In the News (from Bloomberg Businessweek): “German Chancellor Angela Merkel said European Union leaders will discuss plans to bolster economic growth in the 27-nation bloc at their June summit.

“The EU may consider strengthening the European Investment Bank as part of their plans, Merkel was cited as saying in an interview with the Leipziger Volkszeitung newspaper published today. Countries can already use EU structural funds more flexibly to help small and mid-sized businesses, she said.

“Merkel rejected providing new government stimulus to foster growth, saying that policies must focus on creating jobs and improving competitiveness, according to the newspaper.”

“The amount of the guarantee will increase but significantly in the coming years. EFSF aid aims to stabilize countries and allow them to gradually return to the markets. In return, the States must meet strict conditions to the budgetary stability and competitiveness.” Source: Best Finance Blog

My Comment: No-one will be able to suggest any new financial policy and moreover the program for exiting the crisis because the cause of the crisis is not in the plane of economy or finance, but rather in human relations. The crisis of human relations (the revelation of the breaking of the souls) can be cured only by the upper Light (Ohr Makif). The program for exiting the crisis is called Kabbalah (according by the sources of Baal HaSulam, not the one selling holy water and red strings). In general, the time of the total revision has come.
[77968]

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In the News (from Oxfam’s Report): “According to a new report from Oxfam, a broken food system and environmental crisis are now reversing decades of progress in the fight against global hunger. Oxfam projects that spiraling food prices will create millions of hungry people unless we radically transform the way we grow and share food. …

“Oxfam identifies the various symptoms of our broken food system: growing hunger, flat lining crop yields, lack of fertile soil and water, and rising food crisis. The organization says that we have entered a new age of crisis where depletion of the earth’s natural resources and increasingly severe climate change impacts will create millions more hungry people. Naturally, poor countries will be affected dramatically more than industrialized nations. Oxfam projects that the price of staple food such as maize, already at an all time high, will more than double in the next 20 years. Half of this price increase will be directly linked to climate change. The world’s poorest people, who spend 80 percent of their income on food, will be hit in the harshest way.

“By 2050, Oxfam predicts that demand for food will rise by 70 percent. Yet our capacity to increase food production is in decline. The average growth rate in agricultural yield has declined by almost 50 percent since 1990, and it is set to decline even further in the coming decade. …Four global companies control the movement of the world’s food. Three corporations- Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill- control around 90 percent of the global grain trade. Their speculative activities drive volatile food prices and they profit from it. For example, in the first quarter of 2008, at the top of a global food crisis, Cargill’s profits were up by 86 percent. In 2011, Cargill is heading for its most profitable year on record. Needless to say, this speculation on food prices will further disrupt global food supplies.

“’For too long governments have put the interests of big businesses and powerful elites above the interest of the seven billion of us who produce and consume the food.’”

My Comment: Governments are powerless against corporations or they serve them. We have created a trap for ourselves—our egoism; although it’s destroying itself, it doesn’t want, like the Pharaoh, to release us from bondage, even if this leads to the destruction of Egypt—our egoistic world.
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Opinion (Avinash Dixit, Professor of Economics at Princeton University): “The hurricane analogy seems especially apt as I write this; the winds buffeting the world economy, assisted and in some respects even caused by policy follies, have already produced a Great Recession, with fears of more to come…

“At least one prediction can be made with high confidence; think of it as the central path in the cone. On it, in the course of the next century there will be several financial and economic crises…

“What about the extremes of the cone of uncertainty? United States and Europe are on the right edge. Dysfunctional politics and continued adverse demographic trends will trap these former economic giants into relative mediocrity in the world… From time to time they may enjoy a little growth, but much of the time their economies will stagnate while new dynamic economies of Asia, and parts of South America and Africa, grow faster. Europe and America will remain burdened by debt, both private and public, and suffer periodic bouts of inflation and currency crises…

“On the left edge of the cone of uncertainty we find China and India, whose inevitable and irresistible rise to world domination is being forecast so confidently today, in the early years of the 21st century. Regional and ethnic inequalities in each of these countries will explode into repeated civil conflicts. The police and armed forces needed to cope with this situation will take up large fractions of their governments’ resources, leaving little for productive social expenditures or public investments.”

