Gordon Brown: The World Is Drifting

Opinion: (Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom): “Politics trumped sensible economics in the United States this summer, when Congress and President Barack Obama could not agree on taxes, entitlements, deficits, or an investment stimulus.

“As a result, few people today doubt that the world is drifting, rudderless and leaderless, towards a second downturn. The pre-summer debate about whether we faced a ‘new normal’ of slower growth has been resolved: nothing now looks normal. Muddling through has failed. Unable to conclude a global trade deal, climate-change agreement, growth pact, or changes in the financial regime, the world is likely to descend into a new protectionism of competitive devaluation, currency wars, trade restrictions, and capital controls.

“But this is not a time for defeatism. Countries claiming to have reached the limit of what they can do really mean that they have reached the limit of what they can do on their own. The way forward to sustained growth and employment is not through a flurry of one-off national initiatives, but rather through global policy coordination.

“So, first, we must restore the broad vision of global cooperation contained in the G-20 growth pact…

“The G-20, which represents 80% of world output, came into its own in 2009 as the only multilateral body able to coordinate global economic policy. Unfortunately, its member states soon abandoned that goal and defaulted to national solutions. Predictably, going it alone has proven futile in ensuring economic recovery. The G-20’s time has come again.”

My Comment: This won’t help, as it didn’t in the past, until we do the following:

• Determine that egoism in us is responsible for all our failures;
• Establish that humanity must come to complete cooperation and become part of unified nature;
• Determine that our path to unity and balance with nature lies through education of humanity about the laws of total cooperation.

Who will do all this? Isn’t that the mission of UN and other international organizations? Weren’t they created to bring all the nations and countries to mutual cooperation and closeness, and not for political games? Ultimately, the formal existence of these organizations and their isolationist policies only accelerate our crisis, and perhaps this is the benefit we reap from them. Hence, it’s necessary to create an international body of influence, which will consist of scientists, economists, and sociologists (not politicians), meaning of people who understand the state of the world and new methods of solving its problems.
[56812]

Global Problems Call For A Global Solution

Question: Authorities in Israel are trying to find an answer to the demands advanced by the social protest. What are your suggestions?

Answer: With all due respect to the chairman of the government appointed committee, Mr. Trachtenberg, I suggest creating an organization that will know, above all, where we are headed. Our final objective is unity of the people and of the whole country.

Once we choose this direction, let’s see about where to begin. Obviously, first we have to lift the destitute above the poverty line. And then we have to work on rehabilitation: create a program for every sphere of activity that will enable us to gradually put production, trade, healthcare, the systems of government and banking, and others onto a new track. Step by step, we have to reorganize them into a single, integral complex.

For that we have to teach and educate people by involving the environment so they will understand what we have come up against, what kind of crisis we are facing, and how we can alleviate the situation. We have to give them an explanation of the solution, the remedy to the illness that we have diagnosed, how to take this remedy, in what doses, and for what period of time. And they have to want to use this remedy.

This requires a propaganda system that opens people’s eyes to what is happening. I want to wake up tomorrow morning and feel that I am together with the whole nation in a common understanding of the world we are living in. I come out to the street, ride on a bus, talk to my coworkers, listen to the radio, watch the TV, and everywhere people are talking about the important things, everyone is informed and not blind, unlike those who are ignorant and only know how to shout about yet another wreckage.

Today economists are scaring people with starvation, while doctors, instead of curing us, are forcing us to fearfully count how many lives their strike might cost. Enough already! Let’s get to the bottom of the situation. Let’s understand why the medical employees are dissatisfied, why the financiers are panicking, and why people cannot make ends meet until the next paycheck. Let’s look at the general picture rather than its separate fragments, no matter how alarming they might appear.

In order to solve the problem, we have to rise above it. But in the meantime, people are coming out to the street without even really knowing why. Often they don’t have clear demands or a clear program, but only pain, or just a personal reason for being dissatisfied. So let’s take an impartial, bird’s-eye view of the global events. This is not just a regular, short-term phenomenon, problems of a separate country or separate social classes, but a common human problem. All of human civilization is now entering a new state, so why don’t we figure it out, showing a mature and intelligent attitude?

