A question I received: Why do you keep insisting that the current financial crisis can only be solved by changing the relationships between people?

My Answer: This question has already been answered in a previous blog entry.

Moreover, economists are also saying that the reason for the stock market crisis is people’s loss of trust in banks and companies. After all, the rise and fall of stock prices depends on the rise and fall of people’s expectations of companies and banks.

In addition, people suspect that even in a time of crisis, companies are putting away considerable “revenue” for themselves. The managers of the banks and companies that went bankrupt knew about the upcoming bankruptcy, and they made sure to give themselves and their employees salary raises in order to “stock up” ahead of time. Hence, the present crisis (and there will be other crises as well) is a crisis of people’s trust in banks, businesses, and in the future as a whole. It’s a crisis of trust in the egoistic system of relationships and its ability to continue regulating our life.

This is why Kabbalah views this crisis and humanity’s general state as the beginning of the world’s correction. We must realize that we absolutely depend on one another, and that it is impossible to get rid of this dependence. We are like members of one family who share common joys and woes. We must create an atmosphere of “familial” trust and care on the entire planet – only then will the systematic global crisis subside.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Analysis of the Crisis
Laitman.com Post: How Does a Kabbalist Feel About the Current Events?
Laitman.com Post: 7 Ways to Approach Globalization Correctly
Kabbalah Today Article: A New Direction

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Two questions I received on the New Year:

Question: Lately there has been a lot of talk about the year 2012, as a time of change of the cosmic consciousness. Are there grounds for this in Kabbalah?

My Answer: I think that the change of consciousness will happen before that. No year is “special.” All the changes – whether for the worse or for the better – depend only on us. In addition, the New Year that we celebrate here in Israel isn’t a calendar holiday, but a celebration of the first time that egoism was recognized as evil and the first time its correction had begun. This happened in man 5,768 years ago. The New Year is the beginning of correction, and today we are continuing it on a global scale!

This is why we consider the first spiritual birth a holiday, and this is why Adam is called the first man – the word Adam comes from the word Dommeh, similar to the Creator. This is what each one of us is waiting for.

Question: Lately the the mass media is writing about the development of a plan spanning from now until the year 2020. Can we plan ahead for such an extended period of time, today, when everything is so interconnected and changes so fast?

My Answer: Unfortunately, extended plans are usually composed to satisfy specific egoistic goals that benefit someone today, and that’s where it all ends, while the extended plans become forgotten. The distant goal serves as a justification and cover-up for immediate fraud.

Just like it happened in the times of terror regimes and wars, people will once again be forced to suffer and even die in the name of a national idea. If a goal entails casualties, then it’s a false goal! I think that everything will happen differently. Globalization and global interdependence will compel us to act together!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Spiritual Labor Pains and the Future of Kabbalah (Advanced)
Laitman.com Post: Disasters and Diseases Come to an End When Humanity Unites Above Selfishness
Laitman.com Post: The Method of Achieving Happiness Is for All or None
Kabbalah Today Article: The Spiritual Rosh Hashanah
Baal HaSulam Article: “Building the Future Society”

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The vanity of modern life, the myriad changes and trips, and abundant opportunities of communication, do not solve the problem of loneliness. It’s becoming more and more difficult to make new acquaintances, especially in order to create a family. About half of the people living in cities live alone, a tendency that’s only growing.

In the era of total freedom, it has become harder to make new acquaintances. Globalization and individualization are leading to a disintegration of social networks. Cell phones and the Internet are increasing the distance between people. People are increasingly communicating anonymously and virtually, instead of meeting face to face.

This is only the beginning of the expression of egoism – a cancerous tumor that is consuming us little by little. It is digging its own grave, as written, “Egoism is a help against you,” and “The Pharaoh will bring us closer to the Creator.”

Related Material:
Kabbalah Today Article: You Have a New Message 🙂
Kabbalah Today Article: Facebook – What’s All the Fuss?
Kabbalah Today Article: Second Life – Better than the Virtual World!?
Kabbalah Blog Post: The Internet Prison – the Influence of the Internet on Our Lives

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The following is a translation of an article about the global food crisis that was recently published in one of Israel’s leading newspapers, Yediot Aharonot:

What Does a Fallow Year Have to Do with Rice?

Next Sabbath we are going to read Parashat BaHar (a weekly Torah portion), which deals with one of the most ancient and complex precepts that were entrusted with the people of Israel – the precept of a fallow year. Once every seven years the people of Israel are commanded to rest from cultivating the fields and leave the fruit to whoever wishes to pick it. What will we eat in the eighth year? The answer is that in the sixth year there will be enough crops to feed on, and even in the ninth year.

It may be symbolic that precisely on a fallow year, when we are promised to have no shortage, we are facing the beginning of a serious global food crisis. Even if we overlook media spins, which were probably meant to raise the price of rice, we cannot keep ignoring the fact that the American and global economy are already in a deep crisis. This crisis is likely to plunge us all into a deep recession, affect the structure of society, and shake relationships between various nations and economies.

But what is causing this crazy turbulence, and how do we curb the erosion? Or in other words, what does a fallow year have to do with the stock market in Chicago? Here is the gist of the Kabbalistic explanation to the crisis, along with suggestions for a solution.