My Comment: These are some tips and no solutions…
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In the News (from BBC News): “Although a protest vote against the stringent austerity measures enforced on Greeks had been widely expected, in the event the two main parties that had agreed the bailout terms, New Democracy (ND) and socialist Pasok, attracted less than a third of the vote.”

My Comment: If the leaders are doing everything just for themselves, now and in everything, what social maturity can be expected from the citizens who are losing everything!? If the government had showed an example of patriotic instead of egoistic attitude towards the fate of the country, it would have been able to lead the masses. And if it’s not able, then it’s also to blame for not educating the population.
[77972]

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Opinion (Joseph Stiglitz, an American economist and a professor at Columbia University): “The basic idea is: A few powerhouses like China, Germany, and Japan, plus some commodity-based economies, have thrived in a system where they do all the exporting, and a few countries like the US run massive trade deficits.

“But that system is coming to an end, as countries realize that their trade deficits are unsustainable, and seek to become trade surplus countries at the same time. Of course, not everyone can run surpluses, so this becomes a game of hot potato, with everyone pushing the deficit to someone else, via currency devaluation and other aggressive trade moves.

“An alternative framework for the global financial system: a global reserve system, reform in WTO allowing developing countries to engage in industrial policies, global financial market regulations and capital account management, with a focus on limiting destabilizing short-term capital flows, globally coordinated monetary policy, with globalization, effects of monetary policy.”

My Comment: How reality changes the opinions of economists. They can see before them, at a distance, the only solution: total unity, partial or complete. However, they don’t know how to make the first step toward this future until they meet us.
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We have always been egoistically pushed forward by nature; we have always followed it blindly; in other words, we were instinctively pushed forward by our desire to keep fulfilling ourselves, and as it kept manifesting in us, we strove towards wealth, fame, power, knowledge—anything at all.

As a result, we have reached certain satiety, and our egoism has come to a dead end; we cannot even say that it keeps growing. On one hand, there is a certain line of reevaluation of our values: “Is it right to continue to strive towards the attainment of fame, knowledge, wealth, and power? Is this the meaning of our development?”

On the other hand, we see that our dependence on each other forces us to introduce some other international economic formulas, which must take our interdependence into consideration, in other words, if I will suffer, you will also suffer, no matter how egoistic it now appears to be. Even today, I still try to build my happiness on the suppression of others, base my power on being stronger than others, and by collecting more.

However, the same Europe is a bright example of how mutual dependence determines everyone’s destinies today, and it is impossible to just disconnect a country from the EU no matter how much one might want for it to happen. Maybe economists do not fully realize this yet. We cannot disconnect from the entire world.

This dependence exists inside actual nature, inside the inner connections between us. And economics, which only represent our external egoistic relations, can no longer keep describing them the same way it did before: what I give to you, what you give to me, a percentage for a percentage, etc. Industry, international trade, and international relations can no longer continue developing the same way.

We must take the integration of the world into consideration. And if we do not correspond to this integration, we will not be able to understand the way we are supposed to advance in accordance with the world and nature. Today we feel nature’s challenge, its pressure on us with the only purpose of making us gradually begin to change ourselves to become like it. This has never happened before.

If we were to look at it from an ontological perspective, we would see that nature has always pushed us towards egoistic development. And now, on the contrary, it is showing us that egoistic development has come to an end; in other words, we have completed our development of the still, vegetative, and animate levels, when we were instinctively pushed forward by nature; this is why this level of human development is called animate.

But now we must begin developing on the “human” level, when we understand and perceive the surrounding world to the point of changing ourselves to suit it. Neither the world nor nature are forcing us to change instinctively, evoking these desires in us, which forced us to build a society, economy, technology, etc.: This no longer exists today.

Obviously, the next stage of our development is when nature shows itself to us in a new, integral way, the way it really is: Everything is interconnected in it and it is just nature alone. But we, being its components, do not correspond to it, and must come to the same integral form in the structure of our society: in politics, economy, finances—in everything.
[77435]
From KabTV’s “Global Crisis – Deficit of Resources” 3/1/12

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Question: What part of the population needs to participate in integral upbringing in order to change the consciousness of the entire society?

