Opinion (José Barroso, President of the European Commission): “‘This crisis was not created by the European Union. This crisis was created by unsustainable public debt created by national governments and by irresponsible financial behaviour tolerated by national supervisors,’ he says. ‘The European Union is a victim of the crisis, not the cause of the crisis. We are not the problem. We are part of the solution.’ …

“‘Sometimes in the debate this is presented as a crisis of the euro, which it is not. The reality is that countries that are not in the euro are some of the most affected,’ he says. ‘For instance, the country that has done more to mobilise taxpayers’ money in supporting the banks was Britain, not a euro area country. Or let’s not forget the case of Iceland.’

“Austerity, he argues, has also been erroneously characterised as a European policy.

“‘Some people try to link the policy of rigour in public finances to the euro. This is a myth. Britain is having the most restricted budget since the second World War and Britain is not a member of the euro. It’s true that financial stability in the euro area, because of the differences among the 17 countries, raises specific challenges and that is what we have been trying to address.’”

My Comment: Not entering into a discussion with Barroso, we can say that there are objective laws of nature. To the extent of similarity with them, we win, and to the extent of our difference with them, we lose. And the more we develop, the more we feel either reward or punishment for the extent of our likeness to Nature. Excuses will not help us. It is possible to hide from criticism temporarily, but as Russia is paying for its “socialist” past, Europe will be paying for its incorrectly created unification for a long time.
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Question: In the past humanity somehow regulated the evil it encountered, but today it seems that the evil has been set loose.

Answer: We have advanced and developed in a constant ascent; our ego grew over the years until it has become “round.” We have always known what to do with it, and how to balance it. Time after time it pushed us forward to new achievements. We have always managed with it: We built, invented, and added something. The deficiency pushed us forward and we reached a filling. If we couldn’t attain it directly we had revolutions.

The generations have changed; there was a time of slavery, and feudalism, the Middle Ages passed, and capitalism came along, and eventually we have reached the last phase, communism. In a “round” state” there can be nothing but mutual connections based on mutual guarantee.

We have to say here that it’s the Creator who evokes the deficiency each time, and by that, the created being receives the power and the mind to fulfill the deficiency. The changing of eras and special moments are typified by revolutions, since such transitions are only possible by troubles, by dramatic changes.

So today, in our current state, we have to act according to the new leadership. All the old approaches and methods will not work today since they were all good up to the moment that we began to become “round.” Now we will receive blows since we aren’t adjusting ourselves to what is happening around us.

These are not anyone’s insinuations, but the natural process of events: If you don’t adjust to the external conditions, you cannot blame anyone for the outcome. For example, what’s the point in blaming others if you went out on a cold winter day without warm clothes? In the same way, we are entering a new world now without having adjusted ourselves to it.

It has been scientifically proven that in the new era we need a greater degree of unity, connection, and cooperation. But we remain the way we were and so we are not adapted to the new reality, to the force of the leadership that has closed us in a “round” system. For over a hundred years scientists and experts have been writing about that, so who is to blame if we don’t listen?

The cost of our not adapting to the changed conditions will be global bankruptcy, systematic collapse, and perhaps even world war. How can it be otherwise if we stubbornly refuse to adjust ourselves to the unity and the connection that the new state requires? We are like the person who has killed his parents and is asking the court for mercy because he is an orphan.

So the time has come to adapt ourselves to the global world, which will continue to “round up” even more. It’s impossible to go on living as in the past, the only way today is unity and connection, according to the world that is becoming one before our eyes.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/21/12, “The Peace”

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Opinion (George Friedman, Chairman of Stratfor): “It is the political dimension that has become the most important, not the financial. It may well be that the European Union is in the process of dealing with its banking problems and might avoid other sovereign debt issues, but the price it has paid is both a recession and, much more serious, unemployment at a higher rate than in the United States overall, and enormously higher in some countries.

“We can divide the European Union into three categories by measuring it against the U.S. unemployment rate, which stands at about 7.7 percent. There are five EU countries significantly below that rate (Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, Netherlands and Malta). There are seven countries with unemployment around the U.S. rate (Romania, Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom and Sweden). The remaining 15 countries are above U.S. unemployment levels; 11 have unemployment rates between 10 and 17 percent, including France at 10.7 percent, Italy at 11.1 percent, Ireland at 14.7 percent and Portugal at 16.3 percent. Two others are staggeringly higher — Greece at 25.4 percent and Spain at 26.2 percent. These levels are close to the unemployment rate in the United States at the height of the Great Depression.

