Baal HaSulam: “The Writings of the Last Generation”: It is a fact that Israel are the most hateful of all the nations whether it is for religious reasons, because of race, because of…or because of cosmopolitanism, etc. It is because hate precedes all the reasons, but everyone solves his hate according to his own psychology.

Once the nation of Israel was as one man with one heart, and hence although it’s dispersed all over the world today, the nations of the world treat us as one whole. In the world, this attitude is originally rooted between the desire to receive and the intention for the sake of bestowal, and we have to correct it only on the spiritual degrees.

There cannot be any correction in our world. Although there are attempts to “mediate” between us and our Palestinians neighbors, Turkey or others, there is no way these problems can be solved on the level of our world. It’s because our situation here is only the result of an action that stems from Above.

This is one of the fundamental laws. There is only a motionless desire to receive in this world. The only thing that can move it is the Light, the force of life.

When the Light comes in its time, it brings about trouble and evil (1). Why? It’s because it is then revealed through its posterior. But if the Light comes as a result of our request for correction (MAN), it’s revealed as the good and benevolent Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif, OM).

Thus the only difference is to what extent we can advance towards the goal faster than the forces that come from Above. Our free will is between these two options.

So there are simply no efficient means on the level of this world. Talks on all levels, politics, the UN, and so on are all useless. In fact, it’s all the outcome of the action of the upper Light that influences different factors in our world according to the first option.

No matter how many decisions are made in summit meetings and conventions, the Light actually determines everything. Essentially, the politicians are puppets, and the only thing that is really effective is our request for correction, which we raise before the negative force comes. Only then will the negative force be changed to the positive one—after all, we want to be corrected without waiting for trouble.

So how do we reach this request? We do so with the help of the group and the study (a prayer). The group connects us into one body, one vessel, and by praying during the lesson we connect to the one source of the Light, to the Creator.

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In the News (from Global Post): “Unemployment in Arab countries rose to 16 percent in 2012 following the revolts which erupted the previous year, Arab Labour Organisation chief Ahmed Mohamed Luqman announced on Sunday.

“‘The unemployment level in the Arab world was 14 percent in 2010, which translates to 17 million people out of work,’ Luqman said in Algiers.

“‘This increased by two points by the end of 2012 to 16 percent, or 20 million people unemployed,’ the ALO director general added.

“Luqman said the upheavals that swept the Arab world in 2011 and 2012 had caused the rise, particularly because of a plunge in foreign investments and the number of tourists visiting the region.”

My Comment: Only after the elite and the peoples of these countries realize that what is happening is inter-Arab conflict will they be able to change their state. The migration of young people, the best productive force, to non-Arab countries weakens their homeland. The takeover of Europe can become a boomerang. The world is round, mutually dependent, global, and integral. It’s neccessary to take this into account!
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Opinion (Renata Salecl, Slovenian social and legal theorist): “With freedom come choices. Every choice is an opportunity to select the best possible outcome, the one that would make us happiest. More choices lead to more happiness, right? Of course we find the opposite to be true. As choices increase, so does anxiety. In the latest installment of the RSA animated lecture series, Slovenian social and legal theorist Renata Salecl argues that this anxiety, coupled with the capitalist ideal of the self-made person, leads to a kind of social paralysis.

“’Today’s ideology of choice,’ says Salecl, ‘actually pacifies people and makes us constantly turn criticism to ourselves instead of organizing ourselves and making a critique of the society we live in.’” (Source: Open Culture)

“You are also ashamed of poverty. We are afraid that people will laugh at our choice; we recognize the need for public opinion in relation to yourself. We never make choices for ourselves, in isolation from society. We choose what others choose. Thus, choice is a social category, and specifically this feature brings a feeling of anxiety.

“Another reason is an attempt to make the right choice. As a result, people change mobile network operators or partners, but always remain unsatisfied.

“The third reason is that choice inevitably involves losses, the possibility of following a different path, which produces maximum discomfort today.

