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In the News (from The Richest): “Depression is an illness that plagues millions of people, all over the world. Sure, we all can feel sad or down sometimes, but when someone is dealing with depression, it is a never-ending and sometimes all-consuming battle. …

“While depression doesn’t discriminate against people, there seem to be some demographics that tend to be more depressed than others. Whether it is economics, the culture, or background, the fact that there are countries that have a higher rate of depression than others is worth looking examining. …

“According to the United Census Bureau and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, about 5.4% of the world’s population deals with depression.

10. Italy – 3.8%. It’s interesting to look into the societal views of depression in Italy. Based on a national survey, 75% of respondents believed that those suffering from the mental illness should avoid talking about it. Italians are no strangers to the illness, with almost 4% acknowledging that they may suffer from the condition. When it comes to the cause of depression, it varies anywhere from dynamics in the personal lives of the participants (i.e., death, divorce, school, money), while the recently struggling political and economic environment in Italy could well be a contributing factor.

9. Mexico – 4.8% Studies have shown that depression in Mexico affects more women than it does men, and increases with age. But there were lower rates of depression among those in the population who were more educated. When it comes to depression in Mexico, it’s worth taking a look at the Mexican culture. With more success, depression rates are reduced. Success could mean anything from marriage, to having kids, to getting a good education: Depression was much higher among women who were single, divorced, or widowed.

8. Spain – 4.9% In terms of the percentages, adolescents are greatly affected by depression in the country.

7. Belgium – 6.2% Depression has become a recent epidemic in Belgium. The country made headlines recently when it became the first country to legalise euthanization in certain extreme cases of terminally ill children. … The idea is that the high numbers of depression sufferers might mean more Belgian citizens contemplating suicide, and with euthanasia becoming more readily available, those who may have considered ending their life may be able to do so through more convenient, legal means.

6. Lebanon – 6.6% Life in Lebanon is undeniably stressful which leaves many worried about the future of their homes, jobs, and families. Trends show that the citizens of Lebanon prefer medication over therapy, likely due to the rising cost of the latter. But the cultural perception of therapy has also been cited as a possible reason behind depressed Lebanese citizens avoiding therapy – a 2011 report on the issue in the Daily Star Lebanon stated that Lebanese ‘don’t believe in talk-therapy’.

5. Colombia – 6.8% The country has been through its share of political hardship, war, and economic downturn – it’s speculated that if there were more resources for treatment, the depression rate could be reduced.

4. Netherlands – 6.9% Compared to the rest of Europe, the Dutch have notably higher depression rates than most – which seems to, in some ways, contradict recent studies suggesting that the Netherlands is the best place to raise children. But residents of the Netherlands are asking the world to think about context and perception – they say the Dutch culture is just generally a bit more morose than that of their neighbours.

3. France – 8.5% The French may be the most likely candidates to suffer from clinical depression, given the stereotypes of the French of often wearing black, drinking coffee or wine, all while smoking a cigarette and approaching life in a cynical manner. … In 2008, it emerged that the citizens of France consume more antidepressants than any other country in the world.

2. Ukraine – 9.1% It is common knowledge now that tensions are high in the Ukraine. … However researchers, psychiatrists, and psychologists have explained the depression rate by crediting it to the transition to a post-communist state and the ongoing recovery from the stress of the 1986 Chernobyl incident. Of course, the current political upheaval occurring in the Ukraine right now probably hasn’t helped matters.

1. United States – 9.6% No doubt that the North American country has its troubles in terms of politics and the economy. People are losing their jobs, and the economy is slowly recovering from a recession. In a country where prices are rising and wages are falling, it might be said that Americans can be justified in their feelings of depression.”

My Comment: Of course, this all is according to the polls, but people prefer not to talk about their feelings. But the main thing is not the indicators but the trend. Ahead of us, there is either the darkness of the Middle Ages or re-education towards love and bestowal.
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Question: Rabash writes, “Then he has no other choice but to pray to the Creator to give him some life, so he will feel that he is dangerously ill and needs to cure the soul.” What is this request and feeling?

Answer: I see how my friends are connected. They go out together to some particular activity, helping each other, feeling closeness, understanding each other. Whereas, when I pass by them, I don’t feel any connection to them, no mutual participation. I am always drawn towards solitude. I have no desire to be together with everyone. What is there to do?!

