The Connection Between The Teacher And The Student

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In what way should the connection with you be expressed by those behind the screen?

Answer: Your connection with me should be expressed in that you write me specific, serious questions about the lessons, not made-up, but thoughtful. I will be answering them in writing or verbally.

Indeed, communication occurs when we do something together. A portion of knowledge that you get from me every day is not considered connection. Connection is when we make, create, something new together. If I teach the wisdom of Kabbalah or integral education and upbringing and you study this, then there is a connection between us.

Connection is possible only when you are similar to me. We know that unification between the two objects happens only to the extent of the similarity of their properties. And what similarity can be between us if I am a teacher and you are a student? What similarity can be between the created being and the Creator if the Creator only gives and the created being only receives? What can you give in return? Unity with me. And what can it be? If you act the same way I do. Only that! And how else can you act? To teach me as I teach you? No, teach others as I teach you.

Therefore, there can be no more effective state than that of dissemination; otherwise, you do not process material. In the spiritual world, the one who does not pass information through himself closes himself and does not perceive anything. You cannot imagine what a tiny dead fraction of what I give you, you perceive, precisely because you do not pass this along further in any form.

Those people who are engaged in translation or processing the lessons are the happiest people because what they hear or process eventually reaches someone. And those who do not do this have no other way out of themselves; they are a dead end.
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From a Talk About the Dissemination 10/17/13

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The Ego: Friend Or Foe?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When we work as one group, we make great efforts, but the ego is revealed each time anew and separates us. What should we do? After all, it disturbs us from disseminating efficiently.

Answer: I don’t understand how the ego can stand in your way. What would you do without it? You exist thanks to it and it’s only thanks to it that you can rise as it continuously grows and swells inside you. It’s by rising above the ego that you can keep on growing and without it you will attain nothing. Its growing is a clear sign of your growing.

How can you see the ego negatively?! It’s the force that develops us and without which it would be impossible to be shaken. After all, you can only be shaken or pricked by your ego. It’s very simple.

We mustn’t relate to the ego this way since it’s our nature. Everything that the Creator has created was created in total harmony. When all the inner and external envies are revealed, we should understand that it’s impossible to make even one step forward without them! What’s more, you can change them into the opposite attributes on the spot. It is possible.

The ego increasingly grows on the way to our spiritual attainment. At the same time, it’s gradually revealed through terrible states, in the form of scary forces that are opposite from the Creator.

Today very little of it is revealed in the form of different positive or negative impressions, even without any specific reference. However, when you have a more accurate goal, you will reveal your ego in ways that may seem like your beloved or your dear child being kidnapped before your very eyes and their lives being threatened. What would you feel then?! What would you do?!

When your ego is revealed that way, as it kills your slight movement towards the Creator, it will take on different forms. Now it is only the prologue.
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From a Talk About the Dissemination 10/17/13

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Within The Family There Is No Need For Heroics

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: As a specialist in personal coaching, I can attest that over fifty percent of the people come to courses specifically because they have difficulties in building connections as couples.

This is a very painful and difficult topic. People don’t understand how to build and maintain the most important connection in their lives. Sometimes they are in despair and throw up their hands, but deep within their hearts in spite of it all they yearn for this closeness, even though they don’t know how to build it….

Answer: First of all we must understand that we constantly pass through a series of changes. It is impossible to compare modern couples and old-fashioned couples who lived a half-century of a century earlier, and even more so those who lived even before this. People communicated much more easily then; they married fellow villagers, they knew all the families, were familiar with their characteristics, culture, and education.

Therefore there were no surprises in marriage, even the future family menu was known from the start. People were more dependent upon each other; they required more mutual help. Due to a lack of time, people could not take care of themselves alone; they could not build their lives, run the household, cook, clean, do laundry, and so forth.

In short, a couple needed each other to survive. A person simply didn’t see a future without marriage and a healthy family. He could not even provide himself with necessities.

It was the same regarding children. In general, the entire society was built on clear patterns of family with three generations often living together. The young and the old depended upon each other, and in fact, they were an inseparable unit.