In economy, just as with any social system, interdependence is the name of the game. Crises where one factor “infects” others and brings the market to the verge of collapse are part of the symptoms of modern economic globalization. However, the attempt to predict economic crises using sophisticated models has failed time after time. It turns out, that the economic system cannot be controlled or predicted accurately, and an action in one place causes far reaching changes in other, unexpected places. [Read more →]

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News Story: What Follows American Dominion

Many are predicting a new non-polar world. The appearance of such power centers as regional powers, nongovernmental organizations, mass media, religious movements, terrorist groups and drug cartels are destabilizing America’s unipolar stronghold and dissolving the presence of a fixed power center. In the new world, it will be harder to react collectively to global problems and make any given mechanism work. Threats will increase, and it will also be harder to establish and maintain relationships. Richard Hauss, President of the Council for Foreign Relations and the article’s author, states that “only diplomacy that is more focused, creative and collective will prevent a non-polar world from becoming more disorderly and dangerous.”

My Response: Humanity will be left with no choice but to unite. Egoism, however, won’t allow for it: egoism will oppose unity to the point of an annihilation threat. Things will worsen until humanity realizes its evil – its egoistic nature as the source of all problems – and will be ready to hear that there’s a cure, a method of correction designed specifically for fixing this problem at its source. However, without realizing the bitter error of egoistic development, humanity will not achieve correction.

Related Material:
* ARTICLE: The Untold Story of a Consumer Nation – A new documentary, The Story of Stuff, shows how our entire lives have been taken over by “stuff.” And the wisdom of Kabbalah shows what we can do about it.
* ARTICLE: The Consumer Effect – The globalization of economics means that any local market is inextricably tied to the global economy.

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1. Globalization has become a key factor in the world’s economic, political and cultural development. It incorporates the international market, all the social processes, and the lives of each and every one of us. However, it doesn’t solve any political, economical, social, cultural or religious problems.

2. A new kind of education is needed to reconcile us with this new reality. In the past, education was structured within the boundaries of an egoistic and disconnected world. New education should take place naturally, rather than through Nature’s painful influence. One way or another, Nature will force us to change – to change our way of thinking and to make our relationships truly global. But unlike previous transformations, we don’t have to undergo the current transformation by force. For the very first time, we can do it ourselves, consciously.

3. The common culture should not be replaced with a global culture forcefully, like how we usually do things. For instance, today we are forcing our children to study by old methods, even though they are ready for “the new humanity.” We instinctively strive to suppress everything new, while they naturally strive toward it.

4. For the first time in history, mass media must assume an educational role. Instead of being a dubious source of information, mass media needs to earn our trust by contributing to the education of the new generation. Mass media should initiate the change, and later, educational institutions will follow. This is because all social changes need to begin from “below,” in other words, they should touch people’s lives, morals and cultural-religious traditions. The new should not replace the old by force, but naturally, by revealing the globality of nature and society. Then the new will replace the old painlessly.

5. Kabbalistic education is not coercive, because it does not strive to bring everyone to the same educational and cultural level. On the contrary, people can keep all possible levels and cultures, because Kabbalistic education raises people above their various cultures. Instead of making them collide, it unites them even more strongly due to such differences.

Therefore, Kabbalistic education prevents the clash of cultures, ideologies, and nations. As Baal HaSulam writes, everyone can remain in their religions.

6. Even though Kabbalah brings everyone to a single consciousness, bringing people together as cogwheels in a single mechanism, it doesn’t lessen anyone’s individual role. This is because it helps a person find his or her place in the mechanism, in the mutual connection of all people. Each one of us discovers the best possible state that Nature has prepared for us.

Kabbalistic education enables people to accept the same principles of existence in the world, so that one’s individual consciousness turns into collective consciousness, and later into the consciousness of one civilization. After that, as Baal HaSulam writes, the boundaries start disappearing and a single civilization emerges, in which the citizens are single-minded in their aspiration to unite with the Creator.

Parting with independence, the disappearance of boundaries and cultures, and the creation of a single spiritual authority should not happen coercively, but by realizing the need to unite with the Creator.

Mass education can happen through TV shows and internet games, and by prohibiting the glorification of egoistic fulfillment and forceful influence over the world.

7. Globalization evokes the sensation that the world is small. Yet the growing awareness of the single system of souls makes it a warm world, where we can all rely on one another.

Related Material:
My Article on Ynetnews – A Kabbalistic Interpretation of the Economic Crisis
The Consumer Effect

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My article on the ego being the reason behind the global economic crisis was featured today (in Hebrew) on the Ynetnews site. Here’s its translation into English:

A Kabbalistic Interpretation of the Economic Crisis

The ego driving us to increase profits at each other’s expense is in complete contradiction to the balance between nature’s elements, which is vital to nature’s harmonious existence.

The events surrounding the American and global economy prove that this time it’s serious – the global economy is in a deep crisis. What is causing this crazy turbulence and how can the erosion be curbed? Kabbalah provides an explanation along with suggestions for solving the crisis.

Just as with any social system, interdependency is the name of the game. Crises where one element “infects” others and brings the market to the verge of collapse, are part of the signs of economic globalization. This is why we are seeing credit and real estate bubbles in the U.S. bursting and bringing about an infectious collapse of the stock exchange, in banks, companies and hedge funds all over the world.

Having said that, trying to solve economic crises using known models is destined to fail. It turns out that the economic system cannot be controlled or accurately predicted, and that one move in one place of the world causes serious repercussions in other places.

The wisdom of Kabbalah claims that if we understand the laws working on nature and abide by them, we can fortify our understanding of what the future holds, and possibly prevent the next crash. [Read more →]

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In developed countries, globalization is already unpopular:

The right – defend the economy and the trade industry from foreign products.

The left – support unions, which see international competition as an unemployment threat, and imported goods and immigrants bring about lower wages.

Since the parties seek electoral votes, they start showing dissent toward globalization, multinational corporations and international banks. Antiglobalism appears, a movement toward the resurgence of the nation and against international goods and immigrants. This process results in fascism and Nazism, just like it had emerged in early 20th century Germany.

My Current Mood: anxious

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