If all the evidence shows that man is the result of his environment, it follows that organizing all kinds of models of a good and correct society for all humankind is critical. This way any person, depending on his inclinations and personality or by following the advice of his friends and family, would always have the opportunity to connect to such a society, to develop himself in the most effective way possible, and become a genuinely perfect human being. Therefore, in our education we must also focus on establishing such groups and other opportunities for people to unite.

If we continue to study this issue further, we will see that a person is formed by the influence of his inner qualities, the genes he was born with, the various inclinations he acquires early in life at his parents’ home, and then by the influence of society.

We must therefore focus on kindergartens and the various circles for little children, and then on schools and clubs for older kids. We need to ensure that every person has a wide array of opportunities to reveal his potential and develop into a well-rounded individual.

Even the qualities that don’t appear to be particularly strong or promising in an individual ought to be developed anyway, as that will enrich his inner world, as will teaching him to appreciate music, literature, theater, art, and culture: All these things depend on a person’s environment as well.

People must have a family and bring up children; they must learn how to properly act toward his or her spouse, toward friends, in the company of strangers, and at work. We must teach the person by applicable examples how to behave and how to become a person in the full sense of the word, one that’s appreciated by society, which will in turn allow him to reach success and prosperity himself.

To this end, there are only two factors that aim and correct me every minute: my own natural qualities and the environment’s influence upon them. My ability lies in choosing an environment that would constantly develop me in the right direction, bring me closer to good and advanced states that give the sensation of greater security, confidence, and comfort. This is how we continue to develop.

From this we need to understand the task that lies before us, what we need to do to make sure that our children have a good life  and that the next generation is better off and more confident in its future.

This can only be done if we manage to surround our children with these kinds of teachers and create for them the kind of environment that would influence them to reinforce their good qualities and to transform their negative qualities into positive ones rather than suppress them.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 3, 12/29/11

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In the News (from Reuters): “More than one in 10 British-based scientists or doctors have witnessed colleagues intentionally altering or fabricating data during their research, according to a survey by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Thursday.

“The survey, which collated more than 2,700 responses, also found that 6 percent of scientists said they were aware of possible research misconduct at their institution that had not been properly investigated…

“High profile cases of misconduct have led many other countries, including the United States, Canada, Sweden, Norway and Poland, to create formal mechanisms for overseeing research integrity.”

My Comment: Since science admits everyone, not idealists, but anyone who is willing to sell scientific inventions and discoveries for money, honor, fame, wealth, and power, it’s not surprising that “scientists” adjust the results to the requirements in order to achieve something not in science but in their lives, for which science has become a way to reach wealth, power, and fame. This is the cause of the crisis in science, egoism, as everywhere and in everything….
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Pure desire without intellect represents an original form that is derived from the root. If desire strives only to maintain itself without any other desires, it is called “inanimate.” It doesn’t change, but rather always wants by all means to preserve its existence one hundred percent as it is and continually resists any changes whatsoever. That’s why it’s called “dead.”

On one hand, it’s the most powerful force that keeps inanimate matter in its form and because it is inanimate, it is stronger than anything else. On the other hand, it has a deficit because it doesn’t develop at all, nor does it create any advanced form!

A plant doesn’t possess as much force for self-preservation as inanimate matter; it is weaker. But it does have an addition; it is able to change! It develops, alters, and grows. On the other hand, it still cannot remain eternal; that’s why it “acquires” life and death.

There is no choice, there is a price for the opportunity to continue developing. If you don’t possess stony steadfastness, but rather allow yourself to change, you go from edge to edge, from life to death; there is no other option. In other words, our development happens at the expense of immortality.

For a lifeless stone, life and death are the same. For a plant, life and death are different since plants can sense life. This is the root of any sensation, pleasure and affliction, one against the other.

Animals are much farther from inanimate nature; they undergo dramatic changes and experience tremendous growth. They acquire a higher intellect that accompanies their desires; so, during the process of development, animals acquire diverse forms. Naturally, animals are subject to an array of external and internal influences. Compared to inanimate and even vegetative levels, animals have a much more complex organization. Of course, animals sense their mortality very strongly as the difference between life and death.

