In the News (Weizmann Institute of Science): (June 30, 2011) — “How easy is it to falsify memory? New research at the Weizmann Institute, Israel, shows that a bit of social pressure may be all that is needed. The study, which appears in the journal Science, reveals a unique pattern of brain activity when false memories are formed – one that hints at a surprising connection between our social selves and memory.”

“The experiment…took place in four stages. In the first, volunteers watched a documentary film in small groups. Three days later, they returned to the lab individually to take a memory test, answering questions about the film. They were also asked how confident they were in their answers.

They were later invited back to the lab to retake the test while being scanned in a functional MRI (fMRI) that revealed their brain activity. This time, the subjects were also given a ‘lifeline’: the supposed answers of the others in their film viewing group (along with social-media-style photos). Planted among these were false answers to questions the volunteers had previously answered correctly and confidently.”

Study results showed that under the influence of “public opinion,” the participants changed their initial answers and “conformed to the group on these ‘planted’ responses, giving incorrect answers nearly 70% of the time.”

“But were they simply conforming to perceived social demands, or had their memory of the film actually undergone a change?

To find out, the researchers invited the subjects back to the lab to take the memory test once again, telling them that the answers they had previously been fed were not those of their fellow film watchers, but random computer generations.

Some of the responses reverted back to the original, correct ones, but close to half remained erroneous, implying that the subjects were relying on false memories implanted in the earlier session.”

Comment: This experiment proves once again how much people depend on the surrounding society. According to Kabbalah, only by choosing the environment can we correct ourselves by becoming like it. Thus, through the choice of the environment, we can change ourselves to the point of similarity to the Creator. Please refer to Baal HaSulam’s article “The Freedom.”
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Opinion (Steven Staples, President, Rideau Institute on International Affairs, Canada): “Economic inequality is growing: more conflicts and civil wars are emerging. It is important to see a connection between these two situations.

Proponents of global economic integration argue that globalization promotes peace and economic development in the Third World. They assert that ‘all boats rise with the tide’ when investors and corporations make higher profits. However, there is precious little evidence that this is true and substantial evidence of the opposite….

Economic inequality between Northern and Southern nations has worsened, not improved. The mainstream media frequently oversimplify the causes of war, with claims that they are rooted in religious or ethnic differences. While such differences are made use of in conflicts, a closer examination reveals that the underlying source of most conflicts is economic in nature….

Globalization is driving a global war economy and creating the conditions for tremendous loss of human life. Many writers and researchers have documented the decline in human rights, social justice, environmental standards, and democracy caused by globalization.”

Comment: Globalization in itself is not a breakthrough but a demonstration of unity in our world, its complete mutual dependence. But a union of robbers (countries-egoists) is evil, both for them and for the entire world. That is why the crisis continues. Globalization shows that there is only one solution: a change of our nature by educating an integral human being. This will lead to changes in the global economy and the entire social order.
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When reading The Zohar, we need to keep the intention and imagine a sensory picture instead of the words. Our sensory picture has to include the following two components:

1. Happiness from embracing the Torah, something very exalted, which we are not yet in the condition to appreciate;
2. The desire, the need, to really connect, merge with it.

This is why I need to experience happiness from respecting the Torah and realizing the importance of the goal to which we are connected. And I also have to feel the desire to become worthy of all of these qualities of bestowal so that they become clothed in me, in my spiritual vessel, and I really become the bestowing one, radiating the Light.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/2011, Shamati #5

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati (I Heard) No.5, “Lishma Is an Awakening From Above, And Why Do We Need an Awakening From Below”: When one has already accustomed oneself to work in order to bestow, and not examine oneself—if he is feeling a good taste in the work—but believes that he is working to bring contentment to his Maker through his work, one should believe that the Creator accepts the labor of the lower ones regardless of how and how much is the form of their work….

Question: How can one bring contentment to the Creator? What does this mean?

Answer: Our reality has not changed, is not changing, and will not change; it remains the same. Right now it looks to us as darkness and concealment, yet we nevertheless need to imagine ourselves in adhesion with the Creator.

