Question: We are forming a collective desire before going to the Arava. How can we reduce the path of such a desire so that it transitions from material exertion into spiritual attainment?

Answer: In fact, there is no such thing as two worlds, material and spiritual. When our actions lack intention, it seems to us that we act within matter. The world around us is “visible” because of the deficiency of intention; that’s why we are bound to work with “reinforced concrete” by going through trouble and putting forth demands. They are nothing but the materialization of the defects of our intention. That’s what our material world is about. So far, there is no way out except working with “clay and bricks” as the sons of Israel did while they were in Egyptian exile.

Kabbalists gave several recommendations which allow us to draw the upper force upon us in order to get altered. I don’t know who I am at this time since I consist of a thousand parameters and have no idea how to change them. Besides, I don’t possess any ability for self-regulation. Real transformations are of a qualitative nature; I am not qualified at this time to envision the next step or shape.

This is the reason why we have this world and the group, toys which we “play” with. It’s okay that I act materialistically and egoistically, by doing so I trigger the influence of the upper Light upon me. It’s a very unusual remedy: I can connect to a notion called “we” and together we activate the mechanism of the group with the help of intention, studies, dissemination, and so on. Thus, we engage an even more superior mechanism, GAR of the world of Atzilut, from which we receive the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) that changes us. We try to connect with each other, participate in various events, join common meals, study and disseminate. The major thing in these activities is our unity.

We take part in all sorts of activities with egoistic intention (Lo Lishma) to the best of our ability as small children who don’t know accurate answers to their questions. By acting so, we initiate a system that comprehends our actions like a mother who senses her child even though he is not yet able to express his desires. She knows what he wants before he cries out.

The motherly system is ready to decipher our appeal. It’s Bina who gave birth to us and to whom our appeals return through a closed circle. It doesn’t matter whether our efforts are of a material nature; they will result in spiritual “discovery.”

Kabbalists accurately defined the place and specifics of human efforts: The group work should be as unified as possible. At the same time, we should address the world with the message that the Creator wishes us to convey to others; if we cope, the “discovery” will come to us by all means.
[70744]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/12, “The Peace” 

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Opinion (Gerald Celente, Harry Dent, and Robert Prechter): “‘The economic recovery has been weak, so the next downturn should generate bad news in a big way,’ Mr Prechter told USA Today, saying the markets look ‘very bearish’ for the third time in 12 years.

“Mr Prechter told USA Today both markets will crash back below their lows hit at the height of the financial crisis in March 2009. Unemployment fell last month to 8.3 per cent, a three-year low, and weekly jobless claims are at a four-year-low.

“But Mr Dent believes that people will be left out of work again in 2013 or 2014 and U.S. markets will crash because central banks have been pumping so much money into markets that they are unrealistically strong.

“Mr Celente told USA Today that a higher unemployment rate will cause social unrest and there will be a growing rich-poor divide. This would no doubt help fuel movements such as Occupy Wall Street.”

My Comment: No comment—people’s mentality will change only under the threat of bankruptcy and destruction. Meanwhile, we can only prepare materials and disseminate as much as possible, the method of improving the quality of life.
[71980]

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Opinion (Ashok Khosla is one of world’s leading experts on the environment and sustainable development, a former director of the United Nations Environment Programme): “The Earth has entered into another period of extinction of the biosphere, which resulted in thousands of species disappear, President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Ashok Khosla. ‘We are witnessing the 6th mass extinction, which takes place on the planet Earth from the moment of her life. Last – the fifth – led to the extinction of the dinosaurs,’ – said Khosla in a meeting with reporters in Moscow. In particular, the human race be without risk of fishery resources by 2050. Every day the world is cut down and burnt about 50 hectares of forests every day about 20 thousand hectares of farmland turning into desert, and broken by ravines. Every day in the atmosphere 60 million tons of carbon dioxide, which is reflected in all corners of the earth.