“For advanced industrialized countries — some of the most powerful in Europe, for that matter — these are stunning numbers. It is important to consider what these numbers mean socially. Bear in mind that the unemployment rate goes up for younger workers. In Italy, Portugal, Spain and Greece, more than a third of the workforce under 25 is reportedly unemployed. It will take a generation to bring the rate down to an acceptable level in Spain and Greece. Even for countries that remain at about 10 percent for an extended period of time, the length of time will be substantial, and Europe is still in a recession.

“Consider someone unemployed in his 20s, perhaps with a university degree. The numbers mean that there is an excellent chance that he will never have the opportunity to pursue his chosen career and quite possibly will never get a job at the social level he anticipated. In Spain and Greece, the young — and the old as well — are facing personal catastrophe. In the others, the percentage facing personal catastrophe is lower, but still very real. Also remember that unemployment does not affect just one person. It affects the immediate family, parents and possibly other relatives. The effect is not only financial but also psychological. It creates a pall, a sense of failure and dread.

“It also creates unrooted young people full of energy and anger. Unemployment is a root of anti-state movements on the left and the right. The extended and hopelessly unemployed have little to lose and think they have something to gain by destabilizing the state. It is hard to quantify what level of unemployment breeds that sort of unrest, but there is no doubt that Spain and Greece are in that zone and that others might be.

“It is interesting that while Greece has already developed a radical right movement of some size, Spain’s political system, while experiencing stress between the center and its autonomous regions, remains relatively stable. I would argue that that stability is based on a belief that there will be some solution to the unemployment situation. Its full enormity has not yet sunk in, nor the fact that this kind of unemployment problem is not fixed quickly. It is deeply structural. The U.S. unemployment rate during the Great Depression was mitigated to a limited degree by the New Deal but required the restructuring of World War II to really address.

“This is why 2013 is a critical year for Europe.”

My Comment: Although the year 2013 is not expected to be critical, but passing quietly, time weakens the EU and the world. There are more social, rather than economic, problems, but they cannot be solved except through the education of society because it is lost, has no guidance, leaders, or goals. People cannot be managed in these conditions, nothing new can be offered to them. That is why leaders disappear, and the boat is rocking in the middle of the ocean …
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Our advancement in the last 2,000 years of exile was of a different character. The nation of Israel gradually lost the spiritual level of Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE) that they had, became more and more mixed with the “nations of the world,” and descended to the corporeal level. In Kabbalah this process is called the “descent of generations.” We talk about descending along the steps of our world from the state in which there is still a certain illumination from spirituality, until the very bottom where it is dark.

These are the laws of nature: Everything depends on the relation between the upper Light and the Reshimot (spiritual genes) below. Today when the descent has ended and the ascension is before us, we then determine these relations when we change the coefficient in the set formula; in other words, when we insert the connecting link, the measure of the equivalence of form, between the Reshimot and the Light.

During exile, we could not do this; thus everything happened in its time. It is not by chance that the Kabbalists knew and wrote about the time when this period would need to end. The Reshimot descended lower and lower, deeper and deeper within the egoistic desire, and it became “coarser” to the extent of “burdening of the heart”.

However, today the descent is over, and we see that according to the surrounding world: All the areas of life are on the brink of bankruptcy. Family, education, culture, finance, business, and even religion‑everything today is penetrated with unrestrained and acute egoism.

Thus, we went through 2,000 years of very hard work. The world advanced and Israel descended from its spiritual degree, and here, when the world is collapsing under the blows of the crisis, they stand “face to face.” The correct connection, the correct combination between the “nations of the world” and Israel has been created. And now it is possible to begin the ascent. The present state is desirable and highly productive.
[97929]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/14/13, Writings of Rabash 

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In the News (from Financial Post): “The widening income gap between the rich and poor and burgeoning government deficits are the risks most likely to have a global impact over the next decade, according to experts surveyed by the World Economic Forum(WEF).

