Audio Version Of The Blog – 09.08.16

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Why Do We Need To Correct A Man If He Was Created In The Image Of The Creator?

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Creator created a spiritual prototype of a man called Adam. He was on the level of the quality of complete bestowal and love, i.e., was in equivalence of form with the Creator.

We are called “sons of Adam” and there is a part of him in each of us. Today, we are completely opposite to the Creator and our task is to rediscover the quality of bestowal and love in the connection between us and to rise to the level of an upper force.
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Ynet: “What Is Important For Our Children At School?”

From my column on Ynet: “What Is Important For Our Children at School?”

If we don’t want to wake up one morning and discover that we have lost a whole generation, we have to change the education system that prepares our children for life as soon as possible. But while all the surveys indicate the need for urgent change the Ministry of Education is focused on conveying knowledge and on grades only. What is the solution?

If you were one of the decision makers in the country, which public service would you improve first? The medical care services, the National Security institute, the courts, or the education system? Hundreds of Israelis answered this question in a poll conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics and the results were published this week.

If you are the excited parents of children who are starting a new school year this week, you probably know the answer to this question. More than 30% of the public believe that the Israeli education system needs improvement: 48% of the parents in Israel are disappointed with the way it operates; 60% look for alternatives, and 81% of the parents complain that the education system doesn’t prepare the children for adult life in the 21st century.

The customer is always right, and in this case it is the parents. What tools to manage in society will our children have after 12 years of school? What values will they learn in school? Racism is growing, the division in the nation is widening, and the discourse in social networks is becoming more violent. Who is preparing our children to cope with these real problems and many more?

Parents, do you care?

This week school will once again become the central institution that influences your child’s life and future. The public education system was established as the 19th century industrial revolution accelerated with the intention of training many workers for the assembly lines. It has not changed much since then… It thus turns out that the main focus is on teaching professional skills that will serve the economic system better and will help it develop. As long as schools continue to be a factory for producing good and competitive citizens and the achievement test is the only criterion for measuring success, there is no point sending our children to school.

The school system should first focus on teaching values and not information. Improving the core subjects and increasing the number of students who take five point English and math final exams (the highest level) and rewriting phrases in social studies is important, but this is the role of the Ministry of Information and not of the Ministry of Education.

Profound Re-education

In the meantime, there is a sharp decline in the number of youth that want to serve in the army. Many young people think about leaving the country and we are becoming increasingly more indifferent to one another every day. In a state that is coping with a national problem called unfounded hatred, the seeds of which were planted with the destruction of the Temple, we have to take action and teach the national idea of “love thy friend as thyself.”

“The one concerned with days, plants wheat; with years, plants trees; with generations, educates people” (Janusz Korczak). Every parent worries about the future of his children and does his best so that they will learn to keep the family relations between them. This is how we together should also worry about the future of the next generation. We should encourage the improvement of interpersonal relations so that we can discover the power of unity and the wellness and security it offers, not as a result of the false spirit of mutual guarantee which emerges at times of trouble. “Our only hope is to profoundly rearrange the education of our children, to discover and to reignite the natural love that is flickering in us and to revive the national muscles in us which have been inactive for two thousand years” (The Writings of Baal HaSulam).

A Lesson in Connection

If we don’t want to wake up one morning and discover that we have lost a whole generation, I suggest that we start the school day as Baal HaSulam says in his article, with at least one hour of consolidating unity activity. We mustn’t miss the moment; we have to sit on the school bench again. “We, the nation should lead to an interaction that will create a micro society among the students in which everyone cares about everyone else like a small family. This will prepare the children to establish a warm friendly connection on top of all the tension and the natural conflicts among them, and bring out all the creativity and potential in them. (“Education doesn’t create anything new but brings out what is already in a person” Rav Kook).

During the “connection hour,” the teachers will provide the basic tools for building a strong and healthy connection between the students, bring examples of positive mutual dependence and consideration, and will guide the students in how to better cope with the global world, which affects every aspect of our life. The children will sit in a circle in which everyone is equal and can see and hear each other, not behind desks arranged in a row. Everyone will learn to listen to each other without imposing their opinion until they reach a general understanding. Gradually they will learn to overcome their egoistic nature, and finally they will feel a partnership, connection, and love as it is written: “love will cover all our transgressions.”

