In the News (from Science Daily): “Making The Most Of It: Study Reveals Motivating Factor For Enjoying The Present” According to a new study, thinking that we have a limited amount of time remaining to participate in an activity makes us appreciate the activity that much more and motivates us to make the most of it. These findings support the idea that “thinking about an experience’s future ending can enhance one’s present experience of it” and that “focusing on the fact that an experience is fleeting enhances enjoyment by creating a ‘now or never’ type of motivation.”

My Comment: At every moment in time, one has the opportunity to change oneself and the world for the better. If one has this attitude to life, then he is always enthusiastic about life. After all, “the world” is what you build and perceive within!

Question: I don’t understand: if everything is driven by thought, which begets the mind, then what’s the end result of it all? Is it to achieve the goal of absolute harmony and attainment of the Creator? But what for? And what’s going to happen once this is achieved? And what’s the point of creating the primitive creature that is man in the first place – to revel in our ego?

My Answer: The goal of developing our desire is to attain the sensation of the state of perfection inside this desire. The most rational, quick and easy method to bring oneself to perfection (to correct oneself) is demonstrated to us by the Creator through His work (Avodat HaShem).

Just as adults teach children how to live in our world by showing them examples of the proper behavior, so the Creator shows us examples of the behavior that’s necessary in order to start perceiving the concealed part of the world. However, if we act of our own accord, then we are like children who don’t have parents or the right environment, and are trying to grow from a primitive stage to a level of being able to understand life in the modern world. How can they possibly do it without being educated at home, in kindergarten, school, and so on!?

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In the News (translated from utro.ru): Sooner or later the economic crisis will be over, and then life on our planet will be completely different. The experts of the World Economic Forum concluded that the era of swift development has come to an end, economic growth will slow down, the influence of the government will increase, and the global economy will change completely. The experts put forth four scenarios for the future of the global financial system: Either the worst will happen in the East, or in the West, or everywhere at once, or the world will somehow recuperate.

My Comment: Nobody knows the future, because it is for us to decide. However, there aren’t four, but two possible scenarios: either things will be good for everyone, or bad for everyone. It can’t be divided up into parts, because the world is integral and absolutely interconnected, and this is being revealed more and more each day.

There are two possible paths: the path of suffering, or the path of conscious development and a favorable connection between everyone. However, one way or another, we will have to reach one goal – to become an integral part of Nature.

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In the News (from Environment News Science): “Global Warming Forecast to Leave Half the World Hungry by 2100” Climate change will desiccate crop yields in the tropics and subtropics by the end of this century, leaving half the world’s population facing a food crisis. The area at risk stretches from the southern United States to northern Argentina and southern Brazil, from northern India and southern China to southern Australia and all of Africa.

My Comment: These people will be forced to leave their lands and move north. But will the developed countries withstand such an influx? And if yes, how? Perhaps by using nuclear weapons, as Baal HaSulam writes in the article “The Last Generation”?

The source of all our problems is that we disconnect ourselves from nature, thinking that all existence is split into “man” and “the environment.” This view of nature makes us think of everything around us as a supplement to man.

Even when we do care for the environment, it is only for our own narrow gain, with no regard for the holistic system of nature. Violating this closed system of nature evokes its negative reaction to us. And since we are a product of nature, we end up suffering on all levels of our existence.

Therefore, we must replace all of our educational programs, such as “Saving the environment,” with educational programs such as, “Man is an integral part of nature.” After all, the solution lies not in cleaning water from pollution or restoring the ecosystem, but in creating a single system, where everything is “One Nature,” instead of “man and nature.” Hence, there must be only one educational program, just as Nature is one. We must imitate living organisms and use them as models for how to organize our lives as a single whole.

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News Report (from The Times): “A tidal wave of discontent threatens China” The Chinese Government announced yesterday that exports had fallen at their fastest rate in a decade. China’s exporters are collapsing, pulling down other businesses with them. According to some serious statisticians, the unemployment rate may have already passed 20 per cent. This makes the severity of the economic crisis in China much sharper than in the US and Europe.

