From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/27/20

I can sympathize with the desire to reopen the economy and return to “normalcy.” The emotional strain of being locked down, the uncertainty and anxiety over the future, the loneliness of millions who live alone in their homes, all those contribute to the longing to resume social and commercial life.

Regrettably, if we reopen too soon and without required preparations, we will suffer terribly. The virus will return with a vengeance, fatality rates will dwarf those of today, risk groups will cover all age groups, and the social distancing will be far more severe and prolonged.

The coronavirus has shown us how alienated we are from each other. Were we not so alienated, we would not feel so lonely, uncertain, and anxious. We would be so much more resilient that we would be able to withstand a lockdown even for the entire duration of the plague. The stress so many of us feel now is not because of the virus; it is because of the emotional remoteness that plagued us long before the virus came. COVID only uncovered it and placed it right before us. If we want to heal ourselves from the virus, we first have to heal ourselves from alienation. Instead of focusing on business, we should focus on strengthening our communities.

When people do not feel alone, it is much easier for them to deal with stress and discomfort. We can and should cater to the vulnerable in our communities, see that they get what they need, and that they do not feel alone. We must remember that keeping COVID away from them means keeping it away from us, as well. If we practice mutual responsibility, we just might have a chance at fighting the most rapid pandemic to ever spread across the globe.

[Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash]

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/27/20

As reported on CNBC, “Spain is deploying a basic income to citizens to ease the coronavirus impact.” However enticing, some people say it is “an incentive to stay home without work.” The program is not intended for everyone, but rather to give the least earning and the unemployed a safety net that will guarantee their ability to provide for their basic needs.

I fully agree that in a reality of high, and growing, unemployment, it is necessary to provide a basic income to everyone. However, doing so without anything in return is a recipe for disaster. It is not only an incentive not to work; it will deprive people of a sense of purpose in life, the sense of necessity to struggle and advance. It will make them apathetic and a burden on society. And since there will be more and more people without income, a few years from now, this will be a huge social problem.

But Spain can prevent this dismal scenario from materializing if, instead of just giving money away, it will stipulate the benefits on participating in state funded courses. Spain can use these courses to direct people to jobs it wants to occupy, educate people about Spain’s history and culture and make them more connected to their country, as well as educate them about globalization and responsible social behavior in an age of pandemics.

People who attend these mandatory courses will either find new careers, become teachers themselves to the new arrivals to the government educational program, or go off the program altogether. Either way, they will have learned something that Spain wants them to know, and have become more connected to their homeland in the process. This will make future crises easier to go through and prevent social unrest in the immediate and near future. So in my view, basic income should be given, but only if recipients take classes in required jobs, understanding today’s globalized world, and where they can contribute to their country.

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New Life 1225 – The Education Of Tomorrow
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

The move toward virtual learning will cause major changes in the educational system. Learning must build an integral society such that the threads of connection pass between all the students. In a soccer game, for example, each one is taught to give credit to the others, wanting everyone to enjoy the game. Everyone is given an equal opportunity and an equal sense of relationship beyond all differences, just like a mother who loves each of her children. The goal of education is to build the feeling that everyone is connected with a single heart so that love can be born among us.
[263747]
From KabTV’s “New Life 1225 – The Education Of Tomorrow,” 4/21/20

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Question: You say that the situation with the coronavirus will take six months to a year. When will this all end?

Answer: Don’t wait! Nature must tame us, guide us along a completely new path, the supra-egoistic path. We cannot continue to mutilate it, we are obliged to live differently.

You can’t spend 80% of your strength, energy, and mind on breaking nature and leave 20% or even less on your own existence. We cannot act this way anymore because when we do this, we violate the laws and conditions of nature’s equilibrium. Nature can’t stand it.

In just the two months that we stopped interfering with nature, it began to recover. Nature cannot tolerate any longer! The system cannot remain oppressed!
[264754]
From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah: Victoria Bonya,” 3/29/20

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Baal HaSulam writes that if humanity does not want to unite and treat each other kindly, then we will face world wars and natural disasters after which a handful of people will remain on earth who will have to include all the souls and come to love their neighbor anyway.

Why don’t we do it right now without waiting for the blows? Let’s ask ourselves.

All humanity must unite as one ten and include the Creator within itself. A ten can consist of ten billion people; the main thing is that they connect as one group, one ten.

The number of people is not important; the connection is important. But keep in mind that the fewer people remain on earth, the greater egoism each person would have. That is, they would have to go through greater suffering and misery in order to receive greater force from above to correct their egoistic desire. The world population growth is caused by the growing desire to enjoy being revealed that requires correction.

