Question: There are factions among the people of Israel who are involved in separation from the people and demonization of the nation, including even those values that make up the consensus. How do we deal with this; how is it possible to achieve unity in the face of this?

Answer: We don’t need to be involved with people and their actions, even if they represent the government. It is said in Proverbs 21:1: The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD… Even if they are those who in our world are considered to be knowledgeable or influential, they are basically only carrying out the actions that are imposed upon them by the upper force. Each of them is just a puppet.

We must turn to the upper force that manages them and not take the people themselves into account. We pay attention to them only because through this, we are examining whether or not we are correctly building our relationship with the Creator.

According to this, we examine if we are correctly or incorrectly constructing our relationship with the Creator. In addition, the principle from Exodus 10:1: Come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart… is operable here.

So here we simply need to work more on unity, connection, and dissemination.

We have nothing to work on besides connection within the group in order to influence the Creator. We should not relate to anything external unless they come up against us in war. War requires a response and we must influence everything else through the Creator.

Nothing influences a person directly. Disputes are useless. Discussions help in clarifying certain points so that they will be more understandable to everyone. That is another matter and for that purpose, I am ready to speak with a person, not to convince him, but to bring the message to other people.

Only the Upper Light can correct. And so we have no need for arguments; they don’t work. It is possible to persuade someone solely and only through the higher power. The Creator manages everything. The upper force, the Light, influences everyone, and at each and every moment, arranges the present state of the world among people in all kinds of forms and relationships.

So it follows that we need to turn to the Upper Light and not to the world. We also see that nobody is prepared to influence or convince anyone. Even the world leaders really discover their insignificance in the understanding of what is happening and their own abilities. They are arguing like children on the street.

Unlike them, we can influence the upper force, and through that, the correction of the world. This is our mission.

There is none else beside Him, and by turning to Him, there is none else besides you. If you want to organize the world beautifully and correctly, and prepare it for revelation of the Creator, then you are running along with the Light in the right direction.

Question: What does it mean to “influence the Elyon (upper one)?”

Answer: This means creating all the conditions for Him to be revealed. Through this I give Him contentment. And these conditions are bringing the powers of bestowal, Ohr Hassadim (Light of Mercy) to this world. After all, the Creator is Ohr Hochma (Light of Wisdom), which after Tzimtzum Aleph (first restriction) can be revealed only if Ohr Hassadim precedes it. That is what I must bring to the world.
[134151]
From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/01/14, Writings of  Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati 159, “And It Came To Pass In The Course Of Those Many Days:” This is the meaning of “the king of Egypt died,” that all the dominations of the king of Egypt, which he was providing for and nourishing, had died.

The king of Egypt died inside us and  the control of the ego upon us disappeared. Therefore, we were not able to work anymore. We were always working in order to receive and then to bestow in order to receive.  And suddenly there is no one to work for since the desire to receive disappeared. And if there is no desire, then there is nothing to do, no desire to bestow or receive. The ego disappears, we come to despair and don’t know where to go.

We don’t have a reason to move; we feel disconnected from life, which suddenly becomes in vain. But, clearly this is exactly the passage to the next degree. If at this moment we are powerless, it precisely indicates our dependency on the force of desire and how it held us in its complete control.

“The king of Egypt died,” that is, our ego stopped being important to us. We no longer try to fulfill it as before, nor do we feel that there is any vitality in this fulfillment.

In ordinary life it is clear to us that if I we are fed up with a game, it is not as important as before, that is, that the king of Egypt, the ego, that was part of the game and fulfilled us, does not fulfill us anymore. Therefore, we look for another game, changing our place of work or lifestyle.

But, in spiritual work we don’t know how to change a problem. In regular life we have TV, the Internet, advertisements, and we constantly choose where else we can find enjoyment and what else can be experienced. We enter the supermarket and see endless varieties of wine, cheese, and meat on the shelves. If you don’t want one thing, take another one. This confuses people and creates an illusion of a variety of pleasures, and this calms people by showing them that there is always something to fulfill them. Nevertheless, we see that with all the sufferings, a large percentage of people suffer from depression, complete despair, and drug use.

Because we progress toward mutual spiritual work, today in our world people do not understand where the king of Egypt disappeared to. Before he provided aspiration for work from which we received different fulfillments. But today, everything has disappeared and this is a problem in our lives.

We understand that we cannot change jobs anymore; there is no place to where we can escape, and we will need to concentrate on finding a new king. Meaning, we must receive the control of the force to bestow without any reward, to receive force from above and perform actions that are directed upward and toward people outside of us.

