Audio Version Of The Blog – 06.22.12

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The Crisis Slashes Spending On Education

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Euronews): “All over the world the economic downturn is having a negative impact on education. Public spending is being slashed and schools have not been spared. Now, as students take to the streets, governments are struggling to maintain education as a basic right.”

My Comment: The education system doesn’t bear fruit because it is not connected with the system of upbringing, and without it the crisis is felt more deeply in all the layers of society. The time will come when even businesses will not be able to operate without uniting all the employees in one team, in mutual responsibility.

Weaving the method of unification in all occupations is becoming more obvious with each day. There will come a time when a necessary condition for success in all actions, as individuals as well as any groups, will be unity, and unity and will precede actions. Thus, the upper authority will force humanity to learn intentions before actions and will lead everyone to Itself.
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“Why Rock Music ‘Brings Out The Animal In Us’”

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from The Telegraph): “Sudden, jarring changes in pitch and frequency play on the same emotional mechanisms as the signals which animals use to alert one another of danger, a study found.

“When animals cry out in distress they force a large amount of air through their voice box very quickly, producing a discordant effect designed to grab the attention and provoke an emotional response in other animals.

“Hearing similar sound patterns, like Hendrix’s distorted version of Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock in 1969, sends a shiver down our spine because we are programmed to react strongly to the harsh noise, researchers said.

“The same goes for discordant music associated with horror films – such as the screeching soundtrack to the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho – but not for generic ‘elevator music’ which lacks jolting changes in sound or volume.

“Researchers also found that while dissonant music stirs up strong emotions, these are usually linked to negative feelings like fear or sadness rather than happy ones.

“Greg Bryant, assistant professor of communication studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and one of the study authors, said: ‘This study helps explain why the distortion of rock-and-roll gets people excited: It brings out the animal in us.

“’Composers have intuitive knowledge of what sounds scary without knowing why. What they usually don’t realise is that they’re exploiting our evolved predispositions to get excited and have negative emotions when hearing certain sounds.’”

My Comment: In the process of integral education, we have to use the appropriate musical influence as the background for conversations and during the workshops. We need to encourage and increase listening to songs with “integral” content.
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“Why We Lie”

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “We like to believe that a few bad apples spoil the virtuous bunch. But research shows that everyone cheats a little—right up to the point where they lose their sense of integrity. …

“Over the past decade or so, my colleagues and I have taken a close look at why people cheat, using a variety of experiments and looking at a panoply of unique data sets—from insurance claims to employment histories to the treatment records of doctors and dentists. What we have found, in a nutshell: Everybody has the capacity to be dishonest, and almost everybody cheats—just by a little. Except for a few outliers at the top and bottom, the behavior of almost everyone is driven by two opposing motivations. On the one hand, we want to benefit from cheating and get as much money and glory as possible; on the other hand, we want to view ourselves as honest, honorable people. Sadly, it is this kind of small-scale mass cheating, not the high-profile cases, that is most corrosive to society. …

“Knowing that most people cheat—but just by a little—the next logical question is what makes us cheat more or less. …

“One thing that increased cheating in our experiments was making the prospect of a monetary payoff more ‘distant’ … Another thing that boosted cheating: Having another student in the room [in the experiment] who was clearly cheating. …

“Other factors that increased the dishonesty of our test subjects included knowingly wearing knockoff fashions, being drained from the demands of a mentally difficult task and thinking that ‘teammates’ would benefit from one’s cheating in a group version of the matrix task. …

“The results of these experiments should leave you wondering about the ways that we currently try to keep people honest. Does the prospect of heavy fines or increased enforcement really make someone less likely to cheat on their taxes, to fill out a fraudulent insurance claim, to recommend a bum investment or to steal from his or her company? It may have a small effect on our behavior, but it is probably going to be of little consequence when it comes up against the brute psychological force of ‘I’m only fudging a little’ or ‘Everyone does it’ or ‘It’s for a greater good.’…

“This experiment has obvious implications for the real world. While ethics lectures and training seem to have little to no effect on people, reminders of morality—right at the point where people are making a decision—appear to have an outsize effect on behavior.”

My Comment: Egoism lies consciously and unconsciously because it needs to see benefits for itself in everything, and only this counts. The correction is to change values. The value of honesty and the possibility of spiritual elevation, must become valued more highly than normal cheating. However, only striving for the highest reward, to become closer to the Creator, can protect from natural egoism.
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Nothing Has Changed In Education

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe model for the exchange of information between teacher and student emerged in the industrial era. Although the world has changed, schools continue to pretend that they still are preparing the workforce for factories. The primary skills learned are discipline and obedience.

The main structural component is the classroom. One teacher lectures a general lesson to all the students that everyone needs to grasp simultaneously. Such a system is suited for preparing people to work on an assembly line. Since then, it hasn’t changed.