The greater the number of people who want to overcome their egoism, the easier it is for them to correct themselves. If we do not want to improve, then nature puts pressure on us, destroys and kills us, but in every survivor there remains much more suffering, problems, and willingness to give up their egoism. It all depends not on the number of people but on their willingness to unite as one ten.

When I talk about what the world will look like in the post-coronavirus era, I am accused of supposedly being a socialist. But this state has already been described by Baal HaSulam and the prophets a long time ago.

We need to rise above our corporeal view and see ourselves existing in one heart. And this does not depend on the condition in which the physical bodies are or on their number: whether it will be ten billion people on earth or twenty billion.

We must reach a state where it becomes unimportant for us in what material form we live and, most importantly, that we exist and can be united by our souls, thereby providing a place for the Creator to be revealed. It doesn’t matter how my animal body lives; the main thing is that I feel as one heart with all the inhabitants of this world.
[263363]
From the  Kabbalah lesson 4/18/20, Baal HaSulam, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings” 

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Gmar Tikkun is the complete, final correction of egoism into bestowal and love when we turn the ego into the opposite quality.

Here, the science of Kabbalah comes to our aid. With the help of this methodology, the upper light affects the egoistic desire gradually raising it to new desires: to bestowal, love, and connection with others. This is a serious change of our essence into its opposite.

Question: Can we say that this is a change from an egocentric perception of the world to a holistic perception of the world?

Answer: Of course.
[264598]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 6/17/19

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Turn The Cup Toward The Good

Rabash, Dargot HaSulam, Item 274, “Specifically through a Man and a Woman”: Also, if one has only the power of reception without sparks of bestowal, he can no longer make a choice to reject the bad and choose the good, since then he does not have the strength to decide to the side of merit.

The most important thing is the property of bestowal. We must develop it as much as possible and accordingly use the female property of receiving so that we always have the opportunity to elevate the property of bestowal over the property of receiving. Then we can perform the action of receiving for the sake of bestowal.

Hence, specifically when the two forces are equal—the power of reception and the power of bestowal (and this is the best option)—one has room for work and labor to be able to prevail through the labor and determine to the side of merit. At that time, this deed that a person has decided to the side of merit is called “newborn,” meaning that the Creator places the spirit of life in this action.

This is not about individual bodies but about one person, because in each of us there are both female and male parts. If they are in the right interaction, when a person, working on himself, causes such an influence of the upper light that all his desires to receive are in the intention for bestowal, then he is already acting correctly, he is corrected.
[263217]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/8/20

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There are absolute laws for attaining the Creator and they never change from one person to another. Anyone who wants to attain the Creator from our earthly state needs to perform accurate actions and build certain attributes within, and then he will begin to reveal the Creator through the 125 levels of attainment of the worlds.

No one in this world is able to change this picture, this sequence, the conditions, or these rules that have existed throughout history. They will always be the same for everyone. Our feelings are subjective but the attainment of feelings is absolutely the same and objective and stem from the general resistance between the light and the vessel (desire).

The creation is called a desire and the desire is new each time and changes under our influence and the influence of the Creator from above. Here we need to distinguish between two kinds of attitudes toward the Creator. On one hand, it is an attitude toward the Creator Himself and, on the other hand, it is an attitude toward what stems from Him. We cannot say anything about the attitude toward the Creator except for the fact that He is the source and nothing more than that.

The source of what? Of the good or the bad?
I don’t know.
But do you feel good now?
Yes, I feel good.
And can you feel bad?
Yes, I can.
So does this mean that the source changes?

Kabbalists tell us that the source does not change. Absolute bestowal descends from it constantly, which is what we call the upper light. But you are in your qualities in a certain state to this influence of the Creator’s bestowal, and so you feel His impacts differently each time.

In principle, we speak about our states and not the state of the Creator. So a person needs to understand that when he says that the Creator is bad or good and that He affects me one way or another, it is not that the Creator changes, but that the person himself changes, but it seems to us that it is the Creator who changes.
[258046]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/8/19

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Question: In a school in Israel, a 4th grade student hits teachers. In fact, the behavior of children in schools has become, if not aggressive, then uncontrollable. That is, the child, according to the remarks of the teacher, can hit him and push him, not to mention that he can simply contradict him.

Where is the line between permitted and prohibited when a person grows, understanding his capabilities and, yet, not crossing the boundaries of uncontrollability?

