Question: Typically, a woman is consumed with housework and a man generally comes home in a negative and irritated mood. It seems that a woman has no strength to deal with this kind of a situation because she has no resources from which to draw the strength that is needed to deal with it. What is the solution?

Answer: The men finish their day incorrectly. They should gather together, sit in a circle, and set their intention for a proper return home. They need to rise above themselves by reminding themselves of why they are in such a state and that their stress is actually due to their advancement.

They need to feel like pioneers and elevate their state despite the fact that it is so intense. This is a special state, and they are special because they were chosen among all of humanity to actualize the method of becoming an integral human. I think that this will alleviate some of the inner tension, and they will be able to come home in a normal state.

The women should support one another and understand the men’s state. We should work with women separately and teach them how to neutralize this state.

I understand all of this because I’ve experienced it myself, only in my time, there was no integral method. I experienced very unpleasant states that were impossible to deal with. There wasn’t all this advice or special unity gatherings or psychological workshops and preparations. However, today, everything is all possible.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/31/12

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Question: Can you give an example of a joint, practical exercise that can be given to married couples in the integral education course?

Answer: First of all, we need to be concerned that their mutual influence on each other will be constant. Apart from that, during the time from meeting to meeting, they must maintain a connection between themselves, share impressions every few hours.

Couples work together in a partnership. Sometimes one of them is higher than the other and sometimes they are equals. They learn all of this in a new system of mutual relationships, doing homework every day. During the day they do follow ups:

How many times, in one way or another, did they have to remember the principle “love covers all transgressions,” how many times did they need to go above their ego in order to see their partner positively instead of negatively, and within themselves to see their egoism as negative instead of positive.

Each one exchanges the criticism of the partner with self-criticism, meaning, in clarifying his or her own attributes that are displayed in the other as bad. Couples note how many times they supported each other at home, and how many times that they were in contact with other couples, let’s say, once every three to four hours, by phone or internet or through conference calls.

And so they advance forwards every day meeting at the course and receiving new, methodological explanations. After a learning session should follow a workshop and homework for the next day.

In addition, one should allot separate time for clarification of the past day. It could be that something was not successful, so what can be done to succeed? And it can be that today, during the course, instead of going forward according to plan, it is worthwhile to go over the lesson and workshop on the same subjects and questions that accumulated from yesterday.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/11/12

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Question: Many family members of those friends that have included themselves in the integral system began complaining that those friends became lazier and stopped taking care of some necessities. What is the correct way to deal with this? After all, shouldn’t a person put in the effort and fulfill his family obligations just as everyone else?

Answer: Everyone must actualize his necessary participation in family matters, and it should be done as part of the effort in his spiritual advancement. You must attend to your family’s needs. This is working with the same egoism, not only with personal egoism but also with family egoism. This work contributes to your advancement.

Comment: To the neighbors, this person should appear absolutely normal, caring for his family, earning money, striving to solve corporeal problems, etc.

Answer: To a certain extent. However, he shouldn’t strive to earn more than what is needed for the basic necessities. Everything he earns in excess of that, he is ready to give up for the purpose of uniting the world in any efforts and events. This is how he operates.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 5/30/12 

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Question: How can we fulfill the recommendations of integral education in daily family life, in the mutual relations between a husband and a wife?

Answer: I don’t see any problem here. In the lectures for couples, we teach the chapter called “Free Will.” It provides information about nature and society from which we conclude that a person is a product of the environment. So if he wants to change, he only needs to choose the environment that will change him. It’s up to a person to decide, and the fulfillment is in the hands of the environment.

Suppose there are several rooms before me and in each room there is a special environment. One room will turn you into a criminal and in another room you will become an intellectual, in the third room you will be perfect, in the fourth room you will know how to make the right decisions, and in the fifth room you will become a perfect family man. You choose a room, go through it and come out from another door fully formed, an Oxford graduate or an armed robber, a gigolo, or a businessman, etc. It all depends on those “four walls.”

This is the reason that it’s so easy; all you need is to teach a person this principle and to prepare the right environment for him. Then he will undoubtedly succeed. So the problem we are facing is divided into two parts:

• To help a person decide, so that he will choose the right “room” which means the right environment.
• To prepare this environment for him.

Thus we provide him with everything that he needs.

Gradually people will join the new environment, expand it in quantity and reinforce it in quality. As it becomes more attractive, it will be easier for people to choose it and everyone will have a chance to be corrected. It isn’t difficult, all a person has to do is to become part of this society, and it will influence him.