A Teacher forLife

The teacher will also be part of the circle and will sit with the children and talk with them on the same level. He will replace his authority and superiority with the art of asking leading questions that help the children discover the information by themselves by communicating and speaking among them. This is how information is assimilated in a much more meaningful, qualitative manner.

A child who grows up in an environment that measures his success according to his consideration of others and according to his contribution to the whole society is guaranteed to flourish and to be educated. As an adult he will undoubtedly face life with a much wider perspective of the world and with a feeling of responsibility and care regarding the building of a considerate egalitarian society, just like the environment he grew up in.

“It is a shame to admit” says Baal HaSulam in the same article that “one of the most precious and important qualities which we have lost during our time in exile, is our national awareness, which means the natural feeling that connects and sustains every nation. It is because the strings of love that tie the Israeli nation together have deteriorated and have been cut from our hearts and are lost and gone.” Our nation has a great wisdom of connection, an ideology that has been established for generations. All we have to do is to implement the method of connection that is rooted in the love of mercy of Abraham among our dear children. It isn’t a dream, in is right here in the relations between us.
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From Ynet article 8/31/16

The Turning Point

laitman_742_03Torah, Deuteronomy 9:13 – 9:14: And the Lord spoke to me [further], saying, “I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people. Leave Me alone, and I will destroy them and obliterate their name from beneath the heavens, and I will make you into a nation mightier and more numerous than they.”

The people are in a state where their entire egoism has come out; however, it has not been transformed. Therefore, it seems to the people that there is nothing they can do. Let there be death, but they must not remain like this, and here comes another state.

Question: Here, the Creator tells Moses to distance himself, I will annihilate them, and you will beget a different nation.

Answer: This is how a person feels. There is nothing left within him except for the property of “Moses.” This is precisely the turning point.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/5/16

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Remember How You Were

laitman_278_03Torah, Deuteronomy 9:6 – 9:7: You shall know that, not because of your righteousness, the Lord, your God, gives you this land to possess it; for you are a stiff-necked people.

Remember do not forget, how you angered the Lord, your God, in the desert; from the day that you went out of the land of Egypt, until you came to this place, you have been rebelling against the Lord.

Comment: At this stage it is seemingly said, “Remember how you were…”

Answer: In order to correct your egoistic qualities you must resurrect them in yourself, raise them again and start to correct them. Once you rejected them and passed over them, but that isn’t enough.

This is just a degree that is called “bestowal in order to bestow.” Now you must take your qualities and transform them inversely into opposite ones. So it seems that here the previous stages are remembered.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/5/16

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A Woman, Satan’s Tool Or The Crown Of Creation?

Laitman_631_3Comment: Some men feel that women are Satan’s tool because of their bitter experiences with them.

Answer: According to what we study, a corrected woman in the spiritual world is not an actual woman but a corrected desire that is also found in men. A woman is a person’s egoistic desire, and if it is not corrected, it can really be called Satan. You can imagine that it is inside a person and then it is called a woman. There are many levels in the process of correction and each level has a name.

Question: And then the woman is the crown of creation?

Answer: Yes, the corrected female desire is the final phase, which the Creator wants to see and for which everything was created, while a man is only the mediator between the Creator and the female desire; he only fulfills his functions.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/24/16

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New Life 759 – Proper Boundaries In Love

New Life 759 – Proper Boundaries In Love
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches how to relate to others in a balanced way, including one’s spouse.

For this we must study human nature, add limits to instinctive sensations of love and hatred, and make connections between us correctly, with a spiritual connection.

A person begins to feel the other when he reins in his narcissism, the desire to fulfill himself. He restricts his egoism, rises above instinctive drives, and develops a relationship toward others through internal effort.

In proper love between spouses and in general, there exists a balance between feelings and intellect. On the one hand, there is love, and on the other hand, there is a limit to revealing that love, a limitation on the giving to others depending on the response of the other side.

In order to build a loving connection, we must take the desire of the other and work on fulfilling it, the result of which is aspiring to become one.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 759 – Proper Boundaries In Love,” 8/11/16

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 09.08.16

Preparation for the Lesson

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Writings of Rabash, “Rungs of the Ladder,” Article 12

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 6, Part 16, Item 154

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World” 

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