Question: The end of the exile should signify the end of all our suffering, so why do we reach total emptiness and bankruptcy?

Answer: We all know that the exile begins from the seven years of satiety and there are the seven years of lack that end in the darkness in Egypt, in terrible plaques. Who receives these blows? It’s my body, my “Pharaoh.” This is called bankruptcy when, while in my last ten Sefirot in the last ten plagues, I feel total despair which totally detaches me from my desire to receive.

Then I am ready to come out of Egypt, to escape from there. This is bankruptcy, since when I came to Egypt there was food and life there and it was good, you could find everything you wanted there! At first Egypt was like the land of Israel to the sons of Joseph, the land of milk and honey; Joseph was the ruler of Egypt and all the Egyptians worked for the Jews, for the children of Israel.

I am in a state in which the ego provides me with different pleasures; I am glad that I have found the wisdom of Kabbalah, meaning that I have found a means to receive the upper pleasure and to succeed in life. Before I had nothing and now I hope to receive everything in this world and all the upper worlds and to conquer everything. This is what a person who comes here to study feels; it’s as if he has found a great treasure that can fill all his desires to receive. It isn’t by chance that it is called the wisdom of Kabbalah (the wisdom of “reception” in Hebrew).

But when I gradually advance and participate in the collective work, I feel as if the seven years of lack and bankruptcy have begun. Where is the promised pleasure? Where is the attainment, the understanding, the feelings, the control? There is nothing! A person deteriorates more and more. So we see that “a thousand enter a room to learn and only one comes out,” the one who can bear it all.

The others flee since there are other pleasures on the outside. But now we see that there is nothing on the outside either, so everyone will eventually return. We are ready and glad to receive everyone. It’s clear that a person flees since the seven years of famine have begun. After all, he doesn’t understand that he has to receive the new world in new vessels, and if he hasn’t prepared these vessels, then what can he feel?

The seven years of famine come to an end in final bankruptcy, in the ten plagues of Egypt, when I don’t see that I succeed in anything. I despair because of the powerlessness I feel in all the ten forms of my relationships with the world: in education, in health, in security, in economics, in finance, in the desires for food, sex, and family.

There is nothing I can revive my soul with; all the sources of pleasure have dried up. Then I come to the conclusion that I have to flee from my egoistic desire and to leave the system that forces me to think only about how to fill myself. After all, there is no way anything can enter my mouth according to this method, I need to find a new method.

Then I escape from Egypt, cross the Red Sea, which is inner feelings, my understanding, and my consciousness. I escape from my ego, draw away from it; I am scared and in the dark, but I already understand that there is nothing I can do in Egypt anymore…then help comes from above and takes me out of there, but I am prepared for it.

Then, from the phase of Mt. Sinai onward, I begin to take on another form. This is the path we have to go through now with the whole world. Everything we have done before was just the preparation, meaning the correction of a small part of the desire: GE, Israel. Now we have to do the same thing with the whole world.

The whole world will have to go through and is already going through the same state that Israel experienced with the exile in Egypt. The whole world gradually goes down to Egypt. The seven fat years of prosperity of the American dream when everyone thought that all humanity will develop, conquer space, and cross every border are over. Now we are gradually folding all our programs and don’t want anything anymore. This is called the “seven years of famine.”

The ten plagues of Egypt that will hit the world are approaching and we already see the beginning of an ecological disaster. Then there will be problems with oil and gas supply and with viruses and plagues if we don’t succeed in softening these attacks. The blows will come no matter what, but we can soften them by approaching them ourselves. If we operate knowingly, consciously, we can indeed soften them.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/02/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Yesterday the Israeli Finance Ministry announced a cut in pensions of 10%. The economic situation is becoming more severe…

Answer: Since the day before yesterday we have not attracted the Light that Reforms which would correct our state to the same degree; instead of lowering 10% from the pension they would have added 10%. We are to blame because only we have free choice. If we had carried out a correction yesterday, today we would not hear about this.

What do you want from the government? The politicians and the government officials base themselves on facts: Here is the budget, here are the expenses, including the “hidden” manipulations, and this is what is left for the pension. And what will you do here?

Stop dreaming about a “fair budget.” We cannot come to them with claims. They are only arguing about where to get what’s missing. And understandably, they don’t collect taxes from the big tycoons and corporations. There is no nation in the world where they deprive the rich, rather the opposite, they only add more and more to them.

The authorities act according to their egoistic calculation and continue in the same way. Ten percent of the pension is nothing compared to what is standing ahead of us.

If you want changes, only the Light that Reforms can bring them. Therefore, understand—everything depends on you.

Behind the scenes the higher force acts and we are prepared to change its influence on us from negative to positive. It sends us the evil only so we will be “caught” in it, obligating it to be linked to us and correct us.

