Question: I am taking the International Kabbalah Academy course online. How important is it for virtual students to come to the convention in Kharkov? Can we virtually participate in it as we do in our lessons?

Answer: No way! You will never replace the direct interaction. You can keep taking the Kabbalah Academy online courses and gain knowledge. However, without real unity it’s impossible to unite and connect in order to sense the Creator in our connection. After all, the revelation of the Creator is our main problem. This is precisely the reason for our existence, for the existence of this entire world, and for our courses.
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From the Virtual Lesson 7/8/12, “Kharkov 2012”

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Question: There is concern that a person who is mentally included in the general integral system will stop applying regular physical effort, and it is possible to say that he will turn into an abstract slacker. Will there be place for linear human efforts in the integral world?

Answer: We were evolving throughout human history under the influence of the egoism developing in us. Egoism was going through various stages: physical egoism, food, sex, and family and egoism that directed us towards wealth, fame, power, and knowledge, but today, we have reached an impasse and need something higher.

The attracting force of the past egoistic development disappears; a person rushes to something, but where, it is unknown. That is why we have all these spiritual methods, techniques, manipulation, New Age, and the like. People are suddenly become attracted to religions again; truly, it seems “back and forth,” but in reality, it is a search that will pass quickly.

We enter into the integral. That is, now humanity will begin to understand that our next state is the creation of an integral society.

And what is wrong with our egoism?

Today, we have reached the line, and from here, we will start building an integral system or become like the integral system, nature, which is the same.

How do we do this? We do this with the egoism that grows in us.

What does it mean growing; we have said that it no longer grows?

It begins to grow so that you will transform it into integral. This is a completely different egoism, which will oppose and hinder your becoming integral. And on the basis of it, looking at it, you can change yourself because you will be able to see all the negative disturbances, this breaking in this mechanism, and how to correct it and become integral.

Why do we need this system?

We need it so that through all kinds of breakdowns, failures, suffering, various conflicts, the lack of understanding, and egoistic rejection of other people, my egoism dragged me away again.

Why do I need, on the basis of it, to try through my efforts to enter into the integral system with everyone?

Because then I obtain skills, learning like a pupil who does exercises. A pupil is given homework all the time; he should feel: correct or incorrect. The incorrect turns into the correct, it is said: “The experienced one is better than two inexperienced.” “The experienced one” is the one who realizes his transgressions, mistakes. That is, we are constantly analyzing our mistakes, but they are not our mistakes; thus, our egoistic nature is specially developed in us, not because we want this, but in order that we rise above it and create an integral community.

That is why egoism is growing, but this is an entirely different egoism, directed against the community.

This is another kind of work. If earlier I used egoism linearly and through it constantly advanced, developed egoistically, now I consciously, pushing against it, transform it into integral unity, connection with others. Today, it is building material for me; I build with its help.

Comment: So, for egoism to be manifested, do I have to interact with the world physically, do I have to be in this world?

Answer: Our world was created this way for this purpose because in it we can be simultaneously in egoistic and in higher qualities.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/30/12

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Question: Many family members of those friends that have included themselves in the integral system began complaining that those friends became lazier and stopped taking care of some necessities. What is the correct way to deal with this? After all, shouldn’t a person put in the effort and fulfill his family obligations just as everyone else?

Answer: Everyone must actualize his necessary participation in family matters, and it should be done as part of the effort in his spiritual advancement. You must attend to your family’s needs. This is working with the same egoism, not only with personal egoism but also with family egoism. This work contributes to your advancement.

Comment: To the neighbors, this person should appear absolutely normal, caring for his family, earning money, striving to solve corporeal problems, etc.

Answer: To a certain extent. However, he shouldn’t strive to earn more than what is needed for the basic necessities. Everything he earns in excess of that, he is ready to give up for the purpose of uniting the world in any efforts and events. This is how he operates.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 5/30/12 

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Question: How can we fulfill the recommendations of integral education in daily family life, in the mutual relations between a husband and a wife?

