Opinion (Jane Jones,  David Wong): ”If 80s movies taught us anything, it’s that at some point you’re going to run into a mysterious relic that lets you switch bodies with other people.

“Would you use it? But let’s say the artifact doesn’t let you choose, but will instead switch you randomly with one of the other six billion people on the planet. Virtually nobody will take that deal, for fear they’d switch with some poor villager in Nigeria.

“So what does that say about us? Well, according to experts, it says almost everything we think about what would make us happy is dead wrong. Let’s look at the five things we’re most wrong about…

“#5 Fame…

“This is brand new to humanity, for thousands of years, material goods and security dominated. Now, fame is at the top. Obviously part of the reason is the perception that anybody can get famous these days–reality TV and YouTube have proven that you can become a celebrity for doing not a…thing. But there’s another, less obvious factor. And it explains why so many famous people are miserable.

“So What’s the Problem

“Experts say where you find kids who desperately want to be famous, you find a history of neglect at home. Parents were either absent completely or, at best, emotionally distant…. It turns out the whole surge in aspirations for fame came right along with the explosion of single parents and ‘broken’ homes. Only half of today’s children live with their original two parents.

“You can see how this sad mechanism works in the attention-starved mind. The kid is programmed by biology to love a parent, but the parent doesn’t return the love. Fame lets them turn the tables on that arrangement. When you’re famous, millions love you, but you don’t even know their names. It’s purely one-sided. They wait for hours in the cold for your autograph, you barely glance at them on the way to your limo. You get to take their love and wipe your…with it, the same as your parents did to you.

“But it turns out that kind of massive, paper-thin adoration is a poor substitute. Famous people are four times as likely to commit suicide as the rest of us (…you’d think it’d be higher–everybody reading this has seen more than one of their favorite performers self-destruct).

“#4 Wealth…

“Hey, remember when we said earlier that most people wouldn’t do the body-switching thing for fear they’d wake up in Nigeria? Well according to surveys, Nigerians are happier with their lives than the people of any other country.

“The USA came in 16^th.

Hey, did we mention that the average Nigerian makes $300 a year? That’s less than a hundredth of what the average American makes. America being the country that hands out 120 million prescriptions for anit-depressants every year.

“China is turning into a great object lesson in this, as their economy explodes and incomes skyrocket, but levels of happiness and personal satisfaction are dropping at the same rapid rate.

“There’s a couple of reasons for it. First, your brain adjusts feelings of happiness downward after you’ve reached some goal or other. It regulates the good feelings, presumably so that you have motivation to reach the next goal instead of just lounging by the pool for the rest of your days. …

“#3. Beauty…

“Yes, being physically attractive has concrete advantages. Attractive people earn more, get better grades, have better jobs and find more successful partners than average or ugly people. Strangers are more likely to help them in a crisis. They have wider social circles.

“So What’s the Problem

“Remember, we’re talking about happiness here, not success. For one, attractive people have the same self-esteem problems the ugly people do. Like money, attractiveness is relative and if you’re hotter than your friends, at that stage you start comparing yourself to people in the media. You know, like the magazine covers we mentioned before, the ones that that have had the living…Photoshopped out of them. …

“#2.Genius

“We’re using the broader definition of the word “genius” here, meaning anyone with an extraordinary talent or skill. …

“Want to know what it’s like to live life as a genius? All you have to do is go hang around with the stupidest, most incompetent people you know. Cringe at their stupid jokes, feel the frustration as they fumble even the easiest tasks and fail to grasp the simplest concepts. Being a genius must be like that, only everyday. Everyone is an idiot compared to them. They’re living Idiocracy. …

“If you’re not the Einstein kind of genius, it doesn’t matter, any situation where you’re 10 levels above your coworkers is going to be daily frustration. If you’re a genius at spreading concrete, that feeling only occurs to you in the form of everyone else being sloppy and helpless. No wonder they wind up treating people like dirt.

“Not that you’d have time for friends anyway. Genius takes practice. Lots of it. …

“All of this is a great recipe for the stereotypical depressed, moody genius who dies alone and bitter.

“Wait, it Gets Worse…

“If your genius lies in some kind of creative field, then there’s a good chance you have actual mental illness to deal with. While only one percent of the population suffers from bipolar disorder, it is claimed that 50 percent of poets, 38 percent of musicians and 20 percent of painters have it. It’s just part of the package.

