Question: Harvard Kennedy School Professor Ronald Ferguson coauthored a book about raising successful children, The Formula: Unlocking the Secrets to Raising Highly Successful Children. He and coauthor journalist Tatsha Robertson provide “The 8 Roles of Good Parents.”

The first role is “the early learning partner.” The parent engages in trying to interest the child in learning and making learning and problem solving fun even before the child begins school.

What does it mean to be a learning partner to a child?

Answer: When a parent speaks, he or she introduces and explains to the child in advance these sensations, these relationships.

Question: Does he at the same time encourage the child to be the first in the class?

Answer: No. It’s not about competition, it’s about the correct attitude.

Question: What kind of attitude should it be?

Answer: To instill the appeal of knowledge in a child.

Comment: The second role is called “the flight engineer.” This is a parent who controls the environment of a child and intervenes when something goes wrong.

My Response: This is natural. The environment determines a person and their development.

Question: Can a parent step in and move a child to a different environment if something is wrong?

Answer: Definitely!

Question: Is this not coercion?

Answer: No. This is an adjustment that must be made from above.

Question: What if a child likes it there?

Answer: It does not matter what he likes.

Question: To such an extent? Almost forcibly? Do you just move him or her to another school?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What kind of environment should I move the child to?

Answer: The one that helps the child to develop and does not limit or create any false ideals before him.

Question: What should be the ideal of the correct environment?

Answer: Free, extensively developed, friendly, not restricted in any way.

Question: Is this what an environment should be? Does this include teachers, classes, and friends?

Answer: Of course, everything.

Comment: The third role is “the fixer.” A parent ensures that they child has all that is needed to succeed, that no opportunity to improve the child’s life will be lost.

My Response: To do this, you need to educate a parent first.

Question: What are the main opportunities for improving a child’s life?

Answer: Society, environment. Nothing else.

Comment: The fourth role is “The revealer.” A parent-revealer expands the child’s view of the world by showing them the world and opportunities available to them and takes them to museums, libraries, and exhibitions.

My Response: That’s right. I was raised that way. My father took me to the movie theater all the time. He was a big movie fan. We had a movie theater where they only had movies about artists, musicians, and great people. We went to all these movies once a week.

Question: Did this expand your view of the world?

Answer: Of course! Since then, I have not seen these films about great artists, musicians, and people of art.

Comment: The fifth role is “the philosopher.” Parents help their child find purpose by asking deep questions about life and answering them. Do you think it’s right for a parent to be such a philosopher?

My Response: It is necessary to awaken such questions in a child that puzzle the child and that he or she tries to answer somehow.

Question: What questions would you awaken in a child?

Answer: It depends on the age and the character of a child. It’s not easy.

Of course, questions about the basis of the universe, about life, about nature that surrounds us.

Question: Can we ask a child such questions as “What was I born for? What is the meaning of life?” Or is it too early for him and we should not do this?

Answer: I do not know. This should be done very carefully. I do not want to advise.

In principle, children have these questions in childhood. Then they forget. “What do I live for, where do I come from, what am I for, what am I?” And so on. This is still a pre-hormonal development. Then the hormones start kicking in, and everything ends at that.

Comment: The sixth role is “the model.” These parents define important values for themselves and instill them in their children.

My Response: I am not sure about that. My parents’ values were to make me a musician. It was, of course, terrible. I did not appreciate this at all and could not appreciate this. I did not like to work mechanically on myself, to play scales for five or six hours a day and more things like that. This dryness killed me. I could not stand it and did everything I could to break away.

Question: In general, is it correct that parents define important values for themselves and instill them in their children?

Answer: That’s how it turns out! There is nothing you can do.

Question: Does it mean that the main thing is to educate parents so that the correct values are instilled in them? And then the children will follow them.

Answer: Yes, that’s right!

Question: The eighth role is “the GPS navigational voice.” The voice of such parents continues to sound in the child’s head even after they have left home. What do you think about that?

Answer: That’s right. This remains, and this is very important. However, it’s just a navigator. Therefore, it is necessary to check the values that parents have and that they want to instill in their child.

Question: In other words, do we need to check this “navigator”?

Answer: Yes. This is a problem today.

Question: Are these values basically all egoistic by and large?

Answer: Of course. We need to educate parents. Take all these values and instill them in parents, and let them educate themselves with this.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/14/20

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic of “Work with Faith Above Reason”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, ‘Histaklut Pnimit,’ Vol. 1, Part 2, Chapter 10, Item 128″   

Lesson on the Topic of “Hanukkah”   

Selected Highlights   

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Question: Let’s say that I feel that I cannot justify the Creator either in my mind or in my heart. Nonetheless is this a state of awareness?

Answer: Yes. There is a very smooth gradation that can go from double concealment to  single concealment, then back to double and again to single. This is because when we go forward, by correcting our sensations all the time, we correct them in ascents and descents, ascents and descents.

The ascents and descents give us the feeling of a double or single revelation of the Creator, and then concealment, and then revelation. In other words, these states alternate all the time.

