Question: At the Sunday seminar you said that the center of the group did not exist before the breaking of the vessels because the three lines did not exist then, and now we are forming it. What does that mean?

Answer: We have a collection of data, but we have to gather it together into one ourselves.

Let me give an example. Suppose we used to have a mosaic image depicting the sun, clouds, a meadow, and several animals and people on it. It’s a pretty picture. Then this picture was broken into parts and the parts were mixed up.

Now you have to put the picture together again, but it will not be the same as the previous one anymore. That’s because you are adding your own component to it, the difference between what was created from existence and what was created from absence. In other words, the difference between the Creator and the creature is embedded into the mosaic, and the image transforms from flat to multidimensional.

In Kabbalah this is designated as a 620-fold addition. However, this is not talking about a quantitative addition, but about new details in the perception of reality.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/12

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Question: How can we reach the center of the group?

Answer: We must constantly think about our common force so it would correspond to the Creator. It has to grow forth from our equal cooperation, where every person bows down his head, joins the group, and raises the friends in his eyes since without them he would not be able to take one step toward the goal. His mind and feeling are born out of unification, and inside the unity, he finds his soul. Thus, aspiring to the center means aspiring to one’s soul.

No one has his own, separate soul. Baal HaSulam writes that only one soul, one common vessel was created. Therefore, without revealing the center of the group, we remain on the “animate” level, outside of the spiritual world, outside of our soul, and exist in the material bodies.

We must constantly form the center of the group. It is a point, like an elevator that rises up the spiritual degrees by the might of the unity of its constituent parts, rising higher and higher, to greater quality, to a greater concentration of our aspirations and desires. This enormous field is the “territory” of our common vessel.

The Creator endowed us with various qualities by means of the breaking, and with the help of intention we focus on the central point.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/12

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Question: What kind of an effort do we need during the seminar? Should it be a burst like that of an attack, or a fine internal search?

Answer: The seminar and our path in general are completely based on feelings, since we are clarifying everything inside of our material, the desire to enjoy. The desire perceives itself through feeling, but in order to realize the different states experienced, we need the mind. The mind comes to us only on the elevated levels, when we begin to unite desires in hope of reaching a corrected vessel. And this is when we begin to form our spiritual mind.

Prior to this we are only at the disposal of the earthly, animate mind, which helps us to better serve our egoism. This mind does not ascend higher than the level of this world because the lot of a slave adjusts to his master. That’s why those feelings and the mind with which we exist now are completely limited by the level of this world and don’t have anything pertaining to the spiritual. And here, it’s not important how smart a person is. This absolutely does not relate to the spiritual.

With the new feelings and mind, which do relate to spirituality, we now begin to develop in the search for our common point. This sensitivity must localize in the area where we are connected to each other, in the center of the group. The mind will appear in order to uncover the various subtleties in this and to help us unite. These are already the spiritual feelings and mind, belonging to the spiritual ladder.

That’s why at the seminar the inspiration precisely for unity must reign, and not a simple enthusiasm in the hope of receiving new knowledge and for the development of the self. If I want my awakening and preparation for the seminar to join into this work, then from the very beginning I need to focus myself only towards unity. This means focusing on the importance of unity, the importance of the group and friends, and not to long only to attain something by and for myself. It’s a pity for those who exert such futile efforts, since they will be left out of the circle.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/12, “Talk About the Seminar”

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Question: Although you warned us that we cannot be late to a workshop, we still had latecomers. Did we do the right thing by taking pity on them and accepting them into the common circle instead of making a separate circle for the latecomers?

Answer: It’s baffling how people can allow themselves to be late for a clarification of this kind! It’s the same case as when the Ari invited his students to go to Jerusalem and perform the final correction, but no one came at the appointed hour. I don’t understand how a person can be late to a gathering devoted to spiritual work.

Everything depends only on the preparation, on concentration, on the desire for it to happen. We need to start thinking about it for several hours before the workshop. Nothing will happen without preparation, we need to prepare the desire.

In everyday life, the feeling of hunger and other needs rise up on their own thanks to hormones and natural processes in the body. But when it comes to the spiritual, I myself need to arrange my desire through the environment. There is no desire in me for anything spiritual that would arise on its own like the need for food, sex, money, power, and knowledge do.

