I recently had a conversation with Don Miguel Ruiz in New York.

He is a Mexican author, shaman, and teacher, who was a surgeon until a near-death experience impelled him to seek answers in ancestral traditions of the Toltec.  Within the Toltec tribe, his mother was a curandera (healer), and his grandfather a nagual (shaman) who, after death, continued to teach Ruiz in his dreams.

His most famous and influential work, The Four Agreements, was published in 1997 and has sold around 4 million copies. It was featured on the Oprah television show, and advocates personal freedom from agreements and beliefs that we have made with ourselves and others that are creating limitation and unhappiness in our lives. Ultimately, it is about finding one’s own integrity, self-love, and peace within this reality.

Along with a companion workbook to the Four Agreements, Ruiz also wrote several other books, including The Voice of Knowledge, Prayers, and The Mastery of Love.

He often lectures and leads retreats in the United States, as many of his students are American.

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In the News (from PLOS ONE): “How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research?” – A popular view propagated by the media and by many scientists sees fraudsters as just a “few bad apples.” This pristine image of science is based on the theory that the scientific community is guided by norms including disinterestedness and organized skepticism, which are incompatible with misconduct. Increasing evidence, however, suggests that known frauds are just the “tip of the iceberg”, and that many cases are never discovered. …misconduct was reported more frequently by medical/pharmacological researchers than others.

…it is likely that, if on average 2% of scientists admit to have falsified research at least once and up to 34% admit other questionable research practices, the actual frequencies of misconduct could be higher than this.

My Comment: Egoism coupled with science makes science an instrument of evil! That is why the great scientists of the past, Plato and Aristotle, were against dissemination of science to the masses and accepted only “egoistically corrected” students. (See Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, The Tree of Life”)

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A question I received: You often use the word “harmony.” What do you mean by it?

My Answer: The harmony of humanity refers to the correct interconnection between people and governments within society.

This interconnection will create normally functioning economic, political, military, educational, family, and other systems, which are currently in crisis.

It is necessary to bring humanity to a state of inner harmony, without which its survival is impossible, as we have revealed that the destruction of  previous relationships has led to this multifaceted crisis.

Economics, politics, education, family, society, business, and trade are all formed by people and are based on human relationships. Suddenly we discover that we have built them on an egoistic basis, and the altruistic basis is now being revealed , to which we do not correspond. Nothing that was previously created now works.

We see this as a crisis of institutions. But in actuality, this is a crisis of our interrelationships. Today we need to amend the institutions that we have created. Nature has placed us in such a position of dependency on each other that we are obliged to change ourselves in accordance to Nature’s new demands: create a system of complete and harmonious interconnection. This is what the science of Kabbalah teaches us.

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In the News (from The Times Online): “Help, my boyfriend is using online sex chat rooms” – …model of cybersexual addiction – as defined by Dr Kimberly Young, an acclaimed expert on Internet addiction – shows that disinhibition, accelerated intimacy, and hypersexual online behavior are a pretty accurate predictor of real-world transgressions. Ellen Helsper, research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, says: “Couples do not make a distinction between online or offline infidelity because the emotions, and the sense of betrayal, are the same.”

My Comment: Lack of criticism, fantasy, wishful thinking, absence of limitations and etc. are the dangerous attributes of virtual affairs. Kabbalah considers virtual connections to be genuine because they reveal the inner desires of a person. Unrealized aspirations are more dangerous than realized ones because they constantly chase a person, do not allow realization and are therefore followed by disappointment.

It’s said, “Сомнения согрешить труднее, чем сам грех” “Temptations to sin are more difficult than the sin itself” because doubts chase and never leave a person!  At the same time, a committed sin leaves a person experiencing disappointment or at least reveals its imperfection, as with any other so-called fulfillment in this world.

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In the News (from The Telegraph): “Millions of Britons spend free time worrying about work, study shows” – More than half admit to working at home through the weekend, while two thirds won’t leave without their phone or Blackberry. …Northern Ireland has the hardest workers – with 51 per cent doing ten-hour days.

My Comment: But my schoolteacher promised that when I grew up, everyone would work half days and half weeks, and spend the rest of the time enjoying leisure activities!

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Questions I received about man’s descent into egoism and his ascent into spirituality:

Question: How is it possible within a short time-frame to transform our egoistic nature to one of altruism since we have been developing over thousands of incarnations without doing so?

My Answer: Over the last 5769 years and the span of thousands of incarnations, we have developed on the inanimate, vegetative and animate levels. We have been growing desires of the “human” level: fame, power, money and knowledge, and all of them fueled by envy.

Our egoism has continued growing with each generation until reaching the current state where it has become integral. We are fully bound together, completely dependent on one another!

Our development is akin to a pyramid. The top of the pyramid is very small, which is why the period of correction is very brief and must be made within the span of one generation. This is how time contracts – as we move along the pyramid from the base to the top.

Question: Why then did the Kabbalists of past keep quiet and not accelerate our historical development?

My Answer: Before we became united into one system (in the second half of the 20th century), we considered egoism the engine of progress. Now that it has begun to pit us against one another rather than uniting us, we are beginning to perceive it as evil. It will continue to reveal itself as the source of all evil in the world; it will force us to correct it to the opposite form of connection – towards compassion, contribution and love.

Today Kabbalists must assist the world to quickly realize the source of our suffering by revealing our egoistic nature as the source of all evil in the world. And to explain the rationale behind these events occurring within ourselves and our environment as the effect of that power that forces us to attain the highest goal – to attain life on the level of the Creator.