Despite the fact that concealment pushes me away, I do not see the Creator, and I do not understand Him, I am always in some doubts and contradictions, I still do not leave this work and insist on understanding and distinguishing Him. Then the Creator is gradually revealed to me.

I begin to feel that everything comes from Him, and everything has its own reasons, which are intentionally manifested in relation to me and give me the opportunity to be in double or single concealment, and in double or single revelation, so that I would always feel the contrasts between darkness and light. After all, it is with these contrasts that I begin to understand what the principle of His control over me is and how I should respond to this with feedback.

Basically, I need to reach a state where neither double nor single concealment obscure Him from me.

By rising above myself in any darkness, I will feel how to behave correctly, and the darkness will never separate me from the Creator. On the contrary, it will be helping me to be connected to Him by rising above it.
[274951]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/14/19

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Virtual Convention “Preparation for the Lesson 3”

Virtual Convention “You Have Made Me, Building the Greatness of the Creator,” Lesson 3

Virtual Convention “Preparation for the Lesson 4”

Virtual Convention “Being A Conduit,” Lesson 4

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Question: The great Kabbalist the Ari wrote that there are five kinds of desires. Two categories are my inner desires. They are close to me, so I care about them. And there are three more categories of desires that are outside of me that include people I cannot take care of because I feel them as strangers.

When I apply the method of Kabbalah, will I feel their desires much closer than I feel my own today?

Answer: Yes. As much as your mortal, temporary body is now dear to you, to that extent you will feel that they are your eternal, perfect soul, and you will invest in them more than supposedly in yourself.

Comment: It is hard to believe that this is possible.

My Response: It is possible. You just need to see the correct connection.

The Creator does not require anything that you are not able to do. But He invites you to change your point of view so that you determine that what exists outside of you is more important than you yourself today.

Question: Where is the Creator here?

Answer: The Creator is a common force of nature that created everything, divided everything into two parts and sets the condition: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the minimum, but in fact, you must love your neighbor more than yourself. And then you will take care of your soul, of your eternal state, eternal potential, and not of yourself as an animal, temporary and flawed. Thus, you will come to a completely different sense of the world.
[275017]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/28/19

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Question: Is the very meeting of future parents in our world predetermined or not?

Answer: It is predetermined. It was no accident that I met this person.

Question: Why is this done? Why do couples connect in this way?

Answer: There are no coincidences in the world. No coincidences at all! As it is said in The Master and Margarita: “The brick is neither here nor there… it never merely falls on someone’s head from out of nowhere.”

Question: If so, is the birth of a particular child who will be born predetermined?

Answer: Everything is absolutely predetermined until the end of all time. There is nothing new.

Question: Can we say that there is a good time for conceiving a child?

Answer: That doesn’t matter either, and it also does not depend on people. It is all arranged from above, and so it happens. In fact, a person does not choose anything.

Question: But when parents decide they want to have a child, what should they think about?

Answer: That they want to make a good person who would be useful to the world and would enjoy the fact that he is beneficial to the world.

Question: What is “to benefit the world”?

Answer: To bring people together.

Comment: Imagine giving this task to parents!

My Response: They think about it in the act of conception. As it is written in Ketuvim, Job 3:2: “Would the day in which I was to be born be lost, and the night when one said, ‘A man has impregnated.'”

Comment: Usually a person thinks more about himself, so that there is a good, kind, warm, beloved, healthy child. Think about him more.

My Response: No. By this you do not make a child but an animal. And if you think about how he will be in the world as a person, for the world, then you make a person.

Question: What if a couple cannot conceive a child, but they really want to?

Answer: Try as much as you can. You cannot do anything. Even today it still depends on higher providence.

Question: And what will help more here: going to healers or doctors?

Answer: We must visit doctors, we must do everything possible.

Question: And at the same time ask the upper one to help?

Answer: Of course, all together.

Question: When will He hear this request?

Answer: This is unknown to us. As much as people strive to do good to each other and with the Creator, the closer they will be to the fulfillment of this desire, although this does not guarantee it.

Comment: It is not very clear: “good to each other and with the Creator.” Explain this point, please.

My Response: To act between each other as it was originally established by the Creator.

Question: How is this established?

Answer: Everything is built on goodness.

Question: How should expectant parents behave during pregnancy?

Answer: We must be considerate with each other, especially with a woman. And try so that a woman during pregnancy has good thoughts, music, readings. In general, to influence her with positive and more elevated emotions and knowledge. All this influences the child very much.

Question: What kind of music would you choose?

Answer: I personally support classical music because it is the most proper, the most complete. Of course, not heavy but soft classics.

Question: What should a woman during pregnancy think about?

Answer: It is written about this in the Torah that a woman only thinks about the one who is in her, who was conceived and grows in her. Only about him. Nature has already foreseen this, so there is no need to interfere with it.

Question: What is the most critical time of pregnancy?

Answer: As a rule, the first few months. Then the foundation of the child is laid.

Question: When should the child be handed over to the mother?

Answer: You must immediately place the child on her so that he feels that he is still connected with the mother.

Question: Does this give him more security?

Answer: Both to her and to him. There must be a connection. It is very important.