“For example, some island nations may be flooded in the next century due to rising waters in the oceans. Currently, scientists recognize five major mass extinctions. The latter led to the disappearance of dinosaurs  65 million years ago . His reasons still not fully understood. The death of the dinosaurs could have caused the fall of the meteorite, a supernova explosion, powerful volcanic eruptions, or climate change. Now on the brink of extinction are 19.6 thousand species of animals and plants – a third of all species that exist on Earth. Over the past two decades, the number of species threatened with extinction, has doubled. If the predatory attitude toward nature will continue, then, as some pessimists, 2050 Planet empty.” (Source: Mysteriousall)

“Industrialized countries are suffering from excess consumption. They are encouraged to reduce the level of consumerism and use fewer resources per capita. Business must be socially responsible and care for nature.

“Why would you fill the refrigerator with food if you do not eat everything? In Germany, 17% of produce is thrown away unpacked. In fact, can we not donate it to poor countries? The food there is 100 times cheaper.

“Some of the recommendations are difficult to implement because it requires to change habits: for example, travel to work by public transport, work during daylight hours, which means getting up and going to bed early, do not litter, and slow down child-bearing (one child per family).

“The future must be based on social justice and a green economy. Over-consumption can be stopped only through innovation. New technologies available now are enough to get four times as many products without a corresponding increase in resource spending. There are about 2300 resource and energy saving technologies in the world.” (Source: STRF.ru)

My Comment: The Club of Rome has been talking about these ideas for decades, and who hears them? And this is in spite of the fact that it includes well-known and influential people. We must understand that green technologies, reducing excess production, saving, and caring about cleanliness, all this can be achieved only through prior integral education and upbringing of people. Precisely due to upbringing, people will relate to one another, others, society, nature, and the world differently, and the messages of the Club of Rome and other clubs will be heard.
[71988]

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In the News (from World Socialist Website): “Tens of thousands of Britons are struggling to make ends meet, forcing ever greater numbers to resort to the use of food banks.

“There are now 163 food banks in the UK. In 2011 alone there was one opening every week.

“Food banks were first launched in 2000 by the Trussell Trust to address the problem of providing emergency provisions of food to people who had no money. People are referred from Citizens Advice, GPs (doctors), social workers and school liaison officers. Each person is entitled to three vouchers at a time, with each voucher exchanged for an emergency bag of food that lasts approximately three days.

“In September 2011, the Trussell Trust said that the numbers of young people using its food banks had risen from 41,000 to 65,500 in the previous 12 months.

“Many young people are not entitled to welfare benefits. Now the government is launching a major attack on existing welfare arrangements that will force many people already on the bread line over the edge.

“It is estimated that up to one third of the UK population have little or no savings, or any available funds to fall back on. Chris Mould [executive chairman of the Trussell Trust] said: ‘People are going without food in order to feed their children, sometimes for days, for all sorts of different reasons, but fundamentally because their incomes are too low to support their basic needs of housing, clothing and food.’”

My Comment: And yet, there is no need to produce more food: The world has surplus food, but there is no desire to provide food for everybody. If we treated the whole world as our home, we would have an abundance of everything. Hence, the problem is not in the world, but in our upbringing.
[71890]

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Opinion (Nikolas Busse, Brussels Correspondent for NATO and the EU): “Perhaps the scariest side effect of the euro crisis is the renaissance of national prejudice. The Germans are called the Nazis again, while southern EU members are considered lazy and crooks. Some phrases are reminiscent of the rhetoric of the period before WWI and between the world wars. Rough expressions are evidence of the EU’s decline.

“European unity is broken by its goal – to reconcile peoples, who throughout history were used to looking at each other with hostility, distrust and envy. Despite the existence of the internal market and freedom of movement, EU citizens are strangers to each other and live in accordance with national mentality.

“During the crisis, the Europeans are turning to the past: Europe has not forgotten the Third Reich, for there will always be a certain skepticism in relation to Germany. The EU has a future only if all member states stay together.”

