Audio Version Of The Blog – 4/4/22
Posted on April 4th, 2022
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Medium published my new article “How to Really Prepare Children for Life”
A new educational program in Israel proposes to prepare 12th graders for life. They will attend it during the final six months of their K12 years, and will teach them how to manage their finances and how to conduct themselves successfully in a changing job market. Preparing children for life is a great idea, but if you start it in the final six months of their attendance in the education system then a) you will not really prepare them for anything, and b) what have you been doing during the eleven and a half years prior to the final six months? To prepare a child for life, we must first prepare the parents for parenthood, and then prepare the children from the moment they are born.
When speaking about preparing for life, we must include all aspects of life. Financial education is only one aspect, and not the most important one. Children need knowledge in every aspect of life, but the most important aspect, and the one least taught, is human relations. We may excel in our field of expertise, we may make a lot of money and be affluent, but if we cannot communicate with other people positively and make them feel good around us, then we will not be happy.
Today, the most common medical condition is depression. Most other conditions, such as various addictions, violence, eating disorders, workaholism, and so forth, ultimately stem from depression that manifests through various symptoms. Currently, the common treatment for depression involves drugs. However, drugs do not cure depression, they only dull the pain. If, on the other hand, depressed people could form supportive and positive relationships, their depression would vanish as if it never existed, and without any medications.
Today, most adults do not know how to communicate with others positively. Hence, in order to teach children how to build positive relationships with others, grownups, too, must learn the craft.
It may sound naïve or unrealistic to think that people can relate to one another without malice in their hearts, but continuing to live as we have been living until now is not only unrealistic, it is also destroying our society and our planet, and poses a real risk that another world war will break out.
Therefore, even if we fail to make a positive connection, it does no harm to anyone if we make an effort. But if we do not make an effort and continue as we are, we will surely destroy ourselves and the planet we live on, and the future we will leave for our children will be very bleak. After the catastrophe, they will still have to learn to be on good terms with one another, so would it not be better if we learned this craft and taught it to our children while we are all still here?
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Question: Do you think that humanity is tired of wars?
Answer: On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, it cannot resist them.
Question: In the future, will we have ideological wars because modern conflicts are mainly economic in nature?
Answer: Yes, in the future, people will not fight with firearms, but with a special type of weapon, such as economic and computer ones, and so on.
Question: Is the war in material form a chance for correction or a forced correction on the part of nature?
Answer: War in the material form is necessary because, in principle, everything starts with matter.
Question: Do you think that a Third World War is already happening?
Answer: It is already starting.
Question: What is victory in the war for you?
Answer: Victory in a war is a state when people who incite wars begin to realize their meaninglessness.
Question: How can we prevent wars?
Answer: Show people that nature has a completely different goal, which they will never reach through war.
Question: Can we consider the coronavirus epidemic a biological war against egoism?
Answer: No, I do not think that egoism has suffered some kind of major defeat from this. Yet, such natural events as pandemics do help to restrain egoism a little.
Question: Is war a punishment from the upper force, from nature, for some actions or lack of actions of a person?
Answer: War is the path of a person’s movement toward the fully corrected state. It only depends at what level he does it.
Question: Does a person need to get used to the internal war?
Answer: The most internal war (the most real and beneficial) is when a person is at war with himself.
Question: Can a person get used to an external war?
Answer: There are people who literally have been at war with each other all their lives, for decades. For example, there are tribes in the Amazon that are constantly at war. In general, a state of war is a permanent state in all of humanity, in the entire world.
Question: What are your wishes to people?
Answer: To be engaged in the war between our egoism and the Creator in the right way and to see the achievement of our victory over egoism.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 3/1/22
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Question: Irina writes: “Only now do I understand that the whole history of mankind is going from war to war. Why? Battles for borders, the glorification of war, all progress works for war. Why?”
Answer: Because it is human nature to suppress and feel superior to the other. Without it, life, existence, it has no meaning.
