Question: What does a couple feel when they are in the “shared space,” when your partner understands and feels you?

Answer: A “shared space” refers to complete mutual understanding within its limits. This area is usually created in the attitude towards children. The mutual concern for them and the importance the couple attributes to them connects the couple. These are seemingly external factors, not ours, but they belong to us. If you don’t have children, it is more difficult to find common connecting points.

We have to look for things we agree on, understanding, something we have in common; where we agree, we understand each other and connect, although in the beginning we had different opinions. But we grow so accustomed to these concessions that we cannot manage without them. Even if we could correct the difference between us, we wouldn’t want to. We feel that all these contrasts are an opportunity for a special union. We already understand that without them there would be no union.

All these “rough spots” help us connect. It is thanks to the fact that I concede and my partner concedes that we feel the connection between us. Without our mutual concessions there will be no connection. If we agreed from the start on everything, we wouldn’t feel the contact. It would be as if we are the same thing. When we concede, we don’t annul our ego, but rather build a connection above it, as it says, “Love will cover all the sins.” Therefore, this strong connection, the inner contrast between us, is kept, but above it, love grows increasingly higher.

The “shared space” is our double common ego, but because of this, it connects us more strongly and allows us to feel the connection between us. We have to constantly take care of this “shared space,” to evoke it and try to expand it with regard to different types of connections from the corporeal to the spiritual.
[100776]
From a “Talk About a New Life” 7/25/12

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Lowliness is not when I don’t have the power to do something, but rather when I think that I actually do something. The lowly is not someone who cannot be a hero, but someone who thinks that he is a hero. If the ego awakens in a person, then everything he says indicates his lowliness.

After all, everything is managed by the upper Light. But a person thinks that he has his own power, feelings, and mind in his ego, and this is his lowliness. The lowliness is in the fact the he doesn’t understand, that he doesn’t feel, and doesn’t attain that his desire to receive is only a replica of the Light. It’s only a shadow of the Light and he has nothing but that shadow.

If a person feels and understands this, if he fights the lowliness that is evoked in him over and over again in order to reveal the gap between him and the Creator, then he enters another lowliness that is actually not a sign of lowliness but of adhesion. He doesn’t want to be adhered to his desire and serve it devoutly, not in the shadow, which is the opposite replica of the Light that imagines that it exists independently since it’s detached from the source. Instead he wants to devoutly serve the Light itself. Thus he reaches adhesion with the source.

Then he is filled with pride, with power, with everything that that Light has by having annulled his desire to receive before the Creator. He thanks the Creator for having created this desire to receive by which a person can feel how he can adhere to the Creator. Thus the clarification of self-lowliness constantly helps a person get closer to the truth, to the source. So where one feels His lowliness is the place where one discovers the Creator’s humbleness and His greatness.
[100817]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/13

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It is obvious that we have many complaints to the Creator about our state, the conditions we would like, and about the host who is responsible for everything that happens to us. But this won’t help. We either agree to the conditions we have been given or we have to advance by the path of sufferings.

After all, in order to set such conditions, we have to know the whole process, the whole system; we have to understand that everything is for the best and that it’s impossible to fulfill the conditions if we don’t know the systems and are in constant concealment as we advance from the bottom up. The only thing left for us is to believe that all our work has to be done above criticism and complaints. When we look at everything from our ego, we can’t come to any other conclusion since the advancement is actually with regard to the desire to bestow and not toward the desire to receive; so in our state, we will never be able to understand how we advance.

It says, “Open a gate for me that is as big as the eye of a needle,” which means just exert yourselves a little, “and I shall open the upper gates before you.” But we have to discover the “eye of the needle” by ourselves, and it’s a very difficult task. It is because I have to lower my head, to annul my pride, and to understand that we will not be able to perceive and to appreciate anything inside our ego, but rather it is by the feeling of our lowliness, the lowering of our heads, that we begin to understand what is happening.

After all, it’s by the concealment of our ego that we begin to know the Creator who is concealed and we begin to resemble Him in some way. A mother who takes care of her baby is also in concealment from him, since the baby doesn’t know how much she cares; he doesn’t have to know either. What’s important is that the result of all her efforts will be fulfilled in him, the conditions for his growth.

But if we yearn for the Creator, we have to discover His actions with regard to us and to repeat them by ourselves. In order to do that, we have to humble ourselves like a mother who forgets about herself for the sake of her baby, or like the Creator with regard to the created beings. We only feel the result of the Creator’s care for us, but all His actions with regard to us are not revealed since we are babies who can’t understand anything.

