Question: What feeling indicates that I am progressing?

Answer: We advance in the form of turning wheels: some of the wheels go forward, and another moves backwards. Some of them move from bottom to top, some move from top to bottom. The wheel advances forward, and its parts execute various actions.

If a person measures himself in relation to a goal, then he understands that he progresses. But if he measures himself only in relation to ascents and descents or in relation to other states, then it sometimes seems to him as if he is moving backward or standing still.

There are many possibilities to measure the advancement. But the most definite examination is: Do you feel today, as compared to yesterday, a greater necessity to find connection with group? That is the surest examination.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/12, The Zohar

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Question: A woman once said that her freedom is limited by certain obligations for her children, family, husband, household, etc. She feels most free within these obligations. But if all of this were to be taken away, her feeling of freedom would disappear.

Answer: This is true. When a person lacks strict boundaries, it is hard for him to determine where freedom is, and he simply feels lost, because absolute freedom appears to him to be an absolute lack of freedom.

Freedom, like any other feeling, is defined between the negative and the positive in it. Therefore, within certain boundaries and the opportunity to remain, act, and comfortably exist within them, which means managing them, performing any obligations and enjoying achieving them, this is perceived as freedom.

But the thing is that when we become integral in our society against our will, according to the plan of nature, we are unable to feel capable of creating the right framework because it is being violated all the time; on one hand, we become more interconnected with others, and on the other hand, we do not feel like we can do something on our own within our own framework because we depend on a huge quantity of external factors.

This is why the only way to surpass our boundaries is by entering the integral system, which gives the feeling of freedom.

Nature inevitably pushes us towards feeling “cornered” into a state of need, in a constant struggle for survival within our own framework, everywhere: in our families, at work, at home, on the street, anywhere at all.

It is here that we need to show people that freedom is only acquired by correctly interacting with others: globally and harmoniously.

A person, especially a woman, cares only for her boundaries, her comfort within these small boundaries on the animal, egoistic level of existence. When she has a home, a family, children, responsibilities, and she is able, capable, and equipped to provide for the wellbeing of her entire small household; then of course, she can have a complete feeling of confidence, freedom, and realization.

It is not as simple with a modern person, even a modern woman. She aspires to get into business and realize herself. But still, the determinant, basic orientation of the female character is directed towards the family, and for things to be right in it.

However we see that families are broken. The latest statistics are just menacing! The number of divorced and single parent families is greater than 50%!

Here we observe a tendency to push a person out of his little family circle where he feels comfortable leaning on his relatives, where it is enough for him that he could only care for his household and getting whatever the household needs. Despite his mind, man is being pushed towards something greater against his will.

We are tied up with everyone else. Our inner wellbeing depends on the entire world. Thus integral upbringing is simply necessary here to compensate for insecurity, fears, and absence of freedom.

As we rise to the next level, we specifically acquire freedom, despite our current egoistic beginning.

When I connect with others, I acquire something in common with them, common desires and common understanding that when we decide everything together, by interacting with each other, and in no other way—that is when I feel free.

My freedom depends on me. It does not depend on others, because everyone else in the integral group begins to appear absolutely corrected to me. They are already integral in the state of mutual guarantee, connection, and I alone am only beginning to feel where I still need to add and adjust myself. And in general every person feels this way in relation to others.

A person acquires a completely new need to constantly strive towards a proper relationship with all the people.

This is a whole new level. It is still egoistic, but at the same time it is a different and desirable level where I feel that I lack fuller integration. It is in it, after breaking into it, performing a psychological turn around inside of me like by pulling a trigger, and by changing to the opposite, I suddenly actually acquire freedom.

It is like when an embryo is born from a mother’s womb, it turns head down and seems to lose everything it had, after which it appears in a new world; we need to turn upside down, begin to understand the world in another way, and then we will be born in the new integral world.
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From a “Talk About Integral Education” #9, 12/15/11

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Question: In the post “Are Mass Protests An Effective Means Of Reform?” you write: “…no country today is capable of controlling its domestic affairs, and all of them together cannot deal with anything as well. No one can do anything, and that includes all of the countries and governments. And there is no solution to the situation besides drawing closer to nature.”

Are you saying that after we come closer to nature, the next thing will be for all the countries of the world to get together and come up with a plan that will benefit all, and then take it to the public of each country for more detailed solutions?

