I understand where the inner resistance to dissemination stems from. Our ego prefers to sit in its place and simply read and listen to the teacher telling it something interesting instead of going out to disseminate.

This is all very clear. You don’t want to disseminate and you don’t even want to connect with the group. You would rather sit, study, and live peacefully and not run about anywhere. You think that this is much more suitable for your soul.

But the teacher who tells you very wise and interesting things also has some strange ideas, since he is asking you to go out, give lectures, speak to people and perform certain actions with them. You think that all this isn’t for you and that it has nothing to do with the wisdom of Kabbalah, which has always been concealed and studied quietly and secretly.

This is where the wisdom of the crowd comes in. The wisdom of the crowd means that you don’t want to do something according your mind and heart and cannot do it, even if you understand that you have to since it makes sense, even if Baal HaSulam and Rabash write that you don’t want to do this and every cell in your body resists it!

This is where you have to clarify things: Do you recognize that this is the advice of Kabbalists, despite your reluctance and endless excuses? Kabbalists say that it is an essential condition in our days: Baal HaSulam, Rabash, and your teacher say it is so. Your faith in the wise is determined when you annul yourself and perform the actions that they direct.

You will never agree with them on one thing or another. There is no way you will agree with your teacher as to the spiritual work because he always tells you about actions that you have to perform against your ego, which naturally seem to you unreasonable and undesirable.

This will happen over and over again and even if you agree to it theoretically, you will not accept it in practice and will try to evade it anyway you can, as long as you won’t have to do it. Your body will refuse to obey you.

The spiritual teacher is a person who is one level higher than you and who shows you where to put your hand, where to put your foot, and how to move your body so that you can ascend to the next level. This is because you don’t know how to get there or where to place your hand or your foot in order to reach a higher level.

It is like being on one side of a swamp trying to get to the other side. There are stepping stones in the swamp that are hidden under the water that you can use to advance and step to the other side. But, you cannot see these stepping stones. If you take a wrong step, you are lost and the swamp will immediately swallow and drown you in your ego in this life.

The teacher tells you where you should step each time and you must believe him. Otherwise, you will not be able to cross and will drown in this swamp. This is called faith in the sages. A person who tries to advance in this manner can cross the swamp. Of course, a person has endless doubts and it’s true that he acquires faith in the sages gradually, then exits himself and operates according to a higher mind.

This is how you can cross the swamp, and whoever follows this path can cross it. You need more luck than brains here.
[130845]
From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/21/14

Related Material:
The Promise Of Light
Like A Net, Teeming With Fish
The Rav Teaches The Group To Walk

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Dissemination, Egoism, Inner Work, Spiritual Teacher, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book Panim Meirot U Masbirot,” Item 11: …On the other end, when we regard the order of existence and sustenance in the modes of existence of the whole of reality, large and small, we find confused orders, as if an army is fleeing the campaign sick, beaten, and afflicted by the Creator. Their whole life is as death, having no sustenance unless by tormenting first, risking their lives for their bread.

Question: What is the meaning of “sick, beaten, and afflicted by the Creator?”

Answer: On the one hand, we see that nature has prepared and arranged everything for us, all the laws that govern the life of the created beings. But on the other hand, everyone devours each other and everyone benefits from the troubles of others. Each animal thinks only about how to devour another to fill itself, for its entire life, it spends its time looking for food.

A person worries about food even more than other animals. Prehistoric man lived like the animals and ate whatever he could find. He had no way of keeping food and preserving it and therefore had to look for food and collect roots and fruit. This was his daily worry. He had no spare time to do anything else but that. Man lived like an animal and was constantly busy looking for food.

Then man learned to domesticate animals, and so he began to cultivate domestic animals like cows, dogs, chickens, and so forth. He developed agriculture and didn’t need to hunt for food anymore since he had a farm with animals living by his side. There was no need to look for plants to eat since he could harvest his crops in his field. People ceased to wander from place to place and began to settle on their lands.

But this didn’t make their lives easier. It seemed that they could live in peace, but wars and disputes over territory broke out and people began to enslave other people. Life became worse than a dog’s life. On the one hand, everything seemed to be ready on nature’s part, but the management of the still, vegetative, animate, and especially man seemed to be very confused.

Why is there no peace among all parts of nature, and why can’t the prophecy, “And a wolf shall live with a lamb, … and a small child shall lead them” be fulfilled? Instead, everyone devours everyone else. We don’t understand why nature is this way. We have gotten used to this kind of life, but it is wrong. Why is life so? This is where people begin to doubt godliness. Everyone thinks that he can manage the world better than the Creator because he sees the great disorder in nature.