Following in the footsteps of the US Government, the Chinese Government in November announced a four trillion yuan ($600 billion) public spending package to get the country out of the slump. But this won’t work in China. If the Chinese Government does not take a New Deal approach, it risks the Chinese people revolting and overthrowing those in power. Across the country there is mounting evidence of popular discontent turning to violence.

My Comment: The crisis is unfolding completely differently in free countries and in totalitarian countries. The closer a country’s structure is to free development, the calmer the unfolding of the crisis will be, and the quicker its people will realize the cause of the crisis and how to come out of it: through free correction of every person and all of us together.

In the free countries, a person is used to taking care of himself, and therefore he perceives the need to change differently. He takes it as his personal concern, rather than transferring the responsibility for the needed changes to the government. Because the people in the free world have this psychological preparation, they have an advantage over the people who grew up in countries with restricted freedom (responsibility).

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News Report (from Reuters): “UK advertising budgets cut at record rates” British marketing budgets were revised sharply lower in the fourth quarter… The Bellwether Report said companies had cut back on spending after seeing their financial prospects deteriorate at a record pace. Hardest hit in the fourth quarter were main media advertising.

My Comment: Consumption will continue to decrease; there’s no going back to the rampant pursuit of excess. Besides, the essential goods don’t need any advertising.

What we do need to advertise is the correct global behavior and the explanation of the new interconnected world. In other words, we need educational advertising. This is what people will need, and therefore advertising will develop in this direction.

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News Report (from The New York Times): “Project Created to Restore Ancient Babylon” A master plan is being developed for the restoration of the Mesopotamian site of the ancient city of Babylon, in present-day Iraq. The “Future of Babylon” project, financed by a $700,000 grant from the State Department, will map the city’s archeological sites, develop conservation plans and pursue possibilities for tourism and education.

My Comment: This is a landmark event because our global civilization is a replay of ancient Babylon. In the past, Babylon was a place with the same conditions as we have today – those of a “small village” and “the Butterfly Effect.” In other words, people’s egoism grew by leaps and bounds, and they stopped “understanding one another.” This is how we got the expression that “they began to speak different languages.” Yet, at the same time, people revealed that they were completely interdependent.

That’s when one of their priests, named Avram, began to examine the crisis and revealed its cause: it was happening because Nature (or the Creator) was pushing people towards unification. As a result of his research, he attained correction – the revelation of the quality of bestowal and love within him. He also realized what kind of connections are necessary in a closed system in order for it to survive and function correctly. He changed his name to Abraham, where the additional letter ה (Hey or “h”) designates the addition of the Upper Force (bestowal and love) to him. Thereafter, he wrote a book called The Book of Creation.

Abraham taught what he had learned, and thereby formed a group of students. He called them Israel (Isra – El = straight to the Creator), and together they went to what would become the land of Israel. As for the Babylonians who remained behind, they got rid of the crisis by breaking the connections between one another and dispersing all over the planet.

Today, just like Abraham’s science, Kabbalah,  predicted, from the end of the 20th century on, we have once again entered the state of “a small village” and “the Butterfly Effect.” However, this time we have done so on the global scale, so there’s no place to run in order to destroy our globalization. Hence, there are two paths before us:

1. Suffering, due to the discord in our civilization’s system, or
2. We can use Kabbalah as the method of correction.

Either way, we are obliged to correct ourselves so as to reach the level of observing the conditions of existence in a closed system, where every person will have to live by the rule of, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

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News Report: An article that appeared in today’s The New York Times, called, “2 Years After Campaign Began, a Different World,” shows how different the world was when Obama became the Presidential candidate in February of 2007. It was before the economic crisis, and the situation in Iraq and the Middle East was just beginning. The article poses the question, “While the world has changed, has Mr. Obama changed along with it?”

