Baal HaSulam, “Exile and Redemption”: The Creator will evidently show us that Israel cannot exist in exile, and will find no rest as the rest of the nations that mingled among the nations and found rest, and assimilated in them, until no trace was left of them.

On the whole, the vessels of reception are divided into 70 parts called “the nations of the world.” During the shattering they have all become integrated and were also integrated with the desire to bestow.

But there is another problem here: On the one hand, the integration of the desires to receive doesn’t create a collision. Even if they are different, they don’t contradict one another by nature. On the contrary, they operate according to a collective plan of receiving, and they certainly understand one another. On the whole, the nations of this world also understand one another and feel that they belong to the human race.

But it isn’t so with the desires to bestow, with those in whom there are sparks of bestowal. What is more, they were also in the corrections during the time of the Temple. There are Reshimot (informational records) of bestowal left in them and so they belong to a totally different species. This is where the conflict is created: The desire to receive, by its very nature, hates the desire to bestow, which is opposite from it and which seems to force it to bestow. The desire to bestow, on its part, doesn’t feel hatred towards the desire to receive, since it was sent by the Creator to take care of the desire to receive and to help it and not to be hostile to it.

So on the part of the Jewish people there is no hatred towards the nations of the world, but there is some weakness. The nations of the world, however, hate the Jews, because the desire to receive wants to catch the desire to bestow and to enslave it under its dominance. That’s the way things are, when “something from nothing” encounters ” something from something.” The events in our world stem from the upper nature.
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From the 4^th part the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/29/12, “Exile and Redemption”

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If there is one desire to receive in us and nothing but that, then we operate like robots. The moment some pleasure illuminates for us, we immediately begin to chase it and the moment we feel sufferings, we try to escape them. It is the natural behavior of every created being: the inanimate, vegetative, or animate.

An ordinary person in our world is no different from animals when it comes to this, because the desire to receive also operates in him, but his desire to receive is simply more sophisticated and confused since a person doesn’t understand where it comes from all of the sudden.

Animals operate according to their natural instincts and there is nothing external that influences them. A person, however, is motivated by attributes such as envy, lust, and honor. He is impressed by the environment that can influence him to value things that are against his nature and which destroy him.

Society doesn’t operate in favor of the individual, but in favor of the general egoistic, broken society. If one person is an egoist, then he simply operates like an animal with his small ego. He tries to get along in this world as well as he can: to build himself a better home, with healthier, more comfortable conditions. He tries to do what is beneficial for his body.

This is how people developed in ancient times. But when their ego grew and forced them to connect, in order to make a greater profit one at the expense of another, this egoistic connection generated a phenomenon called “public opinion.” This environmental effect became harmful for the individual, since not only did the ego grow because of such a connection, but it also took on distorted forms that are far from the natural forms.

It wasn’t a natural connection, but a distorted connection of desires, since when many egoists connect, their desires are opposite to the other desires and it is impossible to understand how they can even connect. So the influence of the environment on each individual brings about such distortions and corruptions of the natural desire, such as: envy, lust, honor, and power.

This is how humanity developed: The individual ego grew, and as a result of the distorted connections of egoists under the negative influence of the social system on every individual, society developed in a direction that is opposite from Holiness, from the corrected state which we eventually have to reach in the future.

Our social values have drawn light years away from the natural human needs… and as a result we all operate according to artificial, egoistic values that only harm us. But we are compelled to operate this way since we are subordinate to the law according to which the environment affects a person.

The whole problem is in the fact that this environment is bad and our big, complex, and distorted ego has mutated in different ways from one generation to another so we don’t even understand that it affects us and leads us in ways that are opposite from the natural correct way.
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From the 1^st part the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/29/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot” 

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Opinion (Steen Jakobsen, Chief Economist & CIO, Saxo Bank): “Policy makers are finally realising that social tension can overtake much needed reforms and financing needs by virtue of rallying the voters. Note that the groups of people demonstrating across Europe are no longer just unions or public employees. This is now a national issue for many countries. One generation of youth has already been lost, with all the negative consequences expected for productivity, innovation and pure outlook on life. …

“IF – the policy makers ignore this call for ‘change’, then the voters will be radicalised, moving to the extreme left and right politically. We are considering having an Outrageous Prediction for 2013 that include a serious move back to Communism in Eastern Europe and towards more autocratic states in Southern Europe. …

“In times of crisis people go to extremes – and this is now a full blown crisis, as we have a banking, economic, political and social crisis in place. It can’t get much worse actually, which is probably a good thing. … Is it time for change now? I doubt it, but this is a step in the right direction, and it proves, once again, that to create a mandate for change you need to see a serious crisis.”