We only need to request to disconnect from any self-benefit, from our future, from fulfillment, and from good or bad feelings within us.

And afterward, when they walked in the desert and came to a state of Katnut, (smallness), they craved the servitude that they had had prior to the death of the king of Egypt.

When man had previously disconnected from working for his ego and had risen above it, he again is brought back to the feeling of the desires, intentions, pleasures, and fulfillments he had in the past! This is done so that above his feeling of disconnection, he will build the same state on a spiritual level.
[133046]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/14, Shamati #159

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Our good fortune depends upon establishing good relationships between us. I try to do this in every way, but suddenly there is an explosion and somebody takes me out of balance and away from the right direction. In order to maintain this intention, we must have general agreement, a system of education that is designed especially for this purpose..

This is what must be taught to children at school, so that they will not behave the way they do today. This is a nationwide problem that must be solved on a national scale, and doesn’t just depend on someone’s desire or lack of desire.

No one wants this since it is contrary to our ego and not easy to realize. So we must create a system of education that will bring us closer to one another.

Our entire salvation is only in this. Two thousand years ago the people of Israel lost their land precisely because of unfounded hatred. Today we have again found ourselves in a dangerous situation, so let’s get closer to each other.

Baal HaSulam writes: All of our hope is in recreating a national education that is designed to discover the natural love that is latent in our people so that by all means we will go back and revive the same national muscles which have not operated in us for two millennia.

From the days of our father Abraham, who left Babylon, until the destruction of the second Beit HaMikdash (Temple), that is, for about 1,500 hundred years, the people of Israel lived in complete unity.

Question: What does it mean to live in unity? Does it mean that there won’t be any quarrels with one’s wife at home?

Answer: For this, it is necessary to have education that will lead to good attitudes, including women and children.

Question: This sounds like some kind of utopia. What exactly will happen with people? Will they stop being egoists?

Answer: People will be able to control their ego. You won’t do this to become good and to not quarrel with your wife, but because through quarreling, you are destroying the lives of all people in the world. This is specifically you, and even because you quarreled with your wife.

Imagine that your relationship with your wife influences the relationships of an immense number of men with their wives, because you are a Jew.

Question: So if a Frenchman quarrels with his wife, this doesn’t influence others as strongly?

Answer: No, this doesn’t have an influence in the way that a Jewish man quarreling with his wife does. This is because Jews are the first in the general system who must realize the law of Arvut (mutual guarantee), the connection between everyone. And after that, the whole world must also be included in this law of Arvut, in the general unity. It is specifically towards general unity that nature is pushing us, towards general unity.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 3/08/15

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In the News (Time): “Loneliness kills. That’s the conclusion of a new study by Brigham Young University researchers who say they are sounding the alarm on what could be the next big public-health issue, on par with obesity and substance abuse.

“The subjective feeling of loneliness increases risk of death by 26%, according to the new study in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. Social isolation — or lacking social connection — and living alone were found to be even more devastating to a person’s health than feeling lonely, respectively increasing mortality risk by 29% and 32%.

“The researchers emphasized the difference between the subjective, self-reported feeling of loneliness and the objective state of being socially isolated. Both are potentially damaging, the study found. People who say they are alone but feel happy are at increased risk of death, as are those who have many social connections but say they are lonely. People who are both objectively isolated and subjectively lonely may be at the greatest risk of death, says Julianne Holt-Lunstad, an author of the study, though she notes that more data would be needed to know with certainty.”

My Comment: This problem will be manifested increasingly as the world becomes more tied with external connections, but people become more and more lonely. There is a constant discrepancy between our negative and positive connections in the world, and the magnitude of this discrepancy brings about all the suffering in the world.
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In the News (Infowars): “The new ranking system will instead use what it has determined to be ‘truth’ as its ranking tool. This Orwellian move opens the door for Google to homogenize thought and become the global arbiters of truth, with the ability to send content it declares as ‘untrue’ into the dustbin of obscurity.

“The term ranking refers to the position at which a particular site appears in the results of a search engine query. A site or a web page is said to have a high ranking when it appears at or near the top of the list of results provided by a search. Under Google’s current set up, the higher the number of incoming links to a website or page, the higher the ranking. The content is considered too, but much of it is about popularity.

“A recently published paper from Google outlines how it’s going to take care of that, by giving each website or page a ‘truth score’ determined by counting the number of ‘incorrect facts’ on its pages. A website having few ‘false facts’ will be considered trustworthy and will be able to rise in the rankings. The score computed for each page will be known as its Knowledge-Based Trust score.