However, we must change ourselves and then we will see that nature and the Creator’s attitude toward us is correct. We must only connect to the upper force, and it will fix us and make us equal to it, which means that it will make us human beings.

The moment we change, we will perceive a different world. This will be a world that is totally good. Suddenly the wolf will dwell with the lamb and will lick it as its own cub. The little child will come to play with them. Everyone will help one another. Then, I will see that life always has been that way, and only I saw that everything was the opposite because my perception of reality was corrupted. I looked at the world through glasses that were totally shattered and therefore thought that the world also was shattered. Now, I have been given new lenses and I see that the world is wonderful, round, beautiful, and pure. It seemed totally shattered before because of my perception of reality.

Therefore, our goal is to correct ourselves to such an extent that we will see the whole upper providence as good and benevolent—the only force that operates in reality, the attribute of love and bestowal.
[130859]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/23/14

Related Material:
A Boy Whom A Lamb And A Wolf Obey
Measuring The Perfect World With Crooked Rulers
Personal Participation Required

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Perception, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: Why does human society develop the way it does throughout history? Couldn’t we have evaded all the great tragedies in our history? And now we are also in a state that no one can understand!

Answer: Everything was very clear… up until our time. From now onward everything is also clear except for the events that we will actually determine in the future, we humans, all of us, by our freewill, which is the reason that it is not predetermined. Up until now we had no choice and everything throughout history occurred according to strict and rigid laws of development on the levels of the still, vegetative, animate, and human.

From Kabbalah we learn that our world was created as a result of the creation of the desire to receive pleasure. This unique created being was shattered into many parts as a result of its evolution, and after the shattering, the parts fell into the level of our world and created its four levels: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking.

These four forms of the desire have to unite from our lower (egoistic) world and ascend to their source, their root, where the one unique desire was created (born).

This is the reason that our entire history is a movement towards unity that is attained by wars, by mutual actions, art, commerce—by all our actions in which we connect and begin to understand one another better by adopting each other’s attributes and thus becoming incorporated in one another.

This unity (which is egoistic at the moment) took place in the last stage of development of our civilization, capitalism, i.e., under the mediation of capital, the development of industry and commerce, which was the basis for the establishment of global economic, political, and social relationships that led us to a global egoistic society. The development of egoism in people led to the development of industrialism, which has led all of mankind to unite egoistically.

Next we have to discover all the evil of egoism and decide whether to flow with the current it leads us along or to correct it by our proper unity.

This is the solution and our free decision. Until now our history was predetermined, but the moment we have to make a decision onward, we don’t know what will happen. To be more accurate, we know what will happen in each of the cases, but it is up to society to determine in which of them we will be!
[125831]

Related Material:
The Right To Transcend The Boundaries Of Reality
Humanity Upon Whom the Entire Creation Depends
Softening The Domination Of Nature

Filed under: Crisis, Egoism, Evolution, Free Will, Globalization, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

In the News (T&P): “There is no hope for the old Europe. Europe and European capitalism are in decline and have lost their dominant position.

“The United States has tried to establish colonies in Europe, but this is causing its own destruction, they cannot hold onto their control throughout the world.

“The world was divided into many nations influenced by Western capitalism, the United States, Britain, Germany, and the small nations that depend upon them, where the comprador bourgeoisie dominates (a part of the bourgeoisie of economically failed states), interested in sending capital and foreign investment to its nation to supply its citizens with work and maintain peace in its society. The government is concerned only about short-term goals: The nation becomes dependent, whereas the accumulation of capital is done outside of its borders.

As a result of this, a nation doesn’t have its own economy and has no economic policy. The nation reacts to the historical situation, answers the challenge, and creates zero ideology, a framework in which it is possible to develop any ideology. We are living in communities of national identity and they are more depressed than the nation, for the moment that you become stigmatized, they immediately throw you out of the community and begin to attack.”

My Comment: All this is developing naturally as the last stage of the growing egoism. In order to replace it, it is desirable and will inevitably come to the next stage of human development, which is altruism,  the principle of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” The achievement of this state is possible only with the help and impact of the quality of bestowal and love, the so-called “Upper Light.”
[158641]

Related Material:
What Will Happen To The World?
Why No One Will Dominate The 21st Century
A Financial War

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Egoism, Nations of the World, News, Society - No Comments →

Each of the five parts of the Torah represents a totally new level in a person’s development or in the development of a group of people who want to fulfill the conditions of the Torah in order to rise to the level of the Creator.