Answer: Today it’s already clear that all countries are totally dependent upon each other. However, nobody knows how to govern the world in which everything is globally interconnected, and this lack of knowledge is called the crisis. The exit from the crisis is in learning how to be interconnected as nature itself is. Then we will be able to make correct decisions and act accordingly.

Question: What do you actually mean when you say “the preceding development is over”? Will there still be money being made, businesses opening up?

Answer: Everything will happen according to the law of evolution, the only difference being that until now we developed unconsciously, as dictated by nature, and today we develop against our desire, which means consciously.
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Question: We have to reach a deficiency for the desire to bestow in the Arava convention…

Answer: We don’t need anything but that. It seems that this is only half way, but in fact, it is half of the coin, the other half of which is provided by the upper one. It is enough for us to desire to unite so as to reach mutual bestowal in order to bestow upon the Creator.

We call it “a need for a deficiency.” But we don’t feel a desire to attain unity yet so that thereby we could bestow upon the Creator. Therefore, we build a compound deficiency made of a double filling. We do not intend to settle for a need for a deficiency so as to feel this deficiency during the next convention.

The need for connection will bring us to bestowal in the group. And there is another need: to bestow upon the Creator. Both relate to the same intention.

Question: We have to yearn for perfecton and this will provide us with the right desire. How can we make sure that the picture of perfection doesn’t hide the need for a deficiency from us?

Answer: We want to attain the desire to bestow in order to unite. Thereby we can carry on our desire to bestow upon the Creator and to reach adhesion with Him. One way or the other, it is all dressed on one “skewer” and is on one line. You shouldn’t draw any differences here. Think about this a little and you will see that there is no problem here.

If you mention the word “bestowal,” you continue to draw the line towards the Creator, without stopping on the way. Bestowal requires connection with the friends because only that will summon the reforming Light that brings the attribute of bestowal. Why do we all need this attribute? Do we need it in order to have a nice beastly life? No. It is in order to reach bestowal upon the Creator. Why do we need to bestow upon the Creator? Perhaps He doesn’t need it at all? No, He has no such deficiency. Our goal is to reach adhesion with Him because by that we bring Him contentment. We please the Creator not by bestowal, but rather by adhesion.

Question: How can we tie a need for a deficiency with a need for adhesion?

Answer: We need the influence of the Surrounding Light so that we will understand that bestowal is the solution for all the problems. It brings us to everything we want to attain. I want to desire to connect and this is what I ask of the Creator, of the Light that Reforms. But what for?

I want to desire to connect in order to reach adhesion with the Creator. This adhesion is part of my way, part of the calculation. Therefore, the plea cannot be whole if the three elements are not welded into it: Israel, the Torah, and the Creator. This is the nature of our desires, and we only need to understand it. Then you will see: You need to add the Creator to your plea. Otherwise there is no reason to connect in our world. You don’t want it, you didn’t come to study Kabbalah in order to connect with others in social protest.

Therefore, when you discover your desire fully, you reach the formula: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” Just part of the sentence, part of the clarification isn’t enough. When we go out to the desert, we cannot cut our request in the middle of the sentence. If the request is whole, it must end with the word about the Creator because it is from Him that you get the power to perform changes, the power of the reason, awareness, and understanding. Everything comes only from this source, and so our requests have to end with it.

Otherwise, it is like sending a letter with no addressee. If you do that, no matter what you write, you will clearly get no reply and the letter will be lost mid-way.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/2011, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot” 

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Question: Do we have free will when it comes to unification?

Answer: Our free will is in the desire to unite. When we fulfill this free will, the Light comes and unites us. So your desire is fulfilled when you come to unity.

Here we have to discern: Your job is to ask, but you don’t carry out the unification itself. No matter what we do, whether we dance or are deep in thoughts, we prepare ourselves for the influence of the upper Light, preparing the deficiency, the vessel for its presents, for the life that comes from Above. You should be like a small child who can’t perform a certain action but waits for an adult to do it.

This is what is missing in our request: We don’t expect help. This expectation should be revealed more clearly.

In the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 17, Baal HaSulam says: “Hence, the student pledges, prior to the study, to strengthen himself in faith in the Creator and in His guidance in reward and punishment.” What does it mean to “pledge?” It means that he is constantly “engaged,” constantly providing his half, and then the other half comes from the upper Light.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/2011, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: What is the meaning of the expression “There is no coercion in spirituality”?

Answer: There is no coercion in the spiritual world because eventually it all depends on a person’s exertion.

In this world receiving rules, and in the upper world, bestowal. In both cases I am obliged to obey, and this is coercion. After all, these are nature’s laws.

