Question: Could you give an example of a relationship between people that would be considered integral?

Answer: An integral relationship is when a person receives and bestows in a balanced manner. If the relationship between people works in this way, that means they are integrally connected.

I don’t want to keep repeating myself or sound like a socialist or a communist because that’s the last thing I am, but an integral society is one where everyone receives according to his necessities and bestows to society according to its needs. That constitutes an integral, global interconnection.

Under these circumstances a person enjoys and is fulfilled by his sensations, by what he discovers in this integral connection. It turns out that the more he bestows to others and the more he connects to an integral society, the more he is fulfilled by it. He begins to discover this system, enters it, and belongs to it.

He becomes an inseparable part of this system, like an electronic element, a resistor or a condenser, installed in the circuit, whereby the system begins to work with him in general harmony, and he feels it pass through him. The person begins to understand that he profits from being fully plugged into this system. And he doesn’t lose his individuality for he contributes himself, his qualities. If you’re a condenser, that’s what your role is, the same with a resistor, and so on. Essentially, you remain who you are.

Nature deliberately created us a certain way, precisely to allow everyone to be integrally connected to the general system via their maximum actualization in it. Your personal, individual, and unique participation does not contradict the integrality of the whole system; on the contrary, it allows you absolute self-expression.
[64002]
Talk on Integral Education 12/11/11

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Question: Why does our analysis eventually become increasingly blurred and vague?

Answer: The point is that you are shattered. It says that the Creator created man simply, but people have made many calculations. After all, the shattering preceded us.

Fundamental questions become “blurred” in your eyes because you don’t pass them through the group. After all, you can clarify things only in the group, in the commonality that you want to solder into a single whole.

There is no other place you can look for answers. You are looking for them in your mind, but your mind is “flat,” superficial. Our job is to connect all the shattered parts into one vessel. This is why I come to the group. For me it is a picture of many parts, and I have to collect them into one.

In other words, the group is the “model” of the Creator. It seems that He is “shooting” at me from every direction, but I have to identify Him as one. Through the whole world, through all the confusion both inside and outside, I only want to see one source. So how can I do that?

I have been given a big world and in it, the group. It seems that there are friends and that we have to make great efforts. But in truth, by developing my attitude towards them, I connect to my personal parts. From total strangers we become one. Thus I correct and build my vessel, and then I understand what “unity” is.

In the convention we somewhat attained this feeling of unity, and this is our great achievement. We felt that above us there is mutual bestowal and love, a reciprocal, single sensation, when we are all connected. This is already the beginning of the spiritual world. After all, spirituality is the dimension in which the level of my equivalence to the Creator is revealed.

So I have to find the answers to the questions that seem so vague in the right place—only in the group.
[63983]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/22/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: 15 years ago I took part in a personal growth training, which was divided into several stages. The last stage was realized in real life. We gathered and discussed things that were actually interesting. What was fundamentally different about that place was that it was supported with money, earned somewhere else. How can this be realized according to your program? A question arises: Where will I get the same apartment, the same bread, clothes, etc.?

Answer: Become part of this society of the future. Take 100% of the people with 100% of all the resources and distribute them based on the calculation that the society is working on providing everyone with a normal minimum necessary for existence. And the rest of the time people only spend creating an integrated connection between them.

You will see where you need to take and where you need to add something, and how many resource you will need to create this integrated connection. Naturally, the society will need to earn these resources.
[63996]
Talk on Integral Education 12/11/11

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Baal Hasulam, “The Freedom”: “Thus, he has substantially changed for the better from the tendency he had inherited from his forefathers. And sometimes one manages to completely uproot a bad tendency. This is done by habit, which has the ability to become a second nature.“

A habit becomes a second nature and there is a need for prior sensitivity in realizing it. After all, we are talking about special acts that are goal oriented, that change my nature.

This is the way we also behave with children when we let them do the same task over and over again until they suddenly begin to do it by themselves. If you try to stop a child from doing something that he is already used to, you won’t succeed. For him the habit is already associated with pleasure. Before he did it under our pressure, fearing that he would be punished if he didn’t do it, but now he sees the benefit in it, the lack of punishment and even a reward.

Eventually the action that was previously undesirable, now becomes rewarding, and this association is recorded in his brain. Now even if I don’t follow him, he continues to brush his teeth every morning and night even if no one gives him a candy for doing so. The model of the candy is already in his brain and it works successfully.

This is the habit. It isn’t just any habit, but an association that exists in his brain that ties the action with the candy. What is more, if I don’t do what I am used to, it is as if I am punished, although apparently nothing happens.