“Climate change, water shortages and aging populations rounded out the WEF’s top five risks.”

My Comment: When it is projected as a chronic state of the next decade, it is a threatening state not just global risks. Each of them will develop into a system failure. Any of them can result in a terrible conflict. We must look for a common cause of what is happening to humanity to find the solution, which Kabbalah talks about.
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In the News (from NewScientist): “Structures in the sun’s corona indicate that the peak in our star’s latest cycle of activity has been and gone, at least in its northern hemisphere. …The southern hemisphere, meanwhile, is on a sluggish rise to solar maximum and may not hit its peak until 2014.

“This bizarre asymmetry strengthens a theory that has been bubbling among sun watchers for the past few years: our star is headed for hibernation. …

“Such a large asymmetry between hemispheres could be a sign of big changes ahead, says Steven Tobias, a mathematician at the University of Leeds, UK, who models what drives the sun’s magnetic field. According to his models, such a situation precedes an extended quiet phase called a grand minimum. ‘Changes in symmetry are more indicative of going into a grand minimum than the strength of the cycle,’ he says.

“Grand minima can last for decades. The previous one took place between 1645 and 1715, and has been linked to the little ice age in Europe.”
My Comment: The program of the Creator must be carried out in the near future, and an ice age doesn’t threaten us; it will be “hot due to interesting events.”
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Opinion (Daniel Innerarity Grau, Spanish philosopher and lecturer in philosophy at the University of Zaragoza, Spain): “Power is the ability to define the situation, that is, to impose, by force and manipulation or argumentatively one’s vision. … In the EU, all the members participate in that.

“The euro crisis has caused break up of the weak union that was formed around certain shared goals and equally shared fears. But this union was fragile and yielded to the powerful voice of some states. …There is no solution to the institutional crisis of the EU until all the member states become convinced that they are not autonomous, but interdependent and hence are obliged to cooperate as a whole. ….

“An understanding and acceptance of these duties require a sense of co-belonging that no historical distinctiveness or administrative body seems able to provide. …

“The European Union is a real challenge to the idea that a national state is the only form of political community and identity. A uniform national identity is not a requirement either for democracy or for solidarity. … The European democratic experiment is precisely an attempt to share rights and responsibilities, costs and benefits, but without the guarantee of a national interaction of the old style.

“Consequently, Europe is established not only through institutional reforms, but also through shared practices. … Governments have to end up accepting, however reluctantly, the fact the European Commission will have more power.

My Comment: An egoistic approach by each country to the EU tears this union apart, and it is quickly heading towards its collapse. Salvation is only in intensive integration. But this is possible only under the condition of educating all the EU members in the spirit of unity. Its absence before the creation of the EU brought about all their problems. But this defect has not been corrected yet. It is necessary to implement integral education for the EU; otherwise, we will witness its collapse …
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Question: Scientists have long understood that it is possible to continue to advance only if we change our attitude toward reality, so why don’t they discover that changes must be made in the researcher himself, in man? What is stopping them from following this direction?

Answer: It is true that this realization was born in the time of Spinoza and Kant, but because they lacked practical tools, this approach remained theoretical. Scientists are reluctant to step into this field because it belongs to philosophy.

Psychology also deals with changes in man, but it isn’t a science since it doesn’t control the processes. We cannot change something in the body, for example, to disturb the balance of acidity, to add some more electricity, and by that change a person’s perception of reality, record the results, and repeat them several times in order to determine a certain law based on our statistics. We don’t have standard “buttons”; we don’t know exactly what every person discovers.

So what can we do? We cannot conduct similar experiments since this area is beyond human nature and remains unattainable. In order to study ourselves, we have to rise to a higher level. For this reason, science deals with concrete facts, and in the main direction it finds itself in a dead end.

There is nothing scientists can do about that, but at least they aren’t carried away by fantasies any more. It is true that they do talk about “boundary” areas, and deal with abstract ideas that sometimes turn into the popular science, and that is natural. After all, there are no new scientific challenges anymore, so why not “spice” it up with philosophy or with fantasy for the general public?

