Audio Version Of The Blog – 04.30.12

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Most Important Is Connection And Love

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we conduct the meeting of friends at the convention?

Answer: The meeting of friends at the convention should include all the groups worldwide. You can include greetings, but they shouldn’t take much time. Being given an opportunity to say a greeting, the group must value time; 15 seconds is even enough. The focus is all on your love and connection.

The meetings of friends have to reflect the world group in the first place, that is, our huge volume. You need to prepare a number of small spots so that there is a huge impression of the immense united global desire, connected above all the continents, differences, time, and distance; so we know that that there is a great number of us; so we feel mutual dependence, connection, and love.

In principle, that is what the meeting of the world group means—to become impressed from each other by the greatness of the goal, the greatness of our power and aspiration.

Question: How do you see the cultural evenings at the convention?

Answer: I think that the cultural evening should be with fewer words and expressed more in music and songs, moreover, more in tunes without words to make them more international. Although the host countries of the convention have their own South American culture with exciting rhythms, they need take into account all the other people. So you could have half of the time dedicated to local folklore, and the other half to our common tunes, which are even better without words when we are just humming the melody together.
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From the Virtual Lesson 4/22/04, Preparation to the Congress

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The Purpose of Thoughts

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: During the workshop, does the elimination of my “I” happen at the level of feelings? I felt that the thoughts that arise in the process of trying to rise emotionally prevented me.

Answer: Everything happens only in the feelings. If disturbances arise in the thoughts, there is not enough feeling. This means that you still need to move forward, deepening and relating to the thoughts of how to correct disturbances, that is, the correction of your yearning.

But you will never be able to advance through thoughts. They exist only for slightly modifying the feelings, focusing, relaxing, and removing. But everything takes place only in desires because desires are matter. Thus, thoughts are only intended to work with desires.
[76507]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Workshop 2

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For My Visit To Chile: A New Internet Site

For My Visit To Chile: A New Internet Site Our friends from Chile and Colombia together have created
a new Internet site dedicated to my  current visit to these countries.
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Three Times Global GDP

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from My Budget 360): “The global debt problem was never really solved but papered over with extensions and banking trickery. The US has dealt with much of the debt issues by suspending major accounting rules and stuffing bad loans into the Federal Reserve like a Christmas stocking. The European Union is facing some challenges ahead and all eyes will be watching given the impact of contagion impacts. …

“These kinds of structural issues cannot be peppered over with more debt. … In 2002 total global debt was above $80 trillion. In 2010 that figure more than doubled to over $190 trillion. …

“Today the global debt to GDP ratio is over 300 percent. You will notice that as the crisis hit in 2007 GDP actually fell but total debt kept going up.

[The USA debt] “has gone from roughly $6 trillion in 2000 to a stunning $15.2 trillion. At some point people will collectively begin waking up and realize none of this debt will be paid back. Not exactly a pleasant realization.”

My Comment: The impact will be strong and in order to deflect it, a war will be created somewhere in the world, or a catastrophe, scam, or terrorist act; otherwise, the rulers will not be able to be justified.
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If You Want To Be Happy, Then Just Let It Be!

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “The relentless pursuit of happiness may be doing us more harm than good.

“Some researchers say happiness as people usually think of it—the experience of pleasure or positive feelings—is far less important to physical health than the type of well-being that comes from engaging in meaningful activity. Researchers refer to this latter state as ‘eudaimonic well-being.’

“Some of the newest evidence suggests that people who focus on living with a sense of purpose as they age are more likely to remain cognitively intact, have better mental health and even live longer than people who focus on achieving feelings of happiness.

“In fact, in some cases, too much focus on feeling happy can actually lead to feeling less happy, researchers say.

“The pleasure that comes with, say, a good meal, an entertaining movie or an important win for one’s sports team—a feeling called ‘hedonic well-being’—tends to be short-term and fleeting. Raising children, volunteering or going to medical school may be less pleasurable day to day. But these pursuits give a sense of fulfillment, of being the best one can be, particularly in the long run.

“’Eudaimonia’ is a Greek word associated with Aristotle and often mistranslated as ‘happiness’—which has contributed to misunderstandings about what happiness is. Some experts say Aristotle meant “well-being” when he wrote that humans can attain eudaimonia by fulfilling their potential. Today, the goal of understanding happiness and well-being, beyond philosophical interest, is part of a broad inquiry into aging and why some people avoid early death and disease. Psychologists investigating eudaimonic versus hedonic types of happiness over the past five to 10 years have looked at each type’s unique effects on physical and psychological health.…

“For instance, symptoms of depression, paranoia and psychopathology have increased among generations of American college students from 1938 to 2007, according to a statistical review published in 2010 in Clinical Psychology Review. Researchers at San Diego State University who conducted the analysis pointed to increasing cultural emphasis in the U.S. on materialism and status, which emphasize hedonic happiness, and decreasing attention to community and meaning in life, as possible explanations.…

“Simply engaging in activities that are likely to promote eudaimonic well-being, such as helping others, doesn’t seem to yield a psychological benefit if people feel pressured to do them, according to a study Dr. Ryan and a colleague published last year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. ‘When people say, “In the long-run, this will get me some reward,” that person doesn’t get as much benefit,’ he says…

“Being happy doesn’t mean feeling elated all the time. Deep stress is bad, but the ‘I don’t have enough time’ stress that many people feel while balancing work, family and other demands may not be so bad, Dr. Diener says. To improve feelings of happiness and eudaimonia, focus on relationships and work that you love, Dr. Diener says, adding, ‘Quit sitting around worrying about yourself and get focused on your goals.’”

