Our desire is created by the inverted seal of the Light and that is why if it feels only itself, it is a horrible sensation, a feeling of unfilled void, an abyss. I simply can’t feel only myself for I cannot live without being filled! It is called Nukva, from “Nekev” (a hole), a hollow will to receive, which needs to be filled.

The Creator is perfection and does not require anyone. It is complete rest and idleness. He is absolutely immutable; He doesn’t need to move and act. But the poor created being (will to receive pleasure, desire, need for the Light) feels totally miserable and can’t find rest until it receives the sensation of perfection. It exists in constant fear and awe, and in search for the lacking fulfillment.

After all, the Light (perfection, the Creator) has stamped itself in the matter (desire) in an inverted form, like a seal and its mold, thereby having produced in the will to receive the need for the Light. Our form is opposite to the Creator, so the nature of the created being is so miserable; if only it didn’t have to feel itself and all its desires, aspirations, and thoughts, which are all about fulfillment.

We are always running after the Creator, the Light. But when a desire is revealed in us at its tiniest, lowest level, we, instead of the Light, envision material fulfillment through wealth, power, fame, sex, food, and family. And if a greater desire awakens in us, from a higher level, we aspire to knowledge and evolution. And when a still greater desire gets revealed within, I start feeling that I lack spirituality.

We always act in the will to receive, from desires of our world to the equivalence to the Creator.
[27098]
From 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/10, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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In the News (from RT): “By 2030, more than half of Americans could be obese, taxing the nation’s health while costing the country $500 billion in lost economic productivity. The food industry, however, is doing its best to keep the public hooked – no matter what the price.

“With one out of three adults clinically obese and 40 percent of children officially overweight, the US is the fattest country in the developed world. The burgeoning public health crisis will see instances of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer skyrocket over the next two decades, taking an already strained healthcare system to breaking point.

“But with food manufacturers keen on keeping customers loyal while maximizing their profits, public health concerns are likely to be dwarfed by the bottom line.

“’What these food scientists have done is that they’ve gone to a lab and they’ve created these chemical concoctions that are very sweet, very fatty and very salty. And they call that the bliss point. Meaning they’ve created addictive foods that are going to get consumers hooked and they’re going to keep wanting to come back for more and more foods,’ Elizabeth Kucinich, of Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine, told RT. …

“Kendrik said the reason why food in the US is both addictive and laden with fat, sugar and salt is simple.

“’In one word, I would say: greed. We obviously are putting money above public health,’ he said. ‘Just like with cigarettes, we want to keep people addicted. I equate it to what the cigarette industry did. They deliberately wanted to put things in that were addictive because that drives sales and will continue to drive generations of sales.’”

My Comment: All this is based on the usual egoism that turns everything into “help against you,” and any mechanisms, systems, and companies, created by man, turn against him, profiting from him, not by curing diseases, not by providing him with useful things, not by teaching him what is necessary, but on the contrary, by confusing him and profiting at his expense. But there is the end of egoistic development: It, like cancer, kills the body and itself dies with it.
[119216]

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot”: …I once interpreted the saying of our sages, “He whose Torah is his trade.” The measure of his faith is apparent in his practice of Torah because the letters of the word, Umanuto (his trade), are the same (in Hebrew) as the letters of the word, Emunato (his faith).

It is like a person who trusts his friend and lends him money. He may trust him with a pound, and if he asks for two pounds he will refuse to lend him. He might also trust him with one hundred pounds, but not more. Also, he might trust him enough to lend him half his properties, but not all his properties. Finally, he may trust him with all his properties without a hint of fear. This last faith is considered “whole faith,” and the previous forms are considered “incomplete faith.” Rather it is partial faith, whether more or less.

In the above passage, money is used only as an example. In fact, it talks about our readiness to refuse everything we have for the sake of our friends. This is what Baal HaSulam calls whole faith.

Question: What does it mean to refuse everything I have?

Answer: It’s a matter of sensation. For the sake of your friend you are ready to give up the most precious thing, an opportunity to exit to spirituality. If you’re not ready for that, you’re not working for the Creator’s sake. In such a case, you don’t have faith, and subsequently, you are detached from spirituality.

Question: Why is it called faith?