We need the Creator and until we understand this it is as if we are left in the hands of blind fate.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/14/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Opinion (from DailyMail): “American scientists have transformed people into cows using immersive virtual reality programmes with the aim of persuading them to eat less meat.

The University of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab allows people to step into a cow’s hooves for a surreal experience.

“The hi-tech computer software subjects humans to being virtually poked with cattle prods and eventually dragged to a virtual slaughterhouse.

“Researcher Jeremy Bailenson hopes that participants find the experience so moving that they empathise with the cattle and choose to eat less meat as a result. …

“It is not the first time the researchers have used virtual reality technology to make people aware of their impact on the environment.

“Individuals who virtually cut down trees said they thought about the experience later and reduced their paper usage. …

“The Virtual Human Interaction Lab is designed to ‘harness the emotive power of empathy’ and although it uses modern technology, the theory is not new.

“It is thought that animal sanctuaries are much more successful as they not only rescue farm animals, but encourage people to interact with them. …

“The same is true with this latest experiment. The scientists said that becoming the animals in a virtual world and stepping into their hooves was a natural extension of this idea and a new way of encouraging people to empathise.”

My Comment: In our case, it is stated simply,  “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” i.e., all the changes in ourselves have to be based on the understanding of ourselves, our attitude to ourselves. All that a person needs to do is an experiment on himself. That is why the wisdom of Kabbalah is called the internal (hidden) part of the Torah.
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If you come to a person at the right time when he has despaired and does not know how to switch to new criteria in order to experience the sweetness rather than bitterness, then he will listen. That is the essence of the crisis.

Previously, we have always looked for and found the means to do this, due to this, humanity grew and advanced, like children who grow because of their toys that become more goal-oriented, and thus they change their tastes, understanding, and awareness of what is called sweet and what is called truth.

And when we reach the end of egoistic development, we discover that we are in a bitter state, which is impossible to turn into the sweet one. There is neither truth nor false that can help in this and change us so that we feel sweetness instead of bitterness.

Here we come with our method of integral education and explain that there is a force: the force of connection between all people. Due to it, we will achieve sweetness that simultaneously will be truth. This sweet truth is revealed not in someone individually, but within our common unity.

People will not be able to reveal this knowledge. Even if they begin to unite with each other, everything will turn into either a circus or a criminal gang; nothing good will happen.

We must be aware that if we do not succeed in our mission, then in the future, criminal association awaits our world, that is, the Nazi regime, about which Baal HaSulam warns in the article “The Last Generation.”

If our method of integral education is not successful, then the world will be won by the fascist doctrine, which is also based on the sweetness derived from unity. But this unity is founded on hatred of others. The whole world then is divided into two halves: mine and all the rest. And we are building our unity not on the love of others but on the hatred of others, and inside it we find sweetness.

Although this Nazi approach is contrary to the goal of creation and development of nature and cannot hold out for long, this possibility exists for a short time.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/13/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Opinion (Chris Rhodes, professor, writer, researcher): “The world supply of crude oil isn’t going to run out any time soon, and we will be producing oil for decades to come. However, what we won’t be doing is producing crude oil – petroleum – at the present rate of around 30 billion barrels per year. For a global civilization that is based almost entirely on a plentiful supply of cheap, crude oil, this is going to present some considerable challenges. If we look over a 40 year period, from 1965 to 2005, we see that by the end of it, humanity was using two and a half times as much oil, twice as much coal and three times as much natural gas, as at the start, and overall, around three times as much energy: this for a population that had ‘only’ doubled. …

“If we can’t address the problem from the supply side we have to curb our demand. In the absence of cheap and widely accessible transport we will need to produce far more of our food and materials at the local level. Such a metamorphosis of human civilization from the global to the local, will be underpinned by building strong, resilient communities in which people share their skills and knowledge, to provide as much as possible at the local, grass-roots level. This is the underpinning philosophy of the growing network of Transition Towns. Frightening though all of this is, we may evolve into a happier and more fulfilling state of living than a perceived status quo, that in truth is all too rapidly running through our fingers.

My Comment: Nature is “approaching” us from all sides forcing us to accept its conditions, to calm down, sit down, and think about the meaning of life.
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Opinion (Peter Koenig, former World Bank economist): “It is an artificially imposed, holistic crisis. Holistic meaning that it is a step towards full spectrum dominance of the US hegemony and its co-opted European allies. It is one of several tentacles spanning the globe, probably the most powerful, of the monster of globalization – towards a One World Order (New World Order) – a term already coined and used by then British PM Gordon Brown at the London G20 Summit in 2009. Ideally, the new world order would eventually be led by an elite served by a class of serfs. The middle class would basically disappear.