The Torah is like a spiritual elevator that raises our properties to a new level. Those who enter it and shut the doors are ready to work on themselves against their ego. They go through five egoistic phases, which are increasingly greater in their intensity and Aviut (thickness) because egoism is crafty.

While studying each of the five parts of the Torah, the ego grows not only in quantity, but also in quality. This is a very difficult and complicated process. But at the same time, a person grows wiser and begins to understand his egoistic nature. Moreover, it penetrates the connections between all parts of nature, just as one enters a certain organization and discovers how people are connected to one another, the organization’s policies, and the ties of mutual connections between different departments etc.

In spiritual work, however, a person clarifies human nature and the nature of the soul. His advancement is on a higher level, gives greater penetration into the individual and the general connection of all the parts of the soul and all of the creation.

At the beginning, he perceives the general creation in a simple manner, like a small child. Then he is split, upgraded, and separated into parts so that by their connections and their division, a person penetrates more deeply into this system. He discovers new obstacles, new mutual connections, individual laws, etc., and so he studies and examines it from the beginning (Genesis) to the end.

He grows in the transition from one part of the Torah to another and can be told about the laws of creation and be held responsible for keeping them. There is an egoistic desire in a person to discover the Creator that occurs despite the unity with others. A certain formula has to work in it: I connect and unite with the others in order to discover the Creator in the connection between us because this is how I can fill Him with joy, just as He wants to fill me. It is in this state that I unite with Him.

When we begin to relate to our conditions correctly, different forces of help, support, and resistance appear in us. They are gradually revealed: first on the zero level of desire and then on levels one, two, three, and four, a total of five levels. There are the five books of the Torah. In these phases we move from the first word in Genesis “Bereshit” – “In the beginning” to the last word “Israel.”
[158524]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/17/14

Related Material:
The Torah Is A Program And A Guide
The Torah As An Engine For Change
Writing A Book Of Torah

Filed under: Egoism, Group Work, Inner Work, Israel, Spiritual Work, The Creator, Torah, Unity - No Comments →

Independence is a very vague and problematic concept. What does it mean to be independent in a world in which we are all connected together? How is it possible to be independent if I am connected with thousands of threads to all kinds of government institutions, businesses, and people?

A much deeper question is concealed here. As the wisdom of Kabbalah says, a person is a desire to receive, a desire for pleasure, and at every moment in his life, he searches for how to attain as many comforts as possible: sitting, getting up, moving, lying down, trying something, eating, looking at something, hearing something. If I must do something, how can I do it in the most comfortable and easy manner, expending the least energy?

Ultimately, we are managed by the laws of nature. We want to enjoy and get the most while giving and suffering minimally. If I am built like this, then what does it mean to be independent? How can I be independent? It is written: “The dead are free.” So will I become free only after I die and my body no longer requires anything?

And how is it possible to become free? How does a healthy person living in this world become independent if I depend on many thousands of sources of pleasure, food, air, work, my children, and my wife, basically on everything. Each one of these can exert pressure on me and affect me. I cannot be independent. Maybe only if I escape to another galaxy will I become free, but this is not called independence.

We must understand that there can be no independence as long as a person does not abandon his desire to receive, his nature. In my egoistic nature I can never be independent, because I depend on everything and everyone. I cannot live without children, without a wife, without friends, without all the people. Today I cannot live without all of humanity, for everything that I have in my house has embedded within it a particle of the labor from the entire world. So independence is impossible if I think of how to fulfill myself, for then I require everyone and depend on everyone.

Theoretically, a person can be independent when he stops being concerned about himself and begins to enjoy bestowal to others. If I can live like this, not getting enjoyment from taking from everyone all the time but through giving and bestowing to others, then I become independent. I need everyone so I can bestow and give to them and receive pleasure from bestowing. Then I am independent and free since I don’t depend on them in the same way that I did in order to receive pleasure from them.