Answer: In this context, faith means bestowal, the power of self-annulling, self-renunciation. However, you should not even try to follow this condition by yourself. The power of bestowal will descend to you with the help of the Reforming Light under the condition that you ask for It. For that, you should apply efforts and be a part of the group. Then, due to jealousy, passions, and ambitions, you’ll see that your friends have already attained the higher states and that you want to be like them. If not, then affliction will push you in this direction anyway and you will still sense the desire to transition from receiving to bestowing.

All over the world, we observe waves of crisis that “summarize” a current developmental spin. What exactly did it bring to us? On one hand, the lives of innumerable amount of people became much better. No longer are they as poor as those who used to have nothing at all but their lives.

For quite a long time people believed in capitalism. In other words, they trusted that their egoistic motivation would let them achieve success. Really, why shouldn’t they improve their living? Of course, on their way to success, they needed to stay within rigid frames of law, inside concrete legal boundaries, rather than making an atmosphere of overall permissiveness and bloodshed. Each one has the freedom to do whatever they want! Do you want to indulge in industrial production, trade, banking, technologies, etc.? Go for it and achieve. As a result of this attitude, people started to chase success and applied tremendous exertions on this path.

On the other hand, they obtained financial freedom, became more educated, accumulated personal properties, started to travel all over the world, and got used to overall abundance. At this point, they became very vulnerable to the blows of destiny as opposed to when they used to be poor.

It explains why “seven years of famine” only happen after “seven years of abundance.” At some point in time, the Jews had a great life under the governance of a generous Egyptian king who provided them with the best possible conditions in life. The Pharaoh used to be a “president,” whereas Yosef (Joseph) used to be his “prime minister” who enjoyed unlimited powers. Not a bad word could be said about either of them. This is how the Creator “exalted” the entire people so that it “gained weight” and became “obese.” Then, the Creator started to take the “fat of abundance” away from the Jewish people, so that they could experience new tendencies on their own “skin.”

Lowering of income and a loss of capital are two dissimilar things. It feels different when we fail to earn an additional one thousand dollars, than if we lose only one hundred dollars that was already in our pocket. This unfortunate one hundred makes us even sorrier than if we failed to earn an extra thousand, since it was already ours. For a whole month we relive the loss of that one hundred dollars, whereas the loss of the potential one thousand does not leave such a bitter taste in us at all.

That’s why nowadays humanity is elevated to a very high material level. At this time, the “fatty deposit” is being taken away from us, layer by layer, until the “meat” is revealed, meaning until the entire bodily tissue is “stripped off” the bone. This is called “seven years of famine,” which will end in “ten Egyptian plagues” during which “Egyptians” will continue “hating and despising the Jews.” In other words, our opposition with our own egoism becomes intolerable to us, and we don’t know what to do with it any longer. At the same time, we know that it is our ego that doesn’t allow us to breathe.

Today, we have everything: banking structures, developed industry, healthcare systems, and good education…anything we want! However, these mechanisms act against us. Doctors and pharmacists are interested in keeping people unhealthy so they can feed us with questionable, or most of the time, useless medications. Industry and trade have turned into  deceit and “money sucking instruments.” To make a long story short, all man-made systems that we used to rely on turned out to be rotten.

It happened only some 60-70 years ago. We thought we were approaching the “bright future” in which everybody would have a house, a job, would enjoy good health, go on vacations, and have a decent pension plan. Instead, when we reached a certain level, our egoistic desires started to descend and buried our hopes. The middle class is gradually disappearing, and everything is returning to previous circles: elites on the top and billions of starving people at the bottom. This is what seven years of famine look like.

How can it possibly be so? Where is the logic? Elites should be afraid that this scenario will cause huge turmoil and riots. The poor will ask questions and it will be impossible to stop them. Moreover, the upper class won’t be able to stop draining their people of everything they have; they won’t leave anything to them, and it will lead them to complete poverty. Egoism will not allow the upper class to change their behavior because this is the program that is rooted in them.

On one’s way to wealth, as well as during one’s downfalls into poverty, one measures and evaluates one’s losses.  People who were at the top and then fell will think hard about what really happened to them. While they think about their lives, they will suddenly see: “Our egoism has devoured us. Our own nature is our hater. It doesn’t allow us to live well. If we don’t correct our nature, we’ll be totally lost.”