“Compare the number of great musical innovators who have died of suicide or drug overdose versus, say, the number of plumbers who have died the same way. It might be better to just stand in the poop all day.

“#1.Power…

“…power is what everything else on this list is about. Fame is about having power in the relationship with the fans. Beauty is about gaining power through others’ sexual desire and jealousy. Genius means society needs your skills more than you need its approval. Money . . . well, money and power are conjoined twins. …

“So What’s the Problem

“Maybe you’re eying the kind of job where you’ll be the boss, or maybe you want to go into law enforcement. Or maybe you’re just driven by that bitter, unspoken urge almost all of us feel at least once in our youth: ‘I’ll show them! I’ll show them all.’…

“It has nothing to do with the ‘culture of corruption in Washington DC’ the Libertarians are always talking about. You find it everywhere, from the…supervisor to the bitter gym coach. Small people driven to mindless, unethical behavior, drunk on just a few drops of…power. They often can’t make friends, their marriages end badly, they self destruct. The world is full of these miniature, sad Tony Montanas, destined for a proverbial bloody downfall.”

My Comment: Research shows that friendship, altruism, and community service bring happiness and satisfaction. Detachment from attempts to arrange personal, individual happiness and focus on others is what makes happiness possible.
[91030]

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In the News (from ScienceDaily): “No matter which way you look at it, rejection hurts. Experiencing rejection from a boss, a friend, or a partner is difficult enough for many adults to handle. But adolescents, who are dealing with the one-two punch of biological and social change, may be the most vulnerable to its negative effects.

“In a new study published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researcher Michael Murphy of the University of British Columbia and colleagues examine the human immune response as a potential link between social stressors like rejection and later mental and physical health outcomes.

“There are many kinds of stressors that increase our risk for disease, but stressors that threaten our social standing, such as targeted rejection, seem to be particularly harmful.

“Many people are probably familiar with targeted rejection from their school days, when a student was actively and intentionally rejected by another student or a group of students. It’s the kind of behavior that we see in so many cases of ostracism and bullying.

“’Targeted rejection is central to some of life’s most distressing experiences – things like getting broken up with, getting fired, and being excluded from your peer group at school,’ said Murphy. ‘In this study, we aimed to examine processes that may give these experiences the ability to affect health.’

“Previous research has shown that people who are on the receiving end of this kind of rejection experience symptoms of depression three times faster than people who are faced with similarly severe life events. Researchers believe that certain inflammatory processes that are part of the immune response could be a link between targeted rejection and depression.

“The researchers note, however, that an overly productive immune response can be harmful to mental and physical health in the long run. If substantiated in future research, these findings could have implications for understanding how social conditions increase risk for a variety of inflammation-related diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and depression.”

My Comment: Undoubtedly, nothing is more harmful to our egoistic nature than a feeling of neglect. It causes violent feelings and physiological reactions that mobilize the entire body and make it capable of the most critical steps. There is only one treatment: to correct man and society!
[90610]

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Question: Yesterday during the seminar, we really felt that we wanted to achieve the goal very much and were completely unable to do so. But then the aftertaste of despair remained: there are no count to these states.

Answer: True. It was what the sons of Israel felt in Egypt, a threat to remain forever under the rule of Pharaoh.

Question: In real life, if a person wants to achieve something, to learn something, he needs to pass the crucial exam. And he comes to the exam in despair because he cannot know everything.

Answer: Our examination is not based on knowledge. The task is not that you give the correct answers, but the fact of what you ask for.

Imagine that I am an examiner. Do not tell me about your positive and negative potential, accumulated during the training. Do not try to soften me with your confusion. You need to act differently here: If you really see that that there is no alternative, then bring the awareness of your own helplessness and the willingness to be changed. No more, just these two things: “I cannot” and “I have to,” and they both must be of equal strength.

So far, you haven’t obtained from the group either the sufficient demand or sufficient frustration. But they are opposite each other and depend on each other: If you do not crave the goal, you will not discover its unattainability. Both poles lack power so far. Yes, both of them have already emerged due to our workshops; however, the matter is how you fill the time between the workshops.

Question: And yet, in this world, there is a date of the exam, which I know in advance.

Answer: The time of the spiritual examination comes when you are able to pass it. Do you want it today? Please. Once you are ready, there is nothing that can prevent you.
[90918]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/12, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Question: What is the state of the exile in Egypt with regard to a person’s work in the group?

