Our Environment: The Collective Soul

"Our environment consists of all of the stages in our development prior to where we are, which include everything that went before, and also the situation that we find ourselves in at the moment. So let’s just go over what our situation is in terms of where we came from.

In our original first state as we were created in the creation of a creature, the four phases of Direct Light, in this condition, there was one soul in relation to the Creator, with no boundaries on that connection. This is the collective soul, Adam ha Rishon, and actually, this is the state we still live in, except that we have lost any sensation of our true condition.

As this state was lowered through a number of phases by the force of development, which is the development of desire and also the development of the will to receive rather than the will to bestow, it arrived at the independent desire of the creature.

Now, this is reflected in our experience this way. This state is experienced rather as a kind of a matrix. A lattice that contains six hundred thousand independent parts, individual souls, all related to each other. The relationship, one to another, and the influence between them, is enormous. They are all interrelated actually, in the way that they were related in their original state, but the awareness of this relationship is lost to each of the individual parts.

Anything that is done in one of these parts—which is an individual desire—is felt through this interconnection in every other part. That is, there is an influence, an enormous influence that is felt throughout the entire system given the condition or the inner action of a desire of any one of these. So nothing inside here actually functions as an individual. We perceive that it does. This is our sensation of it as a result of the hiddenness of our real state from us.

And rather than feeling the interconnection, what we really feel is something more like this—that a person exists independent of others, and is a user and an exploiter of others. But really the condition that we feel is more like this (I’ll do it like that)—connected to nothing. But the truth is that this collective soul is our environment and it puts tremendous pressure on us in the form of our society—societal pressures; the way that everything in our environment affects us. So much of what we feel (and we’ll see how much) comes from this and not from this.

So, as you can see, we are influenced from all sides—inside and outside—and yet freedom is still achievable even in the material world, in this lifetime, and not in some other world as most religions say. But it takes a very special effort, and the effort is to rise above our nature."

- Kabbalah Revealed

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Butterfly

Cindy Ashton reminds us that even when we face medical adversity life is a butterfly full of possibilities.

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Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

"I'm dying and I am having fun - and I'm going to keep having fun every day I have left because there is no other way to play."

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving presentation, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," after explaining his cancer, Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals.
He speaks of his own childhood goals gives great advice on life, success and family.

Have a childhood vision

Help others

Loyalty is a two-way street

Never give up

Show gratitude

Stop complaining and work harder

Be good at something it makes you valuable

Find the best in everybody

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Does Life Have A Master Plan?

kabbalahtoday
Those pioneers in nature’s research wanted to know if nature actually had a goal, and if so, what humanity’s role might be in this master plan

It is no secret that Kabbalah did not begin with today’s Hollywood trendy hype. It has actually been around for thousands of years. When it first appeared, people were much closer to Nature than they are today. They felt an intimacy with Nature and nurtured their relationship with it.

In those days, they had little reason to be detached from Nature. They weren’t as self-centered and alienated from their natural environment as we are today. Indeed, at that time, humanity was an inseparable part of Nature and nurtured its intimacy with it.

In addition, humankind did not know enough about Nature to feel secure; instead, we were afraid of natural forces, which impelled us to relate to Nature as a force superior to our own.

Being intimate with Nature, on the one hand, and afraid of it, on the other hand, people aspired not only to learn about their surrounding world, but even more important, to determine what or who governed it.

In those early days, people couldn’t hide from Nature’s elements as they do today; they couldn’t avoid its hardships as we do in our “manmade” world. And most important, the fear of Nature, and at the same time, the closeness to it, urged many to search for and discover Nature’s plan for them, and coincidentally, for all of us.

Those pioneers in Nature’s research wanted to know if Nature actually had a goal, and if so, what humanity’s role might be in this Master Plan. Those individuals who received the highest level of knowledge, that of the Master Plan, are known as “Kabbalists.”

A unique individual among those pioneers was Abraham. When he discovered the Master Plan, he not only researched it in depth, but first and foremost taught it to others. He realized that the only guarantee against misery and fear was for people to fully understand Nature’s plan for them. And once he realized this, he spared no effort teaching whoever wished to learn. For this reason, Abraham became the first Kabbalist to start a dynasty of Kabbalah teachers: The most worthy students became the next generation of teachers, who then passed on the knowledge to the next generation of students.

Kabbalists refer to the designer of the Master Plan as “the Creator,” and to the Plan itself as “The Thought of Creation.” In other words, and this is important, when Kabbalists talk about Nature or Nature’s laws, they are talking about the Creator. And vise versa, when they are talking about the Creator, they are talking about Nature or Nature’s laws. These terms are synonymous.

To a Kabbalist, the term, “Creator,” does not signify a supernatural, distinct entity, but the next degree that a human being should reach when pursuing higher knowledge. The Hebrew word for Creator is Boreh, and contains two words: Bo (come) and Re’eh (see). Thus, the word, “Creator,” is a personal invitation to experience the spiritual world.

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Why Aren't We All Good Samaritans?

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, asks '"why we aren't more compassionate more of the time?".

The sad thing is that our neurological system, our mirror neurons, are wired to desire to help - and yet we are often to self obsorbed to stop and help. Is charity purely an ego trip? What of speed dating? Do I talk about myself and give the other person full attention?.

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A Complaint Free World

In this video (in 3 parts)footage from Spring 2008 Will Bowen, the founder of A Complaint Free World, addresses an enthusiastic audience about the origins of his innovative 21 Day Challenge. To date millions of bracelets have been sent to over 90 countries around the world.
www.acomplaintfreeworld.org









There is some great info on a complaint free business, complaint free life and complaint free church.
so check out:

www.acomplaintfreeworld.org

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Escape

Escape eng from illuzia.net on Vimeo.

Originally, we were created as interconnected social beings and we cannot avoid this fact. Yet, the world we created is so uncomfortable, and it suppresses us so severely, that people are eager to run away from it.

However, when we run away from society, we begin to feel that we have no choice but to be in contact with it. So how can we find balance between these two poles? This situation in particular is what pushes a person to the next level of one’s existence. On that level we obtain knowledge on how to connect with others while keeping our individual uniqueness, and as such, the world becomes comfortable for us to live in.

This is what we need to learn: how to keep our ego and rise above it in order to connect with others. It doesn’t mean that the ego is suppressed in any way; we discover how to use our egoism correctly. Without losing inner freedom, a person rises above his/her ego and connects with everyone else. Together, they then make up one whole.

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