Children, Be Kind To The Teacher

Dr. Michael LaitmanSpiritual education is much quicker at developing the receiving desire in children. Egoism grows and restores balance as we provide children with the means of bestowal, which help manage it. As a consequence, seven to nine-year-old children develop aspirations and abilities absent in people at thirty or forty.

Our body does not play any part here; its changes are insignificant. A person is judged according to the soul’s shifts and changes. We are yet to see how the egoistic desire in children grows according to the degree of correction that the soul is able to provide. Nature, the upper governance, always keeps this balance.

The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES), Part 9 and further describes the maturing of the soul: the periods of conception, nursing, and maturity. A child will be able to go through these stages before completing high school.

Indeed, why should a boy not become a “man” at thirteen and acquire the Masach (anti-egoistic screen), in other words, begin his work of overcoming, receiving for the sake of bestowal in a mature state (Gadlut)? He will then have control over all of his desires by twenty and will come to the end of correction by the time he turns seventy.

To a certain extent, this is the way it occurred during the times of the Temples. Children received a corresponding education, and it is written that from Dan to Beersheba, there was not a single child who did not know the spiritual laws.

Here everything depends on the environment. For example, if we were to organize a commune and raise our children there, would they not grow, studying the properties of reception and bestowal, and learning to work with them?

Even today our children are soaking in the spiritual education, regardless of the “viruses” that schools are infecting them with. They have a different approach; they know how to analyze the world and themselves. Besides, they do not repeat what they have heard or learned, instead they actually speak in “first person,” they make independent observations, and draw their own conclusions.

Sit a child like this down with a professor of some sort and you’ll see that there will be no conversation. And the child will not be at fault.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/7/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Why Do We Experience Troubles?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What’s the use of my growing egoistic desires?

Answer: Their task is to bring you to failure, to let you feel that you are worthless, that your life is awful, your desires despicable, and generally speaking, nothing around you is worth a thing.

Therefore, the only thing you now need is for the Light to awaken you. It will awaken you to the same desires, showing you that they are worse than they seemed before. Then you really will desire to ascend above them and will start revealing the opposite side of reality above these desires. However, before that, you have to start studying in the group because lectures and live communication cannot be substituted by anything else.
From the lecture in “Kabbalah L’Am” Hall on 1/4/11

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Kabbalists On The Torah And Commandments, Part 14

Dr. Michael LaitmanDear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

613 Suggestions and 613 Deposits

The language of The Zohar calls the Mitzvot [commandments] in the Torah 613 deposits. However, it is also called 613 suggestions. The difference between them is that everything has an anterior and posterior. The preparation [correction of desire] for something is called “posterior,” and the attainment [in the corrected desire] of something is called “anterior.”

Accordingly, Torah and Mitzvot have the aspect of doing and the aspect of hearing, as our sages wrote (Shabbat 88), “Who carry out His word, hearing the voice of His word,” doing [correcting their desires] first and hearing [what they will receive in the property of bestowal, Bina] afterward. The Mitzvot are called 613 suggestions, and they are considered “posterior,” and when rewarded with hearing the voice of His word [because they have acquired the ability to hear, the property of bestowal, Bina], the 613 Mitzvot become deposits, from the term “deposit [the spreading of the Light of Hochma in the Light of Hassadim],” since there are 613 Mitzvot, and in each Mitzva, Light is deposited from a specific degree, corresponding to a specific organ of the 613 organs and tendons of the soul and of the body.
– Rabash, The Rungs of the Ladder, “What Is a Half of a Shekel, in the Work (1)”
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Hot Air Balloon Flight To Freedom

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the Light of Hassadim and how is it brought about?

Answer: When with the help of the Surrounding Light that Reforms I cultivate my point in the heart, it becomes my setting to bestow to the Creator. I acquire this ability. The Light of Hassadim releases me from egoism, and I rise above it. It is as if I received a hot air balloon that lifts me off the ground and I can fly!

The Light of Hassadim is the Light of Bina, the Light of freedom. I break free from my egoistic desire, as if exiting Egyptian bondage and becoming free from the rule of my ego. I rise above it, and it no longer burdens me. I am no longer bound by any egoistic qualities that make me steal, lie, and hoard; I withdraw from it all and become free, as if watching the whole world and myself from above, soaring in the air. This is the kind of freedom given by the Light of Hassadim.

