When I think about the group I don’t see specific people and I don’t remember faces or names. This is especially true since people change a lot, not externally but internally. So I don’t see individual people but rather the general desire of the group that has to be given a form that is as real as possible.

So we shouldn’t think about specific friends but about the whole group, which I have already added into one integral sum. Individuals remain on the left side of the formula, under the integral, while I already think about the right side of the formula, about its result, and this is where I start working.

Question: But this generalization seems like some abstract concept.

Answer: It isn’t an abstract concept but a live one! This general concept of the group is actually full of life, while every individual is dead. It is like the elementary particles, atoms, that begin to connect by some upper force that is not among them. Suddenly these atoms turn into something that is alive, and then a process of metabolism suddenly begins between them, which means life is formed!

One cell receives from another, absorbs things that it needs and extracts materials that are bad for the connection between them. They begin to look on the outside for whatever is good for the connection and helps them connect. All this stems from the connection, without which they would be dead, still, merely particles: electrons, protons, neutrons, ions, etc! These are only elementary particles in which there is no life, and suddenly by the connection between them they reach such a developed form.

Then an inner and external feeling begins to develop by connections that are increasingly more complex. The connection between the organs leads to such an unusual complex combination because each one is ready to take on a special role with regard to the others and worry about nothing else. The liver, for example, cleans the blood that the heart pumps and conveys to the other organs, but what can the liver do without the heart or the heart without the liver? All these organs reach such a loyal connection between them that each one is ready to sacrifice its life for the sake of the others.

The body wouldn’t be able to function without one of the major organs, without the lungs, the liver, the heart, the kidneys, or the brain. One is worthless without the others. Notice how close and connected they have become, ready to sacrifice their life for one another and not worry about it. Each one worries only about the mission it was given and feels 100% responsible for everyone else. This is called mutual guarantee.

Before that there is no body. So the general concept of a group is not an abstract concept but actually the only thing that lives and exists!
[129541]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/10/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: I have heard that the love and the hatred that we feel should develop qualitatively and that in an ideal state we should reach unfounded hatred and from it advance to unconditional love.

Answer: The terms unconditional love and unfounded hatred need to be better and more accurately clarified.

Unconditional love is love that is above all reasons. I want you to listen to this carefully! This means that I have been over all the reasons against this love and I feel love that is above all these reasons.

It is the same when it comes to unfounded hatred. I have many reasons to love, and still despite all these reasons, I hate everyone for no reason. This is the state we should reach.

In fact, the reason that I hate a friend is meaningless since it is given to me on purpose from Above each time. I have to build up love above this hatred, despite the hate! Even if I don’t like the friend, I try to serve him in some way, to give him something, to support him somehow. If I invest in him, I will discover a positive attitude towards him since I invest myself in him.

Besides, we also have to clarify the friend’s actions: Perhaps he performs great actions, perhaps he does great things, and I hate him because he picks his nose. We have to penetrate into one another and then the hatred we feel towards a friend will transform into liking and even love.

Then you will suddenly see yourself in him, and him in you, and that you are actually one whole general vessel.

Question: In the last couple of days I have felt shame, love, mutual guarantee, the Divinity, and, at the same time, that I hate the friends. I can’t understand, is it momentary hatred or real hatred?

Answer: Hatred is certainly revealed on every level. It becomes more real on the upper levels, like we are told about Rabbi Shimon and his students. In the states that we now feel it is very small. It isn’t the hatred we read about in The Book of Zohar, but rather disrespect, some kind of indifference. In short, it isn’t serious yet. So don’t worry, everything is still ahead of you.
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Preparation for the Lesson

Workshop 

The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”   

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”   

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In the news (from the American Dream): “The American people are the most drugged people in the history of the planet. Illegal drugs get most of the headlines, but the truth is that the number of Americans that are addicted to legal drugs is far greater than the number of Americans that are addicted to illegal drugs. As you will see below, close to 70 percent of all Americans are currently on at least one prescription drug. In addition, there are 60 million Americans that ‘abuse alcohol’ and 22 million Americans that use illegal drugs. What that means is that almost everyone that you meet is going to be onsomething. …

“That sounds absolutely crazy but it is true. We are literally being drugged out of our minds. In fact, as you will read about below, there are 70 million Americans that are taking ‘mind-altering drugs’ right now. If it seems like most people cannot think clearly these days, it is because they can’t. We love our legal drugs and it is getting worse with each passing year. And considering the fact that big corporations are making tens of billions of dollars peddling their drugs to the rest of us, don’t expect things to change any time soon.”

