Interesting relationships may start forming between countries:

News Report (from MIGnews): The prime minister of Great Britain, Gordon Brown, has declared war (for now, diplomatic and economic) on Iceland, because Iceland’s bankrupt banks are refusing to return billions of dollars to their British clients.

Since the country’s actual default, forty billion dollars of British savings remain frozen in Iceland’s banks. The government of Iceland refuses to give guarantees on the investments of foreign clients in Iceland’s banks. In response, Brown has arrested the assets of Icelandic companies in Britain.

The British Telegraph reports that his actions were accompanied by the following statement: “We are freezing the assets of Icelandic companies in the UK where we can. We will take further action against the Icelandic authorities wherever that is necessary to recover the money.”

My Comment: All countries will find themselves in the same situation. But there won’t be anyone to fight, since everything is intertwined and there is no one to blame. Still, it’s possible that they will fight nevertheless before reaching the understanding that they have to move on to a different kind of relationship – mutual care for one another for the sake of survival.

And later they will come to the realization that they must “love one’s neighbor as oneself,” because everything that’s theirs depends on others. And later they will also attain the level of love for one’s neighbor, because others aren’t “neighbors” with regard to just finance or security, but in fact, we are connected by nature. Through the mutual guarantee (similar to the guarantee of a bank), people will attain the highest reward – the revelation of the Creator! Even Mr. Brown will be able to understand this.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself
Laitman.com Post: We Must Only Unite Our Points In the Heart
Laitman.com Post: Correction Lies In Unity

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A question I received: Why do you keep insisting that the current financial crisis can only be solved by changing the relationships between people?

My Answer: This question has already been answered in a previous blog entry.

Moreover, economists are also saying that the reason for the stock market crisis is people’s loss of trust in banks and companies. After all, the rise and fall of stock prices depends on the rise and fall of people’s expectations of companies and banks.

In addition, people suspect that even in a time of crisis, companies are putting away considerable “revenue” for themselves. The managers of the banks and companies that went bankrupt knew about the upcoming bankruptcy, and they made sure to give themselves and their employees salary raises in order to “stock up” ahead of time. Hence, the present crisis (and there will be other crises as well) is a crisis of people’s trust in banks, businesses, and in the future as a whole. It’s a crisis of trust in the egoistic system of relationships and its ability to continue regulating our life.

This is why Kabbalah views this crisis and humanity’s general state as the beginning of the world’s correction. We must realize that we absolutely depend on one another, and that it is impossible to get rid of this dependence. We are like members of one family who share common joys and woes. We must create an atmosphere of “familial” trust and care on the entire planet – only then will the systematic global crisis subside.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Analysis of the Crisis
Laitman.com Post: How Does a Kabbalist Feel About the Current Events?
Laitman.com Post: 7 Ways to Approach Globalization Correctly
Kabbalah Today Article: A New Direction

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Two questions I received on love:

Question: What is “the suffering of love”?

My Answer: There is no love in our world. What we call love is the aspiration for pleasure, or to be fulfilled by pleasure. In other words, corporeal love is one’s attitude to that which gives one pleasure. It is measured by the degree of one’s fulfillment from the source of love.

Spiritual love works differently. It’s when a person rises above his egoism and no longer depends on it. He then begins to perceive the desires of others as his own, and unites with the entire desire that was created by the Creator (with the common soul, Adam).

Once he acquires this property of bestowal and concern for fulfilling desires outside of him, he then finds the Creator – the general quality of love, inside this common desire. In this case, “the suffering of love” is when one suffers because he still doesn’t love the Creator, or in other words – because he is not inside the property of bestowal completely.

Question: If spiritual love can only be felt toward one’s neighbor, then it is probably impossible to love those who are not part of my close environment (spiritually speaking)? And when we say “love for others” this means that we understand the egoistic nature of others and realize that these egoistic qualities are temporary?

My Answer: That is absolutely correct. But in addition, it’s also necessary to provide them with a way to become acquainted with Kabbalah in a form suitable for them, and to put it in front of them discretely, so that as soon as their “point in the heart” (a desire for something other than this world) will surface, they can immediately discover the means to fulfill it.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Don’t Look for Love In This World
Laitman.com Post: Love Your Neighbor As Yourself – That’s Your Reward!
Laitman.com Post: Spiritual Labor Pains and the Future of Kabbalah (Advanced)
Lecture: Unconditional Love
Chapter from The Kabbalah Experience: “Spiritual Work”

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Love, Mutual Guarantee, Prayer and Intention, Q&A - No Comments →

A question I received: You said that men are polygamous by nature and are always looking for new sensations. In the past every man had several wives, and he would buy a new wife whenever he wanted one. There was no love involved in this, and sometimes men and women did not even know each other before being married. This is also the reason why men today cheat, get divorced, and find new wives.