This is the nature of our egoism; the Creator created it this way. From a higher level He created us so that by overcoming egoism we would become similar to that upper degree He wants us to ascend to.
It is by constantly suppressing our own egoism, that we must rise above it, and thus, from what is happening in us throughout the whole transformation of our egoism that we overcome, we will create a spiritual degree in us. Gradually, we will build it and mold it from the negation of egoism and the way we want to turn it over in a different way, to mold it in a different way.
Question: And what can be fashioned from our egoism?
Answer: Love, love, bestowal, self-sacrifice, everything!
Question: Out of this desire for war?
Answer: Precisely from it. We do not have any other material.
Question: Can I fashion the desire to be happy?
Answer: Yes. It is from the most disgusting feces, which is worse than anything, that it must be fashioned, precisely from this. You treat it differently, start presenting it in a different way, and then you will see that it is a noble material.
Question: My egoism?
Answer: But this will no longer be egoism. You will turn it inside out. It will be something sparkling. This will be the garment of the Creator. Can you imagine what opposite understandings, elements of nature we have to deal with here!
Question: So I live with this spark of love, the Creator in me, but I only have war in me now? And if it is turned over, there will already be love?
Answer: Yes.
Question: What kind of work should I do so that I understand and start toward it, toward love?
Answer: Love! Only to develop love in you. Love your neighbor is the main law of nature.
Question: Do we have to go through these sufferings, these horrors, these dead ends?
Answer: Absolutely! We not only have to go through them. We must master them, apply them to ourselves, try them on ourselves, see where it does not suit us and where it suits us, and change ourselves. Sometimes it is to lose weight, sometimes to get fat, sometimes to change ourselves so that these clothes are suitable for us.
Question: And this clothing will be what?
Answer: This is called reflecting light: intention for the sake of others.
Question: So the intention for the sake of others is my clothes? Am I living for others?
Answer: Yes. Egoism remains but in such a way that I want to use it completely for the sake of everyone.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/28/22
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When we see the whole world before us in all its beauty, we do not see it as it is in the reality, but only as it is inside ourselves. This means that in the back of our brain, there is some kind of “photo camera” that portrays everything we see, but not what is outside of us (Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”).
Question: How can I connect the hostilities taking place under my window with the perception of reality that everything is inside me. What can you advise a person?
Answer: Nothing. I cannot say anything to an unprepared person. And to the prepared, depending on the degree of one’s preparation, I can remind you that everything that happens outside is a copy of what happens inside of us. If we correct our properties, we will not see war outside because there will be no war inside of us.
Question: There is a parable: one day, soldiers went into a tavern where the Hasidim were sitting, and one of the soldiers raised his sword over the sage. But the sage continued to speak without paying attention to the soldier and the soldier left. That is, the faith of the sage was so strong. Are these all fairy tales? Or can this really be?
Answer: Maybe, of course a person is so connected with the upper force that his attitude toward it literally immediately changes the world. He did not even try to defend himself because he was sure it was just an image. Such a state can be achieved.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 3/1/22
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Question: In Kabbalah do the words “birth” and “death” differ from our usual concepts? As far as I know, Kabbalists do not celebrate their birthday.
Answer: And not the day of death either. However, there is an example of such a celebration in history. On Lag B’Omer we celebrate the day of departure of Rabbi Shimon from this world, the man who wrote The Book of Zohar.
The fact is that Rabbi Shimon totally completed his work. He worked his life hundred percent, and passed on he source of life to people, the method of correction. As soon as he finished this, he immediately retired from material life. What else could he do in this world? He fulfilled his mission.
In this world, we exist as many times, as many lives, as necessary for us to be realized. And then we do not have to come back. This world is the worst state of all that exist in nature.
Comment: But we think it is something wonderful and beautiful.
My Response: We have nothing else. We are just scared to get away from it.
Where are we going? What is happening to us? We do not know. In fact, a person who has not reached at least the first ten Sefirot of his soul’s development simply dies, i.e., his animal body dies, and he reappears again in an animal shell. He does not feel himself in other dimensions.
