October 22, 2024
June 16, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Humanity, Quotes
The human body is possibly the most vivid example of the modus operandi of yielding self-interest before the interest of the host system in return for the system’s protection. In the human body, as in any organism, each cell has a particular role. For the organism to persist, each cell must perform its function to the best of its ability and replace the goal of maintaining its own life with the goal of maintaining the life of its host organism.
If a cell begins to act contrary to that principle, its interests will soon clash with those of the body and the body’s defense mechanisms will destroy it. Otherwise, it is likely to create a tumor of insubordinate cells that strive to consume the body’s resources for their own benefit. When such a process occurs, we diagnose it as “cancer.”
If the cancer wins, the body dies and the tumor dies along with it. If the body wins and the cancer dies, the body persists, along with the cells of the organ that did not become malignant, and the self-centered cells are extinguished. This is Nature’s failsafe mechanism for ensuring that self-centered systems will not exist. Here, too, there is nothing miraculous; it is simply that self-centered mechanisms invariably consume themselves to extinction because they end up consuming their food supply.
Thus, it is in the interest of all cells in the body to dispose of the tumor. Put differently, to guarantee the survival of elements in a system, the elements in that system must cater to the well-being of the system before they cater to their own well-being. In return, the system will cater to their well-being and provide for their survival.
The principle explained just now is valid not only for particles, atoms, and organisms, but for all of life. By applying it, all elements in Nature learn to yield their self-centered natures to an altruistic nature, which considers the good of the collective before its own good.
How can you and humanity as a whole learn examples from nature in order to best survive and prosper? This topic and more are tackled in the Free Kabbalah Course, 20 lessons that will change your life in 10 weeks. The course just started and registration closes soon. Don’t miss out!…
May 7, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
The Real Reason Why People Hate to Collaborate
As we can see from multiple psychological and sociological studies, it is more rewarding to work in a group than alone. Hence, why do we not cooperate all the time? If we are made of a desire to receive and can receive more by collaborating, then why are we not collaborating? What is it about our nature that, despite the 1,200 studies that prove it is better to work together than alone, we have not thoroughly installed these methods in our education system? And why do schools (and the entire education system), media, sports, and politics still promote competitive and individualistic behavior, extolling successful individuals? Why not extol people who promote bonding and mutuality, if evidence proves that it would work to everyone’s benefit?
The reason why this is so is because in Stage Four of the development of the egoistic desire we are no longer satisfied with achieving more. Achieving more was what we wanted in Stage Three. In Stage Four, our primary desire is to achieve more than others. We want to be unique and superior, just like the Creator. Thus, we may provide hard, indisputable evidence that it is better to work together than alone, but without feeling that this is so, our egos will not succumb to the idea. In Stage Four, solutions must first satiate the ego before we can approach daily life tactics to improve our achievements.
In regard to the above paragraph, in “Peace in the World,” Baal HaSulam elaborates on our sense of uniqueness: “The nature of each and every person is to exploit the lives of all other people in the world for his own benefit. And all that he gives to another is only out of necessity; and even then there is exploitation of others in it, but it is done cunningly, so that his neighbor will not notice it and concede willingly. The reason for it,” he explains, “is that… because man’s soul extends from the Creator, who is one and Unique [referring to the single law of bestowal that creates and sustains the world]… man… feels that all the people in the world should be under his own governance and for his own private use. And this is an unbreakable law. The only difference is in people’s choices: one chooses to exploit people to satisfy lower desires, and one by obtaining government, while the third by obtaining respect. furthermore, if one could do it without much effort, he would agree to exploit the world with all three combined—wealth, government, and respect. However, he is forced to choose according to his possibilities and capabilities. This law can be called, ‘the law of singularity in man’s heart.’ No person escapes it, and each and every one takes his share in that law.”
You Can Either Be Unique and Creative Alone… Or With the Creator
On october 15, 2006, Sam Roberts of The New York Times published a story titled, “To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered,” where he referred to a census. The story revealed that “Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority… The American Community Survey, released… by the Census Bureau, …found that 49.7 percent [of] households in 2005 were made up of married couples… down from more than 52 percent five years earlier.” Moreover, revealed Roberts: “The numbers of unmarried couples are growing. Since 2000, those identifying themselves as unmarried opposite-sex couples rose by about 14 percent, male couples by 24 percent and female couples by 12 percent.”
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May 2, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Getting to the Bottom of the “Keeping Up With the Joneses” Phenomenon
We can see just how much we always want what others have in Item 38 of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag’s “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” stating that “Man [Stage four], who can feel others, becomes needy of everything that others have, …and is thus filled with envy to acquire everything that others have. When he has a hundred, he wants two hundred, thus his needs forever multiply until he wishes to devour all that there is in the whole world.”
But earlier in the introduction (Item 25), Ashlag writes, “Since the Thought [of Creation—the Creator’s goal] was to delight His creatures, He had to create an overwhelmingly exaggerated desire to receive all that bounty, which is in the Thought of Creation [to give us unbounded pleasure].” And he continues, “If the exaggerated will to receive perished from the world, the Thought of Creation would not be realized—meaning the reception of all the great pleasures that He thought to bestow upon His creatures—for the great will to receive and the great pleasure go hand in hand. And to the extent that the desire to receive it diminishes, so diminish the delight and pleasure from receiving.”
Hence, if we want to become Creator-like, we must not diminish our desires. But if we do not diminish our desires, then our ability to eliminate self-centeredness and become Creator- like will fail if all we have in our medicine cabinet are the old remedies of religious fanaticism, oppression, tyranny or any other of the old means of discipline. Those methods were good for “taming” the desire to receive in its earlier stages, but they will not suffice for today’s level of desire to receive.
A new method, a fresh code of action is required, something that will not try to suppress the insuppressible, but will harness the new powers that extreme egoism evokes to improve life, instead of destroying both humankind and our pathogenic egocentricity.
Competition or Cooperation? The Need to Choose Wisely
In Stage Three of the evolution of desires, our envy has created an interconnected and interdependent world where we compete against, yet depend on each other for sustenance. Again we can quote Ashlag, who wrote, “Because each person in the world draws his life’s marrow and his livelihood from all the people in the world, he is coerced to serve and to care for the well-being of the whole world.”
We can also quote McGrew’s statement: “This [single global system] defines a far more complex condition, one in which patterns of human interaction, interconnectedness, and awareness are reconstituting the world as a single social space.” These quotes accurately reflect our situation at the start of the 21st century: we are tied together, and hateful of each other.
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