Answer: I don’t see any problem here. In the lectures for couples, we teach the chapter called “Free Will.” It provides information about nature and society from which we conclude that a person is a product of the environment. So if he wants to change, he only needs to choose the environment that will change him. It’s up to a person to decide, and the fulfillment is in the hands of the environment.

Suppose there are several rooms before me and in each room there is a special environment. One room will turn you into a criminal and in another room you will become an intellectual, in the third room you will be perfect, in the fourth room you will know how to make the right decisions, and in the fifth room you will become a perfect family man. You choose a room, go through it and come out from another door fully formed, an Oxford graduate or an armed robber, a gigolo, or a businessman, etc. It all depends on those “four walls.”

This is the reason that it’s so easy; all you need is to teach a person this principle and to prepare the right environment for him. Then he will undoubtedly succeed. So the problem we are facing is divided into two parts:

• To help a person decide, so that he will choose the right “room” which means the right environment.
• To prepare this environment for him.

Thus we provide him with everything that he needs.

Gradually people will join the new environment, expand it in quantity and reinforce it in quality. As it becomes more attractive, it will be easier for people to choose it and everyone will have a chance to be corrected. It isn’t difficult, all a person has to do is to become part of this society, and it will influence him.

Of course, the process of incorporation and improvement has to be accompanied by the right tools, but on the whole it’s very simple: A person doesn’t have to change himself, he only needs to establish the right connection with the right environment.
[83677]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/11/12

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Question: Suppose something happened to me and I feel such a sense of shame that I’m ready to disappear. What should I think of at this point? Should I think of the goal?

Answer: That doesn’t help. What does it mean, “I should think of” or not? You must be prepared in advance for all sorts of influences from the environment, books, friends, the group, and other things that are the effect of the common field on you so that you are reminded of the goal. That is, you set up an external “reminder” for yourself, otherwise you won’t remember. You begin to associate the goal with what happened to you. And that’s the main thing. It means that you already know that what happened was intentional and happened for a reason.

Where do I feel the pain and shame? In my egoism. So, I have to rise above it. Or conversely, let me stay with the feeling of shame because it directs me towards the goal. Then I’m ready to experience it all the time in myself so as to not forget about the goal, to be associated with it, and to move towards it. And let my sense of shame be stronger and stronger, so that I will move toward the goal and it will get closer and closer.

It’s here that we begin to deal with the re-evaluation of values, and thus rise. From now on what will dominate the movement, achievement, and attainment of higher states of love and bestowal above the feeling of egoism as evil and everything that’s in it is basically shame.

Question: Is the mechanism that you described suitable for the 99% of the population?

Answer: Not only for the 99%, but for everyone because the desire to receive is the only matter.
[83599]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/30/12

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Question: How can I relate to the Creator if He is the property of bestowal?

Answer: Really, what is “the property” anyway? Is it a physical force? Can I really love or hate gravity? For example, I can like it on the condition that it does something good to me. But that doesn’t mean that I love or hate it. I realize that it’s something inanimate and therefore I relate to it according to my feeling, according to the benefits I get from it.

I enjoy the sun. But, do I really “love” it? How can we love the sun compared to loving a plant, an animal or a person?

So, how do I relate to the Creator? First of all, it is said about Him: “I HaVaYaH change not.” The upper Light is in absolute rest; it is “Good that does good to both the good and the bad”; the Creator treats us with absolute love.

On the other hand, the Creator is called the Great, the Terrible, and so on and so forth. All evil comes from Him; all the good originates from Him. Everything is so contradictory that I get confused.

If something is unchanging, it’s bad. Why do they tell us that the Creator doesn’t change?

Baal HaSulam explains in his letter number two, that if a father relates to his son with absolute love, it makes the son hate him instead of love. After all, if there is no reaction whatsoever on the father’s behalf, the son sees that it doesn’t matter how he treats his father; in any case, his father responds to him with absolute love. It prevents the son from developing love, and it does not allow him to change, see the connection and stay in contact. It’s as if he is facing an inanimate object. Plants have a certain level of reaction, animals respond even more strongly, not to mention the human being. Then, positive and negative reactions penetrate in each other and create a new liaison, a mutual inclusion.