“Other tentacles, like NATO and eternal warfare against invented ‘terrorism’; Genetically Modified Organisms – GMO food; the petroleum cartel; pharmaceutical and other non-transparent industries – would help limit or reduce the world population, so that the elite could enjoy the Earth’s finite and non-renewable resources with a comfortable life much longer than if these resources would have to be shared with 7 or 8 billion people.

My Comment: There are many versions about the nature of the crisis, and even if we had known the “most correct” one, we would need to add to it the version of the Creator: His program of creation, His plan and purpose. So, without knowing the hidden calculations of the “great” of this world who are ruled by the Creator, we know directly from Him what will be!
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All of us are found in this world as if in a boat in the middle of a stormy ocean and if you don’t fulfill your function in it, you will not bring any benefit. If you will not work to set the sails in it, hold the wheel, bail the water, and if you don’t row with the oars, then you sink the whole boat.

You are included within the general system and must carry out your function, and if you don’t function, then you harm everyone, like a transistor that is burned within a complex electrical circuit and is disabled, or a guitar string that snaps. It is certainly possible to continue to play the guitar even without this string, but what kind of a tune will this be?

The word “system” encompasses a powerful sense and it awakens fear in a person. Since I am found within a system, I depend on everyone else one hundred percent. I, myself, am not ready to do anything. I cannot strike you, kill you, or compel you to change by force or threats. This is because the connection between us is internal, in my heart, and I am not familiar with your heart! You can arrange all kinds of problems for me in life with the help of the desires in your heart, and what can I do? I am really helpless.

This is called being found within a single system. I don’t depend on some terrorist or dictator, but rather on every person in the world and especially on my closest friends. My entire spiritual life depends on them, and for me there is no possibility of influencing them! I am not even ready to check what is in their heart in order to understand how faithfully they carry out their function in the general system. Perhaps, they are actually destroying it.

The integral system that is being discovered now before us is really terrible. Do you know how we are connected and why; all of a sudden there was a flood in Europe or an unusual heat wave in America? We don’t know the original cause or what the final result will be. In the integral system everything is linked, and these links disappear from before our eyes since we are not “integral.” We don’t act according to that plan, that arrangement.

Up until now, we have developed according to our nature, like animals, only more developed, but this evolution has stopped. We have reached an integral connection that is now revealed before us. Our contribution to the system is the management of this entire system. Therefore, we must discover how we can manage it and carry out this work for everyone as integral components within the system.

It must be clear to everyone what his function is. This is like an electronic device that includes the most complex systems that completely stops functioning because of one burned-out transistor.

It is very important to understand this in our function. At one time it was different and everything depended on the individual, himself, if he was great or small. There is a story about this, that a war was lost because of one nail. The blacksmith lacked one nail and he didn’t secure the horseshoe well; the horseshoe fell off, the horse stumbled, the commander riding on the horse fell off, the enemy saw this, rushed to attack, and won the battle.

Thus, they won the war without any logical basis, only because of a small nail, and not even because of the nail, rather because all the events developed linearly, according to a chain, until reaching the high commander upon whom everything depended. However, we already have left a hierarchical system, a round system operates today. Therefore, it is impossible to find the original reason upon which everything depends. Rather, everything depends on everyone and everyone is linked together and considered equally, both the great and the small, and this is a very big problem.

We already have begun to understand that it is specifically the connection that will give us the spiritual form.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/05/13, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”: …the well-being of society, which is the well-being of the state and the well-being of the world, are completely interdependent. As long as the laws of society are not satisfactory to each and every individual in the state, and leave a minority that is unsatisfied with the government of the state, this minority conspires under the government of the state and seeks to overthrow it.

Our world is round not just because the earth is round, but because all the connections round up before our eyes. All the signals move back and forth between us and we are all connected even if it’s against our will.

When we discover the inner connection between us, we also fulfill it on the outside by building different instruments to help us communicate. Did a person who lived three centuries ago need a mobile phone; actually no, and for what? Did he need it in order to check the prices of flour or salt in another state? What difference would it make? After all, it was too far.

But direct physical contact gradually became an emotional contact, and people invented transportation, cars, trains, planes, and radio connections, etc. On the whole, fifty years ago there was no need for global communication cables that connect the entire world, but now we can’t even imagine managing without them. During the last fifteen years the Internet has surrounded the whole world and has become part of every person’s life. Why? Because man has felt an inner need for that and has developed the right technology. By the way, today we also have greater deficiencies, but the ego of individual people curbs their advancement and doesn’t provide us with the right tools…

It all stems from frustration, from an inner attraction to something. This is what should obligate us to build tools by which we can correct the world.