Answer: The state of the exile in Egypt doesn’t have to last a long time as it may seem by the way it is described, according to which it lasted 210 years and was supposed to last 400 years. If we advance in a good pace, we can process and clarify it very quickly.

Besides, a person or a group doesn’t have to reveal all the details of the process described in the Torah by getting into all the details of the story. This is impossible since it is a whole sea with different states that will be revealed to the fullest only at the end of correction.

So what we go through is some section of the general state of this exile as it is described with regard to the souls, which is enough for us. We however discover only a certain layer that is suitable for our souls.

So there is no need to panic while reading about the exile in Egypt and to see how every blow described there suits what we go through. Don’t think that all this has to hit one person and that everyone has to go through this on such a scale as our global ego interprets it.

In fact, the exile begins when we really want to connect and feel the interruptions. It is only from that moment that the exile begins. The first “seven years of satiety” end, and the “seven years of hunger” begin. We begin to feel them to some extent. We only have to make some efforts in order to discover the real necessity required in order to receive the Torah.

The evil inclination has to be revealed as an obstacle that stands in our way, as a “help against him,” which we must correct and attach. The necessity to work in the right and the left lines brings us to the revelation of the Creator, to the giving of the Torah, to the middle line.
[90824]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/12, Writings of Rabash 

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A person has to make efforts, to play in order to annul himself as much as he can, and to value the environment as much as possible. As a result of this game, the right line is built in him in which he thinks that he wants to stay for the rest of his life. The moment he reaches “satiation,” he cuts himself off from this state and dedicates time to the left line.

In the left line he checks himself: “Do I really think that way, and attain this way? Do I really feel the recognition of the Creator’s greatness within my vessels and the recognition of this wholeness? Have I really attained such an understanding and feeling in my heart and mind, or is it just an external impression like of an embryo in his mother’s womb who totally annuls himself?”

But I don’t want to annul myself. I have just annulled my desires in the right line and I want to feel the greatness of the Creator directly in the desire, which I now discover in the left line.

Then I feel a deficiency, but I keep these two lines so that they will balance one another and none of them will be tilted in order to keep the balance. There is no specific time limit for the right line or the left line, although it says that one should spend twenty-three and a half hours in the right line and only half an hour in the left line.

We have to try to add as much as possible to the right line and to the left line. We shouldn’t decide that we have done enough and that now we should wait for the Creator to start acting and to complete these two lines for me.

A person constantly switches from one line to the other until he makes enough efforts and then the third line is revealed. He summons this revelation by raising a deficiency from the left line to the height of the right line, asking that the Creator reveal His greatness to him in response to this request. He wants to reveal the Creator’s greatness, the greatness of bestowal, only so that it will allow him to work with the desire that was revealed in him in bestowal, “above reason.”

His egoistic desire surrenders to the greatness of bestowal that is revealed and agrees to work under the domination of the Creator. This means that a person builds his “head of the spiritual Partzuf,” where he calculates things that enable him to bestow in order to bestow and to receive in order to bestow.
[90528]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/12, Shamati #11

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Question: What is the indication that a person advances along the three lines and that he isn’t just deceiving himself, as if justifying the Creator in everything?

Answer: The indication of advancement is that he doesn’t just say “thank God” about everything, but that he sometimes finds himself in situations where he cannot immediately justify the Creator, although a true hero who is already high in spirituality does feel so. We have to reach a great correction in order to constantly examine ourselves and to have the powers to thank the Creator for all the evil as for all the good.

Until then, there is a long way to go through many states. Sometimes a person finds himself in such states that he cannot agree with the upper Providence, doesn’t want it and doesn’t accept it. The left line is revealed and in it “Pharaoh,” evil, begins to speak.

We have to allow time for all the evil the Torah speaks about to be revealed in us, all the sins. When a person falls into such a state of sin, he says exactly what the Torah tells us: “Who is the Creator that I should listen to Him?” He curses the Creator, and takes the place of all the famous villains: Bil’am, Balak, Haman, since he has to discover all of the left line.

If he enters the right line from the start, not in order to “salve his wounds with honey,” but in order to advance, then he leaves the left line by that. Then he manages the two lines. Otherwise it isn’t called the right line, but just a state of serenity. A line is something that is limited on both sides.
[90534]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/12, Shamati #11

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Question: Will self-annulment, which we want to achieve, help us if I think that it is simply replacing a small egoistic desire with a bigger one, giving up the current reward for the future one?

