In the News (from BBC News): “US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has told Congress that the US economy is ‘close to faltering’ and more action may be needed.

“But he warned that the eurozone debt crisis, as well as overly hasty spending cuts by the federal government, risked undermining the US recovery.

“But he added that the US central bank’s monetary policies were ‘no panacea.’

“On the subject of the eurozone debt crisis, Mr Bernanke said there was little help the US could offer.

“’The problems are not really economic, they’re political,’ he said. ‘Because what they are trying to do is find solutions that are acceptable to 17 different countries, which you can imagine is very difficult.’

“He said that the US was an ‘innocent bystander’ to the crisis, and while the country’s direct exposure to any debt default by Greece was limited, the real risk was that a disorderly default could trigger a run on other eurozone governments and a banking crisis, which would hit the US badly.”

My Comment: The expression “that the United States was an ‘innocent bystander’ to the crisis” is especially moving. One may shed tears, touched by the suffering of pure innocence.
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In the News (from NewScientist): “As protests against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters’ worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

“From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company’s operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

“The work… revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships…. Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the ‘real’ economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

“When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a ‘super-entity’ of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. ‘In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,’ says Glattfelder.

“John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.”
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In the News (from Reuters, my comments are in brackets): “U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday the debt crisis in Europe was ‘scaring the world’ and that leaders in the euro zone were not dealing with the issue quickly enough.

“The recovery of the U.S. economy suffered setbacks this year due to problems around the world, Obama said [it is not our fault, meaning not mine!], including the Arab Spring uprisings [and who provoked them or at least allowed them to happen?] that drove up energy prices and worries about the financial health of European nations [and whom does it benefit?]

“’They have not fully healed from the crisis back in 2007 and never fully dealt with all the challenges that their banking system faced. It is now being compounded with what is happening in Greece,’ Obama said…

“The Democratic president, who pushed through an $800 billion economic stimulus plan in 2009, has set out a new $447 billion plan to create jobs and cut taxes for small businesses but has faced fresh opposition from Republicans.” [The unemployment rate in the United States is 9.1 percent, but it is not going to be better: Everything is heading to the employment to the extent it’s necessary!]
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In the News (from HealthDay News): “Americans who were jobless for longer than 25 weeks in the past year were three times more likely than those who were continuously employed to suffer mental health issues for the first time, a new study finds.

“’On the other hand, we found that people exposed to long-term unemployment were three times as likely as employed people over the past year to be exposed to their first bout of psychological distress in a clinically defined way,’ Goldsmith [an economics professor at Washington and Lee University] said.

“Being jobless also has a greater psychological impact on people with more than a high school education than on those with less education, the researchers found.

“Depression and general anxiety are the two primary causes of poor mental health related to long-term unemployment, the study found.

“The study also found that the psychological impact of unemployment tends to be greater among people in minority groups and those with higher levels of education.

“‘People with a lot of education tend to believe that they have control over events in their lives and are self-blamers. That is really damaging to emotional well-being,’ said Goldsmith.”

My Comment: Unemployment is inevitable as we produce too much unnecessary stuff, deplete natural resources, and pollute the planet. We have to accept the fact that we must feed, clothe, and equip ourselves with the necessary facilities, and not more. The freed time has to be dedicated to the studies of the global world, new integral society, and the way to reaching mutual guarantee. This will enable us to achieve balance with the surrounding nature and survive in a threatening ecological situation.
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European countries assumed that by creating a common currency and uniting against America and Russia, they would become the third power. But it turned out that union also involves trust, a feeling of collectivity, mutual participation, common finances, and the disappearance of borders, meaning cultures. In other words, everything is common.

Boundaries can still be removed between countries, but the “wallet” cannot be common. After all, this is the most important! It reflects our feelings and relationships. When do we say that people live together? When they have a “common pot.” This is the way it was in ancient times, and this is the way it is now.

