Question: What does a couple feel when they are in the “shared space,” when your partner understands and feels you?

Answer: A “shared space” refers to complete mutual understanding within its limits. This area is usually created in the attitude towards children. The mutual concern for them and the importance the couple attributes to them connects the couple. These are seemingly external factors, not ours, but they belong to us. If you don’t have children, it is more difficult to find common connecting points.

We have to look for things we agree on, understanding, something we have in common; where we agree, we understand each other and connect, although in the beginning we had different opinions. But we grow so accustomed to these concessions that we cannot manage without them. Even if we could correct the difference between us, we wouldn’t want to. We feel that all these contrasts are an opportunity for a special union. We already understand that without them there would be no union.

All these “rough spots” help us connect. It is thanks to the fact that I concede and my partner concedes that we feel the connection between us. Without our mutual concessions there will be no connection. If we agreed from the start on everything, we wouldn’t feel the contact. It would be as if we are the same thing. When we concede, we don’t annul our ego, but rather build a connection above it, as it says, “Love will cover all the sins.” Therefore, this strong connection, the inner contrast between us, is kept, but above it, love grows increasingly higher.

The “shared space” is our double common ego, but because of this, it connects us more strongly and allows us to feel the connection between us. We have to constantly take care of this “shared space,” to evoke it and try to expand it with regard to different types of connections from the corporeal to the spiritual.
[100776]
From a “Talk About a New Life” 7/25/12

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Baal HaSulam, “Speech for the Completion of The Zohar“: We should understand what Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator means. After all, the thought has no perception of Him whatsoever. Indeed, our sages have discussed this question before me, asking about the verse, “and to cleave unto Him: How can one cleave unto Him? After all, He is consuming fire.”

And they replied, “Cleave unto His qualities: As He is merciful, you are merciful; as he is compassionate, you are compassionate.

If we change several attributes in us by turning them from “in order to receive” to “in order to bestow,” how does that enable us to understand whom the Creator is? And, what is more, how does it help us resemble Him? How do we acquire this resemblance? How do we adhere to Him? After all, it is impossible to touch Him. So, how do inner “tricks” allow us to resemble someone who we don’t even see and with whom we cannot identify? How can we understand the principle of “from Your actions we know You?” How do the inner changes lead me to Him? How is it possible to love others if it isn’t my nature?

This is why I am not obligated to love directly, but I can correct my 611 desires, and, then, the 612^th correction will be the acquisition of the attribute of Hassadim to the fullest, and the 613^th correction will be “to receive in order to bestow.” So, it is impossible to obligate one to love, but it is from the corrections that precede it that we can attain it.

This is also how the resemblance to the Creator is attained. We fulfill and arrange all the necessary actions internally, and it isn’t the actions themselves that are important, but the clarifications we make regarding every detail. All the clarifications add up and accumulate and turn into spiritual vessels.

So, nothing is lacking in our work. We cannot reach the end of correction in one leap. In fact, we are already at the end of correction, but we don’t have the vessels to feel that. So, we must collect all the vessels along the way in order to finally reach this revelation.

Question: What does “to cleave unto the Creator” mean for us today?

Answer: I build His image inside me through the different discernments I make internally. It isn’t about external signs, but about an internal essence. The Creator is a spirit of bestowal that is born and fills me. It is an attitude in which I can produce to “bestow in order to bestow” or to “receive in order to bestow.” It is a reflection that I reflect from inside me, outward.
[100851]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Question: Why are all the thoughts of employers reduced to profit? They are not stupid people and understand that if you do useful things for people, profit will not disappear. It will still remain. Why can they not set a goal to do something for people?

Answer: Our society does not support this idea. A person, especially in Russia, is considered tougher and stronger the more he takes advantage of others, subjecting them to himself. If I brazenly earn at the expense of others and if they even know about this, then I feel even more a hero, the manager, suppressing others.

This “cult of personality” lives in every person, and, if I want, I can use it. To do this, I must show myself as a despot in spite of everything else. As written in ancient codices, “What kind of a king is he who has not executed hundreds of his subjects every year?” Otherwise, where can he get respect? Where is the sense that he decides the fate of people?

So, if I want to put my company in serious order, I have no choice but to fire a couple of employees. I introduce the policy of the carrot and the stick. One should be reprimanded, the other patted on the back. Otherwise, how can people understand me?

That is still a common practice that operates in many places. Movies, commercials, and the news show that managers still rely on this rigid hierarchy of fear and pressure.

However, if we want to keep pace with natural development, we must be engaged in education, changing the human being according to nature, that is, with those desires and properties that are developing in us today.

