Question: It is common to humanize animal characters for the purpose of education. Is this a correct approach?

Answer: I have never seen an elephant converse with a fox, a dog singing, or a mouse pulling crafty tricks on a hapless cat. I don’t see any educational value in these models. As compared to a realistic worldview, there is a great lie in them. I don’t see in them examples that show a little person how to behave in life.

Instead, I see a distorted picture of the world. By imposing imaginary stories on a child, we maim his reason and warp his logic. We don’t even realize that these illusions will remain with him for the rest of his life, forming his attitude toward the world.

Obviously, we need to familiarize the children with the still, vegetative, and animate worlds, but only in their true form. We ought to treat a small child like a small person, and not a visitor from some imagined reality, where animals speak and exist in fairytale relationships with one another. This approach is a consequence of our sanctimonious world and all kinds of absurdities that humanity has concocted over thousands of years. The wisdom of Kabbalah has a very different outlook on things.

Is this really the only way to raise our kids? In the examples and explanations we offer, can we not avoid animals, the majority of which children have never even seen? Otherwise we’re imposing “virtual” characters on the child, which is tantamount to telling him about ghosts and spirits.

My grandson has a conception of a cell phone, an airplane, a car, and dogs and cats in the streets. So why should I feed him fables? “You know, somewhere outside the city there is a forest, and in that forest there are animals who talk to each other….” Up until now he has lived in the real world, and here I introduce a lie into it. What for? What is the educational value here? Simply, I slipped the child a make-believe reality, which he perceives as fact. Imbued with these fables, he will retain this distorted perception for the rest of his life. No wonder we’ve got people jumping into bear enclosures, thinking the animals are so soft and cuddly.

A child must be educated not with fables, but with parables and games, where the make-believe is not presented as reality. Stop feeding kids fables, and keep them on a truth-only diet. Any lie is imprinted in their subconscious, incorporated into their inner program, and distorts their outlook on life. Only the truth should be expanded more and more as the child develops. The truth will redefine the child’s approach to life, and he will grow correctly.
[22509]
From the Talk on Education 9/29/10

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Educating By Truth
Laitman.com Post: Guide Children Toward Real Life
Laitman.com Post: Education Must Instill The Desire For Discovery

Filed under: Children, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Education, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: How can you explain to children the law of “love thy neighbor as thyself”?

Answer: Education should be the same for children and adults. Only with the child you reveal everything in a smaller measure, presenting examples that he can understand, that are merely “reduced” to his level, and not fairytales. In every case he must be told the truth! We simply need to make sure he understands us properly at his level, just as we adapt the language of the Kabbalists in an effort to bring it closer to the modern man and make it clear to everybody.

It takes many lessons to explain to a child a small part of what the adults study at the daily lesson. After verifying that all the previous lessons were grasped, I reveal a new problem for the group of children to solve; I give them “half a spoon” of it, just for a “taste.”

But afterward, the child must start asking questions, while lacking in understanding and plagued by doubts, discussing it with his friends, together trying to understand what is really going on, wherein lies the problem and its solution. And the teacher includes himself in the discussion on equal terms with them, guiding them toward the right path while keeping his distance.

First we fully clarify the question itself, and then we try to find the solution. Through this process the teacher evaluates the children’s progress: Every preceding degree connects into the succeeding degree with its lower part. No grades are given, everyone is equal; we only evaluate the collective solution to any given problem.
[22545]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Educating By Truth
Laitman.com Post: The New System Of Education
Laitman.com Post: Teaching Children Kindness

Filed under: Children, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Education, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Baal HaSulam writes that love for another has to be so deep that we would be willing to give the only pillow we have. Does this mean we have to fulfill each other’s material desires as well?

Answer: I don’t have anything to fill these desires with! Where am I going to get 7 billion pillows for the whole of humanity? If everyone cares solely for bestowal, a person will have only necessities in order to sustain himself. What, then, would he be able to give to others?

A law forbids us to give up necessities without which we couldn’t survive. This concerns the survival of the animate body that mustn’t be neglected. So, it turns out that I have nothing to give away to others, and it isn’t required of me. If I have arranged myself correctly in relation to the correction process, I will have no extra food nor money to spare since I live solely for bestowal and take nothing beyond what is necessary for myself.