If a husband and a wife have separate bank accounts, they go out to a restaurant, and each pays for himself, is this a real family? But today this is considered to be normal: You pay for this, I pay for that, and this is how we exist.

The process of evolution has led us to a point where we find ourselves connected with one another in the entire world, and not just in Europe. However, people still experience it differently in different places. The world must come to a state where people must treat each other well. This is where the problem is!

We are unable to come to a certain diplomatic agreement with one another. Europe is a good example of this. They just cannot do it! It is necessary to destroy the egoistic connections and build altruistic, meaning, common connections instead. There must be collectivity! And this collectivity must be above all our differences. Here, I am not referring to contradictions. Contradictions must be destroyed, but differences have to remain. Above them, we have to create a collective, which will be called a “common nation”: Europeans. And that is it. Nothing else.

Why should the Spanish, Italians, Greeks, French, Germans, and others feel like they are separate nations? Is it because they have different languages? Their languages will gradually be replaced with just one language or a combination of languages, for example with Esperanto. It does not matter. Nature is obligating us to do it, otherwise we will not be able to fix things.
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From the Talk on Mutual Guarantee 9/25/2011

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The evolution of humanity and its advancement was always happening on the basis of the development of our desires. New desires were constantly appearing in us: We wanted to develop technologies, agriculture, science, and culture; we discovered new lands, and so on. Overall, it’s as if man wanted to “consume” this entire world, and he has almost succeeded. As a result, he has basically mutilated nature, quite possibly irrevocably.

Now, however, a completely different action is taking place in nature. New desires no longer develop in us, and all the desires, qualities, and relationships that develop are beginning to take a completely different qualitative form.

We are no longer connected between us in a simple egoistic manner where we can regulate our relationships with legal, practical, and social laws, which somehow give us the ability to exist without “consuming” one another. Today we are beginning to feel like we exist beyond the laws accepted in human society. We are beginning to feel that we are connected with one another against our will and this is what is bad. I don’t want to be connected with anyone, I just cannot!

We left the caves, built huge cities, separated ourselves from the ground, and formed a human society where everything is so intermixed and interconnected that I am unable to exist without thousands of other people. And today I cannot exist without the entire world. I depend on different countries: One product is made in China, another in Japan, something else in the US. My car is from Japan, my television is from Germany, and so on. In general, none of my things are mine; they come from who knows where.

It is in this way that I am involved with the entire world through reception and bestowal since I also must give. This is with regard to the economic, financial, and trade connections.

What if we take into consideration everything else: health and safety (medications, materials), education, rearing, not to mention books and mass media? Today nothing can exist in a separate country. The world has become so interconnected that we all are obliged to one another.

And here a problem arises: Our egoism wishes to remain individualistic. “I don’t care about anyone else, leave me alone! Who cares about you and why do you care about me?” But this is no longer possible—I depend on everyone. Everyone demands something from me, and I must also receive something from them whether I want to or not.

And now this connection contradicts our egoism. I am ready to use everyone in the world, but what about giving? Sure, I am ready to buy-give. That is not it! A completely different connection is being revealed here: We affect one another with our thoughts, qualities, and feelings. Everything is passed from one person to another; the entire world seems to have become common.

I arrive in another country, and I don’t feel like I am in another country: It has the same hamburgers, the same pizza, the same soft drink, everything is the same. When you know the language (today English is becoming the international language), there is no difference at all where you live. You go to a supermarket or other stores, and there are the same things everywhere: goods, brands, and cars. In other words, the world has become one.

I am so involved in the entire world that I suddenly feel like I owe something to the rest. And this is a bad thing for me. My egoism does not tolerate this!

It turns out that the system we have created (the financial, trade, and world systems) does not take into consideration this type of interconnection, which is called mutual guarantee and is based on a normal, good attitude towards one another. This is not taken into consideration in the treaties. A situation arises when a certain willful, sensitive, and moral interaction with others is required of me. And I don’t want it! But the world, the entire system, is obligating me. This is where the crisis is.
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From the Talk on Mutual Guarantee 9/25/2011

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The economic system of today’s world is the most obvious demonstration of our connection with one another. That’s because we are primarily connected through the economy, production, and trade. And we see that there are several thousand large corporations in the world that are interconnected, that envelop the whole world, not giving us a chance to move.