Of course, the process of incorporation and improvement has to be accompanied by the right tools, but on the whole it’s very simple: A person doesn’t have to change himself, he only needs to establish the right connection with the right environment.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/11/12

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Question: If I see that my husband doesn’t appreciate me, do I have to put this feeling aside?

Answer: No, you shouldn’t extinguish the feeling, but try to rise above it. You establish such an attitude regarding your husband that is as if you are receiving absolute love from him.

Question: Should I share my feelings with him?

Answer: Yes, of course. Tell him, “According to my nature, egoistically, I feel that I am not getting enough love and care from you. You don’t care about me like you used to; you don’t bring me flowers; you don’t show that you care. We don’t live the way we used to when we were young, when we were happy together and used to spend more time together. Today, it is as if each one is sitting in his corner and my demands from you have grown to such an extent that it’s as if they are filling our whole mutual relations.

But I don’t want anything from you except for one thing: Instead of complaining to one another, let’s present the complaints to ourselves. Let’s see each other’s deficiencies as our own. Let’s do this psychological exercise.

This exercise will help each one see his partner as perfect and yourself as not so perfect. Then above all our flaws, we will try to treat each other like partners, this is the actual wholeness. Eventually, despite everything that’s going on, I will treat you only with love, like a mother treats her child according to the principle “Love covers all transgressions.”

I demand the same thing from my partner, since his attitude towards me will increase my attitude towards him. I also need a good and correct model from him so he has to treat our efforts in the work above the ego seriously. The better my partner’s example is, the higher and more important he will seem to me, and the more respect I will feel towards him. This will give me the power to repay him to the same extent.

On the one hand, I have to raise my partner in my eyes and to appreciate the model he portrays. After all, he overcomes his impulses, and at the exact same time I discover a “weakness” as my ego pulls me by the legs downwards and doesn’t allow me to rise above myself. On the other hand, I should always be responsible and be a model for my partner and thereby empower him. Thus we become models for each other. Each one tries to be both the other’s teacher and student at the same time; once he raises his head and once he lowers it. This mutual support is already the right equal mutual connection. Thereby our mutual interdependence is revealed.

We have to discover the benefit that we get time after time, the new system of our mutual relations that is based on mutual concessions and on each one overcoming himself. We rise to the level of mutual love by leaving the mutual complaints below, but we don’t destroy anything and don’t “sweep under the carpet” anything, but only build something new from the same blocks, the same inner urges that constantly increase the ego.

Therefore, we constantly feel mutually dependent. I have to constantly support my partner and be a model of overcoming, and I need the same thing from him. Thus we become true partners against our common ego, against our common enemy, which we call the “serpent.” By confronting it we begin to get closer to each other and this makes us one whole.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/11/12”

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Question: According to statistics, 85% of women share all their secrets with their female friends, and about an equal percentage of men share all their secrets with their wives. Let’s imagine for a moment that a man comes with his problems to his wife and constantly talks about his friends’ wrongdoings and the negativity in his surroundings. This leads many women to think very poorly of her husband’s environment.

Answer: This woman is not sufficiently trained; she is not a psychologist. In order for a family to exist in balance, the woman should be like the family psychologist.

A man comes to his wife the same way that he once came to his mother; we can understand that. In this regard she should feel like a mother in relation to him. He has a need, a necessity for this. Therefore it is written, “May one leave the parents and adhere to the wife.” This isn’t simply because the woman personifies a force that gives birth and develops. Man, as it were, is tossing the wood on the fire and everything else is going on through the female force.

People should understand this. If this doesn’t happen, then of course the wife will begin to disregard her husband. We need to reach a state where men and women will interact correctly with each other, and for now it isn’t the case.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/28/12

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Question: Who must take care that the wife has a positive image of the organization where her husband spends most of his time getting the integral education and upbringing if he returns and talks only about the negative things?

Answer: Why negative? You take an example from one system and you transform it into a completely different one. I absolutely do not see it.

If I come home after discussions at the roundtables where a lot of people have felt what an integral interconnection is and what a positive influence it has exerted on everyone, then I come home with positive emotions, with positive news. At the same time, famous, influential people have participated there, and we were all making decisions about the introduction of integral education and upbringing in other places. Why then, will I come to complain? There is nothing to complain about!

Of course, I understand those people, who are resisting! I understand that a person cannot adopt this methodology right away; preparatory work is also needed.

Question: Must a man worry about bringing home positive information about what he is working on?

Answer: He is obligated to! The wife, the husband, and the children.