Our habits are related to smoking, eating, the way we dress and many other different things. They are constantly active, whether we notice them or not.

This is the complex “mechanism” that refers to the desire, in which every action or every thought is tied to a memory of pleasure. This pleasure is eternal, it is recorded and it stays in me in addition to the first factor. Even if it is not revealed at present, but rather in the past, meaning not in the inner Lights, but in the surrounding Lights, I still feel it.

Thus, the habit is created from the mutual cooperation between the Light and the vessel. We either create it by ourselves or receive it from the outside: from our parents or from other people.

Many human actions are based on this schema. Using it we train animals, educate children, and make ourselves used to things…even when we make an acquaintance with someone and have some kind of attitude towards him, we act according to patterns we are used to.

Thus, a habit becomes a second nature. This is one of the lines in the picture.
[63729]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/20/11, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: Is an integrated connection when I consider the interests of all the other people in every one of my actions?

Answer: Yes. But this needs to be studied, it needs to be taught, it needs to be practiced. The entire society needs to participate in this. Absolutely everyone must become students of the new world, they must study it.

Our lack of knowledge about it is the source of all our current problems. We have entered a new system of interaction between nature and us, interactions in the human society, in the universal unity of the world, and we do not know how to act. I was pushed into some new world and I absolutely do not know any of its laws. I am like an elephant in a china shop.

First of all, we need to understand a very simple principle: Nature will get us there anyway. If you wish to attain happiness by force—be my guest. If you wish to get there fast and easily—sure. The fast and easy way is the way of independent realization and a willing consent, when we move ahead of the blows coming from behind.
[63993]
Talk on Integral Education 12/11/11

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Question: What do you mean when you are talking about harmony?

Answer: Harmony is easy. It comes from the fact that there are two forces in nature: the force of bestowal (the positive force) and the force of receiving (the negative one), which at different levels (biological, physical, moral, and so on) manifest themselves as balanced systems. If these forces are balanced in the human body, the body is absolutely healthy. If they are balanced in nature, this means it’s in a state of absolute rest. A lack of balance leads to all sorts of movements.

Naturally, imbalance is necessary because it produces life. It’s the constant interaction between two forces within certain limits, the variation of their relation to each other that create life. For example, the expansion and contraction of the chest, heart, and other organs are built on mutual movement of the opposing forces that support and complement each other. Life is what occurs between them, owing to their proper and harmonious interaction.

In our development, we will reach a point when the entire human community will achieve precisely this mode of operation whereby all its parts mutually oscillate. But these oscillations, like breathing, will be interdependent with each other, when the force of bestowal is equal to the force of reception. They will alternately interact with each other: However much we give to nature, so should we receive; however much we receive, so we’ll have to give.

Then, we will live in harmony, homeostasis, meaning a state of mutual support. Nature that brings us to a state of equilibrium between its two main forces, the force of giving and the force of receiving, intends that we come to this. It’s nature’s general trend.

We can do nothing with this general universal law. We can only understand where we go and how to fit voluntarily, knowingly into this external, absolutely binding law. Thus, we’ll feel comfortable not only in the final state to which we will come, but at all stages of development.
[63841]
From a talk on Integral Upbringing, 11.12.2011

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Question: Is it necessary to strive towards the maximum unification that one can possibly imagine at the given moment?

Answer: We have to strive towards maximum unification and ever-increasing feeling of unity starting with the point we reached at the convention, and try to rise above it in spite of all disturbances. This is how a spiritual life begins.

On one hand, this point of unity becomes ever more subtle and sensitive, while on the other, you have more and more access to it. You start to develop yourself within it, and various interactions with your first spiritual state begin to arise in you, even if without complete conscious awareness. But as you return to it time after time, a certain attitude arises in you, a certain approach, a revelation of this state.

In this manner you gradually bring yourself to greater and greater contact with this point. And it expands, acquires all kinds of inner properties, certain “organs,” like in a person whom you do not know and then suddenly begin to see his manifested qualities. You have to gradually expand this point to the first ten Sefirot, and then you will begin to feel your existence within it.

The acceleration of this process depends only on you: on how frequently you will attempt to enter this point again and again. You will be cast out, but you will try to reenter it again. In this manner, quantity turns into quality.

Every person who felt this point of unity, and even those who didn’t feel it, can catch up to us, experience it (because it already exists, it was already born, it exists outside of us), and develop independently at a pace that depends only on the person himself. To the extent he will be thrown away from this point and to the extent he will strive to return to it—that is how he will advance.
[63285]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 12/11/2011

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Question: What should women’s work be now, after the convention?