Development is leading us to an integral, interdependent world, to companies with a voluntary, friendly connection between people where everything is decided collectively—as they say, with the collective mind—and is based on advice, support, and so on. In other words, the general, collective mind is developing, which ultimately leads to correct decisions. Indeed, attracting an intelligent person brought up in a collective spirit to management can provide many new ideas for the structure of enterprises, and for decision making and output: for all the issues. Today, we have come to this state.

However, still, many companies and organizations are regulated by force. We will have to switch to a completely different integral method.
[100832]
From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/5/13

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Question: Today business owners have already guessed that the most valuable human capital is collective knowledge and skills and they want to use it. They understand that for the mind to realize this itself, rigid hierarchical structures must give way to soft, self-regulating ones.

But in Russia for example, people are used to a very rigid hierarchy: the “tzar-father,” the breadwinner, the business owner. Is it worthwhile to switch to a new structure? Will people want self-regulation?

Answer: Whether people want or not, it doesn’t depend on them. Nature gradually changes human needs and that is why they will still have to come to this.

Now is the time to establish these values. People see that they do not know how to arrange life; there is devastation, the struggle to survive, huge bills, friction, power, and pressure. Everything which can be replaced by normal relationships is controlled by the power structures of crime or the state.

I do not blame anyone; it is just a transition period. But, in principle, the path to the future lies in choice: Either we wait for nature to mercilessly put pressure on us, forcing us to change or we will consciously match ourselves to the integral system of nature.

By the way, in this respect, Russia is not far from America. Americans are great individualists. They do not take other people into account and can openly do whatever they please. If it is profitable to do so, then I will do it; I will even use others as stepping stones just to win. And the side that loses everything understands that it is the law of harsh business, which has also taken root in Russia.

So, in this respect, both these countries are similar to each other. That is why they will have to undergo a serious readjustment of values and enter into a new system. It will be very difficult, especially for America.

It will be a little easier for Europe because it has a different culture; there is a connection among people and it softens them.

Russians also have an inner connection, “We are a people, we are a community,” and that is why their transition could be easier. But still they will need integral education.

I must say that the Russian people are very open to this. They are inclined to education. The TV, the media—all this is ready to be directed from above. If the government had accepted the idea of moving towards a similarity to nature as a universal necessity and started to implement this, then the Russians would have succeeded quickly and easily; it would have been declared at the top and accepted at the bottom.
[100829]
From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/5/13

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Question: Why do businessmen with little or no education have so much success recently? What is their strength? Why are the best results attained sometimes by leaders who have no experience or even knowledge?

Answer: This happens because the connection of the linear, egoistic connection of “you for me and I for you,” that is, the system of pure capitalism, has stopped working. The world has entered into an integral connection where everyone is connected to everyone, since through a chain of five people who know each other each person on the Earth is connected to all the rest.

In this system, the old connections don’t work anymore, and other connections are required that are based on understanding and the feeling of connection and unity between people. Thus, the first place is taken not by Stalin’s principles of rigid pressure, and not the American principles built on competitiveness, but the principles of mutual connection.

The ones who win are the ones who can build good and correct human relations and not at the expense of finance, commerce, business, etc.

Thus, success will now be on the side of those people, even though they are not great professionals. And if now I need to choose a director of the plant, I would take someone who simply knows how to work with people, and by his side would always be a specialist.

Today what is important is synergy, the connection between people and the ability to assemble a good, friendly team that will be as one whole so that everyone will feel good, including the workers’ families, their children, their wives and husbands.

If people connect between them, then they will find greater similarity to all systems and immediately will begin to succeed. This stems from nature itself, from somewhere in the roots from which comes the vital force, the nourishment, the moisture, and then a successful mutual connection grows.

If a person has the right approach to the team, to reciprocity, to the integral connection between people, then he can direct anyone. He will always be able to find an expert in each area, and if these specialists work in a cohesive friendly way with the team, then they will succeed.

Today this is the main work in a company, the main role! But basically, there is a need for many of these people who constantly hold the team together in the spirit of integration to rise above the egoistic outbursts of each one.
[100746]
From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/5/13

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Question: What are the phases we have to go through in establishing the relations in the family until we reach the complete unity?

Answer: First I need the help of my wife, which is called “help against,” so I can examine myself and unite and explore one another as much as possible. I have to discover that I see the other as a distorted figure that the ego depicts for me. This is the psychology that we have to learn; this is how we have to educate everyone so that they can be mature adults who understand their own feelings and special attributes. Then a person will be able to use all his special attributes correctly in the connections with his or her partner.