Ultimately, I have no possibility of enjoying through reception, but only through bestowal. For with reception I depend on others, whereas with bestowal, they depend on me. And so I can be higher than everyone, I can become truly independent. I can feel myself as their lord in the sense that I am higher than them, but love them. And because I bestow and give to them, by fulfilling them, I enjoy without any restriction on their part. We attain such a state that the wisdom of Kabbalah describes as the future of humanity, when everyone bestows and gives to others and feels himself independent.
[158068]
From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 4/19/15

Related Material:
Independance Day: Where Does Independence Begin?
Independence Day: The Beginning Of The Redemption Of Humanity
Wanting To Be Independent

Filed under: Egoism, Free Will, Inner Work, Society, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Singapore Experiment: The Right Dictatorship

Question: In March this year, Lee Kuan Yew, one of the founders of the “Singapore economic miracle,” died. On an empty spot on the edge of a swampy Malaysia, with nothing around but an English military base, within a short period of 50 years, the most prosperous nation in the world was established. But in this nation, there is not a speck of democracy in the sense that we understand it in the developed nations. How did this nation succeed in doing what large nations like America and England have done, while maintaining the strictest leadership and dictatorship of law?

Answer: I don’t perceive democracy in the same way as it exists everywhere, or that that deserves to be called a democracy. This is not the rule of the people, but its imitation: A handful of people take control over all the economic, political, social, and military resources; they say there is a democracy, and that they operate in the name of the people.

As long as we are under the influence of internal egoism without the altruistic force of nature to balance it, there cannot be a democracy. A democracy is built on contrast, a counterweight and a balance between two forces, which are positive and negative: our ego and the force of bestowal and love. There is a force of hatred and rejection and a power of attraction and connection, which must be balanced with each other. If the ego is balanced by a positive force, then it cannot be evil. And conversely, love and bestowal without the ego can lead to even worse extremism than the ego.

In other words, we were created in a system that is in a balance of plus and minus, between which what remains is only to ignite some kind of tension that gives the right orientation for all the work of the system. And if the positive force doesn’t exist or it is minimal and exists only in fear of annihilation, then we don’t have the conditions for a democracy. We “fall out” of the system in which the two forces are revealed. And therefore when we exist only in an egoistic system, what is most suitable for us is the correct dictatorship.

If a king rules a nation, then he takes care of his nation, his subjects, he doesn’t annihilate them, and they consider him to be great! He is the master! But in a democratic nation, there is no master. We let an election decide who operates the steering wheel for two, three, or four years, and then what? What do the elite care about what will be after that?! They will not be elected again, so they need to grab everything they can while they are in control.

So the dictatorship in Singapore is a wonderful system of government. Democracy in the form of a Sanhedrin.

Question: I have heard that the correct head of the state should be Kabbalists, who knowing the laws of nature,  will manage it in the interests of the entire society. What will be the basis of the moral drive of their behavior? Wouldn’t they be infected with greed; won’t they want to get rich after they attain control?

Answer: There is a concept such as the Sanhedrin (great assembly), where 120 Kabbalist sages gather, connect in a circle, and discuss all the issues on the agenda. The discussion is not based on differences of opinion, which is typical of our world, where it is believed that truth is born through debate. There is no truth in debate, because from the start it keeps us on a beastly level and we cannot rise above that. And we must rise above ourselves, because our stage can only lead to a higher level. We seem to rise to our next level, from which it is possible to see how to reach it.

This happens when people unite into a single, complete unit in spite of all the differences of opinion, and by annihilating their ego, they reach a common heart and mind together. This is a unique inner tension and practical work. From a state of unity, and only with this, they complement each other; they begin to come to a common opinion. But it is not connected to personal opinions; rather, is felt through a common unity. It is in this form that the system of governance for the nation and the people should be manifested.

How can strife and discord be avoided?

Question: Today many nations are trying to recreate this model to one degree or another. Take for example Turkey, in which the government has gradually become concentrated in the hands of one person, or Russia, that doesn’t even hide that it lives and thrives thanks to one person. There are also a multitude of other examples in less developed nations. Does it follow that the formation of governmental pyramids like this is the only way it is possible for humanity to go? So, where is it possible to take people like these who are satisfied with such a method of management?  And eventually in Singapore, which was not originally corrupt, all the key places became occupied by relatives of Lee Kuan Yew. Ultimately, some kind of caste was created.

Answer: Certainly this model cannot exist forever in an ideal state once bribery, power struggles, and the like begin. For some time it can hold its position on some ideal, but after that, everything deteriorates along the usual egoistic tracks.

Question: How would the Kabbalists avoid reaching this situation in the management of the nation?

Answer: The fact that they are united among themselves, the 120 greatest sages of the people would avoiding conflict and differences of opinion. Specifically in this situation, they would begin to discuss some issue and from their unity, they would receive an answer. After all, the unity between them is their next goal, which they must reach and include all people with them.

Question: Do discussions in circles, which your students organize, constitute a small version of this form of unity?

