The internal work begins when a person feels that in every situation and place, no matter what he finds himself in with his desires and his thoughts, there is an awakening from Above, and he has to add his response to this upper action. First he wants to differentiate himself from what he feels and to try to find out what it is exactly that the Creator sends him, why, and for what reason; what does He want to build in a person with that? He needs to clarify what is happening inside him in order to differentiate his natural response from the one that he has to develop inside above that natural one.

The response that a person builds above his nature is composed by his participation in the events and the other half, he is forced to raise to the Creator, knowing that he cannot do it by himself. But he is glad that he discovers the part in which he needs the Creator’s participation, feeling the Creator as a partner, as the eminent, and as his savior inside him!

In this case, a person sees a clear goal before him, understanding that he must reach connection. This means that the first awakening that comes from the Creator in a person’s mind and heart reaches the right implementation. The sign that it is implemented correctly is a person’s change of attitude to the opposite of what it was before, and the great joy he feels about it, which means a successful attempt to rise above himself.

And all of this progress is due to the upper force that now remains in a person. Every action that we make in every moment is fulfilled that way if it’s received correctly in a person.
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From the 1^st  part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How can I examine every action that I make more effectively in order to discover the reason for the awakening from Above that caused it?

Answer: Let me give you an example. Suppose the phone suddenly rings and an unfamiliar voice says, “Wait, I am coming to settle my account with you today,” and hangs up just like in horror movies. You don’t know who has just called and what it’s all about! You begin to look at everyone that you meet suspiciously and fearfully. You check and examine everything that happens.

This is exactly how we should look for the Creator. We need the concern, the anxiety, the fear, the insecurity, and the helplessness that force a person to remain sensitive and alert and to check everything that comes his way.

If the goal is very important to me, but I don’t see that I advance towards it, I worry about what is happening and have to find out what is standing in my way. What is the goal exactly and maybe I am not imagining it correctly. What are the means for attaining it?

Here I discover that my problem is that I simply have to turn my hatred into love. I have to check my state and my intention and to concede where I currently cannot concede. I have to pay attention to what I disrespect and consider as unimportant now and to try to feel it. Then I will regain consciousness and suddenly see the upper world. I don’t see it now only because I don’t want to see it!

It all depends on changing one’s principles according to which a person relates to reality. They determine what a person’s reality will be like.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What exactly goes into the 1% of the desires that a person cannot process by himself when he is under the Machsom (barrier)? Is it the stoney heart, the serpent?

Answer: We don’t examine such discernments before the Machsom, before the spiritual barrier. Before it, we don’t see anything and have no understanding or recognition as to where the serpent is and where it isn’t. Believe me, it is in your best and purest thoughts and desires, where you think that you love and devotedly care about others, that the serpent is.

Just like in history, at the time of the exile in Egypt, the serpent is not revealed among common people, neither the Jews nor the Egyptians. Only Moses, Pharaoh, the Creator, and several Egyptian priests, Pharaoh’s counselors, and those who were close to him saw the serpent. It is only among them that the serpent is revealed and becomes a staff, and then the staff becomes a serpent again; it is only when a person attains such high levels.

The serpent doesn’t appear purposelessly, but only as tiny snakes on the animate level. The real serpent, however, is two-legged, and you have not met it yet. It is only on the upper levels that the essence of the snake is revealed. A very strong Light is needed to show us how opposite our desire to receive is from the Light. The Light has to reveal its full infinite depth and the power of its love and bestowal so that in contrast to all that, we will feel how opposite our egoistic nature is from it.

The real two-legged serpent is revealed only after the Machsom. Until then, during the time of preparation, only small snakes bite us. Each time something disturbs you and repels you from connecting with the friends, from unity, from cooperation, from the right intention—this is the revelation of the small siblings of that serpent, and they eat you up like worms.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/29/13, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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In the News (from News at Princeton): “Collective intelligence is an established advantage of groups, including humans. As it’s understood, a group of individuals gain an advantage by pooling imperfect estimates with those around them, which more or less ‘averages’ single experiences into surprisingly accurate common knowledge. …

“Princeton University researchers report in the journal Science that collective intelligence is vital to certain animals’ ability to evaluate and respond to their environment. Conducted on fish, the research demonstrated that small groups and individuals become disoriented in complex, changing environments. However, as group size is increased, the fish suddenly became highly responsive to their surroundings.

“These results should prompt a close examination of how endangered group or herd animals are preserved and managed, said senior researcher Iain Couzin, a Princeton professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. If wild animals depend on collective intelligence for migration, breeding and locating essential resources, they could be imperiled by any activity that diminishes or divides the group, such as overhunting and habitat loss, he explained. …

“With their work, Couzin and his coauthors uncovered an additional layer to understanding collective intelligence. The conventional view assumes that individual group members have some level of knowledge albeit incomplete. Yet the Princeton researchers found that in some cases individuals have no ability to estimate how a problem needs to be solved, while the group as a whole can find a solution through their social interactions. Moreover, they found that the more numerous the neighbors, the richer the individual — and thus group — knowledge is.