However, we are forgetting that we don’t have to do anything ourselves. Everything is arranged by the Light. We just have to create the connection in order for the Light to act through us. If I am thinking about another’s need, he will receive what he needs. It is I who arranged it for him. By doing so, I have become equivalent to the Creator because I have evoked the act of bestowal.

I can’t do more than motivate the Light to act. This means that I raise MAN (Mayin Nukvin, Female Waters) which is a request or prayer. My MAN, request, from Malchut works similar to how MAD (Mayin Duchrin, Male Waters), answer, from Bina. I raise to Bina all my will to receive to the magnitude of ZAT de Bina. Everything gets resolved in the thought: I provide the desire to fulfill the friend, but it is the Creator who fulfills him. I am just a connecting link between the other person and the Creator. This is how the world is created in my imagination so that I could correct myself.

I feel that I don’t need anything for myself except to bestow to another. I feel his desire above my own and, above his, I feel the desire of the Creator, an opportunity to fulfill and delight Him. If I organize my desires in this fashion, it means that I perform my actions. The Creator will carry out these acts, and we will attain oneness. I asked Him to unify us in adhesion, and He did. I only need to keep asking.

The Creator intentionally makes others lack something. It is done so that I develop a desire to ask the Creator to fulfill another’s lack, so that I desire to become one with Him, to merge and equalize myself with Him. He created all evil in the world and wishes for me to act on everyone’s behalf as their guardian and look after all of them. He fulfills the world with the Light of Infinity, and then disappears, giving me a chance to bring the Light back into this world.

However, I must understand that this is how the world is painted by my imagination in my “matrix” or the illusion that I must live specifically for my correction. If I try to give something away, that is, try to correct the world and not myself, then I will only harm the world further in order for me to realize what a mistake I had made and to start correcting myself after all. We clearly see that any “humanitarian help” brings additional damage by  provoking terrorism, theft, and idleness.
[22555]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: About Love And Hate
Laitman.com Post: What Is Love?
Laitman.com Post: What Can I Bestow, When And To Whom?

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A - 1 Comment →

Everything originates in Infinity, in the initial state, and in order for us to attain full correction, we have to meet all conditions set therein. In the state of Infinity, the will to receive is unyielding; it won’t give up one iota of adhesion, unity, or similarity to the Creator.

In Infinity, there is no end or border, nor a detail that would escape His calculation. That is why it is called Infinity. It is not related to a place (desire), quantity or quality of fulfillment, but lies in the unreserved decision of the created being to adhere to the Creator. Accordingly, spiritual degrees of ascension from our world to Infinity are the “degrees of compromise”: to what extent the created being is still refusing to perform a precise calculation for equivalence.

In the initial stage of his work, man looks at everything through the prism of his personal benefit. That is his nature; he was created this way. This period is lengthy and eventually leads to desperation. Likewise, during its entire history, humanity underwent twists and turns of hard life while it chased pleasure, until a line of disappointments has reached critical mass. Having learned from painful experiences, meaning having tasted their bitter outcome, we quit the race because we neither believe that it will bring us satisfaction nor feel it.

Thus, we begin gradually to despise egoistic fulfillment for its bitter effect. Out of despair, we make a new calculation: In altruism, we will experience fulfillment. This is how, affected by the Light, the chain of Reshimot (spiritual genes, reminiscences), which had emerged in the very beginning of our descent from Infinity, gets realized.

Two lines come into play: the direct line from Above downward and the inverse line from below upward. Now, instead of self gratification, a person makes calculations based on his involvement in bestowal. As a result, his reward changes also. It is experienced not in the receiving desires, but in the bestowing ones.

But what is the difference? After all, we are created beings and must feel fulfillment. However, in order to feel it in the same way the Creator does, we have to be equivalent to Him. That is why, from now on, we work on our capacity to receive pleasure from the action itself and not from the final outcome of bestowal.
[22517]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/10, “What is the Help that One Should Ask of the Creator”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Rising To Infinity Along The Steps Of Love
Laitman.com Post: Do Not Lose The Point Of Adhesion
Laitman.com Post: Climbing Up The Ladder Of The Creator’s Thoughts

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Spirituality - No Comments →

Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam, “In Everything We Must Discern Between Light and Kli”
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “VaYechi (And Jacob Lived in the Land of Egypt),” Item 592
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

Rav Yehuda Ashlag, Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 6, Part 15, Item 120
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

Rav Yehuda Ashlag, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings,” Lesson 6
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Zohar - No Comments →