Question: In my opinion, it is very important that we clarify that the true “self” is specifically within the group, for there are many times that we may try to clarify our true desires alone by ourselves, and we deceive ourselves. We discover tomorrow that we already want something different than what we wanted yesterday.

Answer: It is impossible to clarify this alone. Only a shared discussion can supply us with the correct, advanced values.

Question: Then, what? Will there be a single standard for everyone?

Answer: Each one will find one’s own standard, for there are no two people who feel the same world. It is as if we see one world; but each one comprehends it differently.

Question: How can I preserve my individuality if I work within the group and hear the desires of all the rest?

Answer: Other people show me the stages through which I must advance in order to discover my nature, discover my true space. Specifically, thanks to all that, I hear from others. I ultimately clarify what my space is.

Now, we want to build a relationship with a partner, but afterward, our couple will need to work on wider relationships with couples, with all of humanity. The group is a model of all of humanity and helps me to discover my inner space. This space requires not only connection with a partner, but, ultimately, it also requires development and connection with all of humanity as one family, transforming us into a single person.

Without the group, it is impossible to get along since the external Kli, vessel, the external force, must help me to open the internal Kli, my inner system of connection with someone. There must be an additional, higher level with whose help I can clarify my level, as a father and mother do for a child.

The entire group speaks of and clarifies the inner need of the person to be in contact with others. Contact with the others begins with those people who are naturally closest to us, like a partner, but we cannot build true connection between spouses if we are not found within a society. The society helps us to discover this deficiency in the right way—if I want to look at my partner correctly, to see her from the inside, and she wants to see me so that we both really will connect with each other.

If we want to peel all of the Klipot from ourselves and truly be connected this way where I fulfill her and she fulfills me, we need an environment that supports us and will help us to find all the spaces and clarify how to fill them. All this is possible only with the help of the environment.

The friends in a group help me to see what I want. They reveal this in me so that I begin to see this, but they don’t see this. I feel myself; no one can feel another person.
[111929]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 6/20/13

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In the News (from The Atlantic): “’Improbably enough, people who are better able to resist impulses report being more satisfied with their lives.

“Among humankind’s most valuable assets’ is self-control, according to Wilhelm Hofmann and his team of researchers at the University of Chicago. They define it as ‘the ability to override or change one’s inner responses’ and to refrain from acting on impulses. …

“The more self-control people reported having, the more satisfied they reported being with their lives. And contrary to what the researchers were expecting, people with more self-control were also more likely to be happy in the short-term. In fact, when they further analyzed the data, they found that such people’s increased happiness to a large extent accounted for the increased life satisfaction.

“As they go about their daily lives, people with a lot of self-control appear to generally be in higher spirits; in the long run, they’re happier with their lives. To explain why this would be so, the researchers conducted another online survey. What they figured out is that instead of constantly denying themselves, people high in self-control are simply less likely to find themselves in situations where that’s even an issue. They don’t waste time fighting inner battles over whether or not to eat a second piece of cake. They’re above such petty temptations.”

My Comment: Precisely, restriction (Tzimzum Aleph) and receiving after certain calculation with a specific intention (the screen and the Returning Light) makes reception acute (the Light of NRNHY), up to the point that a person can feel its source, the Creator, in any pleasure! That is the way the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us to reveal the Creator, through receiving pleasure from Him.
[112051]

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What will the future society be?

There is not much written about this. We will discover it gradually, on our own, in the process of building and shaping it. The principles described by Baal HaSulam make it clear that it will be a society of equal people, according to the same principle, which operates in the group, all are equal, all are friends.

Friend (chaver – חבר) derives from the word “connection” (chibur – חיבור). It literally means “entering” into each other, complementing one another by contributing our desires and thoughts. In this condition, we are united. That’s why the only concern of ours should be the way of “replenishing” others.

When we gather together in “tens” for workshops, we try to implement this principle. We should only supplement each other, never argue, and by no means “act smart.” The only thing that we need to do is fulfill our friends and provide mutual support. There is no room for anything else.