Answer: I think that once 20-30% of the population becomes inspired by the anti-crisis idea—I would even call it the idea of our salvation from a critical state—this would automatically spread to the others and they will also become interested, understand, and comprehend the need to study the integral method. Moreover, as businesses and demand for certain services continue to fall as a consequence of the exhaustion of the population’s material abilities, people will understand that they really need to think about a certain transition.

If there serious explanatory work is being done among the population regarding the crisis, its causes, course, and consequences and the ways to solve it on the regional, city, state, and world scales—people will really listen. This is why, when people will be offered a method of further integral education as a means of exiting the crisis, people will take it rather seriously.

It is necessary to organize interesting discussions, to invite different people with directly opposing views, where they will try to figure things out during the debate.
[77713]
From KabTV’s “Experimental City – Solution to the Crisis” 3/2/12

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Throughout our very short life, the world undergoes great changes. People are totally confused, the earth seems to be turning faster than we can grasp. Could it be that we have lost the way and that we don’t know where we’re headed? Or on the contrary, are we examining the situation we are in as a turning point leading to a new path by which we can rise to a new level?

Of course there is a period of uncertainty in the transition from one level to another, from one state to another, when we are between the two levels, between the stable states, in total confusion. Humanity feels very confused these days.

These are very special times because we are living in a new world. This isn’t the life we have been used to leading for ages, we don’t advance directly as we did from one generation to another. Now there is suddenly a great change in the relations between people, in our attitude to the family, to life, to the place where we live, to our nation. Everything changes completely. Although we don’t perceive it at the moment and assume that we’re still living in the past, it’s over!

When we begin to look for the way we’ve lost, we discover a special new desire that demands that we find the source of life, to discover what we are living for, and why we change. Whether there’s a plan for our life, a goal, and whether it’s possible to discover it in advance. Is it possible to advance towards this goal in the ordinary way like we lived for ages on this planet, unsuspecting where our advancement is leading us? Instinctively we performed different changes and the entire revolutions, and lived that way!

None of us knew what was happening. Although there were many philosophers and fortunetellers, none of them could predict and explain what was occurring.

But today, we really need this. We can’t carry on and live as we used to. We are living in total chaos. We feel that we must discover the secret of life, its plan, and in which direction we are developing, because without it we are losing our foundations. In the past we always developed in the framework of the family, inherited everything from our parents and lived in order to build our family and to pass this on to our children. This is how life went on from one generation to another, in many families around me, and together we all advanced along one familiar paved road. But today we don’t know anything anymore.

Besides, many scientists are openly warning that our situation is very dangerous because we are destroying our planet and have no hope for the future since we’ve depleted all the natural resources and energy sources. The technocratic world that we’ve built in the last 50 years is the result of senseless destructive actions. We are simply killing ourselves by taking what we can from nature and burning everything in it as if there is no tomorrow. Although we’re still living, it’s a hopeless life with no prospects for a better future. And what’s more, we are so blind that it doesn’t even worry us.

In our generation, we discover a very special state and a very special question about the meaning of life that is evoked in us and actually burns within us. There are people who can’t relax and who begin to search by trying different new-age methods from which different studies of mysticism stem. But among these people there are those who ask more serious questions about the meaning of life and who want to reach a realistic, scientific solution. They don’t believe in anything, and don’t count on someone else’s words and stories, but want to discover the process they are about to go through by themselves.

On the one hand, they want to understand the past: to what end did we go through this path, not from the beginning of life on earth, but from the creation of the universe? And not just to discover what has brought us to the point we are at today, but to know how to go on from here: What is going to happen according to nature’s plan from now onward? Is there such a plan and is it possible to discover it, and is it worthwhile to discover it? It all depends on whether we can influence it. Will I be able to aim myself correctly? This is an important question that we will have to answer.
[77199]
From the Brazil Convention 5/04/12, Lesson 1

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Question: I have three kids, so I was very worried when you said that our generation is depleting all the natural resources, not leaving anything for our children to live on. How can we correct this situation?