I have an agreement with my wife. If yesterday we had some kind of misunderstanding, we do not carry it over to today. We begin from a clean page. There is nothing left back from yesterday. Of course, we do not suffer from memory loss, but we do not talk about it, we move forward because you will not be able to solve anything this way anyway. Start a new day with a good mood, with good news. Only the good ones! This takes a long time to get used to it.

I remember how for a long time I used to hear from my wife criticisms of the neighbor ladies, about the nursery schools where my son and daughter used to go to, and so on. I said that I didn’t want to hear anything negative, since we are not solving anything by this. What for? This only spoils our impression of each other. We meet, you tell me about the children (now about the grandchildren); very well, I am ready to hear only the good. If, God forbid, some problems come up, some diseases, then yes, but just negative impressions, they are nothing.

Question: What if someone had offended her, whom is she going to complain to?

Answer: Then it needs to be corrected! If it can be corrected, then yes. While if it is simply her impression about something she saw somewhere earlier, then there’s no need for it! The negative things a person sees are on the account of his own personal distortion.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/28/12

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Question: It’s common in a family that the woman will always insist on wanting things done her way; however, the man also wants to prove that he is right. The conflict begins with small things and ends up in divorce. How do we find a compromise between man and woman?

Answer: Before solving the conflicts between men and women, give them the upbringing! How can you solve anything with what there is today? We see that nothing is being solved.

Until you “drag” them through integral upbringing courses, having placed the hardest conditions before them and with them needing to overcome them, they will not receive the reward and various benefits. It’s impossible to solve anything with anyone, since everything is being solved in the old way.

If you want to alter social and family relationships, then you need to change people, their interrelationships. And how can relationships change if their players are not changed? They will be left in the same thing. Of course, you can supress them and then possibly externally the relationships will not be demonstrated in such an expressive way.

Begin to gradually educate people, to explain to them what the system consists of. Include them into the roundtables, in the discussions amongst each other. During the roundtables, gradually raise them above the solutions of the problems, raise them into the commonality, into the dream, play with them as if with children, open up the child in each one of them. They are suppressing all of this inside of them, they are behaving like bullies on purpose, in order not to reveal themselves; it’s a protective instinct.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/28/12

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In the News (from LiveScience): “Saying ‘thank you’ may be a simple way to boost marital happiness, new research suggests. This cycle of appreciation may also make for longer-lasting relationships.

“‘Feeling appreciated by your partner influences how you act in your relationship, and how much you want to stay in that relationship,’ study researcher Amie Gordon, of the University of California, Berkeley, told LiveScience. ‘Instead of just waiting for the other person to make you feel good, you can jumpstart that cycle and take it into your own hands by focusing on what’s good in your relationship.’

“‘What goes wrong in a lot of relationships is if you start to take your partner for granted,’ Gordon told LiveScience. ‘You get used to having them in your life and forget why you chose to be with them.’

“They [the researchers] found that, the more often a participant acted understanding, validating and caring toward their partner, the more appreciated their partner felt, and the happier both were in the relationship. These behavioral displays — leaning in to your partner when they are speaking, making eye contact, giving comforting touches — are important ways that people show gratitude.”

My Comment: There is nothing new in these suggestions. The question is how to overcome pride, enter into the feelings of the other, and to think not about one’s own fulfillment, but about good fulfillment of the other? How can we transform egoistic love into altruistic? This should be taught in a short Kabbalah course because it is the method of correction of our nature from reception to bestowal!
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In the News (from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis): “In early human evolution, when faithful females began to choose good providers as mates, pair-bonding replaced promiscuity, laying the foundation for the emergence of the institution of the modern family, a new study finds. …

“The study demonstrates mathematically that the most commonly proposed theories for the transition to human pair-bonding are not biologically feasible. However, the study advances a new model showing that the transition to pair-bonding can occur when female choice and faithfulness, among other factors, are included. The result is an increased emphasis on provisioning females over male competition for mating. …

“’Once females begin to show preference for being provisioned, the low-ranked males’ investment in female provisioning over male-to-male competition pays-off,’ Gavrilets explained. Gavrilets says that the study’s results describe a ‘sexual revolution’ initiated by low-ranking males who began providing in order to get matings. ‘Once the process was underway, it led to a kind of self-domestication, resulting in a group-living species of provisioning males and faithful females,’ he said.

“The study reveals that female choice played a crucial role in human evolution and that future studies should include between-individual variation to help explain social dilemmas and behaviors, according to Gavrilets.”

My Comment: The true guardian of family values is the man who doesn’t forget to buy food on the way home, but not the one who reigns over the entire family. And within the family, evolution leads us to unity, but not to dominion.
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