Even the elite and the “Croesus” who will survive and win capital battles will feel this way. Let’s say, only a hundred winners will get out of the inferno of the fights for survival. They will “bend” others. There won’t be any transitional connecting links that feed intermediary layers of society. Future governing mechanisms will transition to a virtual space. In the end, every person will ask a major question: “What do I do now?” They will see that their egoism destroys boundaries, goes crazy, and does what it wants. Our nature will never allow us to obtain balance.

It’s so obvious! Isn’t that enough to distribute some part of our proceeds to the poor and support their livelihood? However, even the biggest charitable assistance disappears without any trace, as in Africa.  It doesn’t matter how much we dispense to those in need; there is nothing ever left and it’s never enough. Their needs only continue to grow.

This is the point at which people will start screaming about the evil that will be revealed in them, when they understand that they cannot cope with their egoism. It’s as if a snake crawled inside each of us and now eats us from within, as a cancerous tumor that cannot be treated.

This is a scenario of how the external world will develop. We have no right to sit and wait for it to happen. We have to finally notify people about the methodology of correction, and it has to be done immediately.

We are making every effort to do it. We accelerate time and develop together with the Creator, with the group, with the example of what we have to eventually achieve. We know beforehand what our development will bring us: unity, the aspiration to help each other learn how to love our neighbors as ourselves, equal distribution that is based on integral education. We set up this ideal and constantly aspire to it.

Thus, besides the problems that push us from behind, we have one more power that pulls us forward. Even though the blows in the future will be quite strong, we have an additional hauling power that attracts us forward. We do have knowledge, aspire to our mission, and pursue our goal. We study the picture that is in front of us and it starts literally flourishing and accelerating time.

One way or another, everybody will eventually realize that egoism is evil and  it will kill us. It will become so obvious that all we’ll have to do is dig our own graves for ourselves. After all, we cannot go against nature unless we use the methodology of correction that is created particularly for this reason.
[104051]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/2/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: From where can the external public, for whom we disseminate, get some spiritual desire if today people have quite different concerns? How can we translate their requests into a prayer upward?

Answer: If people are not dissatisfied with life, we are not allowed to come near them. That is why we have been waiting for all these 3,500 years since the exodus from Babylon. And only now when the crisis is unfolding in the world, the need for change arises in people.

Their demands are not connected with spirituality. Even when Abraham gathered the inhabitants of Babylon around him, he did not tell them that they would now work for a special, new God. He simply said, “My friends, we have entered a crisis. We no longer understand each other, our society is destroyed and torn apart by mutual hatred. No one knows which way to go. Everyone has his own god: It is money for one, fame for another, power for the third, politics, and science for the fourth one. All of life is completely destroyed: There is no family, no children, no education, no security, no hope for tomorrow. So, let’s improve our lives!”

Abraham tells people that he possesses the secret of a good life, not some lofty matters, but a simple life! He says, “You feel that your ego has led you to the recognition of evil. Do you already see that your ego is evil that it does not allow you to establish a good life, but condemns you to death? ”

Some people agreed with him and he took them with him. But the rest said they would sort it out without him; they let him go and kicked him out of Babylon. He would have stayed there. But when he gathered his group and went deeper into this work, he realized that first of all he needed to prepare Galgalta ve Eynaim and then armed with the corrected GE, he needed to go to the AHP and correct it. Thus, he left Babylon and went to the land indicated by the Creator.

You can talk to a person only in his language, accepting his claims. We turn only to those parts of the population who feel they are in poor condition. We do not address the middle class, who are well for the time being, but only those who need help. There are people who do not see that a problem exists, and even if they see it, they think that it does not affect them personally. We do not need to appeal to them either.

We address only those who are in crisis. Indeed, the crisis is such that they do not feel that they are able to correct life, having lost all hope. They have nowhere to go for help, and they feel despair and helplessness with no hope for the future.

For the time being, the middle class does not feel these problems, but judging by the speed of the crisis, in six months the middle class will become in the lowest condition. The middle class will disappear all together: There will be just the elite and poverty. Then you can talk to those who have fallen down.

In six months, maximum a year, the middle class will fall into such a state that they will be completely ready for our explanations. Everything depends only on the number of blows that a person gets. If he loses hope for the future, then we can already talk to him. And it will happen very quickly.

