The origins of our spiritual path lie in the breaking. We must regard our egoism, the alienation and hatred between us, as the right preliminary foundation for correction.

When Rabbi Akiva saw barren ground in place of the Temple, he laughed and rejoiced. He was the wisest man of his generation, a great Kabbalist. He was asked how he could rejoice at the collapse of sanctity as the aspiration for bestowal had been vanquished, and the principle of love thy neighbor as thyself had been desecrated. Could the collapse of all hopes really be a reason for joy?

He responded: “I have never believed, never known, and never felt that we will be able to attain the general correction. But now, once our spiritual structure has been destroyed, once the love that reigned among us has been broken, and the people have fallen into unfounded hatred, I am convinced that this final breaking will lead to our general correction, complete redemption.”

This is why everything that is being revealed to us every moment of our lives is the breaking we will need to correct. No matter what happens to me, from the core issues of life to insignificant things in the family or at work, in all that happens within me, with my well-being, relationships with relatives, friends, people, and the world, in all of reality, everything only becomes revealed for the purpose of correction.

Every time, a new image is sketched before me that delves deeper into my egoism. In this image, I must see the result of the constant influence of the Light that essentially, activates increasingly deeper layers within me.

We perceive the world in our ego, and this is why we need to correct it. So, what is this correction? It brings unity to people. Especially now, when the entire world is beginning to realize the evil of the current state, we help them feel and understand that “evil” is our evil inclination.

Our egoism is the cause of everything bad. We see this in the things that are happening. Unable to bring the world to order, people are destroying it, ruining themselves, breaking relationships, and destroying nature. We are unable to move toward goodness and make a good life with the evil that is concealed in us.

The crisis is becoming more acute every day. In other words, we are discovering that our egoism is destroying everything and is not letting us normalize, balance, and improve our lives. On the other hand, we must understand that it is guiding us forward the right way and helps us head toward correction and goodness. It’s similar to how a manifested illness shows us how to treat it.

As we realize this, we must be grateful to our egoism and love it for showing us the place that needs correction. It is written that Pharaoh brought the sons of Israel closer to the Creator. He began to pressure them, and at the end, they had to escape Egypt. Otherwise, they would have stayed there.

This is why it is written: “Come unto Pharaoh for I have hardened his heart.” There are two opposites here, and we must not forget about it. No matter the evil that you encounter, instead of destroying it, you need to correct it.
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From Lesson 3, the Germany Convention 8/6/2011

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In the News (from gamecareerguide.com): “Media reports indicate retailer Coop Norway will cease to carry 51 gaming and toy brands following attacks that killed 77 in a government building and youth camp.

Danish site Gamers Globe reports (translation) that the removal includes first-person shooters Homefront, Sniper Ghost Warrior, Counter-Strike Source, and the Call of Duty series, as well as popular MMO World of Warcraft.

Alleged attacker Anders Behring Breivik mentioned playing World of Warcraft and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in a wide-ranging 1,500-page manifesto written before the attacks.”

My Comment: We see that sufferings correct. But we can do without them! How much violence do we have to witness in order to realize the necessity to change the environment that surrounds us, children and adults alike? However, this is only “against violence” and not for greater closeness with each other. Closeness can be reached only by means of mandatory education of the entire population: bringing all citizens to unification above all the differences between them. Otherwise, the cause of violence—disparity between people and mutual hatred—will nevertheless remain.
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When reading The Zohar, we should try to keep in mind that all of the corrections amount to unity between us. We should see everything taking place in the world today as the revelation of disconnection. At the end of the day, hatred, disorders, and all of the problems that arise are being revealed so we, and then the whole world, will feel that we have to fix the connections between us.

To the extent we work on dissemination and speak about the connection between everyone above the separation and opposition between all parts of the nation and the world, to that extent we prepare and demand unity during the study.

Therefore, the more we exert an influence and disseminate this knowledge, the more we talk about unification, trying to bring the nation to unity, the more we will demand it during the study, and then we will merit conducting this Light to us, and from us—to the nation and the world.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/10/11, The Zohar

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The desires that are now emerging in all of humanity are being revealed by the common Surrounding Light. Therefore, humanity won’t find the answer to them inside of itself and will only break out in protests in different places. Nothing more than that will happen. No one has an answer or an understanding of how to extinguish this expanding fire that will envelop the whole world. And there won’t be any solution to it. Not one “fire extinguisher” will help, but only the Light that reforms and returns us to the source of good.

