A question I received: I just came across Pulsa d’Nura which is supposedly a Kabbalistic practice to curse someone and apparently they have used it in Israel to curse Ariel Sharon and others, and it worked every time. This is horrible! Is this true? Can someone use Kabbalah to hurt another person?

My Answer: Usually this happens the way it happened to Rasputin: He cut the chandelier in the lounge and warned that something horrible would if a prince were to enter. Then when the chandelier actually fell, everyone said he was a prophet. So it’s the same here: the moment something happens, hundreds of charlatans appear and shout, “We told you so!” So calm down – there are no miracles in this world!

The world is what we perceive. We call that which is revealed to us “this world” or “our world,” and that which isn’t yet revealed to us, “the concealed world.” And we constantly reveal the world to a greater extent. Therefore, “the hidden” and “the revealed” are constantly changing, since the boundaries of “the revealed” expand.

We are now approaching the stage of the full revelation of the world, where nothing will remain concealed. The Creator (all of Nature) will become revealed to us because we will become equivalent to the Creator’s nature by changing our common egoism to the quality of bestowal. Then, we will all reveal Him, as it is written, “Everyone will know Me, from the greatest to the smallest.”

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In the News (from Contrarian Investors’ Journal): “Baltic Dry Index indicates a collapse in global trade” In May 2008, the BDI [price of moving the major raw materials by sea] fell from a record high of 11,793 to a low of 663 since 1986. It has been said that such low reading means that shipping costs is very close to the “combined operating costs of vessels, fuel and crew.”

My Comment: What else do you need when you receive a higher reward for these actions, when your soul is fulfilled, when you feel perfection and eternity, the Upper Harmony that’s above this temporal and imperfect life? People should only change (correct themselves) from reception to bestowal. This is merely a psychological problem, because people will receive billions times more than they do now, and they will receive it forever.

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A question I received: The overwhelming majority of people do not recognize “the quality” of the current crisis and the reason for it – that our egoism breaks and distorts all our connections, and that the only way to survive is by attaining the quality of “love for your neighbor.” Moreover, people don’t realize that they need help from the Creator, Ohr Makif, to do this. They do not realize this because they were created on the still level, Domem, and maybe they will never be able to realize this, and they don’t need to.

So what is the purpose of Kabbalah dissemination? If the elite are deaf because they are caught in the vicious cycle of their profiteering interests, and the masses are deaf because of their low level of development, then who are we disseminating to, and what are we disseminating?

My Answer: We are disseminating the science of how every person can correct himself. And every person will apply this science to the extent of his free will, which emerges due to the development of his desire (heart) and mind, through suffering and recognition.

By applying this science, every person will make his path of correction easier, shifting it from the natural one (under Nature’s blows, the way all evolution takes place), to evolution that happens by means of one’s aspiration for the goal, for the quality of bestowal and love for everyone. The global crisis is an indication that this is necessary.

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A question I received: I don’t know what to do. I feel as if I’ve lost all my energy and I am “hanging in the air.” Nothing interests me at work. Even though I do everything possible in my spiritual work, I feel despair as I’ve never experienced it before. I have no “fuel.” Nothing affects me anymore. I feel no desire for anything in this world, and the only desire I have is to escape to somewhere, but I don’t know where to. My heart tells me that this place exists, but I’m still not there. I have been studying with you for over three years and I can’t imagine life without Kabbalah. But I am getting desperate because I feel like nothing is happening to me. On the contrary, the desires of the external environment are affecting me, making me even weaker. What can I do? I can’t continue like this anymore! What should happen now?

My Answer: The reason you are feeling so weak on the spiritual path is that you lack a connection with the group. You aren’t receiving the importance of the goal from the environment, but this is the most important thing – it’s the foundation of our advancement!

You can read more about these states in the Shamati articles and the Letters of Baal HaSulam. There are Reshimot (information or the genes of our spiritual development) concealed in us, which constantly become revealed, causing our egoistic desire to constantly grow. And we must constantly ascend above these Reshimot using our intention to attain the quality of bestowal and love for the Creator. This is exactly why our egoism grows: to give us the opportunity to rise above it, to rise from our world to the level of the Creator.