“These findings correlate with recent research showing that collective intelligence — even in humans — can rely less on the intelligence of each group member than on the effectiveness of their communal interaction, Couzin said. In humans, research suggests that such cooperation would take the form of open and equal communication among individuals regardless of their respective smarts, he said.”

My Comment: People have something to learn from animals…
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In the News (from Smithsonian): “What happens in these types of fantasy worlds also translates into real-life behavior, but in a different way: People who are given superpowers meant to save someone in virtual reality are more helpful outside of it. …

“This finding … relies on the illusion that what happens in virtual reality is real. Participants viewed the world through a head-mounted display, a helmet that provides three-dimensional stereoscopic views of a high-resolution rendered environment. An orientation sensor on the helmet tracked participants’ physical head movements and updated their rendered first-person perspective. To enhance the seeming reality of the experience, virtual sound was added to match the movement of objects and the vibration associated with action.

“In the study, each participant was placed separately in a virtual environment and either given the power of flight, a la Superman, or was a passenger in a helicopter. They were then assigned to one of two tasks. The first involved searching through a virtual city for a young, lost diabetic child in need of life-saving insulin, which they were told they held in a vial in their pocket. …

“After the virtual experience, the experimenter assisting participants ‘accidentally’ knocked over a cup of pens, allowing the participants the opportunity to help pick them up. The researchers found that regardless of the task, those who used superpowers to fly through the fantasy world were quicker to help pick up the pens compared to those who rode in the virtual helicopter. …

“How can a simulation trigger such prosocial behavior? The researchers suggest that embodying a superhuman quality in virtual reality primes people to think like superheroes, such as Superman. Researchers made no mention of the word “superhero” or the prefix “super” at any point during the experiment. But by simply possessing a superhuman ability, participants seemed to tap into what they know about the characters that have them—that they use their power for the greater good rather than personal gain. Researchers believe cognitive channels linking ‘super’ activity and its related stereotypes to heroism and helping behavior may have opened up, influencing participants’ decision to help.”

My Comment: Following your dream, you need to understand how to make it come true in reality. If the dream is correct, that is, it coincides with the reality according to the plan of Nature, then from that future reality already existing in the virtual world, you can attract a force that realizes the dream; this force is called the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif).
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In the News (from NewScientist): “In your wildest dreams, could you imagine a government that builds its policies on carefully gathered scientific evidence? One that publishes the rationale behind its decisions, complete with data, analysis and supporting arguments? Well, dream no longer: that’s where the UK is heading. …

“What has changed now is that informed policy-making is at last becoming a practical possibility. That is largely thanks to the abundance of accessible data and the ease with which new, relevant data can be created. This has supported a desire to move away from hunch-based politics. …

“The biggest need is perhaps foresight. Ministers often need instant answers, and sometimes the data are simply not available. Bang goes any hope of evidence-based policy.

“’The timescales of policy-making and evidence-gathering don’t match,’ says Paul Wiles, a criminologist at the University of Oxford and a former chief scientific adviser to the Home Office. Wiles believes that to get round this we need to predict the issues that the government is likely to face over the next decade. “We can probably come up with 90 per cent of them now,’ he says.”

My Comment: Of course, all these are excuses because politics is not rational decision-making, but promoting one’s narrow egoistic goals. Scientific methods of data processing and decision making lead to no good because human egoism is at the end of this process, and it will do anything to tilt decisions in its favor. Thus, before making objective decisions, you must make an objective person.
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Question: In the process of integral education, do we need to disclose that we do not know exactly what the future society will be like?

Answer: We simply implement integral education and in accordance with this we will see how best to gradually change the world to match our new states.

This is the world that we cannot even foresee so in no way should we get ahead of ourselves.

The fact is that we have always evolved linearly under the pressure of our egoism and that is why we could predict the next images, states, and plans for the future, but here not.

The plan for building an integral society is only in the organization of our self-improvement more than anything. And all the rest originates from it. That is why we have no long-term plan; it depends on a person, the pace of his change.

From the moment we accept this idea, it becomes very simple. That is, I should not force myself to fit in some future framework. I will reach the framework that I want to reach. We are already becoming integral, free. The main thing for us is to be engaged in unity, mutual guarantee, and nothing else. From this follows the rest.
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From KabTV’s “Integral World” 11/28/12

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Igrot,” Letter 34

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt, Parashat “Shlah Leha,” Item 223, Lesson 20

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 9, Question 150, Lesson 31

“A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar,” Lesson 5 

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