But they also can’t move! And now, to their shock, they are discovering this and don’t know what to do. They don’t have any freedom of movement in relation to one another.

This is how the common, global system of mutual guarantee is being revealed to us. But we don’t desire it, we don’t aspire to it from our end. Yet nature, the Creator, is showing us the mutual guarantee, our connection with one another. Under these conditions, how can my mind possibly help me?

The mind can only help me in one regard: to leave my animate mind and start learning, becoming familiar with this system.

However, this system is not built according to my earthly mind because my mind is personal, individual. It helps me exist in this egoistic world, showing me how to win more and do more for my own benefit, thinking that others were created to serve me.

But now, when I am revealing a system with which I am firmly connected and on which I am fully dependent, my previous mind stops working. I have to adapt to this new system! It’s as if I come to some unknown place and first of all I try to take a close look at what’s around me, to learn the customs of this place in order to adapt to them. And once I get to know it well, I can start acting in it and improving my state.

But how can we get to know this global system in which we have found ourselves if we cannot figure it out with our earthly mind? Even all of these huge corporations which seem to control the world, are in reality not in control of anything. And this is now being revealed to them. The mind of every particular person individually does not work just as the corporate mind does not.

It turns out that I now have to discard my animate mind and acquire a new mind—an integral way of thinking. This will be the creative mind, the mind of the common system, meaning the mind of the Creator.

It won’t be easy for us to acquire it. We will have to develop ourselves, turn ourselves into one, connected whole, try to feel ourselves as one person, one system. Then we will attain this single, connected system and will thereby “wrap up” our own egoistic desire and connect with one another. That is how we will gradually build our common vessel, reuniting the parts of the broken Lego.

Within the connection between us, we will reveal the upper mind, the program, its essence, and then we will understand what is happening! Only in this case will our state be corrected.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/11, “The Acting Mind”

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Humanity will not be able to survive as a species and continue its existence without destroying the egoism that exists between us. Only in this way will we treat Earth as our common home.

We have created an egoistic system of interconnections between us called “economics and finances.” It is a very precise, proper system: you for me and I for you. Everyone deserves what he earns: I am smarter than you and I earn more, so I deserve more; you are weaker, lazier, so you deserve less. “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their labor”—this is democracy. Period.

Why would we provide people according to their needs? I am against it. Everyone will declare their needs, which need to be provided for? No way. Everyone should receive according to their labor, according to their investment. Everything is great and fine….

But we discover that this is not enough. It turns out that by doing this, we disturb a certain balance between us. Today we are not even getting by. A new connection is appearing between us, which is breaking all economic calculations, all financial networks. And we do not know what to do about it.

We see that evolution continues in some new and strange way. What way is that? “The butterfly effect,” meaning everyone affects everyone else.

How do you survive in a world where you depend on everyone else and everyone depends on you? Get a machine gun, climb a tower, and spend your entire life sitting there without ever closing your eyes—and then, hopefully, you will not get shot there? But this is impossible! Hence, we must achieve some new connections between us.

We are coming to a state when our egoism is not only destroying the environment, but is also beginning to consume itself: It destroys the family unit, peace, and one’s entire life.

Man is building a prison for himself with his egoistic attitude towards the world. Work-home, home-work, and that is it; I do not exist anywhere else. In addition, I get television and hamburgers, and this is my entire existence. After work I sit in front of the TV screen, at work I sit in front of a computer screen. There are two screens in front of me and nothing else.

We will not be able to fix our lives today without reaching universal human relations. This is the problem.
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From the Talk on Mutual Guarantee 9/25/2011

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Our state won’t be corrected by us building something new on our own. All we have to do is to bring ourselves into greater similarity with the system of mutual guarantee that already exists and is now being revealed to us.