I was given only a single point in the heart so that I could develop my spiritual hunger from it. And everything else besides that point needs to come from the environment. Before the workshop, I need to arrange such an environment that it would influence me and I would arrive with an already prepared desire. Otherwise I will miss all the opportunities, as though I’m suddenly invited to a festive meal bursting with food, but I didn’t know and had just eaten a full meal. I look at all this abundance and don’t know what to do with it.

Preparation is essential. Thus, people who come late and burst into a group from a different world, from their job, or from a store; they cause harm. They cannot penetrate the common circle right away, at best only towards the end of the workshop are they able to somehow grasp the common feeling, and they interfere with others for sure.

Therefore, you shouldn’t welcome them with open arms right away, but verify what has happened: Is it truly the most important event in their life? I would not allow latecomers to enter. It’s necessary to take care in advance about not being late since we’re talking about the salvation of the soul. After all, haven’t you come in order to build the place where a soul is received?
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/12, “Talk About the Seminar”

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In the News (from Bloomberg Businessweek): “It’s just after lunchtime on a drizzly day in the Amsterdam suburb of Bos en Lommer, and the line of people waiting to fill their bags with free rice, juice, potatoes and bread is lengthening.

“The market is one of 135 food banks in the Netherlands bailing out people trying to survive on less than 180 euros ($234) a month, the threshold to qualify for the aid. Organizers say demand for the service rose 20 percent in the first quarter…

“Europeans everywhere are changing jobs, homes and habits to accommodate lower pay, shifting markets and slowing economies. …

“The crisis is now at the door of nations previously considered invulnerable such as the Netherlands. …

“‘The lines will get bigger and bigger as more people lose their jobs and have trouble paying their rent or mortgage,’ said Piet van Diepen, a food bank board member.

“In the Netherlands, more than 23,000 people get aid from the food bank, he said. The numbers also are increasing in places such as Britain, where figures showed this month that the economy has slipped back into recession amid the biggest budget cuts of any of the 10 largest EU countries.”

My Comment: This could be an opportunity to send these people to courses on integral upbringing. In a few months, the face of Europe could change. Social relations, mutual guarantee, communication, and sense of community would lead to the similarity to the fundamental law of nature of unity and cooperation.

To that extent, we would feel that social and political tension decrease, and we would discover new mechanisms of the regulation of social life. As Baal HaSulam writes, the country that decides to implement the system of uniting society through the education of its citizens will become the most prosperous and exemplary country in the world in a few months.
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In the News (from Business News Daily): “According to a study of co-author Bryan Bonner, an associate professor at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, ‘for groups to be successful, they must exploit the knowledge of their (individual) members effectively.’

“The research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, proved this by looking at how both individuals and groups answered difficult questions. …

“’People find they often know more than they think they do. They realize that they might not know the whole answer to the problem, but there are a couple things they do know that might help the group come to a solution.’”

“Therefore, leveraging what individuals already know is the key to solving a range of problems, according to the research.

“According to Bonner and co-author Michael Baumann, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas in San Antonio, improving the ability to transfer old knowledge to new situations may be as simple as attempting to solve problems with others. This is because, when several people team up to solve problems, the group has several viewpoints to bring together in order to reach a solution.

“’Although the sheer amount of brainpower it takes to consistently and effectively transfer learning from old to new is beyond many individuals, groups of people working together can actually be very good at it,’ the researchers said.

“With that in mind, this research may not only change the way organizations go about solving problems, but also how organizations are constructed in the first place.”

My Comment: At all levels of unity, the likeness to the single organism of nature is good. Gathering separate people into a single organism immediately creates not only a simple sum, but more than the sum of them, precisely due to the force of the similarity to unity, the property of the Creator.
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Opinion (Bassem Hafes Qushou, Palestinian Territories, chairman of the board of trustees, Palestinian Friendship Center for Cultural Exchange; economist, strategic planner and training director, Al-Quds Open University, Ramallah, from the international research paper Models of Post-Crisis Development): “Priorities which must be taken into account to bring about global development are increasing the importance of spiritual values, development of global network technologies, and solving environmental problems and preventing global environmental disasters. The first priority is very important, since it will be difficult to achieve the second and the third without considering and achieving it, and, without the achievement of the second one, the third will never be achieved, so these three priorities are interdependent.