Yet instead we are shouting, “The stock market is falling! Europe is on the verge of collapse!” That is how “impressionable” we are being instead of having a normal, constructive approach. Clearly, people are incapable of that kind of approach, but in addition they cannot even admit their own impotency. By trying to fight the symptoms of the illness, they are merely moving around furniture inside the cabins of a sinking ship.

Therefore, we should be wary of poorly thought-out decisions.
[57226]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/11/11, “Peace in the World”

The “Layer Cake” Of The Soul

We cannot manage our world today. I want to correct certain things in the financial system, the economic system, commerce, or in the relationships between nations, people, and a husband and a wife—and I can’t. There are certain plots, additional obstacles, and conditions, which I don’t take into account, and so I don’t succeed in anything. I lack knowledge; I don’t have a clear connection with the new world that is suddenly revealed to us, and I cannot be in clear contact with it.

Where does it stem from? It stems from the degrees that descend into our world from the world of Infinity. These degrees are already in us, they exist within us. They also appear under the influence of Reshimot (informational genes). That is, the forces of bestowal that are revealed to us are also inside me, in my perception of the external space. Yet these are not the egoistic forces anymore, but rather the forces of bestowal, and this is also my “layer cake,” my internal feeling of the world; it is also me. All this is within me. There is nothing that is outside of me.

“I” is actually the soul.

If I begin to divide myself this way, I begin to see that today’s world helps me. The “evil” egoistic force seems to appear in us as the dark past. And the altruistic force appears too. These layers are revealed in me: I begin to feel them not simply outside me, but within me. This is why I am “confused,” so perplexed, and I cannot find my way around in today’s world.

When we begin to understand this system and to find our way around in it, we see how it happens with other people. We understand that a “multilayer cake” appears in us like this: the informational genes from the past, from the present, and from the future, the egoistic powers of the past, the feeling of the present, and the indefinite, incomprehensible feelings of the future—the attribute of bestowal, the attribute of connection.

The layers that appear in me are not connected into one system yet, and this is why they are called “our crisis,” the separation between these parts. The crisis is called “integral” because it doesn’t let us see the connection between all the parts—we don’t have it in us. This problem will persist until we learn to control it.

Where is the problem? On one hand, I drew a question and a crisis, and on the other, I called the same thing “the soul.” In other words, today we are actually on the path, at the stage, and on the degree of discovering the soul within us. When we will unite all these parts within us, we will see a very interesting picture instead of them: We will see that we are made up of three lines.

On one hand, the egoistic forces are the bottom part of the cake. The altruistic forces, or the bestowal, are the upper part of the cake. The middle force is the connection between them; it is when we collect all this inside us and can work with them together. The middle part of the cake will connect the altruistic plus and the egoistic minus and will be able to work with them. This is actually all our work—in the middle line.

So today, with the crisis and the internal discord, we are about to discover our soul. Of course, the world is still very far from this. It will not discover it this way, but with our help, in much simpler ways, by joining us, and so on. We are about to discover this and should continue to advance towards it. It is all part of our nature.

The building of the screen and the formation of Partzuf takes place after the First Restriction. Our future state is already in this Partzuf. The Partzuf is made of the head that decides how to correctly connect the two parts in us: the part in which we can bestow and the other part in which we cannot. Rosh (the head) is above that, and thus it manages us.
[56084]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 9/25/2011

Spiritual Birthday

If we want to realize the purpose of creation and feel the pleasure prepared for us by the Creator, we have to feel ourselves as creatures who are opposite to Him. On the other hand, we have to become like the Creator because perfection is only possible at this state.

It turns out that we have to include these two opposite points, states, and properties inside ourselves. And when they awaken in us, we celebrate our spiritual birth. After being born spiritually, we already include the two qualities within ourselves: the desire to receive and the desire to bestow, one against the other, and we exist between them, feeling them both.

That happens as a result of a gradual, step by step development, whereby we pass through all the previous forms: still—vegetative—animate—monkey—man of this world. After that, new sensations and experiences awaken in a person: He feels bad and wants to learn the reason for which he lives, the meaning of his life.