Answer: Yes. Discussions in the form of roundtables are organized all over the world, not just in Israel. We actively create a gathering, a discussion circle of men and women, who implement the unity by detaching and rising above themselves. Each one invests himself in the others and everyone yearns to be absolutely equal, with none greater or smaller in any way. We aspire to find a precise system of inner balance between us and pursue it so that all will be equal and integrated with each other, will lose himself in our unity, and from “I” will come to a state of “we.” Then, from the state of “we,” come to a state of “one,” as one person with one heart.
[157446]
From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 4/1/15

Related Material:
Democracy, The Rule Of The Spiritual Nation
Kindergarten Democracy
Spiritual Peak Of The World

Filed under: Egoism, Globalization, Group Work, Inner Work, Israel, Israel Today, Nations of the World, Politics, Society, Spiritual Work, Unity, Workshops - 1 Comment →

In the News (from Psychologies.ru): “Our life flows and passes losing its shades and becoming black and white, friends and foes, heroes and villains. Psychologists call this perspective cognitive simplicity.

“This phenomenon appears at infancy. We all know that we acquire the complexity of this world with time through our relationships with people.

“It is better for our leaders if people perceive the world as a simple place since it is simply easier to manage them and to control them. Many agree and are willing to accept the rules of this game.

“Simplicity as a form of psychological protection helps them cope with the complexity of the world.  A simple perception of the world allows a person not only to see the goal more clearly but also to attain it.

“Cognitive simplicity is the basis for manipulation that comes down to people’s ability to attain the goals we were given, while convincing others to also want that. These manipulations are based on ideas that have to be subordinately in common with those who resemble them. The manipulations refer to actions against cooperation trust and autonomy.

“It becomes necessary to imagine our states and those of others not only logically but also emotionally. The individual’s awareness has to include the position of those around him. A person’s fate is an attempt to unite and to care about others no less than about himself.”

My Comment: I believe that only an addition to the egoism that manages us on its own, the second force of nature, the positive force of connection and love will make our world and man living in it balanced by the two forces. We will be able to manage ourselves and the world and to build a balanced system of the world. If not, we will fall into increasingly greater egoism that leads us to terrible sufferings, and eventually after world wars and annihilations we will still acknowledge the need to complement ourselves with the positive force of life and to build humanity as a balanced system. The positive force of connection can only be discovered in the process of workshops and discussion circles that are based on the wisdom of Kabbalah and the wisdom of connection.
[156905]

Related Material:
Noam Chomsky: “10 Strategies Of Manipulation” By The Media
Methods Of Mass Education Against Mass Media
The Internet As A Power Network

Filed under: Crisis, Education, Egoism, News, Perception - No Comments →

Question: Kabbalah tells us that jealousy and envy exist only in humans, but I see it also in my cat and dog. How do you explain that?

Answer: You are right. Envy on the level of our world is an ordinary egoistic feeling, a competitive means of struggling for a source of pleasure, whether it is an animal receiving pleasure from its owner or a person receiving pleasure from a beloved.

The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about the concept of envy, and especially the concept of shame, in regard to emotions that a person feels when he attains the attribute of love and bestowal unto others. This means that he attains the attribute of the Creator (nature), meaning the human level, Adam.

Unless we reach this level, we are considered animals, just like your cat and dog. The nature of our feelings is the same and it stems from our egoistic fears of remaining without a source of pleasure (food, sex, etc.).
[156926]

Related Material:
Shame That Opens Up The Heart
Envy Is Not A Flaw
Grateful For Feeling Shame

Filed under: Egoism, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator - No Comments →

I read in the article “Russian Germany,” that in 2015, only a few dozen laws were dealt with in the European parliament, which is made up of 751 representatives.

Maintaining this creative legislative army costs the taxpayer 1.7 billion Euros every year. According to this year’s prospects, the representatives will readily accept this decrease in their activities and will go on about their own business without any sense of there being a problem.

My Comment: I believe that this is how the composition (of the EU ) is gradually making itself obsolete and irrelevant. However, this may be quite beneficial, since many people have learned from this project, which was a failure from the start. The only reason for its failure was that it was not based on any form of integration but on simple, egoistic calculations. Because all of this is taking place in an era of true integration of nature any form of artificial integration is doomed to fall apart. On the whole, this project will eventually have  to be shut down completely.
[156880]

Related Material:
Europe Is Shaken
Nobody Wants To Pay For The Market (The EU Market)
Real, Very Serious Problems Will Begin In The EU In 1.5 To 2 Years

Filed under: Egoism, Globalization, Politics, Society, World - No Comments →