“The main loss, in which we have no choice, is death. But even in this case we are trying to plan, to delay it, to gain control over it. …

“The ideology of the modern world was based on the fact that anyone can succeed in anything. The idea of a self-realized man who had achieved everything himself was central to this ideology. Anyone can become a celebrity. ‘Everyone can succeed’— this credo dominates society. … In the past, people wanted to become famous in something: some invention, research, or a special talent. Now, they all want to become famous for the sake of fame, not for something, but just famous. …

“Why doesn’t social change happen? –A fear of change, a fear of loss.

“The defining features are self-criticism, a sense of guilt for one’s own failure, and anxiety in the face of choice. Thus we see that the ideology of choice is not optimistic and thus prevents social change.

“The fear of change is associated with the fear of loss. When you have little, you are afraid of losing even that and you prefer not to provoke social change. People become passive and criticize themselves instead of getting organized and taking a critical look at modern society in which we live.” (Source: theoryandpractice.ru)

My Comment: In fact, a person has no choice because the society is governed according to the plan of nature, and a person is completely subordinated to society, environment. The only choice is to choose the environment, and then he will be under the influence of this society against his will. But if a person picks the right environment that corresponds to the upper Nature (the Creator), then he secures for himself a quick and easy progress toward the goal of creation and thus avoids all kinds of problems.
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Question: How is it possible to identify where I am acting on my own, denying the leadership of the Creator?

Answer: It’s possible to identify this place very simply. It’s when you are angry and don’t agree with the higher supervision, are detached from the group and from the Creator, and carry out your own program. This shows that you are not adhered to the Creator.

If you notice that in particular desires and states you don’t feel the control of the Creator, even if you want to adhere to the higher supervision and advance, this means that this desire is damaged and requires correction. Your feeling will not change until you correct it. You can’t say that everything is okay from the start because the goal is to reach unity, adherence with the Creator. Therefore you have no choice; you must work with all these states, desires, and intentions to reach adherence through them where past, present, and future connect; you and the Creator are always connected, in all actions, thoughts, and intentions.

When a problem is discovered, we must solve it as if the Creator doesn’t exist. Even though you know that “There is none else beside Him,” you are found in an opposite state. You are angry, and the anger is a sign of ego.

So what is there to be angry about if everything happens according to the desire of the higher supervision? But in spite of this, a person has free choice. It hurts to see that it’s possible to make corrections and avoid suffering from unpleasant states, to give the Creator satisfaction, and yet the person is not doing this.

There is a clash here between the principle, “There is none else beside Him” and “Thou hast hemmed me in behind and before,” the control by one force, “the free choice of the person,” and the “power of many forces.”

We don’t understand this until we reach the first discovery, the middle line, in which two opposites meet. Then we understand what faith above reason is, where the two opposite states, the plus and the minus, meet. “There is none else beside Him” and “If I am not for myself who will be for me” complete each other within the person regarding past, present, and future.

Without this kind of vessel of bestowal, we cannot connect the two opposites and understand the unity of higher governance. Therefore, Kabbalists simply suggest to us how one should act without entering too deeply into detailed explanations. For in order to understand these explanations to some degree, we need to have corrected properties. Everything is established according to the Kli of our perception. If the person acts correctly, then they are discovered within him gradually and he is ready to feel and accept this particular part.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What do the students who live abroad and are found in various cultures need to do if they want to feel that they are part of the people of Israel?

Answer: I will try to explain the difference between someone who is a Jew from birth, genetically, and a person who doesn’t have these genes, yet has an inclination to be “Yashar-Kel,” meaning belonging to the Creator.

It is said that someone who converts to Judaism is born again. This means that he is a Jew 100%, and even more because he originated with a more distant desire. And if he corrects it, he becomes closer and more internal than the rest. Rabbi Akiva, from whom all our Torah comes, was not originally a Jew. In the period when the people of Israel were on a spiritual level, there were numerous great Kabbalists who originated from the nations of the world.