So how can we be evoked so that we will want to know the Creator’s work? It’s impossible to know it until we become parents too. Only then will we appreciate what our parents did for us. In order for us to grow in the spiritual world and to become spiritual parents, the Creator doesn’t fill all our childish desires, He doesn’t serve us sweet porridge like a loving mother, doesn’t change our diapers and doesn’t amuse us with different toys so that we will be happy. He doesn’t spoil our desire to receive, but rather evokes different questions in us, sufferings, and unpleasant discernments with which we have to work in order to discover the reason for it, since this is how we will be able to discover His work.

If I don’t feel good, I must discover why. Of course, first I feel dissatisfaction; it’s my natural response, I resent the fact that I feel bad! The next thought is already aimed at the Creator and at why He acts this way. He is wrong; He should change! But if the problem doesn’t go away and I can’t get out of it, the blows force me to be more patient. I don’t resent this anymore; I ask, “What is the point of this kind of life?” This brings me to study the Creator’s actions.

I am told that I am responsible for everything that happens. Did I do something? All is done by the Creator! But it turns out that everything is opposite from the way it seems to me, “There is none else besides Him,” “the good and the benevolent,” and all the good that He gives me turns into many different contrasting forces within me. I don’t see that all this stems from the good and the benevolent. Although sometimes something good happens, it’s mostly bad.

I have to determine that it’s a fact that everything that I receive comes from the Creator who is good and benevolent and that there is none else besides Him. If I do that in the state I am given now, I will reach my first spiritual level. Later the same kind of work is expected of me but more qualitative and sublime. This means that our work is first to see that we are the source of the problem and not the Giver, and then to correct ourselves so the problem will disappear. The Giver, His action, and I should connect into one whole called “adhesion“. This will be the proof that I have reached an equivalence of from with Him.
[100767]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Opinion (from Spydell): “An incredible ability to ignore the problems of the financial markets is surprising. Just on Friday, they saw a projection of a serene bright future, and now again the crisis began. There was no crisis on Friday, and now it has started to up again in a few days.

“The situation comes to the point of absurdity. To raise the GDP, you need to eat a lot, which will increase sales of food and fast-food income. But after that, people will be sick with obesity and diabetes, which will increase revenues of pharmaceutical companies and drug sellers. The more you eat and get sick, the better it is for the economy and corporations, but it is worse for you. The bad environment also positively affects the economy because the number of diseases grows, and revenues increase in proportion in the health sector.

“The more deadly weapons produced, the better economy is, but accordingly, there are more wars and killing.

“Sooner or later this craziness with endless growth must end. The economy of growth violates the natural limits of living organisms; no single organic being is capable of either growing or living forever. Even the poorest category of the population in developed countries live at the level of gods of the poor Asian and African regions. … Society adapted to the subsidies and is not going to boost consumption, especially when the shelves are full of goods.”

My Comment: Infinite growth is impossible, not only because there are natural limits of the planet and the population, but also because our desires grow not only quantitatively, but qualitatively, meaning there is a sense of desolation and apathy, emptiness, yearning for drugs, suicide; there is a new void that cannot be filled by anything from the world around us; the question of meaning is rebooting; we are coming to the next stage of our development, when fulfillment will come mainly from the revelation of the upper world, and consumption will be only to the extent necessary for existence. The changing desires will inevitably lead us to this.
[100782]

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Question: Baal HaSulam says that in this era we have a chance to hasten the process of our evolution and reach the Creator. How can we identify this opportunity and fulfill it?

Answer: We are living in a special time and we are indeed given a chance. First, because the Reshimot (spiritual genes) that are awakening in us urge and push us towards the revelation of the Creator, the revelation of the essence of life. It’s because that’s the same cardinal question that awakens in people. After ages of human evolution a person really begins to look for the meaning of life, and doesn’t just try to live a better more comfortable life.

Fifty years ago we still thought that corporeal benefits were infinite and we believed that the prospects of the consumerist society were endless. “Everything is possible: We will fly to the stars, we will control the forces of nature, we will swim in affluence…” This was the direction of our ego.

But suddenly we have reached a kind of satiation, because our desire has begun to change; we have not filled all our desires; we have not provided everyone with a yacht, a palace, a private jet, a private island, or a personal planet to himself. No, we have not filled our desires, but the desires have simply changed, just as a young child’s desires change: A minute ago he asked for cottage cheese, but while you ran to the store to get it, he already wants a sausage.

There are many hungry people in the world today, people who are ill and needy, but the desire changes and while they lack something, it is clear to them that even if they get whatever they lack, they will not be satisfied. There is a filling and there is satisfaction. It is like the example that Baal HaSulam gives when the guest says to the host, “Even if you give me the whole world as a present, I will not be satisfied, since it is not mine.” There will be a filling but there will not be satisfaction.

We are speaking about two very subtle discernments, as a result of which on the last level of our evolution, despite the dissatisfaction, and the shortage we feel in our desires, a person looks for meaning in his life. A new desire emerges, and it is from this desire that a person expects to feel satisfied, even if he doesn’t have a filling in his previous desires and his previous hopes are not fulfilled; even if he only has the simple things left, he will look for satisfaction in what is important to him now.