Take the law of gravity, for example, this is a fixed force that immediately pulls me to the ground. Can you resist its coercion? “I don’t want it to operate on me, I have my own plans.” That won’t work. The law operates, whether you like it or not. It is the same with the laws of bestowal and receiving. All of reality is full of coercion.

You are free only when you choose. What kind of a choice is this? The choice is to switch from receiving to bestowal with the help of the group, the Reforming Light, and the teacher. Actually, receiving and bestowal are one law, one force. Your choice is in how to obey it: positively or negatively. You make that choice by yourself.

So what is your choice? Is it worth it or not to join bestowal? You know everything that happened previously and something of what will happen in the future. We can’t yet feel and touch the place where the choice is made. Yet actually, an amazing void opens up for you there.

We often mention the fable of the worm that lives inside a radish. When he makes a hole in the skin, a whole world is revealed to it. It is a very narrow opening, and it is the worm’s choice to be born or not. Every time you make that choice, another small part of you is born, and you enter the new world that is already prepared for you.

Although it is a very slight and fine action on my part, it is as if I operate a huge system by simply pushing a button. The place I make the choice is exactly the “spirituality” where there is no coercion. I open up a new world for myself, and my attitude towards it becomes free.

The law operates in both places, but when I enter the world of bestowal, I acquire freedom: All this is mine—the corrected desire to receive with the intention of in order to bestow, and I control it. I am really free; with this desire, I can carry out any action of bestowal that I want. This is the only thing that I want, and there are no restrictions.

Therefore it says: “There is no coercion in spirituality.” I am born, and I transcend from a rotten apple into a wonderful world, sunshine, fresh air and singing birds. When I go through this narrow passageway, I acquire a new attitude that is based on bestowal and I become adapted to the big world. In it, I am free.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: The Creator limits my freedom according to nature’s laws, but what if I don’t want that? After all, He didn’t ask me. Where is democracy?

Answer: Actually, the Creator develops modern people differently, and accordingly they ask the relevant questions about Him. This is the way it should be. This is why our world is changing, so that the questions about Him will be evoked in us. As a result, all the questions and claims should be aimed at the Creator. It is all meant for a person to reach despair.

On the one hand, it seems that there is freedom in this world and that I can do whatever I want to. On the other hand, my “childish” mind gradually perceives that the world is controlled by a system of laws and that I can’t do whatever I want to at all, even if I really want to do so. There is a difference between what is desirable and what is.

Gradually I understand that it is all about the laws of the world, which are ironclad rules. They are revealed to me more clearly and oblige me more and more. As a result I don’t feel so comfortable and so good, but on the whole this is how I learn.

At the beginning a child enjoys everything and his requests are fulfilled. Later we begin to limit him. We teach him the rules of life and demand things from him. This is how he grows.

You are talking about democracy, about freedom. But what kind of freedom is this? Freedom from what? Freedom for what? Freedom under what conditions? After all, you are not living in a vacuum; you already have certain attributes, you are already something.

“Freedom” for you is when you immediately get everything that you desire: “I want a palace!”—here you go. “I want to be strong and clever”—here you go. This way you are free of any limitations, you are omnipotent.

But you didn’t choose your mind and personality, which means that you aren’t really free. Furthermore, your desires depend on the values that you were raised with, which isn’t freedom either. There are already preliminary conditions instilled in you, which influence you. So what kind of freedom is this? It isn’t the way you imagine it. You simply haven’t clarified this.

On the other hand, the Creator really wants you to be free. Then you will be free of what he has inserted into you and instead, you will build the opposite attributes above that. You will find true freedom among the 613 “sins” and the 613 “commandments,” which is something new, a third factor, the middle line, the spiritual world. It doesn’t exist without you. If you don’t create it, it will not exist.

In the meantime, don’t forget: You are a created being and thus not free, you are limited in your qualities and in your desires.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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All conventions must be permeated with a single idea. The idea is quite simple. The upper Light exists in a state of absolute rest, without any changes. It exists in total bestowal and there are no restrictions on its part. All restrictions on receiving the Light come from us, to the extent of our opposition to the Light.

Therefore, the only thing we need to do is to change ourselves and to some degree become similar to the Light. The Light bestows love, connection, and balance; hence, we must posses these qualities at least to some degree. By obtaining these qualities, we’ll be able to sense the upper Light, the qualities of love and bestowal within us.