Today, the old system no longer works. We need drastic changes, but any department of education is entirely restricted within a framework of laws. Teachers are afraid of losing their jobs. Parents believe that, at least in school, their children are in a safe state. Thus, the only ones who still have the possibility and the potential to change the situation are us!
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The Light Is Always The Answer To A Request

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Messiah’s Shofar”: And because of that, Rashbi permitted himself and disclosed the wisdom of the hidden in his books, The Zohar and the Tikkunim. However, it was with great care, since he only permitted Rabbi Abba, who could disclose with intimation, so only the sages of the children of Israel would understand, and the sages of the nations would not understand.

The reason for that is that if people driven by egoism find something in this wisdom, they will not be able to advance. In another article, Baal HaSulam brings the example of an unripe fruit that can harm a person. Answers that are received without exertion, without self-advancement, only block a person’s way.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed gradually, so that a person would understand more according to his internal spiritual growth, and thus advance. However, if he received the answers in advance, without growing and developing a vessel, it would stop him and not allow him to advance. Then he wouldn’t need to change and to acquire new attributes, and it would prevent him from discovering the way to the spiritual world by himself.

This is why Kabbalists took great care not to reveal things that people are not yet able to understand. The wisdom is acquired according to a person’s readiness. We study in order to summon the Light that Reforms, and when it corrects us, we begin to understand and to feel the material that we study.

The process is as follows: We connect in a group of about ten people, and then by the power of our unity we can raise MAN to the upper force. As an answer, we receive the Light that Reforms, which means the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif – OM). This is what changes us, meaning, truly unites us (∑) and corrects us, and thanks to this correction we discover the upper world in our corrected attributes.

So these are the stages of the process:

  1. We unite
  2. We raise MAN for correction
  3. The Surrounding Light corrects us
  4. We discover the upper reality.

The Light Is Always The Answer To A Request
If we don’t perform the two initial steps, connecting and raising MAN, then nothing happens. Therefore, Kabbalists wrote their books in stages, according to our advancement in our study. When we read it for the first time, we discover our ego. Then we understand that there is only one choice, to rise to unity (∑), and then we discover that it isn’t enough either and that we have to raise MAN. If we do that then the Upper Light, the Surrounding Light (OM) completes the work.

The Light Is Always The Answer To A Request
The Kabbalistic books are revealed to us according to these stages, and it is all by the study. In the first stage, I discover the evil, in the second stage, I see that I cannot do anything and that I have to connect with the friends, and in the third stage, I understand that we will not manage without a request that the Light will connect us because we cannot do it by ourselves. Then the Light comes and completes the work. The first half of the work is our responsibility and the second half is fulfilled from Above and it is called “the work of the Creator.”
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From the 1s part  Daily Kabbalah Lesson  6/20/12 in Toronto, “Messiah’s Shofar”

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Teach Using Supporting Materials

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Should we offer supporting study materials for the courses in integral upbringing?

Answer: I think that the basic course should teach people to unite practically. And, the next course, which prepares instructors, should include everything.

We need to provide a future instructor with various systematic materials on every topic with a bibliography and other data. Everyone needs to have a folder from which he could draw solid, compelling information at any given moment to demonstrate, convince, talk about, and teach. He has to be able to use this.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/22/12

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How To Acquire Your Soul

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I am actually only an animalistic body and I don’t have a “soul” yet. How do I acquire it?

Answer: A soul is part of the Creator from above. It is bestowal; it is the level of Bina, the level of general love.

If you acquire this attribute, it means that you have received a part of godliness from above. “From above” means that you consider the value of bestowal and love as higher than all your other beastly desires.

If you acquire this part of the attribute, it means that you have received a soul. Why? It is because, with this part, you will be able to love others and to bestow upon them. You will feel a different world, the next world, something that is external to what you are feeling now. Every sphere that you are feeling now, as if you were in it and which surrounds you, is a sphere that you feel inside your ego.

If you acquire the attribute of bestowal, it is as if you exit this sphere and enter an upper sphere that is external to you. You get an extra corporeal feeling, a special emotional state (extra sensory), and then you begin to discover the upper world, thoughts and desires that are aimed fully at bestowal and love. This is called an “addition” above the five senses with which you currently depict this world: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and feeling.

You add extra senses to these five senses, which operate in bestowal, called Keter, Hochma. Bina, Zeir Anpin and Malchut in which you feel something else that is totally in bestowal. The new structure that you have acquired begins to take on the form of Adam, which resembles the Creator.

Now, you exist in an egoistic sphere called “this world,” you feel everything only within your ego, and this is your life. Suppose you expand yourself all the way to some external sphere. What you would feel in it is called the upper world.

How To Acquire Your Soul
So, the vessels that you acquire along with that, the desires and the thoughts, are called Adam, the one who resembles the Creator. The Light that you attain in these vessels, the filling, is the Creator, the attribute of bestowal and love.

Then, you attain an even greater world, the next level, and thus you advance up 125 degrees. However, there, you already have an upper mind and feelings that help you understand what is going on. The main thing is to exit the first sphere because its nature is aimed totally inward, and it is opposite to all the other spheres whose nature is aimed outward.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, The Zohar

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