Now, they still cannot hear us, only those who have the point in the heart. But these people are few and usually they are surrounded by a society that suppresses these sparks in the heart. A person’s spiritual spark is enslaved by his egoism, is under many burdens: the family, children, the opinion of the environment, liabilities, and debt.

A person is deliberately tied to debt so he cannot escape. Today’s economy is based on debt rather than profit. Everyone owes a quarter to half a million dollars, including newborns. It binds the person to a system and leaves him no free choice. It is very difficult to break free from these chains.
[117883]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/13, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Opinion (from psyfactor): “A person who tells lies creates around himself a space, different from the real one, less traumatic, more comfortable and happier.

“1. It’s hard to take the image of oneself as it is: this could be caused by low self-esteem, stressful situations in the past; he has been often criticized, not accepted, his feelings were ignored.

“2. It is difficult to accept the events as they happened: the poor, drinking, uneducated parents, one’s low social status, low salary, failed personal life.

“Protective mechanisms outperform, protecting him from stress, so he does not think about his problems, but lives in a dream world.

“As a rule, all these people experienced some hardship, humiliation, rejection, both moral and material, in childhood or adolescence. It could come from parents, classmates, teachers or first employers. Thus, now they are constantly forced to defend themselves in a way so to avoid going through these emotions again.”

My Comment: Therefore, in our time, so many people go into virtual environments, drugs, games and more. But the increasing egoism grows above these distractions from reality because the program of development should lead us to the revelation of our Source: the Upper Light.
[117541]

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Question: I want to compliment the people of Scandinavia. They stand out in their ability to listen to one another in the group. If someone begins to speak, everyone listens to him, perceiving what he says and picking up each comment one by one. Then they move on to the next speaker. They have a remarkable ability to understand one another!

Answer: Every nation has its own positive and negative attributes. In fact they are not positive or negative. If we connect into one system, we are like a puzzle and we suddenly feel that each one finds his place without having to change. There is no need to pressure yourself! There is absolutely no need to cut off certain “tails” or sharp ends off yourselves.

We have to make efforts that are aimed only at connection and uniting among us. Then we will see that all the evil in me and all the evil or the good in others suddenly comes together complementing one another and making a wonderful picture. The correction is not in the fact that we have to correct each of us or to correct nations or civilizations but only in our connection between us, just the way we are.

In fact, the ego is not what exists in each of us but is what doesn’t allow us to connect.

Suppose we are not egoists but when we try to connect between us we begin to feel opposite forces that make us feel repulsed by one another. These forces which operate in contrast to our connection are called ego.

But if we don’t try to connect and don’t include these attracting forces in us, we don’t have a spiritual ego and what is revealed among us is the ordinary corporeal ego. All my corporeal desires for food, sex, a family, money, respect, and knowledge are all parts of my corporeal ego with little correlation to other people in particular.

The real ego that requires correction is the anti-social ego. Only when we yearn for one another are the forces that are against the connection revealed.

An ordinary person has no ego, he wants to be richer than others or stronger than others, so what? There is no need to correct such desires; they help us advance; they have to remain constant. We only have to correct the spiritual ego in order to establish our connection above it.
[116521]
From the Stockholm Convention “Joy In Unity” 8/31/13, Lesson 3

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In the News (from the Economist’s Club): “(…) America’s ever-increasing rates of severe mental disease (which have already been very high for a long time). The claim that the spread of severe mental illness has reached “epidemic” proportions has been heard so often that, like any commonplace, it has lost its ability to shock. But the repercussions for international politics of the disabling conditions diagnosed as manic-depressive illnesses (including major unipolar depression) and schizophrenia could not be more serious.

“It has proved to be impossible to distinguish, either biologically or symptomatically, between different varieties of these conditions, which thus constitute a continuum – most likely of complexity, rather than severity. Indeed, the most common of these illnesses, unipolar depression, is the least complex in terms of its symptoms, but also the most lethal: 20% of depressed patients are estimated to commit suicide. …

“A massive statistical study, conducted from 2001 to 2003 by the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), estimated the lifetime prevalence of major depression among American adults (ages 18-54) at more than 16%. Lifetime prevalence for schizophrenia was estimated at 1.7%. There is no known cure for these chronic diseases; after onset (often before the age of 18), they are likely to last until the end of the patient’s life. …

“All of this suggests that as many as 20% of American adults may be severely mentally ill. In view of disputes over the significance of available data, let’s assume that only 10% of American adults are severely mentally ill. …

“Comparative epidemiologists have repeatedly noticed something remarkable about these illnesses: only Western countries (or, more precisely, societies with monotheistic traditions) – particularly prosperous Western countries – are subject to prevalence rates of this magnitude. Southeast Asian countries appear to be especially immune to the bane of severe mental illness; in other regions, poverty, or lack of development, seems to offer a protective barrier.”