The only one thing that hinders me from this is that I don’t relate to Him in the way that He relates to me. This is the gap which plunges me into the darkness and causes me to not feel that I am with the Creator and filled with the Light. Instead, I perceive my reality in the form of our world.

That is why I constantly need, like a baby, to imagine for myself that I want to be in attainment, meaning in bestowal to the Creator. Am I really thinking about this? If I take my thoughts to Him through the group, through the friends, so that all of the 613 desires of my heart are corrected towards bestowal, if I am ready to implement all of these 613 commandments, then I am preparing the vessel for the attainment of the Creator.

This is what the whole of the Kabbalistic method is about. We need the efforts; we have nothing else to do.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/2011, Shamati #5

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Question: If the Light and the Creator don’t change, what is the “awakening from Above” (Itaruta de Leila)? What does it mean to be awakened from Above?

Answer: The “awakening from Above” is always there. If you’re able to sit and study at this moment, even for a minute, that’s a result of the “awakening from Above.” It gives you strength, patience, and desire. You study instead of sleeping or chasing after the material pleasures of this world. Instead of all that, you’re listening to the lesson and aspiring to something you don’t even know.

Where does this “foolish” and “unrealistic” desire come from? Would a reasonable, sensible person do this? It’s all thanks to the awakening from Above, whereby the Light shines on you from Above and compels you to aspire to bestowal.

The Light is constant and doesn’t change, but you do. Each time you change, and your sensitivity increases, which is why you’re sensing greater and greater influence. You increase the sensitivity of your perception along the degrees of zero, one, two, three, and four until you reach the complete inner degree (HaVaYaH). You do this with your own effort, thanks to your “awakening from below” (Itaruta de Letata).

However, who gave you the initial awakening and inspired you to exert the effort? It was the awakening from Above! Therefore, it is written: “I Am the First, and I Am the Last.”
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/2011, Shamati #5

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Writings of Rabash, “What Is that Every Grass Has an Appointee from Above Which Strikes It and Tells It Grow in the Work”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected, Chapter “Truma (Donation),” “And Behold It Was Very Good,” Item 432, Lesson 18
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Kabbalah for the Student, “General Preface,” Item 2
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag, “The Freedom, ‘Freedom from the Angel of Death,’ start with ‘I have already brought you'”
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My Good Environment – Dr. Laitman’s Advice and Principles for the Week

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Question: Egoism shrewdly and inventively depicts various pictures before me. How can I discriminate the lie in them, which appears like love for others? After all, all kinds of religions and methods also talk about love.

Answer: In our world “love for the neighbor” is a simple, primitive game of small egoists. Can you really find real, exalted love for the neighbor anywhere, which is really practiced on an ongoing basis?

True, people create separate settlements in order to live in love with one another: There is a village like that in Italy, one in India, and an entire city in Asia. But if you look a bit closer, you will see that they are still the same egoists who just decided to introduce more comfortable social customs. This is more comfortable and pleasant for them, and therefore, they have united in order to make their lives nicer.

Once upon a time kibbutzes flourished in Israel—agricultural settlements with collective property similar to a collective farm. People decided that it was worthwhile for them to live together because this brought them more benefit. “Let’s give up some of our egoism and then we will feel good.” Everything’s clear about this, but is this really altruism?

Humanity supposes that conceding to the neighbor makes a person an altruist. However, people who are slightly more informed about human nature or who study the science of Kabbalah know that any concession has to come with a profit. No matter what a person is giving up, you can find what he is gaining by that. Even if the profit is concealed, it is definitely present.

For example, I am willing to live in a kibbutz because this removes my worries about how to arrange my life. Is that not a profit? I have no worries. I simply do what I am told. But development follows its course and with time kibbutzes became outdated. As a whole, these kinds of communities have no future.

We already see that all forms of interconnection between people have to change due to the egoism that grows in them. Changes continue to take place, and this inner dynamic has to be realized in some way as there will be an explosion otherwise.

This happened over the course of history to various religions, faiths, and methods. Today they are undergoing a worldwide outburst because man has set out on a search once again. He is conducting the final revision: Can these methods offer anything real?