This clarifies the principles of a community life that Rabash talks about. This is a principle that has to be put into the core of the group we are building. It is not acceptable when a friend hurts or harms others. In order to build the future society, we should first build it among us so that it becomes an illustration for others. It should be based solely on mutual assistance; there cannot be any “dirty tricks” played on each other whatsoever. The group charter should reflect this.

However, Baal HaSulam writes that the future society—not a group, but society as a whole—can be built only after people rise to this developmental level, become ready to give up their egoism, and create a new type of social relationships. We need to bring them to this condition. So first of all, it is very important for us to act extensively and broadly open courses on integral education wherever possible.

By doing so, we’ll create a society of equals, a society in which everyone will get as much as one needs and will work for the good of all. Each will receive as much as he or she needs for normal existence and the rest will be redirected to create the same conditions for everyone in the world.

Nothing beyond basic necessities will be produced. However, it is not about contracting or reducing manufacturing of consumer goods to a minimum! No, we are talking about normal, human living conditions that we should not exceed. It’s no secret: If we get out of balance with nature, we begin to destroy it and eventually, in practice, we destroy the house we all live in.

The principles of building the future society are very simple. We physically feel and sense them when we are with our groups. Gradually, to the extent of the advancement of the groups and their “satellites” (non-Kabbalistic groups of people engaged in integral education), new extended communities will emerge. Gradually, they will expand their “territories,” establish rules of their own, start schools and other establishments. Gradually, they will become more connected.

On the other hand, this process can also be directed from above. We make attempts from the top, since any crisis begins from the top and goes to the bottom; everything is rotting from the head. We see that many countries are in totally desperate situations and we believe that sooner or later their governments will understand that there is a system of knowledge that can correct people, thus, allowing us to correct our civilization.

Let’s hope that it will be clear before too much blood is shed.

To sum up: If we want to advance personally, it’s possible only if we expand. If a group stops expanding, if it doesn’t “widen,” it stops advancing. And this is not because there won’t be new people joining it; we just have to work with the rest of the population to the best of our capacity. For that, before anything else, we have to organize and prepare ourselves. That’s why it is so important to engage in the methodology of integral education.

Some of you regard it as a burden, useful or useless, or even harmful. But this is not a burden; it is the same Kabbalah, the same kind of organization of society, or rather fragments of the soul, into a single soul according to the principle “love thy neighbor.” There is nothing new here; it’s just an explanation of all the laws of connection that exist betewen us. These laws are clarified in a plain, normal, human language and are obvious to everybody, not just to Kabbalists. That’s it, nothing more.

Even our groups are seriously engaged in studying and concentrating on the parts of the wisdom of Kabbalah that are the easiest to implement. Similarly, we teach others the rules that are the easiest for them to apply to reality.
[110302]
From the Convention in Krasnoyarsk 6/14/13, Lesson 4

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In the News (from bakadesuyo.com): “Behavior change is not easy. But there’s a great TED talk that shows a simple way to influence people to do the right thing. And it leverages a principle we can all use in our daily lives.

“Alex Laskey spoke about how we can use the psychology of behavior change to get people to reduce their energy consumption.

“Grad students hung signs on people’s doorknobs, asking them to turn off their air-conditioning and turn on their fans. What varied was the message the signs used.

“Which message do you think was most effective?

‘Save money’

‘Save the planet’

‘Be a good citizen.’

Actually, none of them were.

Nobody paid attention. Nobody turned off their air conditioners.

“But a fourth message did work:

‘Your neighbours are doing better.’

“When surveyed, 77% of your neighbors said that they turn off their air conditioners and turn on their fans. Please join them.

“This is Social Proof at work. Robert Cialdini, author of the classic book Influence, explained it in my interview with him: ‘People will be likely to say yes to your request if you give them evidence that people just like them have been saying yes to it, too.’

“We don’t like to think that we’re influenced by other people’s behavior but we all are. And one of the best ways to cause behavior change is to tap into that.”

