In the News (from Reuters): “More than 100,000 people packed Lisbon’s vast Palace Square on Saturday [February 11, 2012] in the largest rally against austerity and economic hardships since the country resorted to an EU/IMF bailout last May, and organizers vowed to step up protests and labor action.”

My Comment: Instead of budget cutbacks, we need to approach the education of the citizens and build a new form of society, a society of reasonable consumption, when we do not just cutback but eliminate all the surplus, transition to balanced distribution, unify all citizens in a single system of education, and reduce all but essential services and positions. If all of this is executed simultaneously, society will feel much more comfortable than it had in its past good years.
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Opinion (Guli Bazarov, Director of the 21st Century Center of Technology): “ In the beginning of the 20th century, entrepreneurship developed very actively, and people were hungry for the pleasures of civilization. Now the feeling of the first hunger has passed. People want to spend more time with their family.

“Everyone calculated for themselves some financial optimum, and they are no longer willing to devote all their free time to work. The period when you worked in order to live is over. But the accumulated tiredness remains. Add to this the lack of career advancement, and you get a worker who has absolutely no motivation. He is no longer kindled about work since he has burnt out.”

My Comment: The crisis will show the pettiness of our egotistic attitude to the world and will bring us to an understanding of a new world, one above our egotistic nature of this world, to a world of bestowal and love.
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In the News (from Forbes): “Moody’s was last to the downgrade party, announcing on Monday it was axing the sovereign credit rating of six European nations including Italy, Spain, and Portugal. At the same time, the credit rating agency put three triple-A rated nations (the U.K., France, and Austria) under negative outlook, signaling they too could lose the precious, yet arbitrary, seal of approval.”

My Comment: Now, it is only a matter of time: either the crisis will change the EU or the EU will become smarter, reject the old system, and take the course toward full integration.

They will need to do the following:

1. Introduce a system of integral education and upbringing across the EU,
2. Develop a new economic system of reasonable consumption and equitable distribution,
3. Plan gradual implementation of points 1 and 2 in all EU countries.

Surely until the EU leaders and a new single EU government begins to attend to these questions, the systemic crisis will begin to weaken.
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Opinion (John Kozy, PhD, professor): “Offshoring production to underdeveloped nations gives needy people jobs, increases their incomes, reduces poverty, and expands their nations’ GNPs. It also enables people in developed nations to purchase products produced offshore at lower prices enabling them to consume a wider range of things…

“Yes, the wages were better than those that could have been earned before, but they weren’t much benefit. Why? Because when the paychecks began to arrive, the local landlords and vendors increased prices on everything, so just as before, all of their incomes went to pay for basic necessities. The landlords and vendors got the money; the workers were not better off… But, of course, the country’s GNP was better, which is all that matters to economists who still claim that economy is improving…

“Two conclusions follow from this scenario: employment alone is not a sufficient condition for prosperity; full employment can exist in an enslaved society alongside abject poverty, and an increasing GNP does not mean that an economy is getting better… Those numbers mean nothing.

“Economists build models by what they call ‘abstraction.’ But it’s really subtraction. They look at a real world situation and subtract from it the characteristics they deem unessential. The result is a bare bones description consisting of what economists deem economically essential. Everything that is discarded (not taken into consideration in the model) is called an ‘externality’… Since externalities are excluded from all economic models and can be expected to change after any model is implemented, all economic models necessarily fail.”

My Comment: We are in the process of exposing this system and due to our realization of the laws of nature and the law of business opposite to it, we will understand the system in which we want to live. Such a system can be only one: a society with equitable distribution of reasonably limited goods and services.

Fulfillment is achieved by integrating and understanding the meaning of life and raising the whole society to the next level: an integral society in which everyone feels the next level of existence in total unity.
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Question: What does a person have to clarify in order to reach a deficiency?

Answer: A person shouldn’t think about a deficiency. A deficiency should be revealed by the clarification and not that the clarification is revealed by the deficiency. First, I clarify what the greatness of the Creator is. This is what I am attracted to. I follow the right line all the time, I don’t torture myself, I don’t criticize for no reason, I don’t look for descents and falls and empty clarifications. If I do look for that, it is as if I do it without the Light and without the Light I cannot clarify anything.

I am always drawn to the right and to the Light, to adhesion, as much as I can express it. By being drawn to it in the study, in dissemination, and in participation in the group, I begin to discover to what extent I am not part of it. It is already the revelation of evil, as the Light reveals the evil and it isn’t me who looks for it and discovers whatever I feel like.