“Google’s software will tap into its new Knowledge Vault, an automated data base currently being hailed as the largest store of knowledge in human history. The Knowledge Vault gathers and merges information from across the internet into a base of ‘facts’ about the world, and the people who live in it. These are facts the software agrees on and considers a proxy for truth, based on their being accepted as truth by the majority of people.

“Websites that contain information contradictory to what is in the Knowledge Vault, known as ‘untruths’ will be kicked down to the bottom of the ranking, where few eyeballs venture to go.”

My Comment: Everything is heading towards a person’s complete submission.. This is the call of egoism. If it were not for the purpose of creation bringing everyone to the likeness to the Creator through the realization of  the insignificance of our nature, then of course, Google’s management plan would succeed.
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Opinion (Paul Craig Roberts, American economist and columnist for Creators Syndicate): “According to the official economic fairy tale, the US economy has been in recovery since June 2009. This fairy tale supports America’s image as the safe haven, an image that keeps the dollar up, the stock market up, and interest rates down. It is an image that causes the massive numbers of unemployed Americans to blame themselves and not the mishandled economy. Industrial production, properly deflated, remains well below the pre-recession level.

“Economists it appears, have simply vanished from the earth. Or, if some are still present, they have lost their voices and do not speak.

“Consider ‘globalism.’ Every country has been convinced that globalism is imperative and that not to be part of the ‘global economy’ means economic death. In fact, to be part of the global economy means death.

“Understand the economic destruction that globalism has wreaked on the United States. Millions of middle class factory jobs and professional skill jobs such as software engineering and Information Technology have been taken away from the American middle class and given to people in Asia. In the short-run this drops labor costs and benefits the profits of the US corporations that offshore the jobs, but the consequence is to destroy the domestic consumer market as jobs that permit the formation of households are replaced with lowly paid part-time jobs that do not.

“When manufacturing jobs are offshored, the US plants are closed, and the tax base of state and local governments declines. When the governments have trouble servicing their accumulated debt, the tendency is not to meet their pension obligations. This reduces retiree incomes, incomes already reduced by zero or negative interest rates.

“If households cannot form, the demand for housing, home appliances and furnishings declines. College graduates return home to live with their parents.

“Part-time jobs hurt the ability to save. People are only able to purchase cars because they can get 100 percent financing, and more in order to pay off an existing car loan that exceeds the vehicle’s trade-in value, in a six-year loan.

“This unraveling of consumer demand, the basis for our economy, was entirely obvious at the very beginning. Yet junk economists or hired corporate mouthpieces promised Americans a ‘New Economy’ that would provide them with better, higher paying, cleaner jobs to take the place of the jobs moved abroad. As I have pointed out for more than a decade, there is no sign of these jobs anywhere in the economy.

“Globalism, like neoliberal economics, is an instrument of economic imperialism. Labor is exploited, while peoples, cultures, and environments are destroyed. Yet the propaganda is so powerful that people partake of their own destruction.”

My Comment: Egoism is invincible! The Book of Zohar says  that we are being prepared for the poison on the end of the blade that the angel of death brings to the mouth, and the unfortunate human being has no other option but to open his mouth and swallow the drop of poison.

After all, he feels pleasure in it and only afterward—death! Only by the influence of the Upper Light can we bring about its correction. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah explains to us.
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Question: Who needs to be in power in Israel, the right or the left?

Answer: Neither one nor the other. Managing the process should be people who understand what unity is. As it is said in Jeremiah 51:5: Israel is not widowed. There are people like this in the world and I hope that we find them and that they will also organize and act.

We hope that we will succeed in bringing the people of Israel to such a state in which nobody will feel himself hurt or left out, where everyone will have a normal standard of living, housing, and everything they want. After all, if we unite, we can organize life in the best way, without any obstacles, and become an example for others.

The world of today is split, divided, and separated, and in this state, thanks to the right example, we can truly become a “light unto the nations.” This is what we must choose bit is because also the true choice of the people now. In whatever direction we go, we must choose the path of agreement and mutual understanding, the golden path that connects the camps of the right and the left.

What I hope for today for the people of Israel is that they make the real choice after the political election. Good luck!
[155848]
From the Talk on “Elections,” 3/18/15

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In the News (Scientific American): “A person’s experience as a child or teenager can have a profound impact on their future children’s lives, new work is showing. Rachel Yehuda, a researcher in the growing field of epigenetics and the intergenerational effects of trauma, and her colleagues have long studied mass trauma survivors and their offspring. Their latest results reveal that descendants of people who survived the Holocaust have different stress hormone profiles than their peers, perhaps predisposing them to anxiety disorders.