Until recently, this process of development was concealed from the masses. But today it has revealed itself and demands clarification so as to help diagnose these events and also provide the remedy. Because we live exclusively in the world of egoism (the force of reception) we cannot transform ourselves or even begin to consider how it can be done.

This is why we have been given the science of Kabbalah. When we study it, we draw onto ourselves the force of bestowal, the Creator, “the Light that returns to the Source,” meaning the force that transforms egoism into love and bestowal. That is the remedy that cures us.

Question: Where do we get the strength to make the ascent?

My Answer: The forced descent from perfection to imperfection is extremely “slow,” because egoism must gradually reveal itself and bring itself out of the Creator’s domain. On the other hand, our ascent from the bottom upwards happens under the influence of and with “the speed of Light.”

Question: Keeping in mind that it took matter in our world billions of years to develop after the descent from the Upper worlds, how can the ascent only take several years?

My Answer: We can make the correction in the span of several years because it happens under the influence of the Light. Perfection is revealed automatically from the state of imperfection merely because of our changed attitude toward it.

Our entire role in the correction is similar to the desire of a drop of semen to become a human being – that’s how indistinguishable it is in comparison with the actions of the parents at its conception, birth, upbringing and becoming a person.

Besides the indistinguishable desire to become Adam (from the word ‘Dome’ – similar to the Creator), the Creator does everything else. So let us do what He expects from us and become like Him.

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A question I received: We know that the path of spiritual development isn’t easy, and an individual is constantly thrown to the left and the right on it. When all of humanity begins to rise spiritually, how will it go through this process, given that it is not a very smooth path?

My Answer: First of all, those who engage in spiritual development are not the only people thrown in different directions in life. However, when all of humanity embarks on the path of ascending spiritually, it will not be thrown from state to state, but will instead rise calmly and orderly.

The fact of the matter is that the whole world will begin to rise as one man, a huge mass that will have a better appreciation of Nature. This will cause people’s thoughts to change, and little by little their desires will change in the direction of drawing closer to one another.

Humanity as a whole will not experience spiritual rises and falls and will not feel the inner resistance of the force of bestowal against the force of reception, where a person either adheres to his attributes of bestowal or to the egoistic desires of his heart.  The resistance of forces is what causes the experience of ascents and descents.

Conversely, all of humanity as a whole will have just one common desire, and it will join with Nature, merging with it more and more, tuning into Nature and rejecting itself before the common Nature. This will be a beautiful and smooth advancement and revelation – a wonderful path!

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In the News (from The Washington Post): “46 States, D.C. Plan to Draft Common Education Standards” Forty-six states and the District of Columbia today will announce an effort to craft a single vision for what children should learn each year from kindergarten through high school graduation, an unprecedented step toward a uniform definition of success in American schools…The push for common reading and math standards marks a turning point in a movement to judge U.S. children using one yardstick that reflects expectations set for students in countries around the world at a time of global competition…The benchmarks would be “internationally competitive.”

My Comment: This program might, in the end, completely stifle a child’s ingenuity. Why are our schools so unsuccessful?

With the emergence of mass in-line production at the turn of the 19th century, wherein man and machine supplemented and replaced one another, its creator, American engineer Frederick Taylor, placed the organization of machine and human labor on the same footing.
The factory workers necessarily became replaceable machine parts.

After the invention of the conveyor belt by Henry Ford, there arose a need to train factory workers faster, as though on a human conveyor belt.
This need fueled the formation of the modern school system: separate stages called “grades,” where children are grouped strictly by age. The children are expected to climb from grade to grade in the allotted time. Every class has an overseer, a “teacher,” precise divisions in time, bells, breaks, and so on.

The result are schools that are isolated from life, created with the purpose of churning out factory workers akin to the interchangeable soldiers for the army of Friedrich the Great. The principle of education has remained the same to this day. School provides very little knowledge (graduates leave school retaining only about 5% of what they had been taught), but in no way does it make a child into a person.

This is the core of all of society’s problems: the upbringing we give our children determines the society we create.

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A question I received: How does the role of the mass media in the process of common correction have to change?

My Answer: Correction of man can happen only under the influence of society. We all have to bond properly as the result of the correction, and in order for this to happen, everyone has to receive examples of correct connections from his environment.

Therefore, we have to use the mass media, the most powerful communication tool, to create the proper environment for everyone in the world. The media has to turn into an instrument of correction for the world in response to society’s demands and by the pressure placed upon it by the government. Only powerful and broad based media will be able to influence a person in such a way that he will feel the need to change his relationship with his environment.

Children have to demand proper conduct from their parents, otherwise they will be ashamed of their parents’ behavior, and each person has to feel ashamed of treating others badly.

This is possible only because of changes brought about by society’s demands. It is in this way that we will make the mass media truly become an instrument of connection, rather having it remain as an instrument of selling to gain profit.

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In the News (from Truthout): “The IMF is Back? Think Again” -  Recent events illustrate nothing more than the fact that the world’s largest economies, who happen to be the Fund’s largest shareholders, view it as an instrument to manage emergency crisis financing. That was never, however, in question. It was the borrowers who saw the need for substantial reform in the IMF before this emergency financing function could be played effectively and, in fact, it is the infusion of large amounts of funding, by freeing the IMF’s hands and relieving its fears of survival that will act against such reforms.

On the other hand, there’s little that suggests a sense of renewed faith on the IMF by its main shareholders, let alone by the borrowers. … Clearly, there’s not much evidence of a change of heart among IMF shareholders to revive and strengthen the IMF, particularly among the richest industrial countries.

My Comment: Suffering will bring us to recognition of globalization and the integral nature of humanity, forcing us to create a world government (regulator) that will not revoke individual nations’ governments but include them within itself.

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