That’s because the Light is now being revealed in the form of harsh forces of restriction, judgment (Gevurot), and they will burn down all of humanity unless we sweeten them with the quality of mercy, bestowal (Hesed), by wishing for this quality to reign among us. We can extinguish this fire with our unity and turn the all-consuming fire of judgment into the flame of love.

This is possible only by virtue of our aspiration to unity. Therefore, everything depends on disseminating our knowledge about the solution, but even more than that—on our inner work, our desire to unite with one another in order to embrace the whole world and give them the Light that we attract for them. And all of this is for the sake of giving pleasure to the Creator by becoming similar to Him.
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From the lesson on 8/9/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: We still don’t feel the pain of the external world to the fullest. How can we correct this situation by working in the group?

Answer: It is better to feel this pain as early as possible. It is like a disease, and it’s better to detect it in its early stages. The world is just starting to submerge into the crisis, but fears it already since today’s problems affect everyone. We see that the time has come, and we should disseminate materials that explain the cause of the crisis and its solution.

The whole world, including America, Europe, China, and Japan, is in trouble. Everyone is scared by what is happening and no one knows what will happen tomorrow. Some are looking at the crisis from afar, as for example Germany. However, they should be afraid even more. The one who rose higher falls lower. We cannot even imagine what will happen if tomorrow all proven mechanisms suddenly stop working.

How could it be possible? People get up in the morning, go to work, and so on.…

But no, they are not going to work. We haven’t realized yet that we are situated in an integral system of nature, while we are not integral ourselves. It’s as if we are trying to insert a square piece into a round opening. In reality, our form should resemble that of the system. This form is not simple because we are not talking about geometry, but rather about our properties.

Today the entire humanity should be gradually adopting new shapes, the correct format that corresponds to the Light. This is a very big problem. We can solve it only if we attract the Light that will perform the correction for us. This is why it is said: “I have created the evil inclination, I have created the Torah as a spice because the Light in it reforms.”

Let’s hope that we will understand this and will be able to pass it on to others.
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From Lesson 1, the Germany Convention 8/5/2011

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Opinion: (Joschka Fischer, Germany’s Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor from 1998 to 2005): “The behavior of the EU and its most important member states has been irresolute and dithering, owing to national egotism and a breathtaking absence of leadership….

“States can go bust just like companies, but, unlike companies, they don’t disappear when that happens. That is why states should not be punished, and why their ongoing interests should not be underestimated.…

“Refusing to pay is not a viable option, because Germany and all Eurozone members are in the same boat….

“The European financial crisis is really a political crisis, because EU leaders are unable to decide on the necessary measures. Instead, time is lost on secondary issues largely rooted in domestic policy concerns….

“The euro – and with it the EU as a whole – will not survive without greater European political unification. If Europeans want to keep the euro, we must forge ahead with political union now; otherwise, like it or not, the euro and European integration will be undone. Europe would then lose nearly everything it has gained over a half-century from transcending nationalism. In the light of the emerging new world order, this would be a tragedy for Europeans….

“Germany and France, the two crucial players in this crisis, will have to devise a joint strategy, because only they, working together, can push through a solution….

“What is required, therefore, is an open bilateral French-German dialogue about a comprehensive realignment of the monetary union.”

My Comment: Ah, this eternal struggle between reason and greed, between your own political future and the welfare of the people or even the world…. But without integral upbringing, the EU will not survive and will fall apart. Evidently, the world will have to go through sufferings to become convinced that nature puts before us the condition to correct ourselves and unite not in a market, but in a union.
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In the News (from scienceblog.com): “When just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society….

“‘When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas…,’ said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. ‘Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame’….

“An important aspect of the finding is that the percent of committed opinion holders required to shift majority opinion does not change significantly regardless of the type of network in which the opinion holders are working. In other words, the percentage of committed opinion holders required to influence a society remains at approximately 10 percent, regardless of how or where that opinion starts and spreads in the society….