On the other hand, you speak about spiritual marriage – man, woman, and the Shechina between them. How is it possible to attain the presence of the Creator between a man and a woman in the spiritual marriage if the modern man always needs new experiences with different women (today this is called cheating).

This is very painful and difficult to accept. Please help us, women, understand men’s behavior. Why is it so difficult for us to accept the fact that men are always attracted to other women? Do men do this because of some anomaly? Or is it just natural for them to constantly need new women, and it’s us, women, who are so uncorrected that we simply cannot understand their needs?

My Answer: This is the curse of egoism, which we fell into from the spiritual level. God said to the woman: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” So my advice to you is: Don’t look for truth, justice, loyalty, and love in marital relationships. They aren’t there from the beginning, and they can’t be there – the Torah warns you of this. Quit trying to resolve the mess in the physical world, and instead aspire toward correction. As a result of it, your relationships will be corrected as well.

You have to understand that egoistic nature cannot be changed, and everyone suffers from it until they rise above it. You should transfer your worries from the corporeal level to the level where you realize “Why did the Creator do this?” It is in order to push you toward correction!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Polygamy – a Matter of Culture
Kabbalah Today Article: ” Man, Woman and the Snake Between Them”
Article: “Today It’s Spiritual Relationship or No Relationship”
Article: “The Spiritual Root of Cheating”

Filed under: Body and Soul, Crisis, Economy, Internet, Love, Q&A, Spiritual Work - 2 Comments →

A question I received: What do you think about disseminating Kabbalah to the masses through Christianity and Islam? Applying the method of Kabbalah to the study of the Gospel yields tremendous results. You begin to understand that you’re not reading fairytales about magic tricks, but about attempts to change something in the spiritual world, and you want to explain this to everyone who doesn’t yet know or understand it. I think that you should explain this to your Christian students, especially since the Old Testament is a major part of the Bible. Once they understand this, once they feel the bliss of true attainment without having to be detached from their culture and religion, then perhaps they will take it even further.

My Answer: Religion is not connected to Kabbalah in any way, but is actually opposite to it. Religion was given to humanity to be a framework for life in the time of darkness, before the revelation of Kabbalah. And this is why religion is dying out in our times, although this process is lengthy and it’s possible that there will still be religious wars in the future.

We do not approach religious Jews, and we disseminate Kabbalah only among the secular public. There’s nothing new about showing religious people that the Torah contains a deeper meaning. However, they’re not interested in this, because it knocks out the foundation of their faith – the egoistic principle of our world, “Do certain actions and you’ll receive a reward.”

Kabbalah, on the other hand, contradicts egoism, and tells you that you won’t receive anything for your actions (you won’t receive anything into your egoism, that is). Your entire reward lies in being corrected by the Upper Light, in loving your neighbor as yourself.

This is something you can only say to people who have already gone through all the egoistic desires and have a “point in the heart” – the desire for the Creator or the meaning of life. People who are still satisfied by faith do not have a “point in the heart” yet, and therefore we cannot talk to them for now. Kabbalah reveals the law of spiritual development to a person, but this development can only happen when it’s free and non-coercive – and that’s another aspect that’s fundamentally opposite to religion.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Where Is Jesus Christ In Kabbalah?
Laitman.com Post: Religion and Kabbalah Are Opposite
Laitman.com Post: Kabbalah Teaches Love and Bestowal, and Nothing Else

Filed under: Crisis, Egoism, Health, Love, Q&A, Spiritual Work - 1 Comment →

I had a conversation that was recorded on the topic of love. I spoke with Oren Levi, manager of our Hebrew publishing department.

We analyzed how the spiritual property of the Creator, “love for creation,” is expressed in action – “bestowal and fulfillment.” However, since creation is egoistic and opposite to the Creator, it interprets this as love for fulfillment and reception. Creation aspires to use and humiliate others, in order to feel more fulfilled than them. In other words, its love manifests in a completely opposite form than the spiritual quality of “love,” yet we refer to both of them with the same word, according to the law of “root and consequence.”

However, when creation attains equivalence of form with the Creator (when it acquires the aspiration toward the property – “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” which is attained only through the influence of the Upper Light that descends during the study of Kabbalah), it begins to comprehend the true meaning of the Torah’s words and of Kabbalistic notions, including “bestowal” and “love.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Is It Possible to Love Everyone?
Laitman.com Post: Love Thy Neighbor as Yourself
Laitman.com Post: Does the Creator Have Feelings?
Laitman.com Post: On the Revelation of Godliness
Laitman.com Post: Love Her Like Your Soul, Punch Her Like a Punching Bag
Laitman.com Post: Love Covers All Sins
Laitman.com Post: On Love
Lesson: Unconditional Love
Kabbalah Today Article: Love, Love, Love
Kabbalah Today Article: Love, Deciphered

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