And so I ask the Creator to show me how much this isn’t good that I am such an individualist, detached from others, not feeling anyone. I hear how they talk to each other, how they can be close.

They stimulate each other and go out to tasks, to dissemination, and I don’t. I am not excited when I look at them. As far as it seems, I am coarser than they are, more egoistic. And I want to be integrated into their connection. Otherwise I could sit next to them, but not be within the group.

Suppose that our main group has 400 men. How many of them truly want to connect?  Maybe it’s a total of 30 or 40. After all, this is not just about participants, but about those who want to connect and feel that through this they discover the higher power as one man with one heart; this is the condition for discovering the Creator.

And I don’t feel this! I only hear about the need to connect, but don’t feel it. I hear that the friends are gathering, planning some kind of dissemination activity, and I think to myself: “Well, next time I will join them! This is not yet the time. I have more important things to do!”

I even purposefully engage in some things to find justification for my absence. Ultimately I see that I have no correction at all. And so I ask the Creator to give me a bad feeling, recognition of the evil in my separation from the friends so that I’ll be able to decide that I must connect. This is called the “recognition of evil,” clarification.

It could be that I am concerned that it’s personally bad for me that I am not connected with the friends and that I didn’t go to them. It could be that I see that they are more advanced and am envious of them and that the greatness of the group must pull me forward. I don’t ask to suffer, but rather for recognition of my evil nature.

Certainly this is unpleasant, but this unpleasantness summons great happiness in me, for this releases me and saves me from the situation in which I am found. Otherwise I will have to die in Egypt.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/23/14, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What if I don’t succeed in dissemination?

Answer: This is a good indicator of exile showing you that you have not yet attained your correct realization. We advance only through awareness of our mistakes.

But there cannot be something like this, that the least talented person in the world could not convince the entire world with the method of connection and unity. This is because we are in an integral system. So even the simplest person, who apparently has no chance of anyone hearing him, has such chances that he must realize.

Through awareness of the integral system, everyone must reach a state where through his personal part of the collective soul Light will begin to transmitted to the entire great system. So he will need to be connected and integrated with his heart and mind to the entire system to be able convince everyone that the correction of the collective Kli is possible only in this way, as he understands and feels this.

It is written in Jeremiah 31:33 “…for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them!” We don’t understand the absoluteness of this requirement. Therefore, it cannot be that a person is not ready to convince others of the correctness of our path.

If you don’t succeed in convincing others, this is a sign that you have not yet convinced yourself, meaning you have not yet precisely clarified these concepts within yourself and you have doubts. In the meantime, you are not prepared to convey the feeling of connection in your own way so that people will absorb this from you.

Even the knowledge of the is also Light. There is nothing besides Light and desire. But in the meantime, you cannot organize yourself within so that you can connect with people and let them feel this illumination. Dissemination, as it is called, is when you absorb people into yourself. That is how you organize and arrange your Kli. so that it is impossible that you don’t reach people with your explanations about the crisis, about the present state of the world, about the group, about the goal.

For you have been connected into one system from the start. And if you approach your right place within this system, you will be sure to have an influence on others. It is impossible to according to the principles of the work within the system in any other way.

You must improve their situation, attract them, and incorporate them within you. They need to want to be integrated with you, because they will feel that they are receiving and will continue to receive fulfillment through you.

It is simply necessary to work more. This is difficult and incessant work, like raising your child, you invest in him for 20 to 30 years and don’t stop having problems. But there is nothing else to do. That is how life is and this is how the process of correction works.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/14, The Book of Zohar

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 Question: The word education is usually associated with educating children and with school, while we speak about educating a person of any age.

Answer: Education is relevant throughout a person’s life.

Education is our main mission, and its goal is that a person will be able to learn and educate himself anew through the Upper Light. Then he will gradually be able to sacrifice all of his ego, which is called offering sacrifice.

First a person has to learn this by himself and then by his example, teach someone else how to connect to the Light of correction. After all, we can never correct one another, only the Upper Light can do so. All of the group’s power is in setting an example for each of its members.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/20/13

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Question: Offering a sacrifice was discovered after the consecutive entrances of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob into Egypt.

Answer: Offering sacrifices was also common in Egypt to some extent, but in a totally different way; Abraham, for example was told: “Offer Isaac as sacrifice.”