At the same time, the global connection is accompanied by a negative and very dangerous phenomenon. Because of the ego we are connected by evil desires, and each one wants to dominate others, to enjoy at their expense, and to use them. If we could only set certain limitations, but it’s very difficult. Thus the connection between us can be very dangerous.

We are in a state of transition, an intermediate state, and despite the threats we have a need for absolute connection. We want to see and hear everyone regardless of language differences, cultural differences, and other differences, and we want to understand and to feel as much as possible. We are ready to make the Internet into something that is totally different since now it already offers us very limited options compared to our requirements. Modern technology can bridge this gap, but in the meantime we don’t develop it for more extensive use.

We are in a very sharp transition and the peace in the world actually depends on each one. This means that each one needs correction since otherwise he can cause harm on an internal scale. Hackers, for example, can disrupt many essential functions by remote control and break the electronic protection of gas reservoirs or the power supply system. In other words, a certain expert can bring about a great disaster just by using his ten fingers from some distant corner of the world.

This means that as long as we are not corrected, the connection between us is very dangerous to the peace in the world. It relates to many different areas and especially to those who produce weapons and deal with them. These people just wait for a conflict to break out somewhere in the world. This is the way the egoistic world thinks and it will remain that way until we correct our ego.

But on the other hand, it’s the danger that was caused by global phenomena that brings about an opportunity for correction, since we will have no choice; we will not be able to go on living under this terrible constant threat. As long as we are under this threat, it isn’t worthwhile to live, to get married, to have children, and to raise them if everyone can easily hurt my success and even put an end to my life. All the beginnings become insignificant.

It’s then that a person finally understands that we must correct the situation. How can I protect myself against criminals? Actually my life depends on everyone and I simply cannot live under this constant terrible threat. It’s impossible to chase all the potential criminals.

Perhaps all this will force us to make a decision since we have no other choice.

In the meantime, we don’t even understand how we can reach a solution, through the UN? We see how impotent this organization is. Behind the bipolar connection there is a bitter truth according to which everyone tries to profit at the expense of others. In fact there is nowhere to turn. There is no organization or institution that represents humanity with regard to the key questions of our time.

Baal HaSulam says that the wellbeing of the world and the wellbeing of the individual are the same. The essential condition of our time is to finally acknowledge the need for connection, for peace, for agreement, and for love among us. Without love we cannot survive. The principle of “love thy friend as thyself” is the result of a very difficult process of the recognition of evil when there is no choice and a person will understand that he must fulfill it.

One way or the other, the individual and the general advance along the same path today, along the path of the recognition of evil, that eventually pushes us to make the decision that we have to change our lifestyle and adopt new software. Then we will finally embark on a new path.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/29/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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In the News (from International Business Times): “In the massive economic misery that has engulfed Greece, the people at the very bottom of Greek society – namely, the homeless of cities like Athens -are being decimated by a cheap new drug called sisa, which is described as a kind of ‘cocaine for the poor.’ …

“Bizarrely, no one is quite sure what all the ingredients are in sisa, although methamphetamine is definitely a core component.

“But at only one or two euros ($1.29 to $2.58) per hit, it’s an attractive buy for the poor and/or homeless seeking any temporary escape from grim realities. …

“… the high from sisa is accompanied by dreadful after-effects, including insomnia, delusions, heart attacks and aggressive behavior. Other reported side effects are anorexia, palpitations and anxiety.

“‘It’s often compared with cocaine … It’s the drug of the streets, produced in home-based laboratories.’ …

“GreekReporter.com noted that, as more drug addicts are forced into prostitution, the negative effects of sisa use are spreading into mainstream Greek society.”

My Comment: We will see this all over Europe, if they don’t come to their senses. As Mark Twain said about Tom Sawyer that “he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.” So, the world has two options for the future.
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Opinion (Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, USA): “Whenever something bad happens – Iran moving closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, … some official or observer will call upon the international community to act. There is only one problem: there is no ‘international community.’

“The United Nations General Assembly comes closest, but little can be expected from an organization that equates the United States or China with, say, Fiji or Guinea-Bissau. …

“No amount of UN reform could make things fundamentally different. Today’s major powers do not agree on the rules that ought to govern the world, much less on the penalties for breaking them. Even where there is accord in principle, there is little agreement in practice. The result is a world that is messier and more dangerous than it should be.”

My Comment: The whole advancement to perfection comes from the “recognition of evil”‑the revelation of the imperfection of our egoistic nature. Only when the human being, people, and the world are finally convinced of the total corruption of this nature, the self, and the world, will they be happy to give it up. Then, the upper force of nature will be revealed in their sensations. People ask it to change them, and it corrects them. Everything that happens to us is only to bring us to this event.
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