But if the Creator doesn’t change, and at the same time He is so kind and loving, then what can I feel for Him? There is no way I can take Him into consideration. And yet, if I cannot consider Him, then I leave Him out of the picture, as if He doesn’t exist at all. Why would I consider someone who never changes?

It’s a very deep notion that was explored not only by Kabbalists. However, Kabbalists strove to demonstrate that at all times the Creator is “Come and See”; so I reveal Him. I cannot reveal Him Himself, His essence, but only His form that is dressed into matter. That’s why when we attain Him in His full entirety, we reveal His ultimate and perfect shape and really see Him as the Absolute, the Perfect, the Eternal, the Good that does good.

In all other states, we regard evil or good that come from Him depending on the level of our own corruptness, as it is said: “Everybody judges according to his own flaws,” and then, we have the opportunity to relate to Him to the degree of our own deficiencies and corrections, and thus see Him as good or bad.

And yet, we have to believe what the great Kabbalists who revealed Him in His true form, say, that He is absolutely good and bestowing.

So we have to relate it to our desires (Kelim): At this moment, we see the Creator to the extent of the correctness or corruptness of our desires, but when we attain Him at the end of the ladder we will reveal Him as the Good that does good.

Then all contradictions will be gone; we will get a “roadmap of advancement” which is scaled to our attitude to the Creator. It allows us to see how we change and accordingly how the Creator changes in our eyes.

We express gratitude to the Creator for giving us the ladder of concealment; with its help we can attain connection with Him. Otherwise, we won’t be able to connect with perfection.
[82488]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/9/12, “The Book of Zohar”

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Question: How can we explain to the 99% of the population about the internal work they have to do?

Answer: When we gather, we think only about how our discussions can help us feel the general force, the general warmth, the general connection, and unity so that each one will stop feeling himself and feel only “we.” “We” is not the general sum of all of us, but “together.” And the “together” has to constantly melt so that you will totally lose all your individuality in it.

In the individuality that is lost, in this new force, in the new thought, just like in one man, in one figure that we create, we discover the inner part of nature and start feeling that this is the plan; that this is the motion. On the whole, we don’t create this, but surprisingly we discover within the unity the new level of our state, of our recognition, the existence outside the body, above corporeality and even above our existence, in another dimension. We can explain all that.

Gradually as a person begins to feel things, he will begin to hear and to believe. First, of course, he may say that it’s “new age” or mysticism and that he doesn’t want to come near such maneuvers of consciousness, etc. but we can bring him to that.

When people gradually turn to unity, by feeling relaxation, warmth, and the energy of life, and that they can solve all their problems correctly from this perspective, etc., it will fill them. They will understand and feel that they depend on us and that we have to organize them since they cannot do it on their own. They are like kids pretending to be grownups and instinctively, internally they will feel that they do need a leader to help them get started. We will have no problem holding unity events with them in the future too. Since we will be connected to them, they will begin to connect through us to the more internal levels of nature and to feel its plan, its motion, and the force of unity. Nature will begin to appear as one single thought.

I think that it will happen quite soon, and that within a year we will be able to speak about this openly. Actually, not just to speak about it, but to hold workshops presenting the task of uniting to such an extent to be able to feel the hidden natural forces and the hidden options.

In general everything stems from practical work. We are not managed by theory. Although we have many sources, we cannot rely on what we don’t understand correctly. We have to feel every step we make, and to what extent we get a response from society, from nature, from within, and by comparing all this, to advance step by step.
[83531]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/30/12

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Question: When a person encounters a negative situation in life he usually begins to ask questions such as, “What’s going on? Why did it happen to me?” As a result, it “triggers” either inherent religious mechanisms or thoughts about balance or fairness.

Answer: The paradigm is very simple. If I understand that there is one force that manages us and that we operate according to this plan, whether willingly or without choice, we still have to carry it out just as we have done throughout our whole evolution. This means that everything that happens to me is fulfilled according to this plan. Thus the positive or negative events occur only in order to help me and the people around me advance.

After many discussions about these states where I am impressed by others and by how they understand and see their life, I begin to understand that the most negative phenomena lead to the best outcomes when I use them to unite and to rise above myself.