After the exodus from Egypt, there were direct instructions to come to the Creator, to build the Tabernacle, to post the priests, etc. This became a movement of a nation that did not exist in Egypt.

Therefore, we can understand how the Hebrew custom of offering sacrifices of animals that they slaughtered was hated to the Egyptians. It is because the ego sees how it is being destroyed and sacrificed in order to acquire the opposite, most hated attribute, the property of love and bestowal.

The ego cannot bear any form of sacrifice, and is against it, but cannot do anything about it.

Question: Certain counties have banned the kosher slaughtering of animals.

Answer: We often encounter this phenomenon since the normal ordinary ego doesn’t understand that offering a kosher sacrifice, even on the corporeal level, is the most humane and merciful way, because in that case, the animal doesn’t feel that it is dead. In fact, it symbolizes correction.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/20/13

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I only want to add something important to what I said about building successful family relationships. It won’t work if you try to implement these methods in certain individual cases.

We may work with many couples, and it will seem to us that we managed to teach them the integral method. But they won’t achieve anything with its help. They won’t have enough patience for it, and the society doesn’t support this. We are not built in the way that helps us implement it. For this, one has to become a true expert on building such system of relationships and devote himself exclusively to this.

We will be able to teach people to create such inner family relationship only in the framework of correction of the entire society where we will build similar relationships as well. That is, this is inseparably linked with integral education.

In an ideal family relationship a couple is connected in such a way that we complete each other, giving to each other pleasure which one cannot achieve alone. And I can’t receive it from anybody else because I feel that it has to do with the inner world of a person next to or in front of me.

We are in union (Zivug) both in the heart and soul, which refers to the innermost mutual penetration, thanks to which we get incorporated into each other.

And this is taking place because inside our connection we feel general influence of the environment that is connected with the same ties as well. Two of us become one whole, and we feel that namely through the connection between us we will be able to connect with a greater society, reaching adhesion (Zivug) with them, and to receive from them a great addition: a feeling of harmony with society.

In this way, we receive a big addition, even if compared with a romantic idyll in the family. But by acting as a couple, as a single family unit in relation to society, we receive billion times more sensations.

Love between us grows many times if it corresponds to the general love that dwells in the society in which we live. Today, we can create a right family only for this purpose, otherwise not. And thus, I repeat: It’s impossible to receive this without integral education.

And this will benefit society at large, which will start feeling love within itself as well, love that raises us to a completely different level. Inside a small family one can attribute it to psychological effect, physical sensation. But if we receive such love in the entire society, we ascend to a completely new level of life.

Question: Can love between us two kindle love in the entire society?

Answer: No, we have to simultaneously develop both. One love supports the other, and they can’t exist without one another. Thus, if we try to implement this method only within the family, we won’t succeed.

Love demands mutual support between family and society. And apparently, this is so on purpose—a great lack of good family relationships that we feel today will force us to establish good relations in society.
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From a TV Program “A New Life” No. 196, 06/09/2013

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There are several types of depression. There is personal depression and there is general, collective depression.

Personal depression is passive. Collective depression is active and is characterized, for example, by people all climbing a barricade together. They don’t lie around quietly hoping for better times, rather they go out to demonstrate, destroying and shattering everything around them, just to be together.

Their power and support for each other is based upon this. This is a terrible phenomenon, for depression like this can cultivate fascism and nationalism.

So, it is very important to change their direction by using the method of the wisdom of connection.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/20/13

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Question: How can a teacher gain respect from children?

Answer: Usually, educators gain credibility in cases where they show the children that they can fully understand them, can be equal with them,  who defends them, and is necessary for them to arrange better contact between them and the world.

Here, it would be nice to stage an “unpleasant incident,” which was prepared in advance, in order for the teacher to settle it, to defend the children, and to show, let’s say to a police officer or the authorities, how children are dear to him and how he is prepared to give up anything for them.

A respected person is the one who leads, sacrificing himself, accepting all kinds of unpleasantness, although he himself is not guilty of them and should not be held responsible for them.

It’s known that the youth has a particularly sharp feeling of self-esteem; they are ready for any action, even suicide, just not to harm their “self.” And when the teacher shows that he is willing to stand by them and defend them, they immediately accept him not only as one of them, but also as a higher one.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman,” 12/12/14

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