I don’t blame the scientists at all. They are looking for challenges and are filling empty niches, but it all stems from inner despair. In the conceptual aspect science is over. A person who wants to know reality better sees that his hands and feet are tied. A true scientist has an urge to discover things, but when he delves into the secrets of matter he sees a border that he cannot transcend, and this border is inside him. Beyond the inner border, his mind and feeling and even his imagination don’t work anymore. He discovers that he is in a “matrix,” a “pattern” that exceeds the limits of his abilities.

I understand this tragedy, the inner frustration that throws scientists in different directions, whether it is practical science, technology, or the opposite, philosophical theories and populism. There is nothing they can do…

A few days ago, for example, there was an article in the paper about stopping the particle accelerator project for the next year or two; this is after great efforts and resources have been invested in it and we are told that it is because the system is being upgraded, but in fact it is about a general trend of decline. Everything is stopping, even the space program humanity dreamt about. If space flights are not profitable today, then they are not funded. Romanticism is dead. It was affected before, but people still hoped for something bigger until the ego totally covered the whole desire. In the past there were all kinds of “bright ideas,” but now the fourth phase (Behina Dalet) is in control, destroying the remains of human conscience and good intentions.

Money determines everything. The rich also control politics and every other aspect of our life. Once it wasn’t only about money, but today it is the opposite, there is no other account. There is no pride, no respect, no offenses; they all belong to the past. Today you can only hurt people’s pockets, since this is what the wealthy take pride in…

Unfortunately, outside the wisdom of Kabbalah, people are still looking for a method to change the external form and not man himself. They would like to reach the essence, but they simply don’t have an inner point in order to see where the essence is and how to work with it. They try to connect, to love one another, to work for the good of society, but they are only declarations and not real internal changes. It is because a real change is possible only with the help of the Light that Reforms since otherwise everything is limited imaginary idealism. They think that it is enough to call everyone to connect generally, and then you are already corrected, that it is enough to speak about “love the others as thyself” and then you are already special… it is human nature and so there is no future in these connections.

As of today, there are two areas that are very close to Kabbalah—education and psychology. It may well be that people who study the global crisis seriously will somewhat agree with us, but then again, it is only to a certain extent, above which we still remain by ourselves…
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/1/13, “Body and Soul”

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Question: You said that the year 2013 will be a year of big changes. I would like to hear from you some kind of blessings, concerning this year.

Answer: I think that this year will pass relatively quietly in the world. The world will delay the end. The economic fall will continue, but in a slower manner; governments will print money, all kinds of “bubbles” will be inflated, and in this way the collapse will be prevented.

But we need to understand that this period is specifically good for us to reorganize, to continue the unity, to prepare intensively for training and good dissemination, so that we will learn to speak correctly to the public and will be able to reach them according to their level and be near them. We must show people that there is a completely different way of development and it is the only way that is correct, realistic, and unique so that they will understand that there is no other way, and then they will see that we are really offering them the only choice.

We don’t need to compete with others and to convince people that we are right, as the Soviet regime did in the past with its claim that “the victory of communism is unavoidable, because it is right.” We just need to work on ourselves, on the movement towards the people, and gradually we will win.

Thus our workshops need to be closer to the public, to people. It doesn’t mean that we are declining. If a person can explain lofty things simply, it is a sign that he understands them and that they live within him. He translates them from the language of the book to his inner language, and then brings it to others in a simple language. Thus, it is very important for us to position ourselves in this way in order to lower it to a simple explanation.
[97333]
From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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In the News (from Global Talent Strategy): “According to the Ernst and Young Eurozone Forecast (EEF), 2013 will be a tough operating environment for both business and political leaders. Businesses need to plan for a European “lost decade” as growth will remain muted and unemployment will continue to rise throughout 2013, peaking at close to 20 million. The peak in unemployment is expected to be both higher and slower to unwind in the peripheral economies with the unemployment rate expected to reach over 28% in Greece, 26% in Spain and almost 17% in Portugal.”

My Comment: Inevitably, they should be engaged in integral education; otherwise, unrest will spread and flare up throughout the EU; that is, the error of not implementing mandatory integral education that was allowed when the EU was created needs to be corrected. The same error continues to this day with the reception of immigrants; they are not required to study and accept the laws and rules that exist in the society to which they immigrate.
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