“Heribert Marty, Switzerland, director of the company Volcon: ‘A world without gold can work – but not one without oil, copper etc.’

“Adelya Atabaeva, Uzbekistan, financial expert at the Association of European Business: ‘The role of natural resources is very important. Battles are already unfolding for use of natural resources in the Antarctic and Arctic shelves. The issue is already salient, as the world’s major powers are starting to argue about who will develop and get this wealth. Therefore, this will play a big role in the short term.’”
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A major problem at the moment is the sharp rise in unemployment caused by the economic crisis. After all, we have built a society in such a way that it is producing more and more products and stuffing each person with everything possible. In doing so, we have abused our capabilities and produce an endless stream of things that people throw away as soon as possible to buy new ones, all for the enrichment of the manufacturers.

However, the crisis has come and the demand is no longer what it should be in a large, developing consumer society. On the contrary, society is reducing its consumption and as a result everything is slowing down and crumbling. Industry is weakening, companies are going bankrupt and dragging down the financial system: banks, insurance, and investment firms. As a result, experts estimate that only 10% of the world population will be working to provide us with all the necessities for life, and the work of other people will simply not be needed.

So suddenly, we find millions of people remain free from work. However, there is a method according to which millions of industrial and office workers who are leaving the job market and becoming free from work will be able to start a new work. From now on their task will be to form our balance with the nature, to initiate social and human changes. It is necessary to create a new human being for the new era that we are entering.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” #20, 3/28/12

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Question: During the process of upbringing, a person has to learn certain models of behavior. What are these models of behavior?

Answer: These elements of behavior are commutation laws, something similar to the multiplication table. Primarily, it’s individual readiness to enter others, to feel another as your partner in the same tuning process.

When we meet people in our egoistic world, we enter into a certain contact with them. For example, we smile in order to first establish a purely visual connection and later, an emotional one. Only after that we begin to perceive each other more closely. The same happens here.

When I speak about groups and societies, I am referring to a multitude of groups, which will become acquainted with each other, connect, and work together, either by merging or mixing with each other, to the point of creating enormous conventions and festivals, when different groups with identical preparation come together and perform certain actions with each other.

In other words, here we are already dealing with thousands of people in a certain limited space, who have to interact with one another. At the same time, we can involve them in special states and games in order to overcome a variety of problems and processes. Besides, these problems and processes must be natural and not artificial. For example, electricity suddenly disappears, or a certain danger appears, or the other way around, a certain opportunity arises, meaning someone finds treasure somewhere. How do we interact in this situation?

We create different conditions of play and excitement for them, we try to get them out of the altruistic habits they are accustomed to and once again make them dependent on each other as egoistically as possible. At the same time, we observe how they overcome these states, then forget about them, and once again attempt to excite themselves, to remember, and to climb out of their egoism in an attempt to find new strengths within for absolutely unexpected situations.

There are many opportunities for people here. I think that the most important thing is to work through these situations because like a child, when a person plays, he ultimately corrects himself, his nature. We think that it’s just a game, but in reality this is an enormous universal goal to correct human egoism, besides for which nothing else exists. Everything else is the still, instinctive nature.
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From “A Talk on Integral Upbringing” #16, 2/27/2012 

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Question: What is the role of the Internet in integral interaction? After all, there must be a reason for its very rapid development.

Answer: I think that integral learning courses will be constantly broadcast. However, the learning process, whereby we can watch the broadcast at any time convenient to us in every part of the world, is not the only thing that matters to us. There is also the possibility to transition from the perception of the virtual world and the real world to the perception of a single world. This is a third world where we perceive the new reality as boundless, when we come out of ourselves and begin to perceive the world outside of time, space, and movement in a new sense, the quality of bestowal, which can’t be measured in meters, seconds, or speed.

In the end we come to a state when through using all virtual possibilities in the learning process, we gradually come to a world where all the electronic methods of communication become replaced with our inner qualities. And the need for technical means of communication will simply disappear since I will begin to perceive absolutely all the worlds together with my new inner altruistic integral vision, not just our world, our space, our universe, or our globe.

Of course, for now we naturally need all the virtual possibilities the Internet provides so we can learn. But later, as soon as a new perception of self and space begins to appear in a person, he will exist in it without occupying himself with these electronic toys. We will reach this very quickly.
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From “A Talk on Integral Upbringing” #16, 2/27/2012

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