The Light of Hassadim expands horizontally rather than vertically because it doesn’t depend on the level of desire. It is similar to a “generous spirit”: “Here I am, ready to bestow to everybody, without being ruled by my will to receive. Take all that I have; I don’t mind! I am connected with the Creator; I am united with Him and don’t feel any restrictions on my egoism; it has no power over me anymore.”

If a person steps out of egoism to such a degree, while ascending in the Light of Hassadim, he frees himself from the angel of death, rising above it.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/7/2011, “Explanation of the Article, ‘Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah’”

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Children And Free Will

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Since a person has to realize his freedom of will, could we be taking it away from the children by teaching them Kabbalah from an early age?

Answer: We are specifically teaching them how to use their freedom of will! States keep changing, egoism grows, the surrounding society changes. Every moment a child needs to make a new decision about who he wants to be with, how to treat and perceive things, and what he needs to do. If they keep relating to the changing environment correctly, they will develop very well.

Everyone knows about the teenage crisis, when everyone revolts. We need to use this wonderful quality and never repress it. It will help children make an easy leap from corporeality into spirituality. We only need to properly prepare the children prior to this age so that the coming-of-age years (12-15) would become their years of spiritual ascent and entrance into the spiritual world.

For this reason, children need to be educated ahead of time in a way that would help them realize what they have learned in practice later. Nature intentionally lays this period of inner explosions in our genes: on the levels of hormones, egoism, and the desire for power.

This is the age for working with a person in order to raise him or her into spirituality. They start “growing old” afterward. Beginning with the age of 20, people start moving in the direction of the cemetery. They “enter life,” end up in an ordinary society, and become concerned only with providing for themselves in the corporeal world.

A child needs to be educated from the age of six or seven so he would acquire an opportunity to act in a correct manner, grow up, and become “big” in the spiritual sense before he enters adolescence and grows up. We must not miss the childhood years; otherwise, it will be too late!

It would be the same as beginning to teach grammar at twenty. Imagine all the opportunities this person would miss in his life. But in our case we are referring to the fundamentals of nature, which need to be instilled in a child. We teach him to properly organize all his desires and qualities.

This is absolutely essential, and this is why we are so concerned with creating an educational system according to the method of Kabbalah.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/2011, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Make Yourself A Different World

Dr. Michael LaitmanUltimately, we paint a picture of reality for ourselves when the Light comes in contact with the will to receive, similar to how in our world the light projects a movie upon a screen. Yet, unlike with the cinema, the Upper Light paints the image not on a screen outside, but inside of us, thereby creating a picture of reality on our matter, the will to receive pleasure.

This is why we see a live world and living creatures “in front of us” (this is how we perceive what we sense inside of us), and not the images on a flat surface. Imagine for a moment that you are drawing a little puppy that is running around you. You are creating it; it isn’t a picture, but a creature made of flesh, blood, and bones which has a mind and feelings because it is within your matter (desire). Essentially, this is all we are doing since there is nothing but desire and the Light.

If your desire awakens, rises, and reaches at least a minimal measure of bestowal, it creates new images, new creatures, together with the Light. You see for yourself, as if from aside, how your various desires change on the contact with the Light and create various forms of life. Can you imagine what reality you are living in? Before your eyes, the worlds are changing with their entire content, all of which is created by you.

Surely, you are fully aware that previously, you had also existed in a world being created in your matter. So, a question arises: Am I creating these forms, making them anew, or had they existed before and are just now unfolding in this form, along the growth of my desire and ascent on the ladder of spiritual rungs?

At each spiritual degree, I encounter new forms, a new world. Did I make this new world that I am discovering, or had it existed before me, and I am only now discovering it? The answer is that I only uncover it. But for myself, I am indeed creating it since for me, it lives in my desires.
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From Kabbalah for Beginners, “Perception of Reality” 10/20/10

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 01.10.11

Writings of Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam, “What is the Feast of the Groom”
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The Book of Zohar — Introduction: “The Donkey Driver,” Item 81, Lesson 2
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Talmud Eser Sefirot 3, Part 8, Item 54, Lesson 30
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy,” Lesson 11
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