The development of true man begins with this. But it isn’t a spiritual birth yet. It can take a few decades or a few life cycles until a person actually starts using the true criteria to research his nature with respect to the nature of the Creator.

And if his time has indeed come and a person can analyze these qualities, he is brought into a group and to the study. A person learns that he or she consists of the desire to receive, above which there is the desire to bestow, the Creator. He discovers that there is the goal, and he is in the process of achieving it; that the main thing is the environment, which needs to be built to correct and improve himself.

A person learns that all the corrections will become realized by him building the means for reaching the Creator and becoming just like Him. By that, he realizes his free will and shows that the purpose of his life is to become similar to the Creator.

For that reason, he builds the means that affect him with the attributes of bestowal. Then, the quality of bestowal that he receives from the society, from his environment, begins to contradict his natural egoistic inclination.

One always gets torn apart between these two qualities and thus, acquires free will. He can choose who to be with: his egoistic desire, his own nature, or with the quality of bestowal, the Creator’s nature. And perhaps he may even use the Creator’s nature to pull his desire to receive pleasure towards it and use his will to receive for the sake of bestowal. Thus, the left line gets included into the right.
[56877]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/2011, Shamati #167

A System With One Degree Of Freedom

The Light created the point of desire, the only creature, “out of absence.” And around this point, it was necessary to build a system in which this point could reach the level of the Light that begot it: to come to it in full understanding and conscious sensation.

All this had to be provided to the point except for one thing: freedom of choice in its development. However, all other means, qualities, and preconditions had to be granted.

It follows that there has to be a bridge between the Light and the point of darkness. The bridge has to become a system by which the Light makes a path to diminishing itself down to the level of the black point that emerged out of nothing.

The dark point in itself is opposite to the Light. It needs to absorb all forms that exist on the bridge between it and the Light. When it will include all existing forms into itself in the shape of internal preparations called “informational genes” (Reshimot), it will find itself on the opposite end of the system of the worlds. Then, under the influence of its own awakenings that arise from within, it will be able to begin to climb the degrees of these worlds and will come to know the Light by itself.

All means come to it from Above: the informational genes, the Light, forces, desires, and states. All of them, but one: The creature always retains the freedom of choice and decides by itself whether to use them for the sake of ascent or not. And this is the key!

Just as with the example of the Host and the guest: The guest is not at fault that he is hungry and has a good appetite. He is not at fault that he is poor! Nor is he at fault that there is a generous and powerful Host who knows precisely what appetite, desires, and taste the guest has, and who has prepared for him a suitable fulfillment, both in terns of quality and quantity.

Nothing hurts the guest’s dignity here if he knows how to behave with self-respect and not to rush to eat. If he knows how to conduct himself well, his shortcomings turn into merits, his weaknesses transform into courage, and his worries and complaints become a blessing of sanctity.
[56692]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/2011, “Pticha”

Closing The Chain Of Great Souls

So many people all over the world are truly anxious and totally helpless. They can’t find any justification for their suffering, and they don’t know what to do, how to make a living tomorrow or in the near future. Some are worried about what will happen to their billions, and others don’t know how they to survive when they run out of their last few pennies.

Each one suffers differently, but no one knows how to carry on. We, on the other hand, have suddenly received such a gift from Above that enables us to see the world differently. This is all thanks to the revelations of Baal HaSulam that came to us through his soul, as well as Rabash who was a transitional adaptor between us and Baal HaSulam.

Baal HaSulam has passed on to us Light from the world of Infinity through his perfect soul that attained its final correction. But he asked to be lowered because otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to come into contact with people. Only after he was lowered by many degrees, was he able to write The Study of Ten Sefirot and the Sulam commentary to The Book of Zohar. We don’t understand the level he was on before that, the enormous height from which he couldn’t even tell us anything in words.

This was the level of GAR of the world of Atzilut and above, where there is the Light not clothed in the vessels. From there he couldn’t approach people and be heard, so he asked to be lowered. In fact, he fulfilled the mission the Creator had appointed him for, knowing that he would ask for and perform it.