First you build a relationship with your wife, drawing her picture and your picture and decide to what extent you can enter into it and to what extent she can enter yours, and where you meet. You start from the basic understanding that you are two egoists facing one another separated by an infinite distance. Now each one has to leave his starting point and start getting closer to his or her partner.

The closer I get to the other side, the further away I get from my natural basic point, and the more difficult it is for me to advance. It is also increasingly more difficult for my wife as she remains with her “self.” We have to thank one another for these efforts, and so we will be able to advance closer towards one another. All this happens thanks to our mutual concessions until we reach an inner connection.

This is the point of contact for which we are ready to give up our own base and connect. To connect means that I receive from my wife what is essential for her according to her character, so that it becomes essential for me. Thus the contact is created between us, a connection, mutual incorporation. There are protrusions and indentations in each of us by which we connect.

What is important for my wife should also be important for me, and she does the same with regard to me so that a shared space is created between us. Working in this space, thanks to our efforts to hold on to the connection in different states, helps us connect. This shared space is called a couple.

There are huge spaces besides this shared space that belong only to me or to her. It is like two intersecting circles with a common area between them in which each receives the other’s desires as if they were more important to him than his own desires.

I see that there is no choice and that these are my wife’s needs. What should I do with the areas that are still separated from one another? We will have to work on them by clarifying them and with common efforts we do all that in our desire to create one whole from the two of us.

If we know how to unite into one whole in the family, then we will also succeed in larger external circles, and even more external circles, until the whole world becomes one person. Then there will not be a global integral crisis. There is plenty of everything in the world, but we have developed in the wrong direction. Instead of developing everything for the good of man, we have acted to harm him. It is like a couple locked in an apartment unable get along and so they are ready to burn everything out of their mutual hate; it is the same situation and the same problem.
[100658]
From a “Talk About a New Life” 7/25/12

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Question: People today still hope that their governments will solve the economic problems…

Answer: The governments won’t solve anything, and it doesn’t matter whom we vote for. After all, it doesn’t depend on a prime minister or a president. No matter who it is, he has nowhere to get the money for the wellbeing of his people. We have entered a round global system in which everyone is connected to each other and dependent on one another. Still, many believe in the approach of isolation and that they will be able to survive on their own. But, in fact, this approach only brings them closer to total collapse.

Today every country that tries to act only in its own interests is destroying itself. It was possible once when there were those who dominated others, but today everything has changed and even the US is facing resistance against its global ambitions. Today the old system of man’s dominating man and nation dominating nation is collapsing. It doesn’t work since the new law of nature is already active internally. Everything is now mutually connected and no matter what I do for others, my attitude comes back to me as a boomerang increased several times.

Question: But still, I don’t actually see that I am part of a general whole yet, I am changing…

Answer: Do you want the Creator to reveal to you now the whole plan of creation and by that lower you to the “animal” level? Suppose I show you that we all depend on one another, and that if I intend to eat breakfast without caring that others have breakfast too, I would be poisoned and might even die. This would deprive me of my freewill and I would be like an animal, like a dog, who knows in advance by what something smells like whether it can be eaten or not. In that case, I would not be able to be a human being any more.

Things have to be different here. We are not animals; we can’t be connected on the corporeal level of emotion and knowledge since it isn’t the human level. Suppose someone gives me a million dollars, should I take it or not? If I feel that by that I would be causing myself harm, I will not take the money. But it would be an egoistic decision “within reason” and I wouldn’t grow by that, since I have to resemble the Creator.

It says, “And they shall all know me from the smallest to the greatest.” This means that everyone will know what the pure attribute of bestowal is; they will know it in their hearts and act accordingly; this is what we are advancing towards. If the benefit of the connection were revealed it wouldn’t be hard for us to connect egoistically. But no, we shouldn’t connect on the basis of knowledge but in faith above reason, which is opposite from knowing. I don’t see that the connection is in my benefit in advance.

This is called “labor pains,” when two opposite forces are active in me. It’s the only way we can advance. Otherwise, without fulfilling our mission, we would remain on the “animal” level. So we must understand where to get the powers to discover for ourselves first of all, and then for others; it is a qualitatively different knowledge of the facts about the egoistic desires “moving against the wind,” which allow me to be born into a new dimension.

We felt it during the Arava Convention to some extent when we had the chance to break through upward, to rise above the body and above anything that has to do with it, to break away from it. It’s a psychological problem but still this idea can be conveyed to people. We all have the right potential that only needs to be brought to life, to be brought out, so that this discernment will float upwards.
[100771]
From the 4^th Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Question: Why haven’t Kabbalists written a manual for life so that every person will be able to use it?