Question: What does mother’s milk mean for baby’s growth?

Answer: Mother’s milk is not necessarily from his mother, it can be from another woman. Although, it is preferable for the child to receive milk from his mother. And this milk is the closest substance to the child, carrying so many elements we do not even suspect.

Question: What does the baby get with mother’s milk?

Answer: It is impossible to express. The upper light, called Ohr Hassadim, light of mercy, he receives from above through his mother’s milk.

Question: How does a mother communicate with a breastfeeding baby?

Answer: She talks to him through it. He feels her through her chest and she feels him through her chest. This is an amazing mechanism in both animals and humans.

Question: How long should a mother breastfeed her baby?

Answer: It is generally recommended up to two years.

Comment: Nobody follows this.

My Response: I know that no one follows it. But, according to the spiritual law, breastfeeding should be up to two years.

Question: And if you must go to work as it is today?

Answer: Well, everyone does, that is true. Who cares about some spiritual or natural laws?

Comment: You are saying that everything is predetermined and all actions are predetermined.

My Response: If you ruin your life, do not blame nature.

Question: So, we ruined life so much? We send mothers to work in six months, a year, and so on.

Answer: Of course.

Question: What needs to be done to make things right?

Answer: To make it right—the woman should not work at all.

Comment: This, of course, is impossible in our times.

My Response: Why? Why is it bad if only the man works and earns enough for his family, and this would be enough for the family to live normally, calmly, quietly?

Question: Tell me, if the mother is annoyed or after a quarrel with the father, should she feed or not feed the child at that moment?

Answer: This is not good. The child will feel this very much on himself, and therefore, such states are absolutely undesirable! A woman must be protected, isolated from any negative, unwanted influences.

Question: That is, all this enters the child, both irritation and hatred?

Answer: Of course. All this will creep into the child and manifest in negative consequences.

Question: Does the infant generally feel what is happening at home in parental relationships?

Answer: Of course. He feels everything. Everything is felt by him “through the air” even if it is in the next house, in another city. All of this is transmitted. He is very sensitive. The mother for him is like a receiver that he listens to and perceives even if she does not say anything to him. But everything that affects the mother, he feels it all.

Question: It turns out that the mother is like a sixth sense for him?

Answer: Of course. It seems to us that he came out of the mother and the umbilical cord was cut off. Nothing is cut.
[274965]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/5/20

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Comment: There is something called xenophobia. It is the desire for self-preservation based on dislike, intolerance, and prejudice toward people who are different, with a different skin color, extra weight, short height, etc. Our brain immediately identifies them as strangers.

There is a law of similarity of form according to which people who are similar attract each other and opposites repel. We say that we must follow the laws of nature.

My Response: No, the law of nature is not necessarily to be closer to those who are like you. In most cases, it is necessary to connect with those who are different from you in order to create a broader field of social relations.

Therefore, we see among biological connections of all kinds that they need to be combined with others, sometimes very different from one another. This leads to an even greater diversity in nature.

Therefore, you will not only cross redheads with redheads, tall ones with tall ones, etc., which can only lead to incorrect consequences.

Question: So, what is this law of similarity of form, like attracts like?

Answer: This refers to inner similarity when people are attracted to each other and feel the same aspirations.

In Kabbalah, this is the most important quality; we come together in groups with the intention of reaching a special goal, a non-corporeal one, which cannot be determined by any standard, material conventions.

People with different skin color, those who are tall, short, fat, or thin can take part in this process. The main thing is that everyone should have the desire to connect with others by rising above their own nature. They begin to connect in a completely different way and with qualities that are inconsequential in this world.

In other words, when we talk about similarity, we mean the similarity of people’s goals, but their qualities and character traits remain different. The greater the variety, the more we arrive at similarity.
[275005]
From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/14/20

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Question: Are there situations when it is worth following just one person—a leader and not a team?

Answer: Yes. If we want to achieve a higher goal, then we cannot rely on the opinion of the crowd because by remaining a crowd with many opinions, it cannot produce anything special or higher than itself. We see what comes out of it. All this is invented only to fool people.

If we want to rise above our state we do not need a crowd. We need to train people, even that same crowd, to be a collective that can rise above themselves in faith above knowledge, that is, to the next level of development, sensing the creation.

Question: But in order to rise to this state, it is necessary to annul personal opinions and combine the efforts to create a unified desire. Why can’t we just add our opinions and not annul them?

Answer: No. If we do thus, we will not reach faith above knowledge. Each of us must humble ourselves in relation to the collective, and then we will all come to a state, where in our union, we become higher than each of us individually or together as a sum.

A completely different principle works here. I work with my egoism, raise society in my eyes, and accept it as something sacred. Despite the fact that I am right as an individual, I accept the opinion of society above my own because it is a society! I understand that there is a common strength, a common opinion, in it.

This is not the opinion of the crowd. By w anting to be connected together, we are all inside each other, each annulling oneself. Then we create such a state where everybody equalizes oneself with the others. Then we begin to feel the next level of our development, each from the point of annulment. This is called faith above knowledge.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 9/25/20

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