My Comment: That is why the method of integral education and upbringing highlights the need to educate all the participants of the integration processes in advance and to proceed to the creation of the integral community only as people’s thinking changes.
[71894]

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Question: You said that it is very important for a person to be in harmony with the rhythm of nature’s breathing: inhalation and exhalation. Psychology examines the process of psychological “breathing,” the so-called “splitting,” when a person’s “Self” seems to break into pieces. Afterwards, thanks to this splitting, a person can once again assemble his “Self” and so on. He does this independently, trying to assemble himself anew every time. Gradually, it becomes more difficult for him to do it, which leads to depression.

Answer: A person becomes depressed because he constantly needs to overcome himself for G-d knows what—just to rid himself of bad feelings, despair, and emptiness. Whereas in integral upbringing, he has a clear goal relative to which the spiritual breathing takes place. As one gets closer to the goal, he inhales, which means that he feels the oneness, senses its greatness, the power it gives him, admiration, and inspiration.

Then a person needs to exhale because otherwise he will not be able to go on. He needs to reveal new emptiness, new negative qualities in himself, in order to once again become one with them and attain unity with everyone, in other words, to move on to a new phase of breathing.

This kind of inhaling and exhaling happens to every participant in the group, usually through some interesting contact between them. There are periods when every participant has his own movement, his own frequency of ascents and descents. And there are periods when the group has special events: picnics, gatherings, and conventions, that is, very serious moments of unity, for which everyone prepares and where everyone participates. These ascents are also followed by certain descents.

There are different descents: descents into bad states and descents into states of indifference. Bad states are better because they pass more quickly and sharply.

States of indifference can last a long time. This requires somehow arousing people in one direction or another. As a rule, they must be aroused in a good direction and never in a bad one since they might fall into an even worse state. In any case, the key is to bring them out of a dead state.

Question: What does it mean, “into a good state?”

Answer: Good state means towards unity. But in general, there are periods when these ups and downs happen in unison in the group, and there are periods when this happens in people individually in their own time, with their own frequency, and so on.

However, only the entire group can help a person. It must inspire and help, it can even obligate him. It can literally pull a person out of bed as there are different cases of depression. In general, the group has the ability to stimulate a person in a positive manner without pressuring him—if it is a real group.

A person can say: “Leave me alone! I do not want to be friends with you at this time.” And this needs to be respected, and a person needs to be left alone. Let him experience the entire state. He will be back anyway. People return as a rule. If not, he still needs to be observed and invited at the right time.

We need to understand that there is no other way! Maybe pride is getting in his way: “You want me to come back?!” We need to show him that we want him, need him, that is, help him come back.
[71850]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #11, 12/16/11

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Question: When people unite for a common goal in a certain group and someone refuses to play the common game, he either needs to be removed or forced to work together with the team.

We are creating integral education groups where people do very important things: They study integration and apply it in practice. But in such groups, there might be a person who not only refuses to play this game, but for some reasons disturbs or even destroys the process.

Answer: We gather people in groups by type. There are people for whom it’s hard to accept the integral method and unification and to understand that community is where we will reveal the next level of our existence above the corporeal body: a common desire, common thoughts.

We have to put these people in separate groups, where we “pump” all this knowledge into them over months or maybe even years. Very carefully, we apply education methods, showing the need for unity using the examples of animals, people, social structures, society, and so on, until they begin to hear that this applies to them.

These people need time. They must not be pressured or expelled from the game because all of humanity has to develop to this point. If they have a desire for something (these people usually gravitate towards understanding, towards systematization of knowledge), they need to be given the opportunity to “cook” in it, until very gradually the society around them, time, as well as material will affect them. There is nothing else that can be done. Practice shows that sometimes the result can only come after several years.

These people study, they can write, speak about integration, lecture, and organize groups, but their nature is in such a deep state of egoistic knockout that they do not understand that they are not in this.

Question: How do you offer such person to transfer to a different group? And who will do it?