It’s these phenomena that push me out of this life and help me rise in my feelings and my mind to unity, and so they are actually the best and the most desirable. I have to be more thankful for them rather than for those positive feelings that make me relax and not yearn to advance. It’s because in this case my desire is full so why should I rush anywhere.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/30/12

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Question: If I see that my husband doesn’t appreciate me, do I have to put this feeling aside?

Answer: No, you shouldn’t extinguish the feeling, but try to rise above it. You establish such an attitude regarding your husband that is as if you are receiving absolute love from him.

Question: Should I share my feelings with him?

Answer: Yes, of course. Tell him, “According to my nature, egoistically, I feel that I am not getting enough love and care from you. You don’t care about me like you used to; you don’t bring me flowers; you don’t show that you care. We don’t live the way we used to when we were young, when we were happy together and used to spend more time together. Today, it is as if each one is sitting in his corner and my demands from you have grown to such an extent that it’s as if they are filling our whole mutual relations.

But I don’t want anything from you except for one thing: Instead of complaining to one another, let’s present the complaints to ourselves. Let’s see each other’s deficiencies as our own. Let’s do this psychological exercise.

This exercise will help each one see his partner as perfect and yourself as not so perfect. Then above all our flaws, we will try to treat each other like partners, this is the actual wholeness. Eventually, despite everything that’s going on, I will treat you only with love, like a mother treats her child according to the principle “Love covers all transgressions.”

I demand the same thing from my partner, since his attitude towards me will increase my attitude towards him. I also need a good and correct model from him so he has to treat our efforts in the work above the ego seriously. The better my partner’s example is, the higher and more important he will seem to me, and the more respect I will feel towards him. This will give me the power to repay him to the same extent.

On the one hand, I have to raise my partner in my eyes and to appreciate the model he portrays. After all, he overcomes his impulses, and at the exact same time I discover a “weakness” as my ego pulls me by the legs downwards and doesn’t allow me to rise above myself. On the other hand, I should always be responsible and be a model for my partner and thereby empower him. Thus we become models for each other. Each one tries to be both the other’s teacher and student at the same time; once he raises his head and once he lowers it. This mutual support is already the right equal mutual connection. Thereby our mutual interdependence is revealed.

We have to discover the benefit that we get time after time, the new system of our mutual relations that is based on mutual concessions and on each one overcoming himself. We rise to the level of mutual love by leaving the mutual complaints below, but we don’t destroy anything and don’t “sweep under the carpet” anything, but only build something new from the same blocks, the same inner urges that constantly increase the ego.

Therefore, we constantly feel mutually dependent. I have to constantly support my partner and be a model of overcoming, and I need the same thing from him. Thus we become true partners against our common ego, against our common enemy, which we call the “serpent.” By confronting it we begin to get closer to each other and this makes us one whole.
[83549]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/11/12”

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Question: Why is it so important that the 99% of the population, in any case, reach integral unity? Is it possible to say that if they unite, then they will receive a form in which it will be possible to transfer the inner force from the 1%?

Answer: Absolutely correct. If people exist within the egoistic breakage, then it is impossible to transfer anything to them. Furthermore, we need to not only transfer this energy to them, this knowledge, but to draw them into the same state.

This means that 1% of the 100% of humanity does this actively, in connection with the upper force, in disclosure of the upper force within them.

And 99% of the inhabitants on the earth do this in a more passive way, by building integral relations, under the new integral conditions: “How can we, “squares,” “ triangles,” “rectangles,” transform into circles in harmony with the new world, to the new demands.

When they think about this and receive education and learning from the 1%, then gradually they turn into integral people. They begin to understand, in a natural way, what this new world is, and they discover the same upper force that the 1% discovered. The upper force operates and is revealed to them through the 1% of humanity, which constitute its “conductor.”

It isn’t some kind of artificial system, essentially, the same thing happening in our world. If we look at our world and dissect it as a pyramid, then we would see that only 1% operates it, creates, and dares. All the rest are the receivers. They participate physically, but actually they use the profits obtained from above, and only add to this their “fertilizer,” their strength.
[83460]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/29/12

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