Answer: In principle, a woman’s work is the same as a man’s: It is in caring for our unity, for the birth of our new state. In men, however, this state is more active, directed specifically towards unification.

By the way, I saw an impulse towards that in women as well: the way they suddenly embraced and held onto each other. It is very unnatural in our world, but on the other hand, it truly stemmed from their feeling of striving towards unity. It was quite wonderful to observe this. When people rise above themselves, they lose perception of gender, age, and all the differences of our world and unite in the internal awakening towards the upper one.

You sensed this aspiration from within your essence as a woman, and now you can describe and convey that to all the other women so they would have a good example. I was impressed by women’s behavior: to what extent they desire to support the men and are prepared to sacrifice everything for the sake of success. This is the women’s work—among themselves and in support of the men. The women comprise a single female part, and the men the single joint male image, and in this manner they work together.

I hope that you will feel this even deeper. We don’t yet have the ability to describe the sensations of our states. We lack the words; we don’t yet understand where we are. But try to do that anyway, at least with psychological impressions. Women know how to do that.

Write about yourselves, write about all your states, don’t be shy. Let it become an example for all the other women and enter our network so that through the women’s page on our website you could unite and prepare for the next convention. This is very important. Without women’s support no kind of success will be possible.
[63288]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 12/11/2011

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Question: Can we say that besides egoism, the Creator has imprinted another element in the desire: the point in the heart, which He will evoke at the right moment?

Answer: This point begins from the shattering.

Physicists admit that the more they penetrate matter, they “lose” particles. Each particle becomes a kind of a “cloud,” and these clouds mix up and together become very thick fog.

With the point in the heart things aren’t that simple either. It is a concept that contains all of the Light of Infinity, but in the opposite form. Thus it seems to us like a spark. It appears in its minimal form so that we will be able to hold on to this initial thread of connection.
[63829]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/21/11, Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

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Question: How can integral upbringing, which explains the general mutual connection, help us come out of the economic crisis smoothly?

Answer: We don’t perform the correction on the economic level, the financial level, or in the mutual commercial connections among us, but in our awareness and our recognition. We have to recognize the mutual connection among us and the need to adapt to nature.

It is as if we all buy a pair of new integral glasses. When a person puts them on, he will see one “round” world. He will see that we are all connected and that we depend on one another. We are so interdependent that only I can feed you and you can feed me. By ourselves, we will all die of hunger.

This seems terrible to our egotistic nature, but from now on there is no other way. And we can see that it is really close.

So we have to raise people’s awareness and then with this new perspective, we will gradually change our life. Our life will change because of the changes in us, whether we like it or not. How will we see it in the banks and the stock markets? This is another question. First let’s start to change, and then everything will begin to take shape.

This process will undoubtedly flow in the right direction because when we understand the total mutual connection, we will not be able to harm one another.

Therefore, integral education is primary and it should be arranged above all else. There is no need to dig too deeply. The shortcomings of the current situation must be disclosed precisely to the extent that it will make us realize the need for education and that only integral education can save us. We should recognize the fallacy of the current system, but not touch the system itself. It is so rotten, that it may collapse as a result of one careless movement and leave us with nothing.

Question: But there are “fires” that must be put out now.

Answer: If you start with integral education, you will see how they immediately begin to subside. And besides, there is no other method. It isn’t the first time that the best experts are dealing with this problem. How many meetings took place and how many promises have been made—but no solution? No one has a fire extinguisher. Everyone says what he thinks: give money, save money, be careful of saving….

So I repeat: The solution is on a totally different level.

In the meantime we should stop making any unnecessary movements, keep things quiet, and publicly declare that we should be very careful. After all, we are up to our necks in the swamp and any wave we might make may drown us.

Instead we should rise to another level and activate the education system. Then, when we look at the world through these new glasses, we will know how to solve our problems. We will know it internally. Thanks to the new education, people will begin to change, and thus change the balance with nature’s forces. We will accumulate the power of mutual help and will improve the mutual relations among people and among nations, and gradually come out of the old, crisis-stricken world.

Above the old system, we build a new system: This is the same mutual guarantee, but it is now adapted to specific fields like education, the family, the state, society, industry and the economy. The principle of mutual guarantee will be determined in every field according to a person’s internal changes.

I don’t know any other solution. The problem is only in realizing this and here we are at a crossroad: Should we go on using the usual methods that will eventually bring us to the rise of Nazi regimes, wars, and mass destruction, or should we follow the path Kabbalists recommend?
[63823]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/21/11, Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

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