This quality, this sensation is called the Light or the Creator. When we obtain the Light’s qualities, the Light will begin to dwell within us, and we’ll sense it and exist in it. We’ll observe ourselves and the world from within this quality because we’ll exist on the next degree called the upper world. This is what we need to attain.

This attainment can only come with the help of the upper Light because it has to influence and correct us. But how can we evoke its influence if the Light exists in a state of absolute rest? We have to desire this and the Light will correct us. The Light can only influence us to the extent of our desire and according to the specifications of what it is we desire.

If we wish to receive only for ourselves and to use our world egoistically, the Light influences us accordingly: It alienates us, thereby worsening our position. However, if we wish to become similar to the Light and to draw closer to it, then in accordance to our desire, the Light draws us closer. Basically everything depends upon the upper Light, on how it will exert its influence in relation to our appeal for it.

Therefore, all that’s required from a person is the desire toward love and bestow. And then, the Light will affect us, will give us the desire to bestow and love, which will become our Light. In other words, the upper Light represents an aspiration towards bestowal, a quality of love. This is what is called the measure of fulfillment of the spiritual vessel.

So, we must posses a great desire for bestowal, love and unity. This aspiration toward the Light will make us loving and giving and will allow us to exist on the next degree, in the quality of bestowal, in the upper world.
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From the Unity Day Lecture “To Acquire a Desire to Give” 1/29/2012

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Question: When I encounter the law of mutual guarantee and see it in action, I immediately begin to monitor others so that they won’t drill a hole in the boat, and I purely egoistically point out that they shouldn’t be doing this.

Answer: With a corrected, altruistic approach, I act differently. I say to myself: “They are all ideal, I can be absolutely sure of them. I only have to monitor myself so I complete them correctly.”

If I behave correctly within the integral scheme, the entire scheme will be correct. It’s a reverse implication of the same law, where each is responsible for all. If, while existing within an integral system, I behave correctly, I oblige the entire integral system to do so as well. If someone breaks the law, the entire system fails.

Engineering has examples of various systems, among them an integral one. There is a discrete system with a strictly defined beginning and end, where all the working parts communicate with each other through impulses. And then there is a system which gets aroused by a signal it receives, then calms down, comes to a state of balance, and only after that can one measure its output as a solution to a problem. This is the so-called integral, analog system.

A disturbance and, naturally, an averaging, a calming down take place in such systems. You wouldn’t be able to observe any results until everything calms down and arrives to a common denominator, to a solution.

At first, when you give a signal, you, say, bring an egoistic environment into a perturbed state. Then correction takes place: Gradually, a balance between absolutely all parts of the system is achieved; the system calms down. And then you measure the potential that results from its connection. If we talk about the human society, then the achieved result is accepted by everyone uniformly, equally, and kindly; everyone tries to uphold this very state because it is the most comfortable for everyone.
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From “Lessons About the New World” #8, 12/15/11

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Question: In the mid-1960’s, there was an incident in Paris when a person drowned in a pool in front of 150 eyewitnesses because nobody came to the rescue. Had there been only one person there, he or she would have saved him, but now it’s as if the responsibility was diluted among 150 people. Hence the law that the more people there are, the less responsibility each of them has personally. How can we make this law integral?

Answer: What does “mutual guarantee” mean? I am responsible for everyone. The general and the particular are equal in their power and influence—this is what the law of global guarantee implies.

If within the final integral system (and we take it as a starting point of any explanation) even one tiny particle is missing—me, you, or him—it won’t be able to function. It won’t be able to operate at the full 100%. It will break down not by 99% or 50%, but by the entire 100% because an integral system implies the participation of absolutely everybody.

Ultimately, the law is such that one is equal to all, one is important for everyone. There isn’t anyone who could wiggle out of this, opt not to participate.

In the integral education we present a simple example: We (all of humanity) are in one big boat. If I drill a hole under myself in the bottom of the boat, everybody drowns. I may say: “I’m sorry, friends, this is my personal business. I want to drown. Or I want to take a bath. That’s it. This has nothing to do with you. What right do you have to enter my territory and admonish me or order me around?!”

If we exist within the framework of one law of nature—in the same boat, like in Noah’s Ark. If someone drills a hole there, we will all drown.

So it follows that responsibility cannot be distributed among everyone. For each person it is the same responsibility as for everyone else! That’s why each person who stands around the pool and sees that someone is drowning must imagine that if I don’t take any action, then no one will. And then everyone would plunge into the water.
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From “Lessons About the New World” #8, 12/15/12

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