On the other hand, today, because of technological developments and global communication, everything has become mixed up and different. A person no longer needs a “second half”; he can easily be concerned only for himself and live alone. As a result of this, we don’t depend upon a partner anymore and already from the age of 11 to 12 children are waiting for the opportunity to escape from under the care of their parents. In addition, we don’t have time to devote enough attention to them, not to mention the fact that they are not involved in running the household as they were before.

Therefore, if in the past the couple supported a shared home together, today we don’t really have anything in common. The modern family is easily “broken” into two parts and each part can get by on its own. Modern laws contribute to this and public opinion doesn’t see anything wrong with the absence of a family. He has a job, a hobby, a life ambition that is primary in his eyes, and a host of temptations, against which the family seems like an unnecessary hindrance.

We see that people change spouses and build a number of families throughout their lives. Studies indicate that a modern person cannot remain within the framework of a family for more than ten or fifteen years. It is no wonder that today changing one’s family is just a matter of time.

And therefore the conditions for family life have changed drastically. But on the other hand, the concept of “family” still remains an inner demand (more pronounced in women and with men subconsciously). People want this, yet they don’t know how to manifest it. They have not been taught what a family is, how to build it, and what is possible to require from it. This is because it is talking about a complex partnership between a man and a woman in which children and parents from both sides also participate.

They don’t teach this in schools, and television shows and jokes are strewn everywhere, often creating a dismissive attitude. Everyone wants to look like a hero, and in our day a “hero” is someone who radiates indifference.

In the end, we don’t know what a family is. We have some kind of dream about this, but there are no true examples from life. When the young look at their parents, they don’t find anything particularly attractive in their shared life; they live in separate “niches,” barely intersect, and apparently they have difficulty finding the time to “create” it, and that is as far as their shared efforts go. Where is the family household? Where is there something in common, mutual support that obliges them to work in order to survive and to continue living together? There is no mutual commitment between them.

Industry and technology, life on the Internet, all these have expanded the borders for us. In the past people lived in the framework of family and work; they were strongly linked by the shared management of the household economy, but suddenly the wide world now comes directly into our homes and we have moved to “vague,” unclear relationships.

It turns out that if people think about family today, they have no education and no example in front of them. They need to clarify anew what a true family is for themselves. So a person will change so that he can gain enough from building family life, we must convey this through special practical courses based upon psychology and encompassing every variety of familial relationship. Nothing can be done here without real educational resources.
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From Kab TV’s “A New Life” 6/09/2013

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The Family Is An Elevator To The Next Level

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In the past, a man and a woman were connected through a shared home and the upbringing of their children. Today what is the measure of their mutual responsibility within the family?

Answer: Today, men and women are completely independent of each other. They are prepared to be married only on condition that they will reach a higher purpose for the sake of which it is appropriate for them to change; and in this way, through mutual help and completion, they reach this level. The family can exist for the sake of this. And for the sake of something else, they cannot.

We are seeing an absolute disintegration of the family; its decline is tremendous. We already see people who don’t want to take the burden of a family upon themselves. People don’t want anything. And if the need for this is awakened, then a person invites what he requires for a home, or he constructs a temporary partnership for a number of weeks or months and leaves after that. Therefore, stable relationships can exist only for the sake of attaining a higher goal. If this goal is important, then it is important to show it from an egoistic aspect so people will aspire to marriage. And if the goal is not important, then they won’t.

Question: What is the degree of my responsibility as a man with regard to my wife, so she will feel that I am truly supporting and helping her to reach the next level?

Answer: It is up to you to understand each other because you will not reach the desired state without the other. The higher goal justifies and obligates you to bear mutual responsibility, and nothing more than this. Why are you living together at all? Why do we need to think about someone or something? Why do we need a family, a wife? This is a serious burden.

It is up to each spouse to feel the importance of the partner, to respect and value the other because they share the desire to attain the higher goal, and this is enough! This is the most correct method of connection, independent of beauty and age. We are mutually faithful to attaining the goal, and this goal is obligatory.

So we create completely different relationships, conversations, different activities, everything is completely different. First try to build a home, a family, while mutually relying on the only thing that obligates you, attaining the next level of existence, the new level or dimension. The family that we are talking about now is an elevator to the next level.