The advancement and the clarification are done by the good, by the Light. Only with the help of the Light can I clarify things. I don’t fight evil by myself! I am not a hero like different warriors in this world. My overcoming is in turning to the Creator instead of fighting evil directly, so that He will fight my evil and clarify it. The Creator will fight for us and we only have to raise our hands to Him. This how the Creator’s war with Amalek takes place, and in general the whole struggle with the ego.

The Creator says: “Come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart!” the Creator always goes to war Himself, “the Lord is a man of war,” and not a person. A person should be the opposite, and constantly clarify the right point to approach in order to stand between the good and the evil and to direct them correctly in this war, and not that he himself fights.

It is a very big mistake students make, and it is hard to convince them that being a hero is not in overcoming evil by themselves but in bringing the Light to fight and overcome evil. A lot of experience is needed here.
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/29/12, Writings of Rabash

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In order for us to become similar to the upper Light, we have our well known way: We need to study with the intent for the Light to influence us and to create that desire, that inner aspiration, that inner tendency within us. Nothing else is necessary.

It seems very simple. Indeed, everything is already before us. Even according to corporeal criteria, it’s obvious that if someone loves something or someone, aspires to something or someone, he wants to give. It fills him like a mother’s love for her child. Look at how happy she is holding a small creature in her arms. That captures her all. She needs nothing: Her love for him is enough to fill her.

If we have such examples in our world, why is it so difficult for us to maintain that condition regarding the spiritual world? It’s because the condition of bestowal and love is spiritual, it needs to be directed from myself outward and not toward myself, not for myself. That is the problem.

Thus, in order to form within ourselves the forward movement, from ourselves outward, we need special exercises, unique skills we can acquire only if we try to unite between us. However, the attempts to unite lead us to despair because we try to do it alone. We have tried to do that more than once, with no success, of course.

Eventually, after many independent attempts to unite: “Where is our mutual responsibility, mutual bestowal, mutual consideration? Where is our spiritual vessel?” and so forth, we begin to realize that nothing can help us here, and we give up. Only one hope remains: that the Light from Above will come and correct us.

But the Light doesn’t come since we don’t request It. We actually ask for fulfillment. We can only draw near the Light if we try to unite between us. When we carry out acts of unity (which we must do as equals since love and mutual bestowal can only be among equals) then in our unity, within our circle, we’ll feel that we lack help from Above. It really is what we lack.

Currently, we simply recall that there is something else that could help us. I can tell that during the lessons my students suddenly begin to remember: “Oh, yes! We also need the Creator! We can’t do anything on our own. We need to bestow and not to receive, not to wait until something approaches us, but rather to aspire to bestowal and invest certain efforts in that.…” So, the correct attempts to attain bestowal can only be within the group.

The group may be virtual or physical, it doesn’t matter, but everything has to be founded on the connection between the friends. We shouldn’t miss this point. Now, all our private movements are directed into ourselves. It seems to us that they are moving from us to others, but all that isn’t true and is completely unrealistic since it is realized egoistically.

Only when I, together with the friends, begin to aspire toward mutual consideration, our common center, common goal, and try to arrange for us all to hold a single desire, a single aspiration, a single prayer, then within us, we’ll reveal that the upper force, the Creator “is sitting” there. When we look at Him, we should act as if we have a unified demand toward Him, and all of us together, as one, focus on Him with a serious demand.

The Creator is waiting, He wants that demand. It is specifically what obligates Him to give us help in the form of a unique force of bestowal and love, meaning to dwell within us. He doesn’t give anything or remain anywhere. He fills everything, hence He simply needs to be revealed within us. That revelation of His within us is what’s called revealing the upper Light: the force of bestowal, love, upper degree.

We all need to demand it together, to constantly demand and demand, but together, regarding our center, meaning our united desire within which we’ll reveal the Creator’s necessity. And then we’ll see that everything we did previously was only to attain the state in which we’re all united together in a demand to reveal the Creator within us, that only the revelation of the attribute of love and bestowal will save us.
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From the Lecture on Unity Day “To Acquire a Desire to Give” 1/29/2012

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Question: You say that we need to catch the end of the rope that the Creator throws us. When I was a child I used to dangle a string in front of my dog’s nose and as he would jump to catch it, I would pull it up. So, now it turns out that I’m in a position like that dog.

Answer: It really is so. However, think about Who is playing with you. Isn’t this an honorable game?