My Comment: Kabbalah uses this great property of the influence of the environment on people for their correction. Under the influence of the environment, a person is ready to do even altruistic actions. That is why, when placed in the correct environment, he will be ready to submit himself to it without prior consent. So, instead of trying to influence a person, we need to create the right environment around him.
[111041]

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Opinion (Valentin Y. Katasonov, economist, Professor of Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Chairman of the Russian Economic Society): “I see in the plans of Europe’s transition to a negative interest the signs of overhaul of the entire banking system of usury capitalism.

“Negative interest rates on bank deposits is the evidence of the halt of the economy, which has ceased to grow, without getting any credit support by banks and diversion of money from the real economy to the financial markets. Banks are parasitized by the wealth accumulated by humankind and through the real sector of economy. …

“Today, the parasite has exhausted almost all the juice out of its victim and is on the brink of life and death. The traditional (economic) methods of parasitism are ceasing to work. We are witnessing (and to some extent becoming the participants of) the transition of the world to another financial and economic model. So, much more serious events might follow after the introduction of negative interest. For example, there might be a decision adopted by bankers to “bring to zero” all the financial assets and liabilities on a global scale.

“In the new model, the role of money will decline sharply, and their functions will be different than they are now. There could be the establishment of a rigid dictatorship of world bankers, i.e. the use of direct violence with the aim of turning people into bankers’ slaves. It is obvious that in a slave society, the role of money is minimal; slaves do not need it, and bankers do not need much money to meet their personal needs. The “golden million” will be served by the “dirty billion.” Several billion people on the planet do not fit into the bankers’ plans (or rather, they fit into the plan for global genocide). …

“Civil conflicts (and even wars) will inevitably arise as a result of opposition to the dictatorship of the bankers. … First, we need to understand: the negative percent is a harbinger of major changes and upheavals in the world.”

My Comment: One thing is certain: We are witnessing the end of egoistic development of humanity and its transition to the new socio-economic system—the integral society of the “last generation.”
[110949]

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Question: Which principles must be found in the future society, do they have a reciprocal connection with the spiritual world?

Answer: In the future society exactly the same Kabbalistic principles apply as in the spiritual world. This is the same Kabbalistic system of mutual connection of the corrected parts of creation of corrected souls, only it is described and explained in ordinary materialistic language and no more than this.

Either I say that we need to gather according to the Kabbalistic principles of “faith above reason,” “nullification,” “first restriction,” “second restriction,” “Returning Light,” and so forth or I say the same thing in a simple language—that people need to begin to connect despite their ego and then they will sense the discovery of a unique collective force among them, which in fact is the upper Light.
[110500]
From the Convention In Krasnoyarsk 6/14/13, Lesson 4

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In the News (from BBC News): “As many as 200,000 people have marched through the streets of Brazil’s biggest cities, as protests over rising public transport costs and the expense of staging the 2014 World Cup have spread.

“‘For many years, the government has been feeding corruption, people are demonstrating against the system,’ Graciela Cacador told Reuters news agency.

“Others complained about vast sums of money spent on hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics instead of being invested in health and education.

“This is a communal cry saying: ‘We’re not satisfied!,’ Maria Claudia Cardoso told the Associated Press news agency.

“‘We don’t have good schools for our kids. Our hospitals are in awful shape. Corruption is rife. These protests will make history and wake our politicians up to the fact we’re not taking it anymore,’ she said.

“‘We need better education, hospitals and security, not billions spent on the World Cup,’ said one mother who attended the Sao Paulo march with her daughter.”