We are on the intermediate degree between Rabash and Baal HaSulam and humanity. On one hand, we have to rise in order to understand what Baal HaSulam said. On the other, we have to descend to people’s level and understand what they need from us and how they will be able to accept our message. We have to attain these two poles, both above and below.

Baal HaSulam and Rabash spoke from above. We are below, under the Parsa, so that we will have the opportunity to touch and to awaken the world and then together with all of humanity ascend through the Machsom (the barrier) and become included into the upperMalchut. This is our mission.

Let’s hope we will manage to realize what Baal HaSulam, Rabash, and all the Kabbalists that preceded them didn’t. They only prepared themselves for it. We draw their teaching, their Light and actually realize it in practice.

Let us hope that we will be worthy and will be able to fulfill what Baal HaSulam wrote about. There is no other group that is following his path and is ready to fulfill his method. This is why we call ourselves “Bnei Baruch” (the sons of Baruch Ashlag), and we can say that Baal HaSulam, this great soul, is living among us, and we are bringing it to realization.
[57001]
From a talk at the meal devoted to Baal HaSulam’s memorial day, 10/8/11

Instead Of Looking At Others, Look At Yourself

Question: It seems that suffering is inevitable and that we won’t be able to manage without it.…

Answer: However, you can replace it with the suffering of love. If those around you start “brainwashing you,” you will begin to appreciate bestowal: “Why don’t I bestow?” You will be walking around with this question from morning to night: “Why do I lack it? Where can I find it? Perhaps here? Perhaps there?” You will look for it everywhere as hypnotized.

Then there will be no need for the blows—the internal blows will replace them. But they will come in the form of a yearning for bestowal, for the purpose of creation, and you will be connected to it directly. It all depends on those around you. They have to constantly “transmit” to you how important bestowal is, and then you will strive for it.

But here is a question: Don’t you remain at the animate level by acting according to the dictate of the environment? That’s correct. This is why people with the point in the heart are told: “You have to build the correct environment yourselves, as well as do it for those who don’t have free will in this. Their freedom is more modest; it is in joining you.”

If you fulfill your free will and build your environment, you will be able to build it for others too. The problem is in the fact that you don’t have the right environment. You haven’t built it, and so you are not influenced by it. Thus, you don’t pass it on to others. You can’t be the environment for them yet.

Don’t complain that you cannot bestow upon others. Instead, think about how you can bestow upon yourselves. There are no tricks here, only practical work. If we don’t do it, we can forget about correcting the world. Who will correct it? We as we at the moment?

We have to create such a strong environment so that we can become a system that bestows upon the whole world. It shouldn’t be only by the media, not only by TV, the radio, and the Internet. This is necessary only to some extent. The main thing is that we will influence the world because we will already be in the system of souls, in the system of mutual connection between us, where everyone’s thoughts and desires flow constantly.

Now we are in this system as well, but we don’t control it because we haven’t acquired the power of bestowal. If we are equipped with the power of bestowal, we will control the general system and will convey the importance of bestowal to everyone. This is the true bestowal upon the environment.

Let’s hope that we will be able to make this year a good year for the whole world.
[56542]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, “Peace in the World”

Everyone Is Waiting Just For You

The souls included in Malchut of the world of Atzilut awaken it through their requests to pass to them the Light that Reforms.Thus each soul builds itself.

When our souls ascend to Malchut of the world of Atzilut and connect to it, they reveal there a whole, complete system. Malchut seems poor and miserable only relative to each of us—this is how we see it.

However, when we connect to it to the extent that we want to bestow to it, we attain this bestowal and discover that all the souls are there: All the friends and all the relatives, and actually all the world is there! And it was only me who just got there and connected to them, in order to begin to work together.

It is said: “Every person judges others to the extent of his own flaws.” The corrupted system only exists relative to the uncorrected person who attains it. It is only to him that this world seems to exist, full of many people whom he needs to correct.

But actually, he needs to correct only himself. And then everything else that he sees around him will transform into the system of his soul, and nothing but it.
[56689]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/2011, “Pticha”