And then we will understand Him, as it is written, “For they will all know Me, from the smallest of them to the greatest” (Yirmiyahu 31:33). But the process is always the same: the Reshimot that become revealed in us are always egoistic, and every time, we have to receive the force to rise above them by increasing our connection with the environment (the group).

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Our world is now at the end of its intrauterine development. The current crisis is like labor pains – the last stages of our egoistic development. And the way out of this state is the birth.

Baal HaSulam explains that “coming out of Egypt” is a spiritual birth. The whole of humanity is now completing its development as an embryo, and the global crisis is the labor pains preceding humanity’s spiritual birth. These labor pains can last for a long time, like it often happens in our world when the labor pain suddenly lets go of the woman, comes back again, decreases and again increases.

Therefore, we cannot relax when the crisis suddenly diminishes and stabilizes for a period of time, as if things were returning to the regular routine. Everyone may be laughing at Kabbalists, saying: “Why were you trying to scare us by saying that something awful is coming and that this will last forever until we reject our egoism? Now everything is returning to normal and we are back to the celebration of life.” The fact is, we need to be patient, because a second and a third wave are on the way, like labor contractions that will result in the birth – our exit out of our egoism and entrance into the quality of bestowal.

However, we would like to reduce the duration of these pains as much as possible, so the birth will happen quickly, even immediately – in one push. This is possible; the time between the contractions can be significantly reduced, as well as the number of contractions. This is how we can accelerate the process of the birth.

A baby is born when the contractions accelerate so much that they merge into a single contraction, instead of coming one after another. They no longer come little by little, but become concentrated in one effort. So let us make our birth happen quickly, because it’s an unpleasant process and the best way to go through it is in one push – in the current crisis, rather than in recurring crises.

This is how the spiritual process works. In the spiritual birth, the contractions signify that the birth is taking place. It’s not like in our corporeal world, which is corrupted by egoism, where a woman may feel contractions even a month before the birth. In a corrected spiritual object, the contractions quickly concentrate around the embryo and push it out. The labor pains are meant to open the “doors” through which the newborn will come into the new world.
(Excerpt from the lesson on 01.29.2009, from 34:08 – 37:59)

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In the News: (from Fayette Front Page): Senators Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Kent Conrad, D-N.D., today introduced legislation to create a Financial Markets Commission that will be charged with fully investigating the near collapse of the banking system and the loss of tens of trillions of dollars. “If our nation is going to learn from history, we must know exactly what happened and why. We need to take a long hard look at how our financial system spiraled downward so far so fast,” Conrad said. “The final report of this commission will help make sure this does not happen again.”

My Comment: We cannot understand any phenomenon in our world from our level. Even Einstein said that in order to solve a problem, it is necessary to rise above it – to its source or initial origin. I hope this commission will be created, and even more than one – that it will be created in all the countries, and that it will be common, international. And I hope these commissions will somehow hear Kabbalah’s explanation of the reason, course, and purpose of the crisis, as well as the way to control it.

Kabbalah reveals that if we want to control the crisis through our actions, there is only one single opportunity in our world for us to influence the events: by continuously creating a better and better environment (society) that will influence every person. This environment will change everyone’s priorities from corporeal (receiving and using others) to spiritual (bestowal and love).

There are no other free actions we can make, because the rest of our actions are dictated by our natural egoism. They are elicited in us by egoism’s constant growth and change, without any participation on our part. Therefore, the reason for the crisis is the qualitatively new egoism that is being revealed in us.

The goal of the crisis is to bring us to similarity with Nature, the quality of bestowal and love. The means of attaining this goal, which is mandatory for all, is to change the environment that surrounds each and every one of us, or in other words, to change the external influence on every person. And to do this, we have to engage all the mass media channels and begin a broad action of worldwide education about the new reality of a united humanity.