Answer: Let it be so in the meantime. We are in the preliminary stages of our advancement and do not take into account that the Light that Reforms impresses us. In fact it operates constantly, thus changing a person. We think that we will stay the way we are now, but will be a bit better. But it is qualitative changes that take place and not quantitative ones, and in the meantime we cannot take them into account in order to estimate in advance how we will change. We think that we will be better by intensifying a certain attribute that already exists, but we don’t understand that we will change in our essence. So it seems that we simply replace a small ego with a big ego, but it isn’t that way at all.
[90405]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: The particular and the general are equal. If I connect with one person, then the general is incorporated in me. So why do I need so many friends?

Answer: It is said: “In the multitude of people is the King’s glory.” First it is easier for you to check yourself whether you are really connected to someone or just attracted to him egoistically. It may be that there is just a usual connection between you based on common attributes or interests.

Besides, don’t think that it is easier to connect with one person than with ten people for example. On the contrary, it is much easier to connect with ten, since you are impressed by the greatness of the self-annulment of each individual, of their mutual concern and their desire to achieve the goal together. By looking at them you are “ignited” and you burn with envy.

But if there were one person before you, how could you see his actions in relation to you and not in relation to other friends? You are a captive of your ego and so you cannot see the desired effect.

So it is desirable to be in a large environment. On the whole, the minimum of a majority is two, but still it is a minority, since it is very little and this case you will have to work very hard.

Actually, it isn’t a question of quantity. What’s important here is that you annul your ego, so that you will begin to see everything that is external to you as your own. You annul the boundaries and you are already outside your body. It is as if your desires are pouring outside and include the whole world inside.
[90352]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: It says, “He who prays for his friend is answered first.” This is actual Lo Lishma (not for Her name); it is total egoism, simple absolute egoism.

Answer: Of course, in the meantime you advance egoistically and your ego grows, but you see that each time Pharaoh is getting tougher and tougher, “since I have hardened his heart,” and that is a good sign.

Question: How can I grow from hate to love and not to self-suppression?

Answer: It is impossible to build love without hate and envy. All the negative discernments are eventually implemented in love and you need each of them. After all, what is love? On what foundation is it firmly established? It is over the ego in the vessels of receiving, in perceiving others as close.

Annulment doesn’t mean that everything is annulled. Hate is never annulled, it is preserved in its full intensity, and it is exactly on top of it that you build love. It is as if you cover this whole “Mt. Sinai” (a mountain of hate) with cream and you get a cake called a “Mountain of Holiness.”

This means that the hate is inside. The gap between the Creator and the created being remains since otherwise the created being wouldn’t exist.
[90349]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article 3: “The Matter of Spiritual Attainment:” Since the will to receive is called “creature” and a “new discernment,” the utterance begins precisely from the place where the will to receive begins to receive impressions. The speech is discernments, parts of impressions. For here there is already a correlation between the Light and the will to receive.

Question: What is Light?

Answer: Something special is evoked in you, an exceptional phenomenon, and you call it Light. When it comes, you know that that’s what you call it.

At the moment, however, you don’t have the right vessel to feel this phenomenon. Unless you acquire the spiritual attainment, all your desires are aimed only at your self-benefit: “everything for myself, for my own good, to use others, everything for my own good and against others.” This is more or less the way things work today, and so being in these desires you cannot feel the phenomenon of bestowal, love, cooperation, connection and an aspiration outwards—all the things that are called “Light.” For you it isn’t Light but darkness.

Sometimes it gets dark and bad: You feel helpless and you don’t feel like doing anything; you don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. This is how your desires appear to you without the typical illumination in our world, without the slightest illumination that will light up the darkness in the vessel.

After all, in our meager desires only a tiny glow can show, giving a little bit of life and enjoyment. This spark is so small that it can penetrate even egoistic vessels of receiving. I live in them on the levels of the still, vegetative, animate nature; the whole human level is above this and I am not part of it.

There are desires to receive and desires to bestow on that level that will be revealed in me one opposite the other. The left line is the evil inclination, the true ego that is revealed to the extent that I want to connect with others and I do so. Then I draw the Light that Reforms and try to acquire the good force and work between the two inclinations in the middle line, which is called Adam (human).

In the meantime I am on the level of the animate, under the domination of my small ego, receiving only a ” thin candle” in the vessel that is made of the first three levels. From a spiritual point of view, this is not considered life or an existence. So our world is called a virtual world, it is as if it exists below the level of consciousness.
[90105]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/12, Shamati #3

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