Audio Version Of The Blog – 05.16.12
Posted on May 16th, 2012
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In order to be balanced with the Creator, to connect with Him, I have to change myself. How is that possible? How can I resemble Him? After all, balance is resemblance.
In order to do this, we were given an environment. Balance with the Creator is attained by balancing with the environment in which I discover Him. The Reshimot (reminiscences) that are awoken inside present the group to me, and my work becomes real, now I’m dealing with something that’s familiar, everything is solved among friends.
How is it possible to find balance with the group? Through mutual guarantee that is the force, the law of balance.
According to this law the entire world is mutually connected, just like cogwheels in a certain system. None of the cogwheels can turn independently without turning all the other wheels and being turned by them. It’s just like two clutch discs when they touch each other.
But the law of development operates in this mechanism. First, the clutch pedal is pressed and the connection between them is still weak. At this point we don’t disturb but rather help one another by spinning and not feeling that we are connected to one whole. The states and nations are separated; some don’t even know that others exist.
With time, the inner ego grows and the cogwheels become more closely connected. In other words the clutch pedal is released and the discs get progressively closer to one another, until they are very tightly connected. This is how all of humanity develops towards mutual cooperation: Countries establish connections, new continents are discovered, international commerce and industry flourish, societies change, the number of different professions grow, and people are becoming increasingly interdependent until they are totally interdependent.
This development is very difficult because the ego and the Reshimot that develop bring us closer together and crowd us, until at a certain moment when this overly tight connection begins to worry us. We can’t detach ourselves from one another to live without each other, even if we want to. Therefore, nature, the Creator, brings us to a new state in which we discover that we can’t break apart any more. If we don’t work out the right mutual connection among us, then we may be destroying ourselves.
Thus mutual guarantee obliges us to be mutually responsible for one another. We are like cogwheels: Any wheel that turns, turns all the others. The clutch pedal is left untouched and the discs come together, the teeth enter each other and we all find ourselves in one huge interconnected system, that doesn’t allow any cogwheel to turn freely. Now all the others have to agree with it, to agree about the direction and the speed. Without this agreement, no one will be able to move.
Eventually everyone will discover a “strange hand around his neck.” Imagine a person lying with an IV without which he may die, but there are several billion taps installed on the tube in which the vital fluid flows. Everyone can turn off his own tap and then, that’s the end.
We will soon feel that we’re in a very unpleasant situation. That is why the wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed to us in advance, in order to prepare our life to the new conditions. After all, everything comes for the purpose of correction; the question is only how to look at this whole thing. If we know in advance that everything comes to serve the search for the right mutual connection among us, meaning mutual guarantee, then the cogwheels will be arranged as they should and will turn in the right direction, in harmony. Moreover, the mutual balance will help them become balanced with the general force that locks them in the one system together with the Creator. This is how the world will reach the desired correction.
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From the One Convention in New Jersey 5/12/12, Lesson 3
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Question: How can we be sure that our connection in the group is enough for the work that we want to actualize?
Answer: You can actually discover this if in spite of the friction, you try to connect and work together. Then you work on two levels: Below are arguments, hatred, rejection, and lack of understanding, in other words the ego that separates between us, and above, you are the opposite, connected in love.
In our maintaining both of these levels, you constantly rise in both of them: The ego grows above love, and you hate each other, and then love elevates above the ego, and this happens again and again; similar to how we walk on two legs. The positive and negative constantly substitute each other, like swallowing and regurgitation. The whole life is built on sequence, and it is impossible to advance in any other way.
But if the hatred that grew is depressing love and you agree to this, then the connection between you will be torn, and the group will be destroyed. Thus, one always needs to remember what the Creator says: “I created the evil inclination.” He constantly renews your ego, so that you constantly will rise above it to the good inclination.
In this way you connect to Him again and again. He strengthens your self-love specifically so that you will stretch the connection and ask for help. This process must be as clear to you as the light of the sun. Only in this way, we advance as a group; otherwise, we can expect a collapse.
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From the Brazil Convention 5/06/12, Lesson 5
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Question: What efforts should the group make in order to attain correction in the same lifetime in which its members discover the wisdom of Kabbalah?
Answer: The efforts should be not to judge any member of the group according to the state he is in. We are all “rags,” as Rabash used to say; we are all uncorrected. All the sins and negative attributes are in each of us.
A person who attains the high spiritual levels discovers on the way disgusting and repulsive desires that he has, and he is shocked by the fact that he can have such desires. It is even impossible to imagine! As a result of the shattering, everyone has all the kinds of desires inside him. Therefore, we mustn’t see anyone as corrupt.
“It takes one to know one.” If I see a flaw in someone, it is only because I am corrupt. If I were corrected, I could see the other according to my level of correction, as totally corrected, because all these degrees already exist. What I see now is the reflection of my ego. It is my ego that depicts this picture for me.
So the main work in the group is to accept every member as your beloved baby. No matter what he does: If he doesn’t let you rest, if he makes a mess, if he breaks everything, you know that it is your baby. This is how you should treat the friend. It is a sign of love.
I speak about a friend and mean that a person can treat others this way too and not someone who just came in and joined the group. Mutual help means to consider the personal states of every individual.
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From the One Convention in New Jersey 5/12/12, Lesson 2
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Question: Suppose we film a class of integral upbringing. Could the instructors then watch themselves at work?
Answer: I think that this is what matters most, the main instrument, this is why we introduce video recording everywhere. When a person looks at himself from aside, it’s much easier for him to see his “blind spots,” the faults in his behavior, which he usually fails to notice.
Comment: But we must treat this very delicately.
Answer: As a rule, we don’t usually point directly at it. It doesn’t work as this can only break a person. We must bring him to the realization that he must rise above himself (doing so on his own, independently), yet also doing it with the help of others, drawing the example from them, always feeling that he is beneath them.