“Yehuda’s team at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Bronx, N.Y., and others had previously established that survivors of the Holocaust have altered levels of circulating stress hormones compared with other Jewish adults of the same age. Survivors have lower levels of cortisol, a hormone that helps the body return to normal after trauma; those who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have even lower levels.

“This finding echoes the results of many other human epigenetic studies that show that the effects of certain experiences during childhood and adolescence are especially enduring in individuals and sometimes even across generations.

“With low levels of cortisol and high levels of the enzyme that breaks it down, many descendants of Holocaust survivors would be ill adapted to survive starvation themselves. In fact, that stress hormone profile might make them more susceptible to PTSD; previous studies have indeed suggested that the offspring of Holocaust survivors are more vulnerable to the effects of stress and are more likely to experience symptoms of PTSD. These descendants may also be at risk for age-related metabolic syndromes, including obesity, hypertension and insulin resistance, particularly in an environment of plenty.”

My Comment: If you take into account the 20 centuries of systematic oppression, then it is not clear how these people can still experience joy, bring up children, and love humor.
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Why are we living in this world?—Every child asks this question beginning around the age of five, and this is because within us is found a Reshimo (reminiscence), a spiritual gene that must be developed. It pushes us from within.

This gene, this desire, requires fulfillment, an answer to the question, “What are we living for? What is the meaning of life?” Later, we forget this question, and in our pursuit of life, we no longer return to it since we don’t have time to think about it and regard it as a useless thought.

However, we see that this question constantly draws our attention in all kinds of situations throughout our lives, and considering how many people are in despair, get divorced, need drugs, and require antidepressants, we see that in spite of everything, this question still is very strong.

This gene is planted in us because at the end of our development, our evolution, we need to reach a state in which all of us ask the question, “What are we living for?” Why live?” “What is the meaning of life?”

It is possible to ask this question in another way: “Why does nature, which is so perfect and purposeful, create a person with such great potential, but leave him without an answer to the questions of how to build one’s life,  and what to achieve in life?”

We see what tremendous wisdom is latent in every cell, in every body, in the connection between us, and we see how much information we haven’t yet discovered! However, even from what we have discovered with the help of science, we see such a wonderful wisdom hidden in all of this rich mechanism, and yet, we who are at the summit of this science, at its peak, don’t see any meaning in our lives. How is such a thing possible? Without a doubt there is a purpose to our existence, but we don’t know what it is and we need to discover it.

So, someone who asks himself about the meaning of life ultimately reaches the wisdom of Kabbalah.
[155154]
From Israeli Radio Program 103 FM, 1/18/15

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In the News (The Economist):  “’VIRTUE,’ according to George Bernard Shaw, ‘is insufficient temptation.’ But new research on the consumption patterns of the environmentally minded suggests that virtue and self-indulgence often go hand-in-hand.

“A recent paper by Uma Karmarkar of Harvard Business School and Bryan Bollinger of Duke Fuqua School of Business finds that shoppers who bring their own bags when they buy groceries like to reward themselves for it. For two years the authors tracked transactions at a supermarket in America. Perhaps unsurprisingly, shoppers who brought their own bags bought more green products than those who used the store’s bags. …

“A study from 2011 on water-conservation in Massachusetts shows how. In the experiment, some 150 apartments were divided into two groups. Half received water-saving tips and weekly estimates of their usage; the other half served as a control.

“The households that were urged to use less water did so: their consumption fell by an average of 6% compared with the control group. The hitch was that their electricity consumption rose by 5.6%. The moral licensing was so strong, in other words, that it more or less outweighed the original act of virtue.

“Moral licensing does not seem to occur when virtuous conduct is obligatory. In one study, participants imagined themselves doing community service. Then they were asked to pick between two rewards: an indulgent one (a pair of designer jeans) and a practical one (a vacuum cleaner). If they were told to imagine that they had been sentenced to community service for a driving violation, they were much less likely to choose the jeans than if they pictured themselves as volunteers. The best way to get people to do good, it seems, is to make them feel bad about themselves.”

My Comment: We are commanded to act either by nature (the path of suffering) or by Kabbalah (the path of Light) in order to realize the insignificance of our egoistic nature, from which, in this case, there is an opportunity to escape.
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