My Comment: This condition is spreading around the world, in the favor of the ruling circles: it is easier to control a weak-willed and dependent population. People need to go through the lowest point of the fall, the recognition of evil, and only then will they be willing to change themselves. Then they will be able to hear about the existence of the method of integral education.
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Opinion (Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, permanent fellow at the IWM Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna, the author of In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don’t Trust Our Leaders?): “The paradox of the modern world is that the democratization of society has ironically led to voters’ loss of power and the rise of social inequality while globalization liberated the elites but deprived them of legitimacy and capacity to govern.

“Today elected governments run the majority of states in the world. … Democratic ideal reigns uncontested and the will of the people expressed in free and fair elections is accepted to be the only real source of legitimate power. In the 21^st century democracy has dispensed with most of its critics but, unfortunately, none of its internal contradictions.

“Democratic ideal reigns uncontested and the will of the people expressed in free and fair elections is accepted to be the only real source of legitimate power. … democracy and good governance can coexist only under a regime of limited suffrage. In their view the real sovereign is not the people, but reason. So, voting should be discussed in terms of capacities rather than rights. In the 19^th century, capacity was translated as property or education; only those with the right education or enough property could be entrusted with the power to vote. …

“While we all agree that democracy means we should be able to influence decisions which affect us, in reality this is not the case. We are frequently consumers of decisions made by governments we have not elected. In a globalized world we depend more than ever on the decisions of others, those who never were and never will be part of our community. And therefore there is a natural urge to make sure that those others do not make the wrong choices. Truth be told, democracy was never that great at preventing people from making mistakes. …

“So, instead of choosing between sovereign democracy, globalized democracy, or globalization-friendly authoritarianism, political elites try to redefine democracy and sovereignty in order to make the impossible possible. The outcome is democracies without choices, sovereignty without meaning, and globalization without legitimacy. …

“While democracy treats individuals as equal (every adult has an equal vote), free enterprise empowers individuals on the basis of how much economic value they create and how much property they own. … Voters can decide who will be in government – their votes still ‘choose’ the winning party, while markets decide what will be the economic policy of the government, irrespective of who wins the elections. …

“The problem is that this unstoppable spread of democracy has both destroyed the borders between the different spheres of human activity – those which should be run by vote and those which should be run by professional competence, and at the same time de-legitimized the popular elected democratic institutions. …

“The logical consequences of such attitudes are, on the one hand, the secular trend of decline of electoral turnout in most Western democracies, and on the other hand, the tendency where people least likely to vote are the poor, unemployed, and the youth, in short those who in theory should be most interested in using the political system to change their lot.

“So, the paradoxical outcome of the expansion of democratic principle of self-governance outside of the political realm is that now that we vote on everything, the political power of the voter has declined. …

“In the days of national democracies, the citizen voter was powerful because he was at the same time a citizen-soldier, citizen-worker, and citizen-consumer. The citizen-soldier was important because the defense of the country depended on his courage to stand against the enemies. The citizen-worker was important because his work was making the country rich. And the citizen-consumer mattered because his consumption was driving the economy. But when drones and professional armies replace the citizen-soldier, one of the major motives of the elite’s interest in public welfare is substantially weakened. The flooding of the labor market by low-cost immigrants as well as outsourced production have also reduced elites’ willingness to take into account citizens’ interests and opinions. The fact that over the course of the recent economic crisis it became evident that the performance of the U.S. stock market no longer depended on the consumer power of the Americans is one more argument why citizens are losing their leverage over the ruling groups. It is the decline of the leverage of the citizen-soldier, the citizen-consumer, and the citizen-worker that explains voters’ loss of power but also the growing ungovernability of modern democracies.”

My Comment: People’s participation today means thousands of demonstrators on the streets who reject government decisions. In the future, the quality of governing will be determined by the opportunity to turn protest movements into coherent positive demands and structured political force. This will be possible through the implementation of integral education for the masses. In this case, they will be able to realize the changes that must be made in society.
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Question: Before the lesson I think about the Creator, during the day I think about the connection with the group, when do I also think about the Light that Reforms?

Answer: The Light that Reforms is in all the gaps between my desire to reach a certain state and my reaching that state. The Light that Reforms is also between my current desire and the correct desire I should have.