My Comment: This is not just the Western way of life, but the indication of the ultimate form of egoism, which forces us to correct it as “help against it.” The very same egoism exposes itself to show us exactly that the problem is in it. And it also reveals the method of its correction: “Methodology of Integral Education and Upbringing” or the “Methodology of Integral Development.”
[115380]

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In the News (from ScienceDaily): A new study co-authored by an MIT professor suggests that many people are, in fact, heavily influenced by the positive opinions other people express online – but are much less swayed by negative opinions posted in the same venues. Certain topics, including politics, see much more of this “herding” effect than others. …

“This herding behavior happens systematically on positive signals of quality and ratings,’ says Sinan Aral, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and one of three authors of the study. …

“’People are more skeptical of negative social influence,’ Aral says. ‘They’re more likely to ‘correct’ a negative vote and give it a positive vote.’

“While this phenomenon of social positivity sounds pleasant enough on the surface, Aral warns that there are pitfalls to it, such as the manipulation of online ratings by some political operatives, marketers or anyone who stands to profit by creating an exaggerated appearance of popularity. …

“In turn, Aral suggests, we should be as analytical as possible when it comes to harnessing collective judgments.

“’We have to be careful about the design and analysis of systems that try to aggregate the wisdom of crowds,’ Aral says.”

My Comment: So, even though the wisdom of crowds is closer to the truth, but in an egoistic space, no one can be sure that this option is not used by selfish individualists, and we should not trust this indicator on the Internet until we correct egoism and get rid of cheaters.
[115307]

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It is impossible to invent something that doesn’t exist in nature. Perhaps there is no analogue in the material we build it from or on the same level, but it must exist. We take all the examples and the analogies from what already exists in nature; we cannot invent anything that is totally new.

It is fundamentally impossible. There is only one new point in all of creation—something from nothing (Yesh Mi Ayin). Everything else, except this “initial act of creation” (Genesis Maase) is a consequence of the meeting of the vessel and the properties of the Light in different connections. So we can take an example only from the existing attributes and create parallel forms.

Everything that we build in our world, which means in our egoistic feelings, is called “this world,” and there are examples for that in nature. If we want to continue our development by studying nature’s wisdom, we have to develop a new perception that is focused on bestowal. Then we can also fulfill the examples of in order to bestow by ourselves.

We cannot receive examples of the upper attributes from this material world, and so all the scientific progress ends on the border between our world and the upper worlds. Even before science has exhausted itself, our material desire to receive reaches a dead end and comes to an end. Our development ends at a certain point since we cannot find new examples we want to implement in this world.

Most importantly, we have lost the desire to look for them in order to invent new things and thus advance on the material level. We are in a point of transition, on the verge of the revelation of new spiritual desires.
[115226]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/21/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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If we create a shared connection between us above our egoistic desires and nullify ourselves within it in order to bestow to the Creator and to give Him satisfaction, and we use all this for work with the public in that we want to bring them closer to us and through us to bring them closer to the Creator so the Creator will bestow to them through us, then we will discover all the higher “worlds,” the entire system. It doesn’t exist outside of humans, rather only among us.

And also the still, vegetative, and animate nature, we discover are within us. Suddenly we discover within us the giraffes, lions, all the wild animals, every plant, and all humans. All of this is just a copy of our properties.

We once had other properties, apparently there were dinosaurs living in the world then. And now the properties have changed and the dinosaurs have disappeared. In our times the properties in us are transforming very rapidly and we see that many species of plants and animals are becoming extinct. They say that in the world 150 species disappear daily, at such a rapid rate, our desire to receive changes, develops, and advances.

It seems to us that nothing has changed on the level of the vegetative and the animate, but essentially every day very great changes are taking place in nature because it is entirely included within a person. Nature itself is only a copy of our inner qualities.
[115224]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/21/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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