My Comment: If Europe does not understand its only remedy—integral education—it will split not only into states, but even into smaller formations to match the ego.
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The science of Kabbalah should be revealed to a person only when he wants to understand the meaning of life. However, if he doesn’t yet possess this desire, if he’s totally immersed in the life of this world and is only concerned with securing his life for the time of his existence, then there’s no point in telling him about the science of Kabbalah. It isn’t for him and it can only confuse him. Let him continue his egoistic development and not touch upon the science of Kabbalah.

It’s for this reason that the Kabbalists throughout the centuries have concealed this science, waiting until humanity reached a state in its development where it began asking about the meaning of life. We see this now in the great problems of the world, in the comprehensive general crisis that permeates absolutely every sphere of human activity.

This is evident by humanity’s current depressed state, reflected in the number of suicides, and by the fact that the world is on a downslide and can’t do anything about it. Everyone is on a downslide, the elite as well as regular people. There’s a gradual disappearance of the middle class, manufacturing industry is fading; we’re losing interest in life. We don’t know what to do. We realize that there’s a possibility of a third world war, but we view this calmly as though it’s our fate pulling us somewhere, because we realize that we have no strength, no knowledge or even desire to put up any resistance. Alienation and powerlessness reign in the world.

It’s precisely in this generation that the science of Kabbalah must be revealed because from it they will not only understand how to exit the current state, which has left them hopeless, but also to discover what awaits them in the future: an eternal, perfect, whole, exalted state, which is billions of time greater than anything we could ever feel in this world.
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From the Virtual Lesson 11/18/12

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Whatever happens to humanity is a result of the collision between two forces: the force of bestowal and the force of receiving. There is nothing but these two forces. So it is useless to fight anti–Semitism directly, since it is clearly a natural phenomenon. It stems from the shattering of the vessels, as a result of which sparks of bestowal penetrated the desires to receive and are now opposed to one another, and so this hatred has to exist.

It was revealed even before the shattering of the vessels, but not to such an extent. History and the system of upper forces show us this in the confrontation between Jacob and Esau, the confrontation between Balaam and Balak and the Israeli nation. It is clear that this phenomenon is above nature, which means that its root precedes the creation itself.

There are two forces: the Creator and a created being, “something from something” and “something from nothing.” The force “something from something” has already awoken in some people, a spark of the Creator, and so they are hated by other people (the vessels/desires) in which there is no such force.

There is nothing to blame or to justify them for; it is simply a natural phenomenon that we should accept, just like a sunset. So there is no logical solution to it; there are many Jewish organizations that fight anti-Semitism, but it doesn’t help. After all, how is it possible to fight a natural phenomenon? It was created before us, from the contrast between two forces and it comes from Above, spreading into the world this way.

As long as the group that carries the sparks of bestowal doesn’t fulfill them, it will be hated by everyone else. It is because it is like a thorn among everyone else, alien and strange. If the Israeli nation wants to resemble the other nations externally, nothing will help. This inner spark, the Reshimo (spiritual gene), doesn’t disappear, and so it can always be identified in those who have it.

When they went to exile, to live in other countries, the Jews usually tried to resemble those around them, but it should be the other way around. They will not achieve anything by trying to resemble the others. On the contrary, by that they will ignite even greater hatred towards them. The hate will disappear only if they correct themselves when they reach the state Baal HaSulam calls “altruistic communism,” which means achieving a corrected form of society. Thus they will serve as a model for all the other nations who, in the meantime, are sinking deeper into the general global crisis for which there is no solution.

This is the mission of those who carry the sparks of bestowal. It isn’t only those who clearly belong to the Jewish nation by birth. As a result of the integration of the desires during the shattering, the sparks of bestowal penetrated everyone, but in some of the people they are revealed more openly and in others less. Eventually, these sparks will awaken and be discovered in everyone, since all of humanity needs to reach correction, regardless of race or color: black, white, red, or yellow.

Any person in whom this spark is lit is attracted to the revelation of the goal of creation, which means to be in contact with the Creator. It is in this connection that the secret of life and of Creation is revealed. If we follow the call of this spark and establish the connection between us in order to be one whole, then it is expressed in the world in the form of altruistic communism, as each one has a standard of living that is equal to others and everyone is connected.