Our correction – and the only action we can make – is to unite. When we do so, we will reveal that we are part of a single upper system and everything will end up working out.

Until today economists had to construct highly sophisticated systems of connections and contracts, but from now on, none of this will be necessary anymore. Everything is already present within this new system. We must only adjust our human relationships to it – and that’s all. We don’t need anything else. All of the stock brokers can go fish.

We will suddenly discover that there is no more need for any professions besides those that provide us with the bare necessities of life. In this new system of connections between us, other professions won’t exist because the system will already be revealed as connected, perfect, coordinated, and ready-made.

These are not the same systems that we had to constantly build using our egoism, such as staging revolutionary transformations and new connections that we had to establish in the past. None of this will be necessary. By correcting the connection between us, our qualities, we include ourselves into the ideal system that already exists.

It exists today as well; we simply don’t know how to include ourselves in it and that is why we are ending up with such a crisis.

That is how humanity will reveal that there is nothing it can do! This entire animate mind of the past has to be discarded. We won’t be able to do anything with it any longer. All we need is to correct ourselves to reach mutual guarantee in order to enter the upper system that will become revealed more and more clearly – a system that is already made and perfect. We will become part of it and will continue existing this way.

Eventually, we will reveal that this system is the inner mind of creation, nature, or the Creator, which is the same thing. We will reveal the eternal and perfect life inside of this system, entering it ever more deeply. Our animate bodies will die and disappear, but we won’t feel that at all and will exist in this system merged with the Creator’s mind.

This system of connections, which we discover among us today, is the revelation of the upper, spiritual system. That is why the economic crisis is happening, which is a crisis in the system of connections between us. After all, precisely the economy connects us with one another, as it says in the Torah, “Go and earn from one another.”

This is what we have to reveal: How we can earn. And the answer is: by bestowing to one another! A completely unique period is upon us, which we are entering in our days.
[58348]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/11, “The Acting Mind”

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In the News (from Naharnet): “A cash-strapped Spanish town has surprised its residents by asking them to pick up a broom and sweep their own streets and pavements.

“The official request by the mayor of Esparreguera, a town of 22,000 people in northeastern Spain’s Catalonia region, did not go down well with all inhabitants.

“‘The town hall does not have the financial means at the moment to improve municipal cleaning and gardening services,’ said the request by Mayor Joan-Paul Udina of the moderate Convergence and Union party.

“‘To return to the habits our grandparents had, we ask you to regularly sweep the portion of the pavement and road in front of your house,’ he said.

“’I am unemployed. I don’t earn anything. And in addition they want to put me to work for free to clean the rubbish,” fumed 53-year-old Jose when asked for his reaction.

“But Dolores Serrano, 56, said it was an ‘excellent idea.’

“‘I have already watered the tree in front of my door because I don’t want it to die,’ she said, adding the mayor had issued a simple request, not a directive.”

My Comment: This is where the lack of education in mutual guarantee is felt instantly. A person does not realize that in this way everyone saves collective resources, and common work brings citizens closer to each other, creates a greater similarity to integral nature, and changes the atmosphere in a small town. Now, it would be good to hold a small awareness campaign about the cause of the crisis and its solution!

The cause of the crisis is only to change society: It becomes interconnected. Previously, the desires in each of us were developing, growing, “linearly.” We tried hard to realize them and thus changed our society. But lately, our desires do not grow but are becoming more interconnected, turning our society into a “small village,” and we do not know how to act in such a case because this relationship between us, egoists, runs counter to each of us.

From here we see the solution: to change our relationships with each other and to all the people, to be as one system, a single whole. This will not appear automatically, instinctively, from within us like egoistic desires and thoughts. It can happen only under the influence of the environment that we must build ourselves.

By building the environment that teaches us, we begin to more deeply understand ourselves, our nature, what happens to us, as well as the plan and purpose of creation, right down to the feeling of the acting force of nature—the Creator.
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