Audio Version Of The Blog – 07.19.13

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The Difference Between Spiritual And Non-Spiritual Descent

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe main thing is not to move from this point: “Today, we have gathered here.” Today is the moment when we need to work on not losing what we achieved before, but only on expanding. This is exactly the situation that has arisen now, after the convention. We need to care about continuing and adding to our gains, instead of waiting until we are thrown down once again and who knows when we will be able to rise again.

Our whole world group of Bnei Baruch must keep itself at least at the same level. We want to preserve what we have achieved, and if you are not able to stay at the same height, then you are not in the desires of bestowal even in the slightest degree.

We must by all means stay in the achieved state and not fall. Descent should be in the realization of the fact that it’s necessary to add to the previous ascent; it’s not enough for us! We must rise to a new ascent. And if we descend, we will never ascend to the King’s palace.

It’s necessary to distinguish every ascent that is in greater bestowal, which is added drop by drop: every time a little bit more bestowal, connection, and the feeling of unity. And after we reach this addition in bestowal, we get a descent based on the feeling of the opportunity to rise even higher. That is, we ourselves awaken the dawn and thus advance.

All the descents that we received to date threw us down from the achieved level, causing us to fall down. They were incorrect, not spiritual descents. The spiritual descent should occur in relation to the previous values. If in the past we somehow imagined bestowal, now we see that bestowal is much more. So, the state that we have achieved seems to us as a descent.

Of course, this is possible only with the support of the group. Let’s say, I have won $1,000 and am very happy. And then I suddenly see that someone else has won $2,000, and then I feel no longer in ascent but in descent. Similarly, we need to treat what we have achieved: Everyone should see in his environment that it’s possible to attain more, even greater bestowal! There should not be any descent; there is always an opportunity to add.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/13, Writings of Rabash

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: We experienced great joy from the unity that was attained among the friends during the St. Petersburg convention and the mirror conventions. Now the thought of losing it is scary. How can we hold on to this unity?

Answer: The fear of losing the feeling of unity that was attained is a very good thing, even if it’s an egoistic fear. It guards a person.

There is no fixed state in spirituality and there are constant changes, just like in a living body where there are continuous processes going on. So the question is how we can advance. In order to preserve the previous state, we have to constantly advance, which means to constantly make additional efforts. It’s essential, even in order to preserve the previous state. If we want to rise above the previous state, we have to add a doubly squared effort.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/16/13, The Zohar

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Everything that you say after the convention is already perceived in a totally different manner, as a new attainment. But on the other hand, there is the fear of losing it, since it takes great power to hold on to what we have attained and it can only come as a result of our unity. How can we increase the mutual support among us?

Answer: We have been through many states lately, through many changes, and have experienced difficult situations. Although they are easily forgotten because of the support from group, the essence of these changes is very significant. Besides, we have made great preparations for the convention. It was simply a favor from above that we held the convention in Krasnoyarsk before the St. Petersburg convention and I wanted everyone to envy those who had attended it.

It actually happened. Everyone wanted to reach the same state of unity and because they felt sorry that they had not felt it, they took the preparation very seriously. This is why we have attained what we have attained. I don’t think that the mirror conventions were any different judging by what I saw on the screen and in the convention itself.

It was the first time I have seen people ending the convention happily as if they are not about to say goodbye. They didn’t have to hug everyone and cry as they used to do in the past. No one came complaining to me that it would be hard to go back home. I left and no one even noticed. It is a very good sign.

People felt that their lives are in the group, in the general connection, while I only come and awaken it from the outside. I explain how to build and organize it, but life itself is fulfilled inside the group. It isn’t I who makes the convention, but actually you by yourselves. You have become so independent and this is very important, and so you have experienced these new feelings and advanced to a new state.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/16/13, The Zohar

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The Key To Unity

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt is said that we are a shadow of the Creator, the reflection of this force—the property of bestowal and love. That is, on the basis of those desires, of the shortcomings that are revealed in us, we can guess from the manifestation of our egoistic properties how to invert them, to change, to turn them into the opposite.

Naturally, we are not able to do this ourselves, but our intentions, our efforts attract the Surrounding Light, and it leads us forward. In this case, each of us, on one hand, is a teacher, and on the other hand, is a student relative to his friends. Let’s recall Rabbi Yossi who said that he could not leave his students because he would be nothing without them. Everything that he revealed, he revealed because he worked with them. And so is everyone else.

That is why we interact as follows. On one hand, we show others how they should work, inspire, long for bestowal and love, meaning, everyone is a teacher relative to the other. On the other hand, everyone is a student relative to the other because he puts himself lower than others and thus can receive inspiration, intention, and sensation from everyone else. Existing in this interaction, we come to equality, in the equal line.

There is no equality in nature; we are totally different and have different sets of properties. There is not a single person who is like any of the other few billion people. And when we, not paying any attention to our natural inclinations and properties, begin to act in this way: once, bowing the head before others, and  another time, on the contrary, showing how to work between ourselves, then we become equal to each other. This is the key to unity, movement towards it.

In this way, we create the condition, in which the Creator is revealed: the great unified force of nature that connects the entire nature together. This is a global, integral force that began to expand from the point of the Big Bang and that built our matter in the lowest layer of the universe, and that we must bring back to unity. And this is the human being’s mission.

In principle, a person is different from the still, vegetative, and animate nature only by its ability to evaluate the lack of unity in nature that begins to be manifested now and is the source of our universal global crisis.

A crisis means not breaking, but the birth of something new. It is its property, and this is its true meaning.
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From the Convention in St. Petersburg 7/12/13, Lesson 1

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By Changing Ourselves, We Are Changing The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanOur role is to understand that there is one and only one global nature, and we are the ones who need to connect it through mutual integration, through our intentions. Therefore the concept of “There is none else besides him” is derived from the unity of nature; there is nothing besides the one system that includes everything within it.