“The research has broad implications for understanding how opinion spreads. ‘There are clearly situations in which it helps to know how to efficiently spread some opinion or how to suppress a developing opinion,’ said Associate Professor of Physics and co-author of the paper Gyorgy Korniss. ‘Some examples might be the need to quickly convince a town to move before a hurricane or spread new information on the prevention of disease in a rural village.’…

“The researchers are now looking for partners within the social sciences and other fields to compare their computational models to historical examples. They are also looking to study how the percentage might change when input into a model where the society is polarized.”
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Opinion (Uzaz Baimuratov, Academician, Director of the Research Institute of Financial Management, Kazakhstan): “The concept of progress…has run its course….

“People experience spiritual crisis when wealth is artificially elevated to the level where it replaces the meaning of human life…. Spiritual crisis manifests itself in that people strive for easy money and material goods, right here right now…. The consumer psychology has to change….” (kazeu.kz)

“There has to be a certain level, threshold, that restricts our consumer appetite. There is a basic principle of moderation in everything.…

Our needs must be met: not reduced, but normalized. “But to achieve this, a person must come to the understanding that one mansion is enough… and now he has to work for the society…. However, to come to such an understanding, one must be a spiritually developed individual.” (inform.kz )
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Opinion: (Denis Barabanov, Director of Financial Analysis Department, Grandis Capital, expert.ru): “The key is to keep the right balance—if governments don’t work on reducing budget deficits, it could lead to a new financial crisis….. Most of the Western countries live beyond their means. Now it’s time to cut costs and review priorities.”

My Comment: Learning to live modestly is useful for egoistic business, as well as learning to understand that there is no other option for selfish existence and never will be, and that all attempts to expand business lead to bankruptcy and the loss of even what one already has.
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The very concepts of globalization, integration, unity of the word, and the globalization era are metaphysical, spiritual, and virtual, something you can’t see or “touch.” These qualities are beyond what we commonly regard as the material world.

Where and who can show me the action of these qualities, forces, and processes in our world? Even though we are talking about the global world, its reality, and the global processes in it, it is still felt more as a virtual world. After all, it is not clearly incarnated in any actual reality. In our imagination, we build its virtual image, possibly idealizing it, connecting utopia with reality and supposition. But how justified is this approach?

The fact of the matter is that we never build anything without having an image of the future. We have to imagine the future, but at the same time be guided by real premises related to the imagined picture. We have to take examples from nature, its globality and integrality, and build our future society according to them.

The entire complex of problems that has risen before humanity indicates the need to solve these problems conjointly. Today there is not a single problem that is local. Nature is pushing us to become aware of our total interdependence. The globalization that is being revealed is forcing us to suppress our national and regional interests, and to prefer the solution of the global, common problems first.

The need for integration for the sake of all humanity requires a constant dialogue among representatives of every country on an equal basis. In a single organism, all of the parts are equal. Every side presents the problems it deems necessary to solve and the importance of every problem is weighed conjointly, like in a family that discusses which problem should be solved first and in what order the others should be solved. Only by accepting the fact of the global interconnection as a primary condition will we develop the right approach to solving problems.

Otherwise, we will involuntarily slide down to war, which is a refusal to have a dialogue. These aren’t necessarily “hot” or even “cold” wars, but an unnoticeable, centralized, informational influence on people’s consciousness in a specific country with the aim of distorting their picture of the world, their traditional concepts and values. The sensation of this informational weapon’s effect can range from emotional discomfort and insecurity, to a disturbance of the basic infrastructure.

Of course, in any case, whether we develop along a good scenario or a bad one, we will still reach an integrally interconnected society because it is the goal of nature’s development. Humanity’s aspiration to unity is a natural expression of a living system. But this natural process cannot be accelerated artificially. It has to happen consciously and voluntarily because otherwise it will turn into a project that is forcefully executed by the authorities.

Therefore, the priority is people’s upbringing, enabling them to understand the new world in which we are finding ourselves today. Real power has to be built as a universal, planetary, informational, educational system, a kind of mass media. Precisely because the entire formation of the new society, indeed—of humanity, will take place through virtual channels, it is necessary to first solve the question of their proper use.
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