a minute, but food should be on it because there is no blessing on an empty place. For this reason, there must always be bread on it so that the high blessing is always in it. From that table, blessing and food go forth to all the tables in the world, which are blessed thanks to it.

The key during the reading of The Book of Zohar is to organize the system of values within oneself so that by every word, one would move along the ladder of properties and inner definitions, understanding that everything exists within one’s desire. This desire has multiple shades, and within them, one has to try to understand the study material. Then, as a result of these efforts, the Surrounding Light will come to him.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/11/2011, The Zohar

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My new book on Kabbalah is being published in Sweden. It is the translation of my book A Spiritual Quest originally published in Russian.
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Opinion: (M. Delyagin, Director of Research, Institute of Globalization Studies (IPROG), kapital-rus.ru): The world financial crisis is merely an external manifestation of humanity’s integral transformation toward a radically new structure of human society.

Information processing technologies gave rise to a small group of managing elite. Consequently, 70% of the population are unneeded and have to be utilized either physically or socially. Global communication has created the most profitable business: shaping public opinion. This qualitatively changes the character of human development: While previously, over the entire course of human history, humanity grew by reforming the natural environment, today it is beginning to feel the necessity to change itself in order to survive.

Therefore, all previously developed sciences existing up to this day not only will be unable to assist us in our subsequent evolvement, but rather will hamper it, as pertains to the whole humanity. In fact, today it isn’t the world that needs to be changed but man himself, which signifies dismissal of science and technical revolution.

Simplified communications erode the system of government. The world’s civil society is called to constrain the world’s government. Global advertisement has imposed on humankind the desire to strive for high-grade consumption, which resulted in tension, terror, and migration.

The depth of the world financial crisis is underestimated due to the lack of understanding that the old paradigm of global evolution has run its course. A qualitatively new world financial system is due. Humanity’s integration has surpassed the capacity for controlling it and it demands to be stepped back and restored to manageability by simplifying the process of its development.

We are called to intellectual revolution, to form a new type of consciousness, which will bring humanity out of stalemate not by extinguishing its part, but rather by facilitating collective progress.

In the new era of human development it is necessary to do the following:

1. Comprehend the essence of the new stage of humanity’s evolution;
2. Define the model of the forth-coming human development;
3. Identify major issues (challenges) requiring a solution, which will shape the progress of human society within the parameters of this model;
4. Work out specific guidelines and rules for international organizations, governments, and businesses;
5. Form and aim public opinion and that of the elite toward harmonizing human development in the new evolutionary setting.

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Question: I don’t understand how the future differs from the past, making us unable to control it and find a solution for the crisis and the correct course of development?

Answer: Man has always been going through changes (evolving egoistically), and then, based on these changes and in accordance to them, he was adjusting the environment “to suit” him. But today, he has stopped evolving egoistically; man’s gradual egoistic development has finished. Hence, he will stop reforming the surrounding world.

From this point on, the movement will be “inverted.” At present, nature, the surrounding environment, is changing: It presents itself to us as an integral, global system and forces us to adjust ourselves to it, to become connected with the entire world as its integral part.

In other words, the phase we have entered is not that of the involuntary transformation of human egoism that dictates to man how to reform nature “to suit” him. Rather, it is man who must change to align himself with a new situation in which nature changes “before his eyes.” This reads a change of the paradigm: If previously we didn’t take part in our internal transformations and kept altering the environment to suit our egoism (we made it serve our needs), today it is the surrounding world which is transforming and forcing us to change to fit in.

This movement is inverted: not from man to the surrounding world, but from the surrounding world to man. That is, as it undergoes change, the world, the natural environment, will make everyone and the entire humanity change accordingly.

Humanity will have to reform itself, meaning to correct itself to be in line with nature. This has never occurred before. Man never took nature into consideration but altered it according to: “Our goal to take everything we need from nature,” that is, to make it serve our ego.

And now, humanity will have to change rather than change nature that surrounds him. Thus, man must begin to attain nature, “see” it first, and then think how to be in harmony with it. Nature is, in fact, the Creator. Therefore, we arrive at the necessity to attain the entire nature, meaning the Creator, by reforming ourselves “to match” Him.

This is the point of no return we call “a crisis.”  And we won’t come out of it until we understand what this new paradigm of our existence is all about: not to change the world to suit us, but to change ourselves to fit the world.

Should we continue making attempts to alter nature to serve us, we will place ourselves in opposition to it. In the end, nature will “break us down” by putting us through horrible suffering.
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Everything depends on the creature’s desire. Everything around us remains in an invariable state: We are surrounded by the Light of Infinity, the Creator, nature. It’s not important how we call it; it is the perfect quality of bestowal and absolute love reigning in the world and filling up everything with itself.

However, we will not be able to reveal this upper Light, the Creator and His relationship with us, without possessing the right tools, the right desires, Kelim (vessels). That is why the entire method of the science of Kabbalah consists of how to make yourself worthy of sensing the Creator.

The Creator is always kind and embodies good, bestowal, and love. The greatest pleasure of all is to feel His love toward us. The only problem is that this can only be felt within the desires of bestowal because by coming in touch with the egoistic desires, this perception disappears immediately.

So, it turns out that from my side, the only vessel worthy of revealing the Creator’s relationship with me is the fear that I may not be able to receive His love toward me and answer it correctly. If His relationship toward me is to be revealed—and this is the only pleasure which really exists in nature—then I will have to be ready to receive it in the vessel called “trembling.” I am afraid of using this love for my own pleasure, enjoying it egoistically, and instead, I want to answer Him with the same kind of attitude.

This is called trembling because I must be afraid of the fact that at any given moment, my relationship may be ruined. It may be turned around, and instead of thinking of Him, I could begin to think of myself.

However, my ability to always remain as loving toward Him as He reveals Himself to me depends on His influence upon me, meaning that my feeling this fear or not depends on the Creator. I ask Him to give this to me; this fear is my main concern. As soon as I achieve the right fear in the right form and am strong enough, I will immediately begin to feel His relationship toward me.

It is as if I keep increasing the voltage on a lamp until it finally lights up! From that moment on, we can see it shine. In the same way, we are located in an ocean of love and bestowal coming from the side of the Creator, and the instant that the condition inside of me called “fear” is implemented at the right level, I will begin to reveal the Creator’s love inside of my trembling.

Both of the following conditions depend entirely on Him:

1. The creation of the vessel that ensures this fear in me. Otherwise, I cannot be sure of myself. In this sense, I am completely dependent on His help called the Light that Reforms;
2. The fulfillment, the revelation of His love toward me, in such a way that I accept it when it is revealed and relate to it correctly. I don’t want this love to spoil my response to Him so that I would suddenly fall into egoism.

It turns out that in building the vessel (desire), in its fulfillment, and the result of its fulfillment, I absolutely depend on the Creator. In order to reach adhesion with Him, I need the fear from which my spiritual vessel is built, reception of the Light, and the results of this reception.

If I concern myself with implementing these conditions in the right form relevant to my level, I will reach adhesion as a result. I will create the spiritual vessel and receive fulfillment into it. This is how we reach the goal: adhesion with the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/6/2011, Shamati #38

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