Audio Version Of The Blog – 8/1/21
Posted on August 1st, 2021
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New Life 1313 – Parents’ Agreement On The Education Of Their Children
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel
As parents, we want our children to lead serious, balanced lives and to know how to relate to other people. We need to set the right example of agreement and acceptance between parents, an example of mutual respect. Children need to see that their parents are as one, sharing the same views. It is a principle that stems from “a man and a woman, Divinity dwells between them.” This means that the connection between them is the strongest. As a result of the parents’ example, the children will learn that they too need to try to live in agreement and mutual support. As parents we try to be as one, to share views, desires, and our perspective of each other.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1313 – Parents’ Agreement On The Education Of Their Children,”7/18/21
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Where did we go wrong as a world?“
We went wrong by thinking we could achieve a harmonious and peaceful life by means of the ego.
For around 5,000 years, since the time of ancient Babylon, we have been developing egoistically. We think that we will achieve happiness via developments of technology, economics, culture and education. However, we are majorly mistaken in such thinking, and in our times, we see what we have built is crumbling. We will soon reach a state where we will stop dreaming about technical development leading us to anything positive.
How, then, can we stop ourselves and avoid reaching great disasters? The solution lies in the development of human consciousness. Together with the growing understanding of the end of egoistic development, and its negative manifestations, we need to also learn what the laws of nature are, without philosophizing or theorizing about them. We need to understand that, in essence, humanity’s salvation lies in the knowledge of the general law of nature, its use and realization.
Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
My new article on Linkedin “On Appreciation and Admiration”
These days, when admiration for superstar athletes, pop singers, and models sets the tone across the globe, it’s worthwhile to look at the phenomenon of admiration and how we can use it positively.
When chicks hatch, they naturally follow their mother. If their mother is absent when they hatch, they will follow anything big and moving as though it were their mother. We, too, have that tendency to follow someone great, someone who can direct us and protect us, someone worth following.
Our need for guidance begins at childhood. First, we admire our parents, who literally mean the world to us. Later, we learn to appreciate teachers, friends, peers who seem successful, and other people that we idolize. Without idols, we feel disoriented and uncertain where we want to go.
Interested parties exploit that vital need. Through mainstream media and social networks, they direct us where they want us to go and make us do what they want. They raise social media idols to stardom, turn them into celebrities that set the tone in public discourse, and make us think that these people are the greatest.
Gradually, through the influence of the social environment, our appreciation becomes admiration. This is already a higher level of relation to the object of attention. Fans are active; they have a sense of belonging and power, which stem from feelings of self-righteousness and entitlement that admiring the “right” people gives us.
To the rulers, this is the ideal situation. When people feel complacent and entertain themselves with sports, movies, and pop concerts, they can be easily manipulated. This allows the elite to gain wealth and power undisturbed.
If we are to advance to a better place than we are in today, as individuals and as a society, we must first determine the values that we want to promote. These values should coincide with the direction of the global development, which is making the world an interconnected and interdependent place. In fact, today, our level of mutual dependence has come to the point where we are dependent on each other for the most basic necessities.
Since this is the case, we need social values that correspond to our condition. Otherwise, we will create a dissonance between our aspirations and values, which stem from the selfish idols we emulate, and our reality, which is entirely interconnected and requires unselfishness as a basis for existence. In fact, this dissonance is why so many people are dissatisfied with life today.
The sooner we learn to value and promote mutual responsibility, caring, and consideration, the sooner life will change for the better. If we learn to respect people who promote cohesion and a sense of bonding in society, it will be easy for everyone to rise to the next level in our development, where the global village that we are is a thriving one, sustaining all its residents abundantly and easily, and everyone feels safe in it, and happy.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is mass media bad?“
Nothing in the world is bad or good. Everything depends on its use. This is why we can say that our means of information and communication were developed by the human ego in order for us to now understand that we need to develop them for humanity’s benefit.
The problem is not whether mass media is bad or good. Mass media’s good or bad influence depends on how it is used.
Who benefits from mass media? Does humanity benefit, according to the general law of nature, or does it benefit primarily the interests of its owners, to raise their ratings and increase their earnings?
This is the problem of mass media. In essence, it has the capability to help establish positive connections among human society, but instead it is used to divide people. Consequently, today, mass media is used in the worst way possible. This is why, on one hand, we cannot tolerate mass media, and on the other hand, we feel that life is impossible without it. Sometimes, mass media acts positively, for instance, when it criticizes certain behaviors and events well. As a rule, however, mass media leads to negative outcomes, because it is enacted by the ego of those at its reins.