To enter the spiritual world, one must enter it while living in this world, and then the animal body living or dying in no way affects your spiritual state. Therefore, it is said: “See your world in this life.”
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From KabTV’s “Close up. Beyond the last line” 5/3/10
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Question: You say that a Kabbalist exists above the level of death, while an ordinary person exists below this level. What does it mean?
Answer: A Kabbalist is not afraid of death and an ordinary person constantly lives in this fear, tries to forget himself, and flirts with himself through various actions just not to think that his life is drawing to a close. Fear, an incomprehensible feature of disappearance, termination of life, “Why then do I exist, why do I do all this?”
And although these questions are very relevant for us, they remain unresolved, out of our lives. We simply remove them from ourselves, engage in secondary and tertiary activities, and leave the most important thing aside as if it does not exist.
But if we set these questions as most important for us, then everything else simply would not make sense until we solve them. “Why do I give birth to children? Why do I exist? I chase after all sorts of petty fillings in life, for what?!”
And the Kabbalist reveals all this and therefore exists in absolutely clear, real movement. For him, everything is in its place. He does not engage in half hints, does not hide from birth and death, the cessation of this life.
He understands the importance of each of his states. He behaves rationally in this life because he treats every phenomenon in its present perspective, in its present dimension, in its present importance—in accordance with life, movement, death, reincarnation, the achievement of some final goal, which, perhaps, will be in a few lifetimes. He sees this whole perspective.
And so for him this little life is also part of many. He understands where his every movement, his every action is. That is, he does not act in our world like an ordinary man that he lived today and tomorrow—”What will be, will be, what can I do?”—without understanding the next moment, not imagining whether it will happen at all or not.
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From KabTV’s “Close up. Beyond the Last Line” 5/3/10
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Question: When speaking of Jerusalem, one cannot but mention the city wall surrounding it with its eight gates. What does this mean spiritually?
Answer: The wall is what surrounds the city. It was necessary to emphasize that within the city there are special properties of bestowal: connection, love, and reciprocity.
Therefore the wall means the connection between all egoistic desires, which take the obligation to be interconnected altruistically, spiritually upon themselves. Thus, the presence of the wall meant that there could be no egoism inside the city. Otherwise it’s not a city.
As for the gates, as a rule they open and close so that you can accept something or it is impossible to keep it in yourself and you need to let it out of the city.
In the language of Kabbalah, this can be represented as a screen (Masach). If you work for the sake of bestowal, then it lets the light of the Creator’s delight into your desires. If not, then the gates are closed.
Comment: It is interesting that one of the gates in the city wall of Jerusalem was walled up. They say they will open in the future.
My Response: This is the Moshiach Gate.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 2/22/22
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why are great artists usually terrible people?“
Recently, a renowned writer was found to have hurt several women, some of whom say that we now need to get rid of his books. Indeed, there have been acclaimed artists throughout history who have created masterpieces while exhibiting terrible behavior in their personal lives.
One has nothing to do with the other. People can be great artists who create the most beautiful and inspirational art about the loftiest of matters, and exhibit terrible behavior in their personal lives. It is unsurprising, because a person includes an entire world of positive and negative qualities.
As we head into the future, it is important to understand that we are headed toward recognition of our evil, i.e., how our egoistic and divisive drives do not let us positively connect, and such awareness will lead us to the conclusion that we have to change.
We were created with an egoistic nature, where we each prioritize self-benefit over benefiting others, in order to become aware of our opposition to the altruistic and whole nature, and to reach a sincere desire to invert our nature into the latter. Doing so would invert our perception of the world as we know it. We would then experience a harmonious and peaceful life.
Based on the video “Why Are Some Artists Such Terrible People?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Preparation to the Lesson
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Lesson on the Topic “Pesach (Passover)”
| [media 3] | [media 4] |
Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”
| [media 5] | [media 6] |
Selected Highlights
| [media 7] | [media 8] |
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