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In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “His Empire in Tatters, German Billionaire Takes Life” Adolf Merckle, one of Germany’s wealthiest men, committed suicide. Mr. Merckle’s body was discovered Monday night near train tracks… In a rare interview last month, Mr. Merckle told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung he had survived “many so-called stock-market crashes” but that he “couldn’t calculate a banking and financial crisis of this dimension.”

My Comment: He’s right: there’s never been a crisis like this in all of human history, because the current crisis is “qualitative.” It was caused by the human society’s opposition to Nature. Society has become global and interconnected like a “small village” where everyone is completely interdependent (“the Butterfly Effect”). However, our mutual egoistic hatred destroys all the connections. The effect of broken connections in a single system manifests as a crisis in the system – a crisis in all areas of our activity.

The crisis will not end until we find a solution – a way to be together, united by bonds of bestowal and love. This is what is required of us by the system that we have found ourselves in. We cannot escape these closed connections. We will have to observe the rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We can do this through suffering (as we always have) or by realizing that it’s necessary (the method of Kabbalah). The choice is ours.

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In the News (from The Associated Press): “Group of 6 arrested in western Ariz. fires includes 4 firemen” Four firefighters and two others have been arrested on suspicion of igniting between 15 and 20 fires in western Arizona to make money by fighting the very blazes they lit, officials said Tuesday.

My Comment: Egoism forces people to harm others in any way possible for the sake of their own benefit. The same can be said of doctors and others who manufacture food fillers, useless and harmful drugs, and so on. Our society is built so as to use people in every way possible. Instead of, “Everything for the people, everything for their benefit,” what we have is, “Everything for the sake of one’s profit, everything to harm people” (and this harms both those who do it and to whom they do it).

In the News (from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany): “Does persistent low fertility threaten the future of European populations?” Three stylized demographic facts are nowadays taken for granted by many Europeans: First, European birth rates are very low and further declining. Second, the currently low fertility will inevitably lead to rapid population aging and population decline in the future. Third, these trends are unsustainable in the long run… Perhaps no one summarized the fears of shrinking Europe more succinctly than Pope Benedict XVI: “…the problem of Europe, which it seems no longer wants to have children, penetrated my soul. To foreigners this Europe seems to be tired, indeed it seems to be wishing to take its leave of history” (Vatican 2006).

My Comment: Egoism doesn’t need anybody; it wants to feel special and unique. The same thing will happen in all the countries as their population’s egoism develops. But the emergence of the quality of bestowal and love in people will naturally make them desire to have children in order to continue their kind.

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Three questions I received on the spiritual desire:

Question: First of all, thanks for a great Congress at Blackpool which I thoroughly enjoyed. Which prayers should we be saying as potential Kabbalists? I have watched the children’s lesson on prayer but cannot find the answer. Is there a particular prayer book we should use?

My Answer: A prayer is the heart’s desire. One should do all that one can to make his heart desire the goal of creation – the revelation of the Creator.

Question: Why does the Creator want us to need Him?

My Answer: Because He is the quality of “bestowal and love” within us. And this quality creates a sensation – within us – of an eternal and perfect life.

Question: You say that a person needs to feel a “deficiency.” What kind of deficiency are you talking about: spiritual or corporeal?

My Answer: This means that you must reveal that you don’t love others, and reveal it in such a way that it will suppress your self-love. It is as though you ascend on top of the mountain of your egoism through love for others, and to this degree, the Creator will be revealed to you, or rather, in you.

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Two questions I received about the future:

Question: In the future, will there be a generation that will be able to see and feel the Light? How will they see It, with their souls or even with their eyes?

My Answer: The spiritual world is attained inside the intention “to bestow,” which is born from our intention “to receive,” as a consequence of the Surrounding Light’s (Ohr Makif’s) influence on us. This Light corrects our egoistic intention, turning it into an altruistic one.

Question: Will Kabbalists become the world’s leaders one day?

My Answer: Certainly: in the future, the only people governing the world will be those who have completely attained it, meaning Kabbalists. People will understand this and institute it of their own accord; in other words, they will choose it.

Today we see how wrong the “blind” leaders of the world are and how they “lead” the world through suffering. And lately we see that they aren’t even able to hide their own confusion any longer.

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