My Comment: “Without bread there is no Torah.” When the income level of families fall below the minimum cost of living, the “red light” flashes in their head, and they want to survive, not to have fun. But the modern state structure will not be able to create the distribution system that guarantees the minimum cost of living. Without integral education, no one is ready: neither the officials, the givers, nor citizens, the recipients.
[110515]

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Opinion (Yehuda Elkana, distinguished historian and philosopher of science, former President and Rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary): “We face the following problem: our science, technology, medicine, governance, and economy in our global world have become so advanced and so complex, that we need all the energy to produce carriers of knowledge on the highest level who not only are technically equipped to cope with what is there, but who can also find the appropriate measures for dealing with crisis-like emergencies in ecology, epidemics, famine, and destitution… . In other words we need many ‘experts’ who do more of the same, instead of rethinking the foundations. Yet it is indispensable to find the few thousands of intellectuals all around the globe who will rethink the world, discipline by discipline and problem area by problem area.”

My Comment: Intellectuals who are able to rethink our world are the Kabbalists and no one else! After all, we for the first time in history have reached the insolubility of accumulated problems. And problems are in everything we are engaged with in our world. They cannot be solved through external changes and mechanisms (new technologies, economic or social reforms, wars and revolutions) but through demanding inner changes—the changes of the human himself—changing his attitude towards himself, others, the world, instead of devouring our world (himself, society, nature) to taking care of everyone and everything.

In this case, people will come to the rational use of resources and consumption and to kind communication. This change is possible in a person only by means of Integral Education. The solution to the crisis is in the realization of the project of the implementation of Integral Education.
[109740]

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Opinion (Alain de Benoist, French academic, philosopher): “The Earth is the finite (exhaustible) space. In the end, there cannot be endless material growth in the finite space. Therefore, we must give up the idea of the quantitative growth. All the classical economists argue that growth is a natural phenomenon, considering that natural resources are infinite.

“In our time, a state is powerful if it is able to meet the challenge of time. If growth leads to disaster, then the countries that have implemented a policy of rational economic downturn will be least exposed to it.”

My Comment: There is no need to induce artificial recession; we need to change society gradually and gently by introducing integral education where individual and social changes will bring about changes in all the structures (political, economic, etc.) in a natural (optimal) way.
[109658]

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Question: In a peaceful society, a government of sages, great teachers, and saints is appreciated more. But in times of trouble, the first line goes to the revolutionaries and rebels who gradually become dictators. We are facing mass unemployment. Today it is already clear that revolutionary leaders are beginning to seize power easily. How will the new era that we will enter in the future replace these leaders, or will rebels and revolutionaries have to become educators?

Answer: Societies in which revolutionaries are prominent are the least stable societies that have no clear direction. They exploit every idea that at the moment seems necessary for attaining power.

As a rule, they combine this with religion and do so in most fanatic and cruel form. That’s because this is the most basic and prominent form that can be explained simply, adapted to certain needs, and presented to everyone. It doesn’t require any knowledge, quests, or inner freedoms, but on the contrary, only personal fanaticism and a range of vision contracted to a minimum: Who is with you and who is your enemy, and that’s all.

The problem is that the two weak civilizations clash. Western civilization has weakened itself in that it has completely neglected its cultural heritage. In the 19th century it was totally different. Its main value was the development of science and culture. Now everything has deteriorated.

Now neither science nor culture is valued, except perhaps only in a form that interests the leaders according to their personal, mercantile considerations that help to strengthen their regime. In our day only money and power have value, and they have transformed into identical concepts. Wealth, once despised even by great scientists and people of culture, has become above all. Today all scientists and people of culture can be “bought.”

This characterizes today’s Western “decadence.” We clearly see that the bestial state of a person in this society is what is most important and comes closest to the Roman barbarism: “bread and circuses.”

The absolute lack of education of the masses is what has led to this state. Instead of attracting the masses to culture, to the scientific elite, which were valued in the 19th century, absolute degradation has taken place. What is amazing is that all this began with Germany, which in the past was the cultural and scientific center of Europe. It was precisely there that this transformation took place.

And now Western civilization is encountering and intermixing with the Eastern civilization that expands not thanks to science, art, and technology, but through the power of the masses, meaning multiplication and fanaticism, that is, pressure.

Thus we see that this is what is taking place in Europe and now in America as well. In the end, it will come to the point when the Asiatic-Arabic culture may “swallow” the world.
[108850]
From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/17/13

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