In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “Pope Weighs In on Financial Crisis” You know the international financial crisis has implications in every aspect of global life when the Pope decides to weigh in. Today Benedict XVI issued his third encyclical focusing on the economy. It is widely seen as directed at G-8 leaders gathering in Italy this week. Here are some excerpts:

Economy and finance … can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. …we must adopt a realistic attitude as we take up … new responsibilities to which we are called by the prospect of a world in need of profound cultural renewal, a world that needs to rediscover fundamental values … it is not the instrument [the economy] that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.

My Comment: All of the above is correct, but how can we possibly make people’s all-enveloping egoism budge? Only through Kabbalah! Maybe someone could tell the Pope about it…

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In the News (from Global Issues): Many people are now calling for fundamental reforms of the financial systems, internationally. This includes international banking and finance, to reform of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF … it was hoped leading developing countries might have voice to make the rich nations agree to meaningful measures … Instead, rich nations resisted substantive reforms demanded by developing countries.

My Comment: Today, no one is making any offers to anyone because the future is uncertain. People can plan for long-term reforms as long as the markets are predictable, but now, no one understands what is going on. And this trend will continue until people discover that the problem is the faulty relationships within the society.

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A question I received: If you worked on Wall Street, would you not have done the same? They had an opportunity to embellish stock prices, fool the world, and receive a return of hundreds more times what the stock was originally worth. The problem is that the lies came to the surface and the stocks collapsed. So now the government is lining the pockets of the bankrupted financiers just to keep the entire system from crumbling. What’s next?

My Answer: By causing us to develop, Nature is pressuring us to find a solution. Kabbalah offers people a way to learn about the global world we have found ourselves in – a world of total, universal interconnection. Then, using this knowledge, we will be able to build a new society as well as a new kind of personal and public relations.

This wisdom enables people to see that we will reach a terrible outcome – such as wars and natural disasters – if we continue to develop arbitrarily. This outcome is opposite to the social change that Nature requires of us in a global world. The needed change is to create more global connections, mutual understanding and common participation.

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A question I received: Today’s economy, and life in general, seem very chaotic. Things are difficult to regulate, control, and predict. What should people do in this situation?

My Answer: Firstly, we should learn from this situation. The crisis and the uncertain state of the world should help us see that we are developing according to certain laws, irrespective of our will. Moreover, we do not know what these laws are.

It would be nice if we could predict things in some way, but all our attempts to predict and change anything do not produce good results. However, if we learned the laws of nature, we would gain strength and wisdom.

Question cont’d: So what are we to do about the situation?

My Answer: All of people’s attempts to fix things have not yielded any positive results. This fact should help people see that all of their mistakes have been programmed by Nature in order to teach them something. This is Nature’s way of helping people to advance.

Question cont’d: Isn’t this fatalism?

My Answer: Nature encompasses everything, even all of people’s instincts, behaviors motives, and actions. The basis of all human problems is that we single ourselves out from nature.

Nature’s goal is to teach man that he should not stand out or try to separate from Nature. People have to realize that we are all part of Nature, that we are “built into it,” so to say.

Man’s task in Nature is to integrate all of Nature using his power, control, and desire. In other words, we need to bring the entire system into harmony and balance. Nature pushes man forward and teaches him lessons in the process. A person may feel bad at times, or he may be scared; and all of this is intended for him to understand that right now, all of Nature is disjointed, contradictory, and prone to crisis for just one reason: because human beings are breaching the natural balance.

Man must do everything he can in order to collect all of Nature’s parts into one, and thus to bring them to harmony. This is something that depends on every person.

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In the News (from Prlog Organization): “The Great Depression Ahead: An Interview with Harry S. Dent” Author Harry S. Dent, Jr. having successfully predicted the crash of Fall 2008 years ago, was also the author of The Great Boom Ahead, published in 1992, when he stood virtually alone in forecasting the unanticipated boom of the 1990s. And now he is saying that the party is over…

Among the predictions being made here is that we are at the end of an historic boom cycle, and so while the economy may appear to recover from the subprime crisis and “minor recession” by mid to late 2009, (given Obama’s deficit spending to aid infrastructure and create jobs), it is actually “the calm before the real storm.”

My Comment: Any analysis that takes into account our interaction with Nature per se supports predictions of deeper crises, or even the end of days. There is the possibility, however, of avoiding the path of suffering by choosing the path of recognition of evil of our ego and its correction by an external force.

All our methods, after all, view change as something we can do on our own. But our own forces are egoistical and can’t alter our condition.