Answer: Our general family includes seven billion people and we have to think about everyone by worrying about what we will leave for the next generation and not only for your three kids or our grandchildren. But in the meantime, I see that we are enjoying life, consuming the vital resources without giving it any thought or feeling, not worrying about those who will come after us. This is just an example of how blind our ego is, and that it doesn’t understand what it is doing.

If we look at the behavior of all the countries and all the governments, we can see that no one is thinking about the future. Our only desire is to pump more resources from the earth, produce more goods, and throw them away. The fact that at the same time we are polluting the air and the water doesn’t stop us. I have traveled around the world a lot and I see that even in countries that are not industrial, the environment is still terribly polluted. There are hardly any places that are still natural and clean, everything is poisoned.

This is a natural process as long as only the force of the ego manages us. If there is no other force to counter the ego, the force of bestowal that can balance it, it will kill us. We will not be able to stop it. Only a moment before the end, having no choice, we will cry, “Help!” and then we will be saved. But it is better not to reach this state; it is better to disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah as widely as possible before reaching this state.

We should understand that if we only fight the external pollution of nature as a society for the protection of nature, it won’t help. We are given all the ecological problems in order to push us in the direction of the correction of the soul. If we only deal with improving the environment, we won’t correct anything by so doing.

Now scientists are also beginning to see this, saying that if we begin to use alternative energy sources to preserve the environment, it will only lead to other unexpected outcomes. For example, the generators that operate on wind energy that are considered to be very ecology friendly, actually have a strong impact on global warming that it doesn’t justify the energy they produce. After all, they push the air to the ground with great force, thus causing greater harm than benefit.

There is the law of conservation of energy. We can’t produce energy from nothing. Even if we use solar energy, it has a tremendous negative impact on the earth. So we can’t cover the whole planet with solar panels, it won’t help us improve the environment, but actually causes harm.

In nature everything is arranged so that only by advancing towards the goal of creation do we achieve balance with nature. Everything else that we do, no matter how good it may seem, only causes harm. No matter how hard we try to protect nature, nothing will help.

It’s to such an extent that we can stop thinking about saving the Earth’s environment and natural resources, the debris that contaminates it, the plastic that fills the seas and oceans, but rather, we should deal only with our internal correction. Then everything will immediately work out because the higher level corrects all the levels that are below it.

In The Book of Zohar and in the article “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” by Baal HaSulam, it says that everything depends upon the correction of man, whereas the natural levels of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate rise and descend with him, without any account of their own. So the protection of ecology will not help us. Instead, the main thing is to care about our soul.
[77374]
From the New Jersey Convention 5/09/12, Shamati #25

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Today we discover that all the problems lie in our ego. Evidently, if we change, upgrade it, in so doing we will rise to the next degree.

In essence, this is the path human development always takes: Initially each new phase seems to be something wonderful, bright, convenient, and progressive. Each shift of social formations promises a new, beautiful life. And then, after we’ve gotten acquainted with yet another formation, having lived in it for a while, we discover that it’s not quite so wonderful. Subsequent development reveals negative sensations, facts,and states. And although we keep advancing, all the negatives keep accumulating, and at a certain point we can no longer bear it.

Then, for want of any other option, revolutions erupt, wars are waged, or we manage to come to an understanding and achieve great changes at the bifurcation, that is, breakthrough point. Thus we are transformed, arriving at new values and a new life philosophy, and starting development at the next phase.

Evidently, today we stand before one such transition. The former state has become a negative one, and we see its problem, our ego, which demolishes all our foundations. Not one of the elements from our former life is working. And this clearly means that our today’s nature demands change.

Herein lies the uniqueness of our new state. After all, never before have we changed human nature. Each time we have simply shifted onto a higher degree of development, like switching gears to accelerate. But now that we’ve reached the fifth gear and are going at max speed, the engine has suddenly gone haywire. And we can’t keep driving further with it anymore.

Accordingly, we must change the paradigm, the values, the goal, the fuel, the engine itself. This is what makes our current situation and the new period we’re entering special.

We must change human nature, this egoistic engine which has always pushed us to develop, consume, feel, understand, and discover something new. Today it doesn’t work anymore, it cannot drive us forward. And that is why we must change the natural force of development.
[76980] 
From a “Talk About a New Life” #20, 3/28/12

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