In this case, there is no teacher and student. Here, a student can appear to be higher than the teacher in the teacher’s eyes. In reality the teacher will always feel like he is lower than the students. Everyone who really is a degree higher than others will feel like he is lower than others. And this will help him rise and be higher. Thus, here egoism works for us, it begins to help us.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 2/27/12
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Opinion (Avinash Dixit, Professor of Economics at Princeton University): “The hurricane analogy seems especially apt as I write this; the winds buffeting the world economy, assisted and in some respects even caused by policy follies, have already produced a Great Recession, with fears of more to come…
“At least one prediction can be made with high confidence; think of it as the central path in the cone. On it, in the course of the next century there will be several financial and economic crises…
“What about the extremes of the cone of uncertainty? United States and Europe are on the right edge. Dysfunctional politics and continued adverse demographic trends will trap these former economic giants into relative mediocrity in the world… From time to time they may enjoy a little growth, but much of the time their economies will stagnate while new dynamic economies of Asia, and parts of South America and Africa, grow faster. Europe and America will remain burdened by debt, both private and public, and suffer periodic bouts of inflation and currency crises…
“On the left edge of the cone of uncertainty we find China and India, whose inevitable and irresistible rise to world domination is being forecast so confidently today, in the early years of the 21st century. Regional and ethnic inequalities in each of these countries will explode into repeated civil conflicts. The police and armed forces needed to cope with this situation will take up large fractions of their governments’ resources, leaving little for productive social expenditures or public investments.”
My Comment: These are some tips and no solutions…
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In the News (from BBC News): “Although a protest vote against the stringent austerity measures enforced on Greeks had been widely expected, in the event the two main parties that had agreed the bailout terms, New Democracy (ND) and socialist Pasok, attracted less than a third of the vote.”
My Comment: If the leaders are doing everything just for themselves, now and in everything, what social maturity can be expected from the citizens who are losing everything!? If the government had showed an example of patriotic instead of egoistic attitude towards the fate of the country, it would have been able to lead the masses. And if it’s not able, then it’s also to blame for not educating the population.
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Question: When specialists work with people, they often encounter qualities in a person which are obvious to everyone, but the actual person does not realize he has them. In psychology this phenomenon is referred to as a “blind spot.” Can these qualities be discussed and revealed to people in groups of integral upbringing?
Answer: This will not work. You can only speak about this in a completely indirect manner, saying that all of us experience these states, not just you or me.
It’s written in every article on integral upbringing that during the process of transition from an egoistic state into an altruistic state, we begin to understand, perceive, and comprehend that there are things that we actually don’t perceive, certain peculiar “blind spots.” But they exist in reality. People around us can see them in us; they understand that so far we don’t realize that we exist in this “blind spot.” It’s as if an enormous light is blinding me and I’m not able to see anything, but the others can see me and everything around me very well.
Generally, a person always exists in a state like this, but we can only talk about it according to the person’s level. We can’t point directly at this “blind spot,” but we can guide him indirectly towards this state, taking him down an alternate route. But never directly, this will not work; on the contrary, it will only worsen the state.
He must realize it through the others, indirectly, and experience it. First, he must find the necessary feelings for this state. He must learn that he doesn’t understand something here that there’s something he doesn’t feel, and it needs to hurt.
And once it begins to hurt within him, he’ll feel disappointed, like he doesn’t understand something, is disoriented, and sees that something is happening in other people and it’s not yet happening in him; in other words, he must start feeling envious, jealous, and proud. It’s these feelings that usually blind him, not letting him see. Everyone has these states. They accompany people until complete correction. Always!
But we must understand that these “blind spots” are the states that we must correct. And this “blind spot” must always guide us forward as a light from a flashlight. This is why the group and everyone else must somehow use their qualities, attitude, and relationships to paint for me the sensation of the “blind spot” which I fail to notice in me, and the fact that I am blinded by my pride, my foolish egoism, and my narrowness, and it’s here that I must rise above myself.
This is a very complicated method. We will speak about it in the future and discuss the different approaches and solutions to it. We must help every person and all of humanity to see this “blind spot” before them. In other words, we must help all realize that this not-yet-activated area of comprehension is your next degree; it’s through the realization of evil, the realization of goodness, that you begin to perceive goodness behind evil.
But in general the “blind spot” is simply our obvious egoism, which doesn’t allow us to feel that we are in it. We believe that everything is normal and right, and we don’t feel that we appear foolish and limited in the eyes of the others. If we were to feel it, we would burn from envy, jealousy, and pride, which would force us to come out of egoism.
This is why we must very carefully spell out a forgiving method of revealing a person’s “blind spot” to him.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 2/27/12
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Opinion (Joseph Stiglitz, an American economist and a professor at Columbia University): “The basic idea is: A few powerhouses like China, Germany, and Japan, plus some commodity-based economies, have thrived in a system where they do all the exporting, and a few countries like the US run massive trade deficits.
“But that system is coming to an end, as countries realize that their trade deficits are unsustainable, and seek to become trade surplus countries at the same time. Of course, not everyone can run surpluses, so this becomes a game of hot potato, with everyone pushing the deficit to someone else, via currency devaluation and other aggressive trade moves.
“An alternative framework for the global financial system: a global reserve system, reform in WTO allowing developing countries to engage in industrial policies, global financial market regulations and capital account management, with a focus on limiting destabilizing short-term capital flows, globally coordinated monetary policy, with globalization, effects of monetary policy.”
My Comment: How reality changes the opinions of economists. They can see before them, at a distance, the only solution: total unity, partial or complete. However, they don’t know how to make the first step toward this future until they meet us.
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