So after money, after control, after technological prosperity, after the information age, we have risen to a new level, the level of meaning. People feel despair and commit suicide because they don’t find a meaning to life. This is the first sign of the era of redemption.

The second sign for being in the era of redemption is the awakening of the whole world, not only those who are looking for a meaning in life. The world is sinking into a crisis that is basically an inner psychological crisis. A person cannot manage his private life any more, and neither can he manage human society. Everything is destroyed and out of control since our ego has completed its development and has finished its work, and by that has nicely ended its role.

Soon there will be new very unpleasant diseases that stem from our overuse of harmful, poisonous materials that we have added to our food and to other products. On the whole, there will be all kinds of negative phenomena that are typical of the use of the negative effects of the ego. We fear a nuclear bomb, a meteor that may hit the earth, but in the meantime one virus can totally annihilate the whole world.

Eventually this world that needs to be corrected, we are striving for that and the means are being discovered; internally and and externally we are shown that we are in a time of opportunity.
[100652]
From the 4^th Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Today the trend that has accompanied us throughout the ages of our development is coming to an end. The ego forced us to climb down from the trees and to start human evolution. We have been through many phases and many forms of life: slavery, fictitious freedom, the Middle Ages, and capitalism. We have constantly worked in order to make a profit, to succeed, and to advance. But today our “partnership” with the ego is coming to an end.

There are several reasons for that and one of them is that the ego itself doesn’t feel satisfied any more. We receive all the goodness, but it doesn’t fulfill us. Even the wealthy increasingly feel they are as if left with nothing, since filling without the deficiency for it brings no pleasure.

On the whole, the elite treat the world as their own property and build a “whole world” for themselves. Through the media, they confuse us, convincing us we should work from morning to night, follow new fashion trends, buy products and services, and then work again. There is constant confusion, wars, and riots like the “Arab spring.” Why? So they can quietly dominate the world and make billions in profits for themselves. This is a never-ending job of governments and other channels controlled by a small handful of people.

However, they already are beginning to feel that they are losing control. According to the laws of egoistic evolution, the world in its current form is coming to an end, facing a global crisis. No one wanted this including the elites who are interested in maintaining and indefinitely continuing the consumerist society. But this doesn’t work.

Now we have to decide where we are headed. So on the one hand, Marx’s books are being reopened, and on the other hand, the wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed.

Today there are talks about a different use of the desire to receive. The next phase is building a united society in which people work about an hour a week because we don’t need everything that we are currently producing. Today unity is the essential model for human society. Without it we will not even be able to receive our daily bread. If we don’t connect, we will not have the basic necessities. But humanity doesn’t know how to connect, although this is what it is required to do. As a result, when faced with a seemingly impossible task, it is going toward annihilation, seeing no way out.

This is exactly where we take the wisdom of Kabbalah out of its hiding place and “wave” it on the background of Marx’s Das Kapital, hoping that we will be heard.

Question: What proof can we bring?

Answer: We have two ways to prove this:

• There is rational proof, as it says, “It is the wise who sees the future.” We can convince people that our approach is true and efficient basing it on examples, without waiting for greater trouble.
• Or, instead, the proof can come in the form of disasters.

On our part, we try to reach people before the blows do, but it isn’t easy. We don’t control the media. The elite have built an army of economists and financial experts and other experts whose goal is to confuse people and to cultivate the great lie. This is all so that the people who are at the top of the pyramid will be able to rule. Rule what? Today, even they don’t know exactly. It is not under their control at all…
[100549]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/13, “The Peace”

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In the News (from The Lancet): The 2011 UN high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) called for multisectoral action including with the private sector and industry. However, through the sale and promotion of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink (unhealthy commodities), transnational corporations are major drivers of global epidemics of NCDs. What role then should these industries have in NCD prevention and control? We emphasise the rise in sales of these unhealthy commodities in low-income and middle-income countries, and consider the common strategies that the transnational corporations use to undermine NCD prevention and control. We assess the effectiveness of self-regulation, public—private partnerships, and public regulation models of interaction with these industries and conclude that unhealthy commodity industries should have no role in the formation of national or international NCD policy. Despite the common reliance on industry self-regulation and public—private partnerships, there is no evidence of their effectiveness or safety. Public regulation and market intervention are the only evidence-based mechanisms to prevent harm caused by the unhealthy commodity industries.”

My Comment: The crisis will sweep away all the problems; people will rise above egoism and choose a new level of consumption—rational consumption for the body and the rest for the soul. In this way they will come to feel a new level of existence, not limited by matter.
[100511]

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Opinion (Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University and Nobel laureate): “The long malaise into which the economy seems to be settling, and the growing divide between the 1 percent and the rest — an inequality not only of outcomes but also of opportunity. To me, these problems are two sides of the same coin: with inequality at its highest level since before the Depression, a robust recovery will be difficult in the short term, and the American dream — a good life in exchange for hard work — is slowly dying.