After this analysis these practices will fall for the last time. After all, today we are checking them in relation to the integral mechanism that nature places before us. We have never had this criterion yet. People are once again turning over the pages of all sorts of practices, confessions, and mystical teachings, trying to understand: Can they help us in the new, integral world?

This process will take a short time and will quickly come to an end with all the expectations crashing down. Everyone will see that it is pointless to wait for help from them. Any subject that is checked will persist for a few years at most after which it will reveal its inadequacy.

After all, if you don’t change man’s nature so he becomes just as integral inside of him as nature itself, then no recipes will help him. The only method that makes man global, integral, and united with others is the method of attracting the Light that reforms, the science of Kabbalah. Every person just needs to be given the opportunity to realize his evil. Then all the means and their combinations will turn out powerless, and this entire business of “spiritual” tricks will end up non-existent.

Man will not be able to calm himself down because the world has changed and the problem is no longer how to calm down, but a “conflict of interests.” No one will be able to survive in the integral system without becoming fit for it.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/7/11, Matan Torah

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In essence, what we study in Kabbalah is the process that we have to go through. The science of Kabbalah explains to us what is the world, why and for what  it exists, and how we exist in it and realize the goal of creation.

Kabbalah points to the part we have to realize ourselves by setting it apart from everything else, which does not depend on us. We have to concentrate all of our forces precisely in the area that depends on us, making this victorious breakthrough and attaining success on the path to the goal.

Therein lies the entire Kabbalistic method: to show man this point, the tiny button among thousands of various buttons and switches that are not connected to anything. It’s like you are standing in front of a huge control panel to the world, but in reality it’s a dummy.

Only one button is connected to the system, and that button is lost among huge switches, bulbs, and color coded panels. Your whole life you press on buttons, click tumblers, tug at levers, shift sliders, spin wheels, and tune dials, but there are no results and you die as if you did not spin anything.

And moreover, all of your efforts accumulate into one tremendous negative charge, which you will still have to correct in the future. After all, egoism grows in every generation.

Therefore, at the end of the day, the science of Kabbalah explains to us where this secret button is found, which cannot be distinguished or recognized among thousands of others. This is precisely the button we must constantly press in order to advance.

Thanks to it, we begin to understand the system, to guess what is happening behind the panel, to surmise how the other buttons are confusing us and why only one of them works. In short, we reach the understanding of who we are, who is on the other side of the mechanism, and how this mechanism operates to connect the Creator with creation and creation with the Creator.

From everything there is in this world, we have to press one button called “love for the neighbor.” Only by means of this button will we be able to activate the system. All other buttons are a bluff, a lie. Together with billions of your contemporaries, you can press, spin, click, and nudge at these counterfeits, just like the past generations did just to pay their last debt in futile attempts.

Therefore, we have to understand how to find this special button and how to press it, how to use our free choice to act correctly, without letting anything go by us. We have to explain this to ourselves and to others so it will become clear to all of us: other actions, which are not connected to pressing this button that commutates (reverses the direction) love for the creatures with love for the Creator, are futile and useless. Moreover, they just increase the minus in our accounts and we will still have to return to them.

If your actions lead toward the goal, they get recorded in your account. Thanks to them, you advance forward, understanding and feeling more. However, if your actions are false, then you will have to become aware of this lie, of your mistake, and the harm you caused in order to correct it and then to keep moving further.

Thus, it turns out that we accumulate a highly undesirable addition, and therefore, we have to be cautious of actions that are inherent to the “correctors of the world.”
All the corrections that we have to carry out, meaning presses on the right button, are called “using the Torah and commandments.” I consist of 613 desires and by pressing on the button, I evoke a certain force that corrects me with its influence, turning my 613 desires into actions of bestowal.

If I restrict the desire, creating a screen and reflected Light above it by correctly interacting for the sake of bestowal, then this desire transforms from a transgression to a commandment. That is how I have to correct all of my desires on all five levels of Aviut of each of them. This is my work, which we have to perform by pressing the right button, meaning by establishing the right connection with the neighbor.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/7/11, Matan Torah

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