Answer: It depends on education. In accordance with what you give to a person, you can allow him to be within certain boundaries.

Question: Can children be punished?

Answer: It depends on the punishment and how it is perceived.
Punishment should be seen as a correction. When I take a child and ask him,
“Did you do the right thing?”
– No.
“Why did you do that?”
– I wanted to. It seemed to me.
“Do you understand that there is a little devil in you who is pushing you to do this?”
– Yes.
“How do we get this little devil out of you? Try yourself to weigh your act and punishment. The punishment will no longer be a punishment but a correction so that the next time you will not hear this evil devil, so that he will not allow you to do stupid things!”

We discuss this with him. And then he himself will weigh the situation and say what he thinks about it.

Question: So it turns out to be like a game?

Answer: This is not a game; this is working on errors. It is correcting the mistakes of nature.

Question: You said that a judge is one who can judge himself over his own egoism. How can a person move to such a position so that he can see himself in the present, see himself in the future, and still judge the situation correctly, if it is, for example, a child?

Answer: There is a lot to learn. It is necessary to compare all the facts, study the nature of humankind and the world around us, somehow explain the science of Kabbalah, and reveal it to everyone, including children. We need to be open with them, talk about our problems and about our nature as that which exists in us and does not depend on us, and discuss how we can fight this and how we can balance it. All of this must be the subject of judgement.

And then a person will begin to relate objectively to himself and to others. He will understand, “Yes, this is my weakness, but this is his. How can we balance the negative and positive forces?” Only in this way can I come to the right society.

The world, from day to day, shows that we cannot educate a person about anything except for the right attitude to the world, to ourselves, and to people. And that’s it.

Question: What should this correct attitude be based upon?

Answer: The right relationship should be based on the realization of evil and good, which we are composed of, and how we can balance them in ourselves, in parents, in children, and between everyone. Relations are objective, relations are absolutely open! Do not hide anything.

What should I hide? I am created this way and I have to fix myself. How can society fix me, myself, my parents, and everything? Everyone should be this way. So all of us are engaged in open self-correction. This should be the schooling.

Question: What can children be allowed and what should they not be allowed to do?

Answer: I gave money to my son at the age of 16 to travel around the whole world. He was in Europe, India, and various other countries. After that, he returned and said, “Never again.” This is what I want. I wanted him to see all of this so that he would understand that it was not his .
Why am I saying this? It must be allowed.

Question: And what can be allowed for children in primary school or preschool-aged children so that they understand we must be guided by certain values, that these are our foundation, and that others are anti-values that we cannot afford to acquire?

Answer: I am not a psychologist, especially not a child psychologist. I just know that we need to raise a child in accordance with his inclinations and all the time I must show him an example. Example! Children are brought up by examples.

Today we have a lot of examples from all over the world that our children see, and, therefore, this is a big problem. I believe that it is necessary to organize the right, serious environment around a person because only this can educate him.

The most important thing is providing an example. And if a person has bad examples including all kinds of films about robbers, thieves, rapists, etc., then, naturally, he will grow up like that. He will willfully become so, involuntarily, because he absorbs these examples and writes them into himself as if copying and eventually repeating them.

It is you who paint the future world into small people today. They will grow and begin to implement it. You must take it all together and do it all in the name of the next generation. It should be integral to state and world politics.

The main problem facing mankind is education; it is needed in order to make the next generation right, happy, wise, and kind.

Remark: There is a very deep foundation in the fact that in Jewish families, and in Israel in particular, children are allowed everything. They can do everything. This instills in them a certain courage and craving for risk. They are not afraid of anything since fear is not brought up in them.

My Comment: They do not put pressure on them because, under pressure, the feeling of a person’s confidence in the world disappears. And so, they are born confident, self-confident, arrogant, and so on. But still, such an attitude toward the world that “the world is beneath me,” is the right property. A person should feel this way.

But, treating the world like this, do I look at it with love? Am I looking at it in the right way? Or in a purely consumeristic, selfish way? This is already a problem. And today, it is not really being solved.

Question: How can we instill love within impudence and self-confidence so that it becomes confidence, respect; something that connects a person with another and does not repel people from one another?

Answer: We cannot do this if we do not direct humankind to the higher power within nature. All of nature is governed by an upper force. All of nature is arranged, wound up, and imprisoned only to bring a person to his best, highest state.

If a person receives this direction, then he correctly interprets everything that happens to him in life with people and within nature, and he knows how to correctly use all of these data.
[259182]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 12/3/19

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