There is nothing better for strengthening the family than a husband, a wife, and between them there is nothing other than the shared, higher power that they discover and create, the shared higher existence, and besides this—nothing. As it is said, (Genesis 2:24) “A man shall leave his father and his mother and adhere to his wife.”
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From Kab TV’s “Through Time” 9/21/13

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Bulgaria Convention “Dawn Of A New World” Day Three – 11.03.13

Convention in Bulgaria, Day 3, Lesson 5

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 3, Workshop 7

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 3, Workshop 8

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 11.02.13

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2013-11-02_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’2.11.13′]

Bulgaria Convention “Dawn Of A New World” Day Two – 11.02.13

Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Lesson 3 

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Lesson 4

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Workshop 4

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Workshop 5

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Lesson 5

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Workshop 6

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Living In Intention Instead Of Desire

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe soul is the desire that was created by the Light, the Creator, which eventually must reach similarity to the Creator.

The Light (represented by the plus sign on image 1) creates an equal desire (the minus sign). However, once it enters the desire, they nullify one another. The desire does not perceive Light as pleasure because they are opposite.

However, as the desire acquires the quality of the Light, it gradually begins to transform into its opposite. It intends to make a restriction (Tzimtzum) and only work with the Reflected Light, in other words, to receive and enjoy only when it feels that it bestows to the one who gives it pleasure. In this way, it attains equality with the Creator.

In other words, Light comes to me with the desire to give me pleasure, but I accept it only under the condition that I feel equivalent to the Creator, as in the example with the Host and the guest.

The Host wishes to please the guest, give him everything there is (arrow marked “a,”representing the pleasure traveling and entering the desire). However, the guest only agrees to accept it under the condition that they are equal (arrow marked “b,” intention or Kavana).

If the intention of my action is to return what I receive from the Host, then as a guest, I can accept the pleasure. In other words, I only do actions that bring me closer to the Host, the Creator, that make me equivalent to Him.

In our world, we live in the action of receiving for our own sake. We wish to receive as much as possible. Nothing else interests us.

This is why we reach a state where we exhaust our possibilities; in other words, the correlation between the plus (what we receive from the Host) and the minus (which exists in us) disappears and we stop perceiving pleasure. In this way, nature, the Creator, pushes us to begin working on a second level in a state of similarity to the Creator. [Read more →]

Tapping Into Hidden Resources

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What can we do if everyone in the group agrees with the importance of dissemination, but no one does anything?

Answer: Dissemination is necessary not for those to whom you disseminate, but so that they give you an additional Kli, vessel, additional suffering, and an additional opportunity to unite. If you begin to disseminate, you start feeling the pain of people you go out to, their terrible state, even if they live behind a metal door in a lovely apartment with all the amenities, and there is a limousine by their house.

After all, when you talk to them, you feel their emptiness. And if you dig deeper, you will find that they themselves feel it, only they hide it from themselves; nothing is okay for them, the whole world is not nice. You must empathize with their suffering in the absence of food, family, normal life, shelter, work, and interaction with other people, some warmth, health, and proper child education: everything that people lack in a normal human life.

If you feel this, and you are sure to feel this no matter how selfish you are, this will start to affect you and will force to unite with each other. And when you promise them that you can bring them out of this state by means of joint participation in workshops, meetings, common activities, and begin to organize this in practice, you will begin to really implement what Kabbalah says, for yourself and for them.

How else will you be able to reveal the Creator, if you do not organize practical training? Everyone who studied at a college, a university, and knows that practical training is crucial. What is the purpose of you listening to the lectures all the time? This is only confuses your mind, blocks you, and does not go anywhere, either in the feelings, or practical thoughts that are already becoming yours. If you do not go out to the masses, you will fade.

At all times, bloodletting was considered the most effective treatment, not infusions, but bloodletting. This triggers the work of the entire body. You have to go outside! You must disseminate! Letting the theory flow out, like bloodletting, you engage those hidden resources that do not work in you yet. Now, you are full of theory; there is nothing in your hands. That’s a pity.
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From a Talk About the Dissemination 10/17/13

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