On the corporeal level, people will only worry about the basic necessities, and we will direct all our other forces to connection and to spiritual ascent. Thus we will be able to show everyone else that the solution for the crisis is in equality.

Equality is not in being like all the other nations in their current form, as the sparks of bestowal are trying to adapt themselves to the needs of the egoistic desires into which they have fallen. On the contrary, we have to correct ourselves before all the nations and then draw everyone to the spiritual level.

Only in this way will we be able to correct all the hatred that divides our vessels. We need a systematic perspective of this problem and not an emotional one. It is a very important question since here in this world we cannot see the whole revelation of the shattering and understand what has to be done in order to correct them.

It is a waste of time and energy spent senselessly. We have to understand that the choice is in our hands, and the correction depends on us, on all those in whom the sparks of bestowal have lit up. All the others, who belong to the nations of the world, are not to blame that the force of the shattering speaks from them. It is only us who are the reason for the whole crisis since we don’t hurry to perform the correction. Let’s hope that we will be able to correct all this quickly.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/27/12

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Opinion (George Monbiot): “Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch. You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices. …

“There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs. Of the 2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, will feed people.

“I am sorely tempted to write another column about biofuels. From this morning all sellers of transport fuel in the United Kingdom will be obliged to mix it with ethanol or biodiesel made from crops. The World Bank points out that ‘the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol … could feed one person for a year.’

“While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals – which could cover the global food deficit 14 times. If you care about hunger, eat less meat.”

My Comment: But if we could establish equal reasonable allocation of the necessary food, no one in the world would have felt hunger or lack; Earth can feed billions more people with coordinated organization of people, but more people will suffer from hunger in the uncorrected state of society in order to come to its correction.
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Question: How do you see the year 2013 for the world group and for all of humanity?

Answer: I see 2013 as an excellent year.

All the media is sharpening our focus now on the fact that this year will not be easy: the lack of harvests, an overall rise in prices, general layoffs, climate problems, with more and more, and so on. That is, nature and society will present us with unpleasant surprises. This is something that concerns all of humanity.

With respect to our advancement, I think it will be a great year. Of course, not because of this suffering, but because we will try to reduce the suffering for humanity and show people how to use it properly, to rise above it.

That is, there is a force that can be negative and can be positive.

If you look at it directly, so to speak, head-on, this force is negative. It pushes you, puts pressure, and causes problems with the weather, harvest, money, work, war, with everything. If you look at it not at the egoistic level, but rise to the level from where it descends, to the level of the Creator, then everything is fine. He meets you there and says, “Finally! I sent you so many various blows that you have ascended to me in the end, but you were not in a hurry. However, finally, you have ascended!” That is why we need to understand why we are given the so-called suffering. They are “so-called” because we look right at them, but they cannot be perceived directly. So, the year 2013 will be the year of spiritual progress for those who will be rising. For those who will not rise, it will be the year of physical, moral, and material regression.
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From a Virtual Lesson 11/11/12

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Question: Will the desire to know the Creator arise in all the people who live on Earth?

Answer: By itself, it will not arise.

People in whom this desire arises are called Israel (Yashar El), which in translation means to move forward, to aspire to this goal independently.

And there are people who do not have this independent movement, but the crisis that will continue to unfold will force them to run away from it. However, then they will inevitably join those who strive forward.

That is, they will have a desire to escape adverse conditions, the pressure from behind, rather than a yearning for the goal. In this way, the ninety percent of humans will move toward correction, the goal of creation.
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From a Virtual Lesson 11/18/12

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” Item 69: But if, God forbid, it is to the contrary, and a person from Israel degrades the virtue of the internality of the Torah and its secrets, which deals with the conduct of our souls and their degrees, and the perception and the tastes of the Mitzvot with regard to the advantage of the externality of the Torah, which deals only with the practical part? Also, even if one does occasionally engage in the internality of the Torah, and dedicates a little of one’s time to it, when it is neither night nor day, as though it were redundant, by that one dishonors and degrades the internality of the world, which are the children of Israel, and enhances the externality of the world—meaning the Nations of the World—over them. They will humiliate and disgrace the children of Israel, and regard Israel as superfluous, as though the world has no need for them, God forbid.