The added ability to use intellect for analysis constitutes a distinction between human beings and animals. As opposed to an animal, a person has developed to the extent that he recognizes “time” in his brain: past, present and future. People can bring time closer by including it in desire. All of a sudden, we start envying someone who lived a thousand years ago or someone who will be born two hundred years from now.

We observe that at a human level, intellect enhances desire. The work of intellect upon the desire is directly related to the Light; actually, it’s the only work we ever do. The more we work on clarification and expansion of our desires, the more advanced we consider ourselves to be compared to our past, undeveloped states: inanimate, vegetative, animate and speaking levels within the human stage.

Naturally, humans sense life and death, the Light and the darkness, even more strongly. We become more dependent, delicate, sensitive and constrained. But this is the payment for our development.

At the time when our development at simple levels (inanimate, vegetative, animate and speaking) is complete, we approach the Creator’s level at which we gain new senses, a different kind of intellect and an alternative developmental force, all three components together, which we didn’t have before.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/6/12, The Zohar

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The Creator doesn’t hide from us; rather, it is our ego that hides Him. Our opposite nature is what separates us from Him. So how can we take on the Creator’s form? How can we reach Him according to the law of equivalence of form? How can we discover Him and find out that He is in us?

In order to do that, we have to perform certain actions. Who performs these actions, us or Him? There is probably a need for cooperation here. We can’t advance without the upper Light. By “rocking” us, It demands our cooperation, which is called “free will.” This cooperation is all of our work. There are no restrictions here. It is open to everyone and is implemented by the correct studying of Kabbalistic books.

These sources can be the “elixir of life” or the “potion of death.” It all depends on our approach.

• If I intend to discover my evil inclination and to correct it, I can succeed, and the wisdom of Kabbalah will be the “elixir of life” for me. I will discover “death,” my ego, inside me and will want to correct it in order to come to life.
• But if I study to attain egoistic achievements, if I am looking for knowledge, power, respect, control, etc., then the studying only reinforces the egoism in me and my success is opposite to bestowal and I am not even aware of it. Such a study becomes the “potion of death.”

Thus we go through the stages of the Creator’s concealment. The concealment is divided into single and double concealment; the revelation first reveals to us the governance as reward and punishment and then the revelation of His eternal Providence.

Actually it all depends on my desires, on my vessels. With regard to the Creator, there are no restrictions. He doesn’t hide and is not concealed. It is my desires, my vessels, that hide Him, and if I work with them properly, they are gradually corrected, and according to their correction, I discover the Creator. One way or another, I am the one who hides Him from myself. [Read more →]

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Free Will, Inner Work, Kabbalah Study, My Similarity to the Creator - 1 Comment →

Question: You often bring up the example of a mother’s relationship to her child and her relationship to a neighbor’s child saying that if she would see the neighbor’s child as her own, she would no longer perceive that child’s flaws. How can you make a human heart love someone?

Answer: It only can happen through the force of habit. The habit then becomes second nature, through the conviction of the surrounding society, its good examples, through songs and films, and everything that influences a person. The influence of the surrounding society can program me to hate my own child and to love the neighbor’s child.

The environment can do anything! The environment is stronger than my nature because it pertains to the human level and my nature operates on the animal level. We see how drastically a person can change due to his environment. This is because the influence of society is stronger than any other influence.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 5, 1/2/12

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Kabbalists were always against memorizing, against learning by heart and against writing while studying, and so were the first scientists and scholars. After recording, you are limited by it. You put on paper or a computer what you should have put into yourself and used in order to change internally.

If you want to perceive the Kabbalistic, philosophical or even a scientific message, you have to change. You have to change so that the idea will live in you, not in the mind but in your emotions.

The mind should only help the emotions. It needs to clarify all the data, both the internal and the external ones, and to process them and evoke the desire to change so that the data will become our Reshimot (informational genes) in the desire and not in some memory box.