Answer: If this book were about how to make a profit and to gain something, people would read it, but the book would be about how to give up, to bestow. So whom would you offer it to? If I had something to interest ordinary people with, I would have done it a long time ago. All the leading TV channels would have invited me for interviews, “He has a recipe for comprehensive infinite pleasure!” But here, on the contrary, there is a psychological barrier: We have to transcend our nature and move on to the next level, and then we will receive pleasure.

So how can I raise myself above the “threshold of the strangulation” of death? People think that they reach the next world, which means the spiritual world after the body dies. I really don’t understand why the body stands in their way, but this is how they see things: that the body is buried in the ground and the soul rises “upwards.” How can I imagine a state that I kill my ego? It says, “He who wants to live should kill himself.” Only then can I really start living. But how can I fulfill that? How can I explain this to people?

Here we offer the remedy before the illness. First we inform people that they are ill, which means that we act like the Creator who reveals the crisis in humanity. Today everyone feels troubles to a certain extent, so what is the diagnosis? Our ego is ill.

But this is not enough, a specialist has to come and speak to the patient so that he will listen, because if people don’t listen, then the illness will keep on developing until the pain will sharpen their hearing.

On the whole, humanity has to hear what’s important: The whole problem is the wrong mutual connection among people. It’s for this reason that they don’t know how to live correctly in the integral world, how to educate their kids, and how to establish the right relations. They have to realize that the whole problem is our ego. Later we will be able to carry on this conversation and explain how people should connect by integral education.

Then people will finally understand what’s going on; they will understand why they are being driven “crazy” by every possible means, why they are required to work 14 hours a day so that they have no time to think about anything. Children are intentionally educated the way they are at school, the TV channels broadcast series of murder and rape and this is all in order to turn a person into a zero, to turn him into an “animal” so that he will not be able to find a solution for his life.

Question: Why don’t Kabbalists have a campaign against the ego, just like the campaign against smoking? Why don’t they write a book about how to prevent the “egoistic fever”?

Answer: Kabbalists don’t have the same authority and the same power that doctors have; Baal HaSulam already tried to warn people but no one listened. As for “effective campaigns,” they also have an egoistic motive. The cigarette manufacturers may be losing money but another group is making a profit from that, for example, food manufacturers who produce unhealthy food. They profit when people don’t smoke and don’t die early from cancer so that they buy their products for many more years. These products make people ill, and at the same time make the medicine companies richer. The main thing is to keep people in a “corral” like animals, in the framework of modern life that doesn’t allow them to think too much about what’s important.

Everything comes down to the profit that someone makes from the consumerist society. Thus all this could go on infinitely if it weren’t for nature’s plan. We would remain slaves who consume what they are being “fed” by supermarkets and the media, without choice. But the Creator has other plans, so we are approaching the collapse of the current capitalistic trend.
[100763]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/13, “The Peace”

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Question: Could we take the ready forms of integral unity and implement them now at the workplace?

Answer: No. If you begin to implement this at workplaces it would be pure communism, it will not work. You should gradually bring people to an integral level; otherwise, nothing will come out.

To the extent of people’s spiritual advancement, interconnection, to the feeling that they are a community, and work is something common for them, to the extent that they feel that their contributions determine the fate of the company, which is clearly reflected on them, on their interaction, on their moral and material fulfillment, then it is possible to start these actions.

Moreover, it is necessary to show that since we have eliminated some problems and reduced unnecessary cost due to our good cooperation, we can afford to raise wages to the lowest paid workers by 20%, and the highest paid workers are ready to reduce their salaries by 5%.

Question: How can we make these decisions; after all, everyone has a different level of development?

Answer: It is necessary to establish certain criteria: absenteeism, number of sick days, the quality of output, speed, and reliability. It is necessary to consider all the factors that exist in the enterprise: depreciation, the level of saved energy, the amount of human and material resources, etc.

Then, it will be clear how much you have succeeded as a result of correct relationships with each other when everyone relates to others as in one family: Save energy, do not create any problems, take care and support each other, etc. According to this, you can raise salaries or do something else. And people will be proud!

These decisions are taken by the local committee, which includes the most spiritual, collectively conscious people, from cleaning personnel to vice presidents, who together discuss this at a roundtable, and moreover feel absolutely equal.

The local committee is a selected group of people who represent the entire company. They are not promoted according to a prepared list, but directly at the general meeting where the whole team selects and votes for them. This is a part of their collective unity, based on the analysis of who can really express their opinion.
[100825]
From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/5/13

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