There is no disparagement here, rather the opposite, because all of the desire that we need for correction is specifically found with the nations of the world. It is said that the Creator first wanted to give the Torah to the nations of the world, meaning for the correction of the AHP. And Israel, the Galgalta ve Eynaim are only a transition towards this correction.

Therefore, the people who approach the collective correction and don’t belong to the people of Israel according to their origin are the pioneering part of the AHP, those “pioneers” from the collective soul that require correction. This means that this is its most important part.

So, they come to us and serve as the conduit between us and the entire world. I hope very much that they will develop the system of integral education, will begin to teach it, and pass it on to the entire world. Each nation has a different culture and a different mentality. So, it is only in this way that it will be possible to help in the correction of the world.

These people are expected to get a much higher reward, and their work is much more important than those who belong to the people of Israel from birth because they are the true conduit and include within them the desires of the AHP. Along with this, they raise themselves to the level of GE.

This picture is still not completely clear, but eventually it will become clear how rich and important the idea of the “convert” is, how many roles it has. A “convert” is a concept, a role, serving as a conduit between GE and AHP that elevates the will to receive toward correction.

There was a time when the people of Israel also left all the other people in Babylon. The spiritual sparks were discovered gradually within the collective desire, layer after layer, beginning with Adam HaRishon. After that, the sparks that remained from the shattering and were called the “points in the heart” were discovered in Abraham and thousands of other Babylonians whom he took from there to the land of Canaan.

These people were a part of all of humanity in the beginning. After that they gathered into a group in accordance with their collective desire and readiness to love thy neighbor as thyself, so that in the center of this connection the higher power was discovered. This is how it is even now. So, this includes both those who were once part of this gathering, as well as those who weren’t in it yet, but are waking up now.

For every one of us, both those who belong to the physical people of Israel and the spiritual Israel, there is a task within the collective system. But it is still unknown to us. But in general, someone who comes from the nations of the world and joins with the people of Israel has a very important role that is yet to be discovered.

They are specifically the ones who establish movement towards the process of correction. GE cannot advance by themselves; they lack desire, lack the power of movement. Therefore, it is said that the nations of the world will carry Israel on their shoulders to Jerusalem to build the Temple.

It is impossible to reach the Creator, the spiritual Kli called the Temple, without the movement that is carried out by the nations of the world, those people who understand this task, this process, this goal. Israel cannot do this on their own. Therefore, our work with all the groups in the world and our concern for our brothers who are part of the nations of the world and are parts of all the groups in the world, is so important. The importance of these groups will be discovered more and more.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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MAN is translated as Mei Nukvin (female waters), which means that in a prayer there should be two elements: Malchut and Bina. Maim (water) is Bina, and the female attribute is Malchut. Only then is it called raising a prayer, MAN.

If I just feel sorry for feeling bad, it is only Malchut. The question is what should I feel sorry about, who should I turn to, what do I want to receive? There must be a clear picture of this request that ties Malchut to Bina: the desire and its direction. I have to understand to whom my sorrow and my pain are directed. Perhaps I simply feel sorry because I am in a bad mood, but that is not considered a prayer, raising MAN.

If I feel bad because the Creator is concealed, and I don’t feel the importance of the spiritual advancement, don’t want to come to the lesson but would rather sleep, it isn’t raising MAN, a prayer. It is simply a feeling of emptiness in my egoistic desires.

Everything depends on what I want, what I’m sorry about—Who I am sorry for. This means that the reason for my sorrow has to be external to me. Then I form my MAN by these two dissatisfactions, these two Malchut: the Malchut of Bina and Malchut of Malchut. A prayer has to be directed accurately.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/13, Writing of Rabash

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Question: The workshops dealing with the mutual integral cooperation are hard internal work. People make great efforts especially when they become integrally communicative, so what should we focus on?

Answer: A person should prepare before the workshop and say to himself: “Calm down. Look at everyone with a smile, even if it is an artificial smile at first, and try to smile more naturally with time. Look “into” the person you are talking to; try to love him; try to get close to him.”