Answer: We initially sort people as we deem necessary. I think that you also put together your psychological groups according to certain criteria. It cannot be done any other way, otherwise participants will disturb one another. And we want for everyone to succeed. Groups are sorted according to certain similarity between them. So we use the same criterion of similarity here.
[71545]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #11, 12/16/11

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Question: Psychology speaks of different behavior regulators like shame, the feeling of blame, fear, and so on. Every person has these feelings and they have to do with ethics. On their own, these regulators are neutral. But how do you properly use them? Will we be able to teach people to properly use feelings like shame, blame, or fear?

Answer: First of all, we have to teach people to have an objective attitude towards these qualities since they have been instilled in us by nature. How do we learn to use them? We need to teach them that.

First of all, we have to rise above it. I am human. All this exists in me. Anything human is not foreign to me. I understand and try to understand all my negative and positive qualities. They are not mine, they have been instilled in me by nature. And the same applies to everyone else. Thus, we have to reach absolute harmony between us by using absolutely all our qualities! That is it.

We will gradually “pull” newer and newer qualities, fears, worries, and self-blame from within us. And we will need to somehow comfortably make all of this work in our common friendship in a way that none of these qualities remain inside me—they will all gradually come out of me.

Is an infant lying in his mother’s arms ashamed of anything? No, nothing! He lacks this concept. He is fully naked and completely hers. Similarly, when there is complete understanding, love, mutual feelings, and need for each other, nothing is taboo. On the contrary, the more of them you reveal, the more opportunity to grab on to one another you give, as if you had claws and connected together.

This is why all our negative egoistic qualities, which we earlier wanted to use to grab on to each other so as to get something for ourselves, are now beginning to manifest as a proper and good link between us, and hence we do not see anything bad in the things created in us by nature. We would not be able to connect with each other without these negative qualities. When we transform their use from negative into positive, we acquire the opportunity to make contact and be connected.

It is like cogwheels. If the cogwheels were round, they would just slide, so the ripples and claws help us connect.

It is written in the Bible regarding egoism: “I give you help against you.” This inverted help actually helps us. So the cogs are our egoistic qualities.
[71537]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #11, 12/16/11

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Question: In the group dynamic we encounter people who seem ridiculous, as if they were from another world. They are usually very active and try to get ahead.…

Answer: There are people who like to lecture. They suddenly get up and spend half an hour talking nonsense. They think that they are talking business, that they have brilliant ideas. And everyone else is regrettably obligated to sit and listen to them. Moreover, it is usually not a onetime occurrence, but they literally must mark their territory at every lesson, otherwise they do not feel like they participate with everyone else.

These people need to be separated, removed from the group. The group should not suffer because of an individual. Never! We must make sure the group is homogenous in everything.

Question: Should we put these people in one group?

Answer: Yes, let them speak, discuss things, and do whatever they want, but only on the given topic. They will advance through mutual discussions, when one lectures and another speaks over him, that is, basically they will advance in their own key, just like every other group advances in its own key.
[71540]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #11, 12/16/11

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Question: I see the spiritual path as a glass half-full. The filled half is love and the empty part is hatred. Shouldn’t each one of us see the full part of the glass and be inspired by what is there so that it will help us rid ourselves of many complaints and advance?

Answer: First of all, we must get inspired by what the Creator is doing with us. In reality we received an enormous credit that we didn’t deserve, a huge advancement and all the opportunities and conditions. Most importantly the Creator gave us the desire and the aspiration to move forward.

No matter what happens the Creator doesn’t leave us. You can’t imagine how thoroughly He is working with us, even when we don’t seem to want it! It is the Creator that lessens our desire for spirituality and then strengthens it once again. As a result of this we become hopeless and we yell and become a bit angry with Him. Then once again we love Him and we’re ready to connect. This is how the Creator plays with us. For the time being we don’t do anything on our own. We must see His masterful work in everything and be at least a little bit grateful.
[71839]
From the Arava Convention 2/24/12, Lesson #4

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