“There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth. …

“Second, the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1970s, a phenomenon interrupted only briefly in the 1990s, means that they are unable to invest in their future, by educating themselves and their children and by starting or improving businesses.

“Third, the weakness of the middle class is holding back tax receipts. ….

“Fourth, inequality is associated with more frequent and more severe boom-and-bust cycles that make our economy more volatile and vulnerable. … The International Monetary Fund has noted the systematic relationship between economic instability and economic inequality, but American leaders haven’t absorbed the lesson.

Inequality leads to political inequality and a broken decision-making process. High unemployment, of course, depresses wages. Adjusted for inflation, real wages have stagnated or fallen. … Since the Great Recession, most of the increase in the nation’s wealth has gone to the very top.

“Meanwhile, as incomes have stagnated or fallen, tuition has soared. … We could have recognized that when young people are jobless, their skills atrophy. We could have made sure that every young person was either in school, in a training program or on a job. Instead, we let youth unemployment rise to twice the national average.  The children of the rich can stay in college or attend graduate school, without accumulating enormous debt, or take unpaid internships to beef up their résumés. Not so for those in the middle and bottom. We are sowing the seeds of ever more inequality in the coming years. …

“Globalization, and the unbalanced way it has been pursued, has shifted bargaining power away from workers: firms can threaten to move elsewhere, especially when tax laws treat such overseas investments so favorably. This in turn has weakened unions.”

My Comment: Inequality is the principle criterion of our world—egoism; it can be eradicated only through integral education which everyone should go through so that humanity can get rid of its evil and survive.
[100414]

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Question: When I meet people lately, I see that they are not looking for success like they did before and are not trying to achieve something. It is as if the ego has stopped growing and is even going backward; people agree to have less, why is that so?

Answer: It is not a simple question. Why has the ego stopped growing? Moreover, why does the ego “concede and give up,” growing weaker? Does it really grow weaker?

The point is the ego changes; it becomes “round,” integral. We are moving from one type of ego: the simple individualistic “straight” ego with the approach of “grab as much as you can” to another type that we don’t understand yet. It has not been fully revealed in us yet. It is a kind of an integral ego that is accompanied by a general mutual connection. We already feel it and don’t know how to manage and cope with it.

Up until now we have developed technologies, science, and knowledge, but now it is time for attainment, which is characterized by a new kind of desire. Once the world was dominated by power, then by technology, and then it was science’s turn, then information became the key, now the main thing is the understanding. All the previous methods will not help us anymore; they cease to be effective.

This has never happened before. All the previous levels used to support the new, more advanced levels, but today it is different. It is as if everything that we have achieved is gone, slipping away between our fingers, no longer causing any inner responses. It is actually so. It is because the “world” is vessels, desires, with the Lights in them. These vessels disappear and gradually turn into different vessels. For the first time there is not a discrete attribute that is revealed in them, of a vessel and another vessel, but the connection with the first ten Sefirot, the first spiritual level.

So we cannot identify this state. We don’t have the necessary inner pattern of perception, the “sensor,” the right sense that enables us to see the new reality. So people stop their chase and nothing attracts them anymore. They feel the outcome of the process: the vessel beginning to “round,” to connect to the ten whole Sefirot.

For the first time the first level of the upper world is revealed, for the time being in the vessels of posterior, but it is already being revealed. By being incompatible with it, we encounter emptiness, and the suffering will grow even if we don’t learn how to adapt ourselves to reality. This situation can actually make people feel helpless, not wanting anything, not wanting to work, as the soul feels hopelessness and a person feels despair.

The linear advancement allowed us to find a replacement for something we despaired of. The ego’s protective force still pushed us forward. But today, many don’t have the energy to get up in the morning and to start a new day, “I don’t need anything and whatever will be will be.” This actually stems from disorientation in the network of the global connection that is being revealed now. A person doesn’t feel the network yet, but he sees that the previous vessels don’t work any more. This is really a very sad situation…
[100226]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Question: What results from integral education workshops?

Answer: People begin to feel each other better and begin to reveal an integrated system that truly binds them together because we are in a system of the forces of nature that connect us. Until now, the principle of this system was, “who is faster, who is better, who is stronger, who is smarter,” and now it is interconnection. Interconnection makes people equal.

Today, you can be smart or rich or special in something, but, still, you do not succeed in life because success—content, happiness, a sense of a result—comes from the right interconnection. We must lead people to this.

They will begin to feel how interconnection, goodwill, a sense of common destiny, and a common movement give a person the fulfillment that makes him want to be in the team.
[100192]
From the KabTV’s “Personnel Secrets” 2/3/13

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