My Comment: Life will force him to change. However, I wish for him to go through the change as quickly as possible – after all, he is the Creator’s angel.

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News Report (from Commodity Online): According to a new IBM national survey of 30,000 US consumers, they are changing their shopping habits to deal with shifting budgets and incomes. The study, titled ‘Shopper Advocacy: Building Consumer Trust in the New Economic Environment,’ shows that tighter budgets and lower confidence have fundamentally changed consumer behavior.

My Comment: This is why no bailouts or purchase incentives will help the financial situation. We have passed a psychological turning point. As long as society’s feeling of financial security is not restored, people will not spend a cent beyond necessity. Egoism is growing and changing, and people are no longer willing to throw around their money – the times have changed. So we shouldn’t try to bring back excessive production or luxury vacations all over the world. Instead, it’s best to engage people in something more useful for their souls and bodies – and for the ecology too!

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A question I received: In one of the lessons you were asked a direct question: Will Kabbalah studies improve one’s financial situation? You answered, “No.” I was waiting for an explanation, such as that there’s no use waiting for a miracle to happen overnight, the way people expect from amulets and holy water. I thought that you would talk about a simple principle that everyone can understand, such as, “Everyone should give according to their ability, and receive according to their needs.”

After all, Kabbalah does provide material prosperity to the people who search spirituality, but in addition, it gives them a way to open the gates to the spiritual world. But instead, you cut the whole topic off and said, “No.” Why?

My Answer: You’re right: of course, a person who works on his own correction sways himself and the whole world to the scale of merit, and to the degree he ascends above egoism, he feels the Light and abundance in his entire life.

However, I want to underline that Kabbalah is the method of revealing the Creator to man in this world, and not a method to get rich, be healed, know the future, cast spells, and all the other things people attribute to it. This is why I clearly tell beginners that Kabbalah studies do not give you any direct material gain. And this is true. It’s because initially a person must reach a feeling that he needs this, and then Kabbalah – the revelation of the Creator – is for him.

It is not a method to get rich quick, or to heal one’s animate body, and so on. If a person genuinely aspires to reveal the Creator, then the Upper Light influences him and elicits changes in this life as well.

Nevertheless, sometimes this may also manifest as it is written in the verse, “He is the righteous and unhappy.” Actually, this doesn’t mean that the righteous person is unhappy, but according to our criteria, he is not rich or healthy. This is because we are all interconnected, and hence sometimes a person who’s righteous suffers for the entire world.

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News Report (from BBC News): “Is love just a chemical cocktail?” Writing in the respected scientific journal Nature, Professor Young argues that love can be explained by a series of neurochemical events in specific brain areas. … Researchers have found that oxytocin is involved in the bonding of male and the female prairie voles, which like humans, form an intense bond with each other that lasts for a very long time.

My Comment: Love, like any other feeling, brings about physio-chemical reactions in the organism. Otherwise, we wouldn’t feel it. However, these reactions are just an external manifestation, or the result, of our feelings.

Scientists are solving our problems backwards: they suggest influencing our feelings with drugs or chemicals. Science is approaching the situation from the only angle that it is able to.

On the other hand, Kabbalah explains that the foundation of all matter is the desire to enjoy. Furthermore, Kabbalah teaches us how to change our desires and control them. Then we will be able to control all other changes, which are just the results of the desires and the changes happening to them.

The division of nature into the still, vegetative, and animate levels is also nothing but a gradation of the desire to enjoy – “to preserve oneself and to develop,” or “to draw closer to what’s beneficial and move away from what’s harmful.”

Science cannot unlock the mystery of love – this cannot be solved with chemical means. Kabbalah, on the other hand, teaches us how to change our feelings, and even to ascend above them. In our transformed feelings, which will change from hatred to love for the neighbor, we will perceive “the world outside of us” – the Upper World, a state that’s eternal and independent of our bodies.

This is love, but not the corporeal type.

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