My Comment: Since we are in the power of one force of nature, then to the extent of similarity to it, we fall under its good influence, which is manifested at all the levels of the body and psyche, as well as the environment.
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My Friend, The Great Sage!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When a person starts saying something, I form a certain attitude to it, perhaps, disregard, maybe, hate. How should I respond correctly to the friends’ words?

Answer: If I am in the group, then I am engaged in spiritual work, and that is why I must regard each of my friends as a great sage, as a great Kabbalist, as a representative of the Creator, who is in front of me now. And if he just, so to speak, is saying nonsense, I have to see it as I don’t understand what he says: I don’t understand. What he says is absolutely true, absolutely correct, divine ideas, but I don’t understand them; this is how I should accept and relate to him, not condescendingly, not like to a small child whom I love and so I forgive him, etc., and naturally not with hatred or impatience.

I must treat him as the greatest in my generation. I have to approach everything from below; this is the condition of my being in the group. Only then will I begin to feel that the Creator substituted these phrases on purpose so that I properly formatted myself and directed towards Him, to “there is none else besides Him.”
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From the Unity Day Around the World 4/22/04, Preparation to the Congress

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Delighting The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanBy eliminating our own “I” and giving the opportunity for the upper Light to flood everywhere, fill everything, and manifest everywhere, we are bringing enormous joy to the Creator, attaining our purpose, and starting to become equivalent with Him. We overcome our old nature, annul it and become nothing. This is what our spiritual development starts from, as a beginning, as a seed inside a mother who begins to develop it.

Right now we need to think about what pleasure that we bring Him so we would receive delight from that, so that the aspiration to please Him would become our fulfillment.

In this manner, we gradually enter the upper Light. It’s still barely discernible, but we are already figuring out which occurrences in our sensations we will go through in order to begin to reveal Him in action.

If my fulfillment will come from providing a place for the Creator to appear and reveal Himself, from delighting Him, from pleasing Him—then this will be all of my joy. Our work begins with this. From this starting point onward, we find ourselves in a state of “There is none else besides Him,” annulling ourselves and creating an opportunity only for Him to fill all of our feelings, all our thoughts. And indeed, in this case only He fulfills us.

We need to be confident that by moving in this way we’ll gradually start to enter into even greater contact with Him, we will begin to feel more clearly that which fulfills us. Out of nothingness, out of concealment, His properties and His ruling over us will be revealed more and more. We will begin to feel how desires and thoughts are created inside us. And we will go along with these desires and thoughts, understanding that everything comes from Him, and agree with it. The main thing is to show and reveal the Creator within us more and more through our common unity, through everyone in the world. We’ll try to bring up the whole world toward this state. And we’re confident that we’ll achieve this.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Workshop 2

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We Demand Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)!

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Creator is not attained without a group. On the other hand, a group without the Creator is not a group, but “a seat of the scornful.” So I, the group, and the Creator make up one whole. This is what is meant by “Israel, the Torah and the Creator are One.”

The Torah is the force that welds us into a group if we want to unite in spite of the repelling force. So the Giving of the Torah and mutual guarantee are connected. After all, mutual guarantee by itself is impossible. We don’t implement it but demand that it be implemented. This is called “the miracle of the exodus from Egypt.” We only participate in it; the changes are not performed by our power, but only according to our desire.

Our job is to want so badly, as much as we possibly can, and then the answer comes. At the same time we are already making the “golden calf,” like in the time of the Giving of the Torah. It happens, but we don’t forget to cry out! We have to be prepared and to demand the maximum, as much as we can. To demand and not to think about what will happen later. A general demand is required here. Then we will receive the power of unity, and if our egoism rises the next moment, as the system is programmed, it isn’t our problem.

Our collective problem is to demand the correction of the egoism that is given to us now, only that, and no more. A person is assessed according to the current circumstances. We must only feel what is necessary as much as we can in our readiness to attack.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Workshop 2

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Helping The World Reveal The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we come to integrality and unification through dissemination and the integral method?

Answer: Dissemination supports us, it obliges us to be together, to communicate, connect, discuss, and so on. But we shouldn’t forget that dissemination will be effective only if we are pursuing a higher goal: the revelation to the world of the state in which it would exist inside the upper Light, in supreme good, in love and bestowal. We are all inside this field: a field of information, a field of kindness.

If we’re pursuing this goal in our dissemination work, then through that, we evoke the influence of the surrounding Light upon us and the whole world. And, of course, through that we become closer ourselves. This intention should be present at least somehow, somewhere, in some form, but we need to take care to ensure that it is there.

We don’t have a right to forget about it, because otherwise, our dissemination won’t be effective, it would simply be a corporeal action. But if we’ll be thinking about how through this action we’re bringing the world, and ourselves along with it, towards revelation of the Creator, then we will succeed.

We can also add an intention that through this, we wish to bring pleasure to the Creator. But this is too high of a degree. I don’t want to talk about this yet, because people get confused: “Who is the Creator? What kind of pleasure are we talking about?”, and so on. Our inner psychology operates with such phrases. We cannot give anything to the Creator, no kind of pleasure. But we say it this way because we feel that this is seemingly happening in the reflection on us.

If we start pursuing this goal, then our dissemination will be billions of times more effective. And this is most important. You have to go to disseminate with an understanding that through this, you’re bringing enormous benefit to the world, helping them reveal the Creator. Moreover, the connection between us will become correspondingly greater. The problem is only in the absence or incompleteness of our intention.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/25/12, Lesson 5

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