Furthermore, by that, they make even the externality in the Nations of the World overpower their own internality, for the worst among the Nations of the World, the harmful and the destructors of the world, rise above their internality, which are the Righteous of the Nations of the World. And then they make all the ruin and the heinous slaughter our generation had witnessed…

If the Israeli nation stalls the process of correction, it gets back the blow of all the corruptions it hasn’t corrected in the world. But to the same extent that we fulfill the method of correction (and we have all the conditions to do so), we draw the upper Light for the whole world, the upper force that arranges all the desires and corrects all the souls. This Light comes to everyone, and so we will see how their attitude towards us will begin to change. So there is nothing to blame our enemies for, we are the ones who have made them that way. We suffer because of our foolishness as we don’t fulfill our role.

It says: “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice to it, since the Light in it reforms.” If we correct ourselves, our corrections are passed directly to everyone else by open pipes.

But if we don’t do that, then the world remains uncorrected because of us, and will turn to us pressuring us and demanding it from us. Then we will still have to advance towards correction anyway, but by the path of sufferings, since we refused to listen right off and to fulfill our role.

We have no choice. Now after so many missile attacks we have understood this a bit more. We see that we are at a dead end and that we are totally helpless. There is no more time to think, and we are so far behind and have to make much greater corrections than the ones we have already made.

The main responsibility is ours, those who deal with the internal correction. If we made the corrections on time, there wouldn’t be any conflict in Gaza and there wouldn’t be any missiles. The corporeal problems would totally disappear; they would simply not be able to exist in our world. We would rise above all matter like a flying saucer.

We are all to blame for what is happening, all those who have the internality of the Torah. The same people who called themselves the “nation of Israel,” who left Babel with Abraham and who have founded the nation based on the principle of “love thy friend as thyself,” “mutual guarantee,” and “as one man with one heart,” now is the perfect time for them to connect and to perform the correction.

The very moment and to the extent that they fulfill the correction, it will pass on freely to everyone else and will spread throughout the system that ties us and that is expecting a filling. We are the valve that blocks the artery and which doesn’t allow the upper Light to go through it.

Therefore, all the nations, feeling the lack of fulfillment, exhibit hatred towards us in different ways.. Our neighbors on the other side of the border are dreaming about destroying us, and this is an expression of the lack of correction in them, which we haven’t provided them with.

According to the structure of the world, we had to pass this correction on to them. It is like a person to whom I owe a million dollars, why? Because that’s the way the world is made, according to all the conditions. If I don’t give him the million dollars, he will have complaints towards me, and I will reply that I don’t know anything about it and that I don’t know what everyone wants of me.

I turn to the UN and to the whole world for help, and the other countries say: “You know what, we think he is right.” It is because they also have a similar feeling, but they are more distant from me. They also feel that I owe them something, not a million dollars like the neighbor, but let’s say ten dollars, and so they can wait in the meantime.

But they feel that I have a debt that is growing from day to day and the interest is growing. So we shouldn’t hope that they will come to us with a bouquet of flowers next time.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/23/12, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar” 

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Opinion (Steen Jakobsen, Chief Economist and CIO, Saxo Bank): “We have been surprised how little impact the strikes on the streets of Greece, Portugal and Spain have had on policymakers. But this is finally changing: Eurogroup considers direct transfers to Greece.

Policy makers are finally realising that social tension can overtake much needed reforms and financing needs by virtue of rallying the voters. Note that the groups of people demonstrating across Europe are no longer just unions or public employees. This is now a national issue for many countries. One generation of youth has already been lost, with all the negative consequences expected for productivity, innovation and pure outlook on life. …

“What comes next is one of two things: Radicalisation – Fascism & Communism?

“IF – the policy makers ignore this call for ‘change’, then the voters will be radicalised, moving to the extreme left and right politically. We are considering having an Outrageous Prediction for 2013 that include a serious move back to Communism in Eastern Europe and towards more autocratic states in Southern Europe. …

“In times of crisis people go to extremes – and this is now a full blown crisis, as we have a banking, economic, political and social crisis in place. It can’t get much worse actually, which is probably a good thing.”

My Comment: But is it possible to cause the necessary need for change not by suffering, not by crisis, but by increasing awareness of the need for change long before it manifests itself, according to the rule “The wise see beforehand.” The wisdom of Kabbalah encourages this by offering the method of how to change man and society long before nature forces us to do so by suffering.
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