However, if we decide that the needed correction is possible only with the help of an external force, then Kabbalah can help us understand, how to activate it. Then the solution will come.

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In the News (from The Guardian): “Young, jobless, broke: today’s lost generation” – A recent survey by Post Office financial services found that most 16- to 24-year-olds believe that it will take a decade for their living standards to return to pre-crisis levels. On the wider labour market survey measure, an alarming 18.3% of 16-to 25-year-olds are unemployed. David Blanchflower, the labour market expert, said, “The danger is that we have a lost generation.”

My Comment: This means that their children will be just like them.

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In the News (from The Financial News): “Interview of Dmitry Medvedev American CNBC TV channel” Now, one problem arising at one place in one country, be that in America, Europe or Asia, is enough for the whole world community, for the whole global economy to catch fire. That is why, a very important conclusion that we should make and take as a basic one is that taking all kinds of domestic national economy decisions concerning inflation, issue of money and some other economic indicators, we are making a direct impact on other economies. This economic globalism is, maybe, the main lesson of the current crisis, which, at the same time, creates better conditions for development in the future, because we can create a much fairer financial and economic architecture.

My comment: See how suffering is helping us! It is well known that suffering cleanses. The correct interpretation of this is that suffering cleanses a person of egoism. This cleansing consists of two phases. Phase one is through the influence of Upper forces. The second phase is the realization that egoism is the cause of all evil followed by a conscious separation from it (from its use).

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In the News (translated from MIGnews): Actual and potential victims of global warming appealed to the UN requesting protection and compensation for rising water levels, drought and other harmful effects of climate change.

My Comment: As recent research shows, none of our actions really have any effect on climate changes. The only thing left is to accept the opinion of Kabbalah that we harm Nature by our egoistic desires, since we set ourselves against it. In fact, a human being is the only egoistic element in Nature, and thus causes a break in Nature’s balance and harmony.

The UN must realistically evaluate information and recognize that climate change doesn’t depend on physical human activities. It must recognize that Nature is forcing us to come to balance by merging our desires and thoughts with Nature, since it is human thoughts and desires that can affect Nature and are the differentiators that separate us from the animal level of Nature.

Only when we start searching for different methods of reaching balance with Nature will we find the only true method offered by Kabbalah, the purpose of which is to cause Nature itself to bring out the force of man’s correction.

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In the News (translated from MIGnews): “Fixation on Crisis” – Recently all events are being considered in connection with the crisis. It feels like the crisis became a basis of our life. In other countries, such as Russia, people try not to talk much about the crisis. Certainly, no one is calling for introducing censorship of crisis related content, but it looks like the entire world has become fixated on the crisis.

By the way, Americans have a so-called “theory of positive thinking.” It states that without positive thoughts you cannot advance and will surely not get out of any crisis, whether it’s personal, national, or global.

My Comment: The matter is not in the crisis itself, but in humanity’s state of becoming totally interconnected. Therefore, until we bring our interconnection to equivalence with the qualities of Nature, which are mutual and kind, our condition will continue to worsen. Moreover, it is impossible to convert egoism to altruism with the forces of our world! Only the force that created egoism is able to change it. This force is drawn upon us through the study of Kabbalah because Kabbalah studies this force’s properties and how to draw its influence upon a person.

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A question I received: Is there some optimistic side to the current crisis?

My Answer: I am the greatest optimist with regard to the crisis. Kabbalists see it as the starting point for our humanity’s correction and the end of all of our misfortunes.

The present crisis shows us how separated we are. The lack of unity is being revealed in almost everything: in the economy, trade, and in all social and political relationships.

We still lack a common understanding of the fact that egoism is the cause of all evil, but more and more people are already beginning to realize that the root of the problem is in the relationships among people, meaning that we should not just build the proper economic or other mutually beneficial connections. We are required in this global world to make heart to heart connections, and this is precisely what Nature is demanding from and dictating to us.

We should understand that we depend on each other and that the realization of this interdependence will enable us to achieve love. Of course, this is a gradual process, but the current crisis is just its beginning. This is the stage when the symptoms of the illness are being revealed and the diagnosis is being given. We need to reveal just how incorrect the system of our relationships really is. This will be the last stage, the end of humanity’s troubles.

Humanity’s previous stages of development had to pass practically without the person’s personal participation. Only now has the time come for Kabbalah to be revealed as the means of correction, and only now will the person be able to affect his fate by himself. Until recently, we had no opportunity to change anything.

This continued until the middle of the 20th century, when for the first time the interconnectedness of the system of souls began to be revealed. This revelation is occurring gradually and in the most unpleasant of forms – so that we would understand the need for correction.

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