Therefore, we have to make an effort that the material we study will enter our nature and not stay only in the mind. It is possible that we read too much, hear too much, and download too much material from the Internet with all the encyclopedias that are there.

My teacher Rabash was against writing during the lesson, even if it helped us remember the text that we read; then too we had to make an effort so that it would penetrate more deeply so that through the network of memory cells it would drip and penetrate the heart. It does go through my internal filters, but, one way or another, eventually it should make me change. The information I receive and the clarification I make should change me, not intellectually, but internally.

If only the mind could be emptied and I could be new each day, start from a blank page without any additions from the previous day. I could study the same material I studied yesterday as if I see it for the first time. Why? Because I have changed in my desires and with the new desires I see something completely new in the “familiar” text. [Read more →]

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A person goes a long way until he finds out exactly what his work is. He reaches the study by looking for a meaning in life, in the search for an egoistic fulfillment. He stays with the same initial intention for quite a while until finally he begins to hear that it is absolutely forbidden, meaning “impossible,” to fill these egoistic desires. So what can he do?

They say that it is only possible to enjoy when in equivalence of form with the Creator. Do you want to enjoy? Learn from Him how to enjoy bestowal, but not bestowal as you see it, not bestowal from personal egoistic satisfaction. True bestowal gives pleasure to the Creator; this is the only thing you can enjoy.

This means that there is double incongruence: We have to change both our desires and our intentions—the place where the pleasure is felt. When a person moves on to these new desires, which he doesn’t understand at all, he is told: Here you are, now enjoy. This is totally different from what he imagines today in his present egoistic state. He must change his perception several times.

Going through this, he can only hold onto the group, the environment. After all, every time he advances a little, he feels that he is even more a like a child, even more confused and that he loses more of his power. This is so different from the ordinary, familiar way we advance— getting more, understanding more, and feeling more—that a person cannot bear such “progress” which seems to be headed in the opposite direction.

He doesn’t understand how it is possible to work and to feel a growing emptiness and lack of understanding, simply a state of death, of total helplessness when there is no light at the end of the tunnel—pitch darkness, the Red Sea (Final Sea – Yam Sof in Hebrew). Is all that called advancement?

A person feels totally lost, but if he continues despite everything, he begins to discover that without going thorough these states, it is impossible to reach the real desires: to receive in order to bestow. There is nothing left of the previous state, not the feeling, not the understanding, not the previous approach, not the intention or purpose of ordinary advancement. Everything seems totally new and so different from his previous experience that it is simply impossible to see it from afar.

The only thing that can help him here is to organize support around him and become incorporated in activities, studies, group work, and dissemination, so that he will develop gradually, like a child who plays and at the same time grows. Thus, step-by-step, he will gradually advance towards the state in which he can bear the spiritual idea.

He begins to understand that there are many spiritual and mystical methods in the world, but here he comes across a method that will bring him to a new reality by changing his perception. And only then will he understand what was happening to him.

Therefore, it is impossible to explain this to everyone. This is why it says: “A thousand enter the room and one comes out to teach.” After all, if a person’s soul is ready to attain the truth at any cost, it keeps him on track.

If he is really ready for that, then the environment can help him go through these phases quickly, and while still in this life to attain the world of truth!
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What does it mean” half of the half” with regards to the work we have to do?

Answer: A person has to prepare his “half” and the Creator completes the other half. But how can you do that, after all, even in preparing my desire I cannot manage without Him?

To prepare my half means to try and find the deficiency and the right aspiration. But I don’t have that at all. I have to look for the right deficiency instead of the black false bubble I am in where I imagine this false life that doesn’t exist at all that will later seem like a dream.

How can I want and try to wake up from this deep sleep and to feel willingness for it by myself, because this is the only thing I need! But without this willingness, I will not be able to receive the upper world that is revealed at the end of this dream because I have to develop a deficiency for it.

People with a great coarse egoism come to study Kabbalah in order to attain the upper world . It isn’t enlightened “spiritual” people for whom meditations are enough who come here . The people who come here want to receive and to gain big time, to discover the spiritual world. Here it depends on whether a person can hear what he is told and bear all the conditions.