Thus, we gradually focus before the workshop because we want to find additional positive attributes inside us, that are hidden somewhere deep within us. Nature, however, reveals only our negative attributes, and we want to balance them.

So we have to start by such preparations: Let’s hold hands like children and sing kids’ songs. It is very relaxing. Can you imagine respectable men and women in their fifties, sitting together and singing kids’ songs?

A person has to free himself from his worries and detach himself from everything he has in society, at work, and at home. Everyone feels good when they return to their childhood that was free from worries; we all remember it warmly, except in rare cases.

So do relaxation exercises, play a little game so people will feel sympathetic toward one another. Besides, you can simply give each one a task: “Say something nice about everyone,” and thus begin the workshop.
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From a Talk on Integral Education 4/2/13

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Baal HaSulam, “The Nation”: It is shameful to admit that one of the most precious merits we have lost during the exile, and the most important of them, is the loss of the awareness of the nationality, that natural feeling that connects and sustains each and every nation. The threads of love that connect the nation, which are so natural and primitive in all the nations, have become degenerated and detached from our hearts; they are gone.

[…] The only hope is […] to discover and ignite once more the natural national love that have been dimmed within us… This work precedes all others.

First, we shouldn’t forget that we are actually not a nation like all the other nations. The foundation of the world is the “70 nations of the world” (the ten Sefirot times seven) that stem from Zeir Anpin in the world of Atzilut. It gives Malchut different forms, and so every nation has typical attributes that project a certain attribute of the Creator. Ultimately, all the nations unite together in the image of Zeir Anpin, the Creator.

So where is the place of Israel in this picture? Israel is the intention, the yearning for that, the activating element and nothing more than that. “Israel,” which means “straight to the Creator” (Yashar-El), has to bring all the nations of the world to this form. Those who have a point in the heart, “sparks” of the shattered Masach (screen), carry out this mission.

We used to be a unique nation different from all the other nations, with special relationships that were based on the principle of “love thy friend as thyself,” or at least based on “don’t do unto others what is hateful for you.” This framework was already established by Abraham’s group and was kept at different degrees until the destruction of the Temple. During this whole period we lived beyond the Machsom (barrier), in bestowal.

On the whole, the condition for the existence of the nation of Israel, which allows us to transcend the Machsom and to enter the spiritual life, is a good mutual connection. When this connection is lost, we are not called “Israel” in the spiritual sense anymore and are not in the “Land of Israel,” meaning in the desire directed straight to the Creator.

Today we live among the nations of the world who hate us, and the reason is clear. When the vessels (desires) fall from the level of Atzilut to the level of the shells, to the impure worlds of  BYA, they find themselves under the “press of evolution” that forces them to constantly advance.

Generally speaking, there are Lights, sparks, and vessels. So the vessels feel that they depend on the sparks, that is, on people with the point in the heart, without whom it’s impossible to receive the Light. As a result they adopt all our customs: our religion, manners, morals, laws, and so on. On the other hand, they hate us since they don’t receive from us what they need. It is because subconsciously they expect something else.

This will continue until we begin to show the nations of the world that we seriously intend to fulfill our role in practice. Thus we will again be the nation of Israel that lives in the Land of Israel and fulfill its role with regards to the 70 nations of the world. It is because they in particular are the “matter” of creation that has to reach the equivalence of form with the Creator.

So we are merely a Masach, an intention, the attribute of Bina, while the main part is Malchut. So the right combination and cooperation between us and the nations of the world is the basis for our advancement towards the goal of creation. The nation of Israel cannot exist by itself without the nations of the world. We have to reach mutuality and correction, and it does not depend on the world, but on how we act according to the times and the current conditions that we have to fulfill.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/13, “The Israeli Nation”

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Preparation to the Lesson

Shamati #68 “Man’s Connection to the Sefirot“

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt, “Ki Tetze,” Item 136, Lesson 10 

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt, Parashat, “Bereshit,” Item 1, Lesson 1

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 1, Histaklut Pnimit, Item 136, Lesson 10

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Peace,” Lesson 11

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