If you take into account Who you’re playing with then you should be satisfied. What else do you need? Try to feel that you’re partners with the Owner, or His loyal servant.

You must jump after this string with the intention to bestow pleasure to the Owner. After all, the dog that you played with as a child played with you as well. It received pleasure from playing with you! Try to elevate at least to the level of that dog. I’m totally serious; this is quite difficult.

If you play this way in order to bestow pleasure to the Creator then you will become a human.

You will jump because you have a connection with Him. You will jump and play together with Him; you’ll understand and feel Him. What separates you from the rest of the people who jump after this string their whole lives is that they will remain animals and you will become a human.
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From the Arava Arvut Convention 2/24/12 Lesson #2, 

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Question: Do we need to add more love from ourselves at each spiritual degree, and if yes, how is this done?

Answer: These degrees are still far away from us, but from the beginning we receive the desires (tools) for this thanks to our rising above our ego and trying to connect with the group, the friends, and to reach mutual guarantee and adhesion.

Thereby we build the vessels that can transcend one’s private calculation. I try to perform a general calculation, attempting to feel how another person can be more important to me than myself. These are already the first steps towards love.

Through these steps, we first of all build within ourselves an ability to love, beginning with the desire to simply feel the other. Afterwards, we want to feel the other like oneself, and then to feel him more than oneself, to begin to live in him, to want to fill him. Thus we reach a state where the Light of Hassidim (Mercy) fills all of our Kli, and thus we reach love.

We begin to receive the desires of the other (AHP) and to work with them so that filling the other will become our only concern. In this way we come to total devotion and absolute love.

When we are in absolute love, we constantly look for what else can be added to it. When we reach a certain degree, the Creator reveals to us more and more empty spaces, that is, higher and higher degrees. But when we reach complete love in the world of Infinity, it seems to us that as a result of complete mutual love and the absence of deficiency, a new dimension will open for us beyond the level of the world of Infinity. This is already the transition beyond the limits of love.

Indeed, according to our understanding and reason, absolute love cannot exist. If there is only white or only black, the creature loses its sensations. This is what happens with a son who feels the absolute love of his father. He has nothing to attain, nothing to work for, there is no empty space that he has to fill if he feels that no action of his, even the worst or the best, will change his father’s attitude towards him.

This is the problem. After all, each time he has to feel some response. In this interaction of bestowal and reception he perceives himself. Otherwise he won’t feel anything. His father, from his endless love, annuls the son. Thus the Creator conceals Himself.

And how it will be in end of correction, this we cannot tell now. Evidently, a new space will be discovered, in which the creature will rise to some kind of higher existence. It will happen after adhesion to the Creator and absolute love, after having felt the Creator fully.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/2012, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: An embryo in a mother’s womb turns as a result of the activation of physiological instincts. But how does a psychological change happen? How does this mechanism work?

Answer: First of all, when an embryo is being born, there is pressure from both the mother’s side (the pushing forces, the so-called labor pains) and the side of the embryo. It also helps this process in a certain way and advances.

Birth is a very serious complicated process, I would even say that it is somewhat tragic and threatening to both the mother and the child. Likewise, there must be some very serious pushing forces in our case, and nature has taken care of it by pushing us with different crises: family, identity, social, economic, ecological, and so on—through everything we do, that is, everything that makes up our womb.

In our current world, everything is gradually being set against us. These are the pushing forces—birthing contractions.

They are not yet as strong as they could be, but their culmination is near. We observe this in all the crises, and now on the development of the last economic crisis, which is literally threatening our lives. So, on one hand, we are already approaching the final stage, we are close to being born.

On the other hand, we do not feel comfortable inside in our current state. We plunge into drugs, depression, and different problems. We do not feel calm or comfortable on the inside. It is not just the world around us that is like that, but we are not able to find peace within. Nothing would change even if the world simply became indifferent for a moment: There are many conflicts and pressures inside us, which we want to escape but are unable to.

If we integrate and gather these inner conflicts and pressures into one single force between us, we will then add our own efforts to the maternal pushes, and of course will be born on a new level, that of “Man” or “Adam.” All this can be alleviated without “midwives” and “obstetricians,” but by using the helpful powers of society: social opinion, social influence, and pressure.