Two natural spiritual laws operate here, which you cannot change in favor of your egoism. We are told that we have to do “half of the half,” but this doesn’t mean that there is some concession here. A person must perform his half, and then he will receive the other half from Above. The other half will change him and will turn him into something that is totally different.

When he is 100 percent ready to change, it means that he has done his half of the work. Then 100 percent of this change is performed from Above; this is the half that the Creator is responsible for.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: The elderly have an especially emphatic fear that arises in any group: What if I won’t have enough time to reach the sensation of eternity and perfection? How to handle that fear?

Answer: We need to set very concrete tasks before them, not prospective ones, like for the youth, and to set defined goals that are attainable and realized very quickly. At the same time, we need to tell them about the entire global picture of nature’s system, its eternity, its life cycles, as well as our life cycles within it. That is, here we need to provide serious psychological support from the very beginning.

Question: During one of the programs you explained that a fear of death paralyzes a person’s life, impedes him. It manifests less in young people and more at a certain age.  How does the methodology of integral upbringing regard attitude to fear? How to work with it?

Answer: I think that a correct clarification of our place in nature is the key to understanding a person’s place within it, the place of death and our biological life. We need to bring a person to the next level of understanding, not even feeling yet, but simply understanding of this.

A person will reach the sensation of eternity and perfection when he or she will be integrally connected with a certain critical mass of other people who are also attaining this integration. Then it is as if we rise above ourselves, creating above us some image of one person with one heart and mind. And our physical body exists nearby as an animal that accompanies this one image, the way our dog or cat lives alongside of us.

We need to focus people’s attention on that and to try bring them to this kind of sensation. In principle, psychologically it’s not that difficult considering that there is no resistance on their end, but on the contrary, support and anticipation of results. They represent that part of humanity that joyfully strives towards integration and closeness, understanding that all else passes and vanishes.

Elderly people easily part with everything for the sake of achieving the feeling of ascent above death, rising above the very factor of the seemingly inevitably impending end. We need to give them a feeling as if they are in a plunging airplane set to crash into a mountaintop, but suddenly some great force force lifts it up, and it speeds upwards with boosted power. I think that such sensation can be created in them quickly.

Besides, the courses for the elderly naturally need to be easier. They don’t require great theoretical and practical studies; they will gladly just participate. And I think that precisely the egoism and fear that appear in all older people, the desire to achieve a result that uplifts them, all that will provide a very serious basis for movement to other groups in society.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #4, 12/13/11

Filed under: Education, Integral Upbringing, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: We spoke about the fact that in the integral upbringing courses people meet for seven to eight hours a day, and together they first go through the preparatory informational stage, that is, receive an education, and then proceed to the practical part, the upbringing, where now in their psychological interaction they go through various states. Aside from study and upbringing, is there room in this program for joint celebration of holidays?

Answer: Constantly. After all, in spending seven to eight hours together, they need to participate in some sort of a meal at least once, perhaps even twice. There should be a lunch and also a small break, like an afternoon snack. There need to be breaks for rest and a constant change in activities; otherwise a person will simply be unable to handle it, especially the elderly—they’d all be falling asleep.

Since they have free time, we need to break their day into morning and evening lessons, and in the middle to give them some time for rest, for housework, for their natural needs. After all, this is a special age group whose physiology may not be fully healthy anymore.

Our task is to have a person connect to a group and thereby acquire for themselves a new society in which they live and not merely pass their time, but find there their bright future. We need to create for them an atmosphere of joyful anticipation that would psychologically support and indeed heal them. Starting with the very first hours of them being with us, we need to work specifically on that.

We should organize dances for them, some kind of special evening functions. In other words, there needs to be a special approach here.

I would like to emphasize once more that their disposition towards our methodology, their desire for it to come true, and their goodwill will play a positive role within other age groups. Elderly people can and know how to influence everyone. We are well familiar with this age: In reality it is quite active. We only think, based on their physical guise, that they are passive, but in fact their influence is very strong.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #4, 12/13/11

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