The Light is in my lack of connection with the group, the lack of attraction that I feel, and the need for it, between the state of yearning when I am attracted to the group since I strongly feel its importance.

The Light is everywhere and in everything, in building the spiritual vessels, the restriction, the Masachim (screens), the intentions; in other words, whatever we do, we only need to think about the Light. Any change of the desire and any correction of the intention is possible only by the Light. Nothing operates except for the Light, neither negatively nor positively. We only need to add our component each time but without dictating to the Light what it should do exactly.

We only add the need for the changes, like a baby who wants something: He doesn’t offer any clever clarifications or specify exactly how it should be done, what should be done, and to what degree; he is totally dependent on the grownup.

I express this dependency in the society to such an extent that I don’t determine how the Light should operate and what it should do. The deficiency that is revealed is enough to help me adhere to the group even more, and the Light does everything else. It may even throw me to some new discernments, or to an unknown dimension; it is its business.

I use the only component that is up to me: the connection. I don’t even build this chain—my special connection with the group to affect the Light that Reforms—I don’t determine anything at all since I am always on a level of an embryo with regard to the new state, and I prepare myself to complete uncertainty. The most I can do is to be in state of smallness, like a small child.
[129432]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/9/14

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Question: When does the Light that Reforms influence a person and bring him to the love of others?

Answer: The Light constantly influences us: It either influences us according to the natural pace of evolution that is called Beito (in its time), or according to a program called Achishena (I shall hasten it), which is hastening time. But it’s always the Light that acts.

On one hand, it is said that “the Light is in a state of absolute rest.” On the other hand, we call it the Light that Reforms, which means that it can influence us in a different ways, either more or less. Of course, the Light is in a state of absolute rest, but I spur myself by the environment: the books, group, and teacher, thus increasing my sensitivity to the Light.

Lets say we are going out to disseminate. Before we go out we really think that we want to attain the love of others in order to attain the love of the Creator, and thus delight Him. We would like to perform this action out of real love, but unfortunately we don’t feel it yet.

So we act even out of self-interest (Lo Lishma): We want to attain spirituality, to know about it, to feel it; we expect that the heavens will get revealed to us. When we operate this way, even with the intention of “not for its sake”—as it is said: Mitzvot (commandments) don’t require the right intention—it still works. The Light illuminates on me from a distance (this is why it is called the Surrounding Light), and thus advances me.

So all my work is to check which of my actions are the most beneficial in order to spur and to draw the Surrounding Light. The most beneficial action, according to the law of the equivalence of form, is the one closest to the properties of the Light, namely: bestowal, love, involvement, closeness, embrace, kiss, and coupling.

We should yearn for that, and I am ready to yearn for that, but only on the condition that I get something from it, i.e., I will be rewarded with new feelings, understanding, and by opening my eyes to reveal the secrets of the Torah so that the heavens will open up for me. I want this and cannot do anything with my desire!

Never mind, I need to work with the desire that I have. It is not up to me, but is arranged that way by the Creator. I work with whatever I have, even if it is clear to me that I do everything for my own sake, and the Surrounding Light will gradually impart right intentions to me. This is how we advance.

If we reach the love of the Creator from the love of the created beings, then the most beneficial thing we can is to take care of the created beings! So dissemination—or as it is said, the role of the Israeli nation, obliges us to bring all of humanity to the Creator—is the most beneficial action for anyone who participates in it. We only need to understand this, to interpret it correctly, and to tell each other about it. Then we will understand that we are in an excellent state. We have received unique opportunities.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/14

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Question: When we work together a “collective head” is created,which helps us clarify things and quickly leave bad states. But on the other hand, I hear friends say: “This state must simply be.”

Is “must simply be” always possible or is it only with the close connection with friends, or can you train yourself psychologically?

Answer: You can train yourself so that the distance or the circumstances will not come between you. It is possible since everything depends only on our state.

A mother, for example, can feel her child and constantly think about him, even if she is at work or far away from him.

Question: So why should we work so closely on mutual guarantee? What is the benefit in that?

Answer: Mutual guarantee provides us with the place where we receive the revelation of the Creator. Everyone has to be incorporated in mutual guarantee. Nothing can be fulfilled without mutual guarantee. An individual is not a soldier in the battlefield.

Notice how ignorant we are when it comes to fully understanding what the place is where we reveal the Creator. So we have to keep on working and clarifying all the concepts and states much more.
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