This happens when together we gather into this one unified image that has to be born, while on the outside our society works on integrating, connecting, discussing, explaining, and identifying all these forces around us. Then a person begins to understand this process inside him. This also pertains to upbringing, when we discuss our actions, history, purpose, and the purpose of all the conflicts; when we examine not just their cause, but their meaning: to bring us to a state where we all are like a single embryo in one mother-nature, which is pushing us outside of it onto the next level. Nature wishes to birth this embryo, and it needs to help nature to do this.

Helping nature is fundamental for us. Nature divides our birth either into a tragic or into a good and easy birth, which is called coming out with the maternal waters. What are “waters?” The water is an alleviating action. When we willingly aspire to this, we can easily cross the “Rubicon”—a natural, spiritual, and a psychological change.

Question: Does a person make his contribution to the spiritual birth process, like in the case of an embryo, by actively participating in the group of integral education?

Answer: Of course it has to be a group because the group represents the embryo! One person is not an embryo (he cannot be born); an embryo is specifically an integral connection between people when we prepare them for birth.

First small groups form, then bigger ones, then many groups appear. When they begin to understand each other, they become like one person in a group, and in relation to other groups every group also represents a single individual. This way they come together: like cells into organs and organs into a single body.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” #9, 12/15/11

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The environment determines what inclinations are more developed in a person (pertaining to the animal body or to the level of man), how we use them, and which of them we develop to a greater or lesser degree.

If parents place a child into an environment where, say, science is valued above everything else, then it’s no surprise that the child too gets imbued with its importance and begins to understand that development in that direction is an extremely important and honorable pursuit. And even though until then he had only rudimentary inclinations for science, say, he merely wanted to learn some interesting things from life (which basically is a commonly shared desire), under the influence of the environment, these abilities developed in him in a special way.

In other words, the surrounding environment can alter the balance of my inclinations within me and to develop some of them more than others.

I experienced this myself. My parents really wanted me to develop my abilities to the fullest, as best as possible, and for that reason they signed me up for various athletic clubs. I was a runner, doing the 500-meter dash. Later they sent me to a music school, and there I made my acquaintance with classical music, which to this day I esteem, love, and understand more than all the other types of music.

But my parents didn’t really place special importance on theatre, for example, and therefore I didn’t develop in that direction. But science and technology were very important both to my parents and to me. I had a natural inner impulse to engage in science. And I remember that I myself went to join children’s clubs where much attention was paid to the study of physics, astronomy, and other sciences. I gave all my strength and knowledge to this.

In other words, a child develops under the influence of the environment: the influence of parents, the surrounding environment, the place where the child lives, and the opportunities that it offers. Ultimately, all this develops a person in a diverse way; moreover, part of his inclinations develop more, some less, while others get suppressed altogether.

The environment in which a person is born and develops throughout their childhood exercises, restricts, and forms their free choice. And a person continues his life like this. I wouldn’t even say that we have free choice in this. Maybe there is some, but even whatever is there we take from our environment. It’s a matter of fashion or friends who happen to be near a person as if by accident and instill certain values into him.

We also need to acknowledge the importance of the experience we accumulated in all our previous lives, of the so-called reincarnations from which we receive Reshimot (informational genes). Going from incarnation to incarnation, a person carries over with him his entire accumulated potential of development. In other words, after being born, a person doesn’t only develop through the influence of an increasingly modern society, but inside a human being new inclinations appear from generation to generation, which we call the informational genes (Reshimot), and he or she develops under their influence. This is especially felt in our time.

If we look at children, we see that they quickly grasp anything modern much better than we do; it’s as though they were born already prepared for it, having made the necessary clarifications and possessing the qualities that help them perceive the modern world. After all, look at how skillfully they manage with computers, mobile phones, and other innovations! But with us everything is different. If I ever need to figure out some new technology, I rely more on my children. It’s as if they already have an approach to it, they seem to have an inborn ability to sense the nature of these new things and understand how to work with them completely naturally. It’s as if these are “indigo children” or aliens from another planet!

Taking these children as an example, we can see that evidently, there exist informational genes, Reshimot, that evolve and are passed down from generation to generation. We call this process reincarnation, but in reality, there is nothing mystical about it.

As we are discovering today, we are all connected to each other, and between us there exists a certain common field, akin to a gravitational or electromagnetic field. This is a field of thoughts and desires that ties us all together above time and distance. We exist within this field and in this manner transfer to each other, or from generation to generation, the information acquired by us. Therefore, it’s not surprising that our physical bodies, existing within this field, detect new information, and so a new generation immediately becomes prepared to correctly enter a new epoch.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 3, 12/29/11

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