If mass media would start functioning for the sake of humanity’s common benefit, where it would communicate the importance of building a new altruistic and positively connected world, then certainly, mass media would start playing a positive role in human society. We would then need mass media, and value it for bettering the world.
Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
A bright path is tied in the middle of the firmament. This is the serpent of the firmament, called by astronomers, “The Milky Line,” where all the thin stars are tied and stand in it in great numbers. They are gathered and stand in it like myriad, innumerable mountains, and they are appointed over the secret deeds of the people in the world (Zohar for All).
The stars symbolize the upper forces that determine our earthly path from above. Therefore, we believe that the stars determine our fate.
Question: Are you saying that from astrology, the science of astrologers, you can learn something about what happens at the level of matter?
Answer: Sure. Completely. Fortune-tellers, soothsayers can tell you this. But the fact is that they will only talk about events within our world, practically what should be, and not what you can change and fix yourself. And they can’t say anything about what is happening above our world.
Question: If I attract the forces of, say, The Book of Zohar, can I change the story of my life?
Answer: Of Course. Absolutely!
Remark: And I thought that the mise en scene does not change, the attitude changes.
Answer: Your feelings change, the mise en scene changes. Whether you are standing at gunpoint, this is one mise en scene, or you are sitting quietly on the lawn, drinking coffee, enjoying the singing of birds is another mise en scene. It all depends on your choice.
How you change yourself internally will change the external theater, the external environment. You have both an internal and an external state prepared for you of how to advance, either in a good way or in an evil way. It depends on what you choose: either to be pushed with a stick to happiness or to rush to it yourself.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #16
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Question from Facebook: Would Israel be the way it is today if there were no anti-Semites and no Holocaust?
Answer: If there were no anti-Semites and no Holocaust, no Jew would come to Israel. They would settle peacefully all over the world with great pleasure and forget that they are Jews because after the shattering and the fall into egoism, they don’t want to be part of a unique group at all.
Israel exists only thanks to anti-Semitism and the fact that there is hatred toward the Jews in the world, because even if they don’t know it, they carry the seed of the attribute of love of others and of bestowal. It is actually thanks to the hatred that the egoistic world feels toward the Jews that the state of Israel emerged.
It is anti-Semitism and the hate of Jews that sustains the state of Israel, and I would even say they are responsible for its prosperity, because the more the Jews are pressured, the more they begin to awaken and move.
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From KabTV’s “Answers to Questions from Facebook” 3/10/19
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Question: Yuval Noah Harari, historian and author, is an adherent of liberal and humanistic views, but as a researcher he came to the conclusion that the liberal system is failing.
What can you say about the crisis of the liberal idea itself?
Answer: Humanity is in misunderstanding of itself. What kind of liberalism can there be?! How can there be love for one’s neighbor, participation, equality, or brotherhood if we are egoists and cannot correct our nature ourselves? Then what is there to talk about?! Philosophy? It gives nothing!
You need to know how to correct your nature. After that, you can talk. And until we have corrected it, we still remain little selfish animals. No matter how we cover ourselves, it is a fig leaf, under which there is nothing.
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From KabTV’s “Challenges of the 21st Century. Introduction” 4/24/19
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Question: We usually use the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature for food. Previously, people made sacrifices from each of these levels. What does it mean to make a sacrifice in the spiritual?
Answer: This means that you must separate a small part from everything that you receive and symbolically burn it. Previously, some small part of the food was poured or burned, thereby showing that a person receives it not into his egoistic desire to receive, but into an altruistic desire to bestow, that he takes this food only in order to be healthy and do good deeds in his good health.
Everything that exists on the still, vegetative, and animate levels symbolizes the types of our egoistic desires, and depending on what we sacrifice, we seem to rise above different levels of egoism.
The highest is the animate level. If a person sacrifices it, it means that he can unite with other people above this level of egoism.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 7/9/21
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Question: What does it mean: “I saw the opposite world”?
Answer: The opposite world is a world of love that exists on the qualities that are the opposite of our world, i.e., on the qualities of bestowal, love, attraction, and work on one’s egoism.
Our world works only on egoism, on filling it. Therefore, the upper world is called the opposite of our world.
In Kabbalah, there is a transition from Lo Lishma (for myself) to Lishma (for others) when I make efforts from my egoistic qualities and, as if, acquire the opposite world.
By applying these efforts, I still get egoistic energy, I still try to reveal the Creator for myself, for my own sake. Then, at some point, He gives me the strength to do it purely altruistically, without any connection with myself. This is my reward.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 7/2/21
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