And it seems to us as separate because we are also separated, and therefore we don’t see the world as it is but see it according to the condition in which each person feels it solely and only individually within himself. The reason the world seems to us as separate, mutually distant, can be found in the lack of mutual connections between each other; this is discovered more and more with each passing day due to the fact that our ego is constantly growing. Moreover, its acceleration is growing acutely hyperbolic; we see how every year, every month, every week, and even every day, everything in the world is changing very rapidly. And this change is happening specifically because the same changes are happening in us. The world is felt solely and only individually. Therefore the method by which the world is felt correctly is derived from this as well; if we change our characteristics, then we change how the world is felt.

Currently there has already been much work done on this subject by philosophers, psychologists, and physicists. Scientists are gradually beginning to approach the awareness that the world depends on our subjective feelings, yet they are all identical. While everyone feels the world differently, they all feel it in the same manner through our egoistic characteristics. If we correct them so that the characteristics become opposite, then certainly we would feel the world differently: as integral and mutually linked. From here is derived one of the assumptions of our method: “Don’t think about correcting the world…” By these words we mean humanity. We don’t correct the world; rather we correct ourselves. So we begin to feel not only the world, but also ourselves within it completely differently. Ultimately, our movement from the present state, which is called “our world,” to the future state, which is called the “world of the infinity,” is in its entirety an inner correction of how we feel the world, and no more than this.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day One” 7/12/13, Lesson 1

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Discovering The Method Of Life

Dr. Michael LaitmanA letter: “The convention in St. Petersburg was so amazing, it was simply an image of the future world, as if I awakened at last into the real world. I was very sad towards the end, since I couldn’t say goodbye and the whole world seemed dark all at once. Then, on the plane I started listening to the lectures from the convention again, which revived me. It was as if the lecture during the convention made notches in my heart and then when you hear it a second time every word is revealed and implemented within.

The lectures were certainly incredible. Every word contains the method of life and how a person should find happiness and a meaning to life

I think this miracle took place since it was such a homogeneous space, thousands of people, but in fact none of them were there by chance and so you know that no matter which way you blindly stretched out your hand, you will find a hand stretched out to you everywhere and an open heart…it is simply an awesome feeling!”
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Solving Problems By The Right Intention

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What should we do with all the interruptions that our friends all over the world encounter now: One is getting divorced, another had his money stolen, another had a car accident, and another was hospitalized? How can we work with such problems?

Answer: There is nothing we can say about our spiritual path except to be patient and to study gradually and systematically, and at the same time solve the problems gradually at the normal pace.

You must constantly feel that you are doing that since it’s the Creator who presents these problems. When you solve them, you are incorporated into the force of nature at the same time, which thus gives you a chance to solve all the problems in the world at any given moment and to hold on to the right intention.

There is nothing but that. I am saying this because I have been through that myself. I have been through some very hard times when I had very serious and complicated legal and economic problems. The Creator turns things around so that you won’t know what to do.

In that case we must simply shrink ourselves and solve the problems together with Him, while we understand that “there is none else but Him.” He makes us deal with these problems, like we do with small kids (we know that we only learn from problems), and you solve them.

When you solve them corporeally, you are constantly holding on to the right intention that everything that you receive comes from Him. Thus you carry on a dialog with the Creator and are constantly holding on to this intention, to this inclination. In addition to that, there are the friends, the study, and everything else. This is the only way to see things! Just don’t cut yourself off! The gap is already a result of a deviation from the original direction.

The main thing is to constantly hold on to the right intention, quietly and calmly and to act only to the extent that you can hold on to it. You will see that there is a solution to everything. Suddenly, everything calms down as if you have poured water on a flame, the water is poured and everything becomes quiet.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention 7/11/13, “Preparatory Lesson

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“ECB Cannot Solve Euro Zone Crisis”

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Jens Weidmann, German economist, president of the Deutsche Bundesbank): “The European Central Bank cannot solve the euro zone crisis, Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann told economists on Sunday, pressing the bloc’s governments to get their economies in shape and tighten their fiscal rules. …

“’Monetary policy has already done a lot to absorb the economic consequences of the crisis, but it cannot solve the crisis,”’ Weidmann said in his speech.

“’This is the consensus of the Governing Council. The crisis has laid bare structural shortcomings. As such, they require structural solutions.’”

My Comment: No one sees the end of this. And this awareness of the helplessness to regulate the economy is the best state of humanity. It should lead us, by the path of suffering and the realization of our egoism as evil, towards the need to change our nature by the method of integral education. It is gratifying to see how quickly the process of realizing the unknown is taking place… Suffering will force us to pay attention!
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Let The Dream Become A Reality

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You want to lead the world by integral education

Answer: I don’t know if I can lead the world because of its rigidity and lack of the ability to see the future. I am not saying this in the negative sense, but simply that the place we are all at is the lowest there is. My dream is simply to make the best of what we have: integral education to the world, integral spiritual unity for my students, at least theoretically.

This is all mutually integrated but at the moment I can’t imagine that it can actually be fulfilled. The world has to be severely shaken.

If we had a well-worded method, we could offer it to China since the government there is concerned about preserving socialism in some way and on the other hand competition and capitalism are flourishing; the government is also very worried that the global crisis will catch up with them and it’s also interested in calming the masses.

If we offer them the integral method they may be able to fulfill it. They have great respect for the Jews and for the wisdom of Kabbalah. They feel a kind of awe, a kind of special ancient respect towards it.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/20/13

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