Audio Version Of The Blog – 1/26/23
Posted on January 26th, 2023
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio
Question: There are three types of egoism. There is the usual everyday egoism that manifests in the family, at work, and in our lives when we constantly use each other in a rude way. And there is egoism, which is manifested directly in the ten, in a group of people who want to unite, but suddenly there is hatred, which appears between them.
The third level of egoism is when a person attains the Creator directly and already wants to use the Creator Himself for his own sake, for his own benefit. Do we need to correct all three levels?
Answer: Yes, all these levels need to be corrected and we need to do what is only for the benefit and good of others. A person should rise above himself and act only in for the sake of others.
Comment: But the phrase “for the sake of others” is used by everyone, starting with politicians.
My Response: It means that the words are correct, but the intentions and actions are wrong.
[307944]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/8/23
Related Material:
It All Depends On The Intention
The Intention Is The Means For Changing Ourselves And The World
The Human Being Is Intention
Comment: You say that it does not matter whether a person loves or not, the main thing is his specific attitude, and not something neutral. That if he is for or against something, then he already has some attitude to any object or phenomenon.
My Response: Naturally. The main thing is not to be indifferent.
Indifference is synonymous with the absence of feeling. Suppose I do not notice you, this means that I do not feel you. As soon as I begin to feel you, you will immediately begin to influence me and emerge in some definitions.
Comment: Usually in life we try to get rid of hatred so that everything is positive.
My Response: This is incorrect. You cannot get rid of hatred, you can only overcome it by feelings that are opposite to it, build one above the other: hate above love or love above hate. It is the same with other feelings.
You cannot calm a restless person and simply destroy his anxiety. You must necessarily give him the opposite quality, confidence and so on. It is always like this. Therefore, we cannot do anything with ourselves. We do not understand exactly how to balance all our feelings, views, opinions, sensations, and emotions with their opposite qualities.
Question: How can this be done? After all, you say that all existing qualities are very important and cannot be neutralized.
Answer: I say that they cannot be destroyed, they must not be neutralized, but balanced by the opposite quality.
[307891]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Transform Hatred into Love?” 2/4/12
Related Material:
Covering Everything With Love
Covering Transgressions With Unified Love
Hatred Of People
Comment: I watched a movie about an attempt to create an endless system of jobs by developing consumption. In it they say that a concern was created in 1928 that minimized the lifespan of products and even imposed fines. Due to this, they created a permanent consumer basket.
My Response: Let’s say any product that is sold to us will have a useful life of a month, a year, or maximum of five years, and then it will deteriorate. Or I will buy a computer knowing that a year later, on the same day I plug it in, something will turn on inside that will burn it, and I have to throw it away.
Maybe I will be able to even bring this computer to the store and get another, more advanced model for a period of one year, or maybe for 9 months, for a 10% discount.
Let’s say we do it. Then what? What will give us this way to constantly give each other work? After all, if we are closed on each other in this way, it is as if we did not produce perishable things.
It is stupid to deplete the earth. It is impossible to constantly pull out anything we want from it. After all, there is a time when oil, gas, metals, precious metals, and so on may run out. There is a date when we will not have enough water. They are already talking about the times when we will not have enough air. What will you do then, sell air, sell water, until they completely disappear?
Even if nature did not have the task of bringing us to the recognition of a dead end in the process of our development, this path is still completely unrealistic and irrational.
[307904]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Make a Revolution” 2/10/12
Related Material:
The End of Egoistic Development
A Reasonable Attitude To Consumption
Kabbalah And The Consumer Economy, Part 5
In the News (ABC News): “New research from New York University found that public school curriculum is falling short in providing “culturally responsive” education, a blind spot that researchers believe could be failing students across the country. …
“‘Culturally responsive’ education infuses the backgrounds, cultures, identities, and lived experiences of the students into the instruction of a classroom. These identities inform a teacher’s communication style, the tools they use in their lessons, and more, according to researchers from NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools.
“For example, educator and curriculum evaluator Sara Carroll-Muniz said in a press conference that when her students were having difficulty understanding allusion in poetry, she instead sought it out in songs they loved.
“‘We’re leaning on a lot of old, white poetry to try to get this message across and it just wasn’t clicking,’ Carroll-Muniz said at the press conference. ‘Hip-hop is rife with allusion … it’s just such a wonderful source for exploring that.’ “
How do you like the idea that, for example, arias in biology and lyrical songs in higher mathematics are being created? What will happen if we teach and instruct in this way?
Answer: Of course it will be clearer to the students.
Question: So they do not need to make any effort to understand?
Answer: None of this is needed. What for? It should get in easily in a sensory way.
Question: So we must work according to them, according to the students. If a student wants to, let him sing higher mathematics. What do you think of this way of teaching? Do you like it? Would you like to study in such a school?
Answer: I think it would help many people absorb mathematics, physics, and so on. All of this can be transferred to very simple things.
Question: You keep saying that the main thing is not even education, but the process of upbringing. Does it exist in this?
Answer: There is definitely the process of upbringing here. They teach students how to teach others, younger ones and so on.
Question: Can you say that when they sing together in class, then this is a process of rapprochement?
Answer: Rapprochement and adaptation. Of course.
Question: That is, is everything that is transferred to joint singing, to joint action, is collected in a “piggy bank”?
Answer: Yes, of course. Thus, in general, you can achieve a lot of success. But who needs it, just between us?
Question: You believe that it is so good that no one needs it as a result. And if it were bad, then maybe someone would need it?
Answer: This is how things work.
Question: So we do not want our children to rush to school to be willing to be together in class?
Answer: What is the point of this?! There is a thug waiting for them there, beating them, taking away their lunch money and things like that. I know that this is how it goes.
Question: Do we not need such a gentle upbringing?
Answer: We need a different upbringing. One in which the most ignorant students will understand that you need to be in good connection and in good relationships with each other. Otherwise, their society will reject them.
It is the most terrible thing when no one says hello to you, when you are rejected, when everyone laughs at you, and the girl you adored yesterday is puffed up and walks past you. These are all very good educational methods.
Question: So, suppose these are methods of education and upbringing. Do you mean tough methods of upbringing?
Answer: Yes, in the beginning this is what is needed, of course. If I am not connected with the collective by good ties, then nothing will help me.
Question: So are you saying to throw all education out of your head because nobody needs it? I exaggerate on purpose.
Answer: This is not an exaggeration. This is the foundation.
Question: And to start to take care of the connection in the classroom, the real connection, so that it becomes the most essential and important thing? And then add to this all the education, everything, absolutely everything.
Answer: Everything else will come on top of this.
Question: Will they ever want to implement this?
Answer: For this you just need good educators who know how to get into the students’ hearts, correctly distribute such roles among them, and somehow create such an atmosphere.
Question: Should educators themselves relate to each other in this spirit?
Answer: This is still far away, of course. And there is no way we can educate teachers! But maybe, it will be possible to come to an agreement with them so that they first unite in the teachers’ room, and then, in this state, go to the classroom. And then we will get good results in everything: kindness in the first place, mutual assistance, and the desire to study better.
Question: Will we get this too?
Answer: Absolutely, because otherwise we will let others down, and our students themselves will sneer at us. And so on.
Question: That is, our class should be the best, we should all be the best together. Is this also a conclusion?
Answer: Yes, but we should not point out that we should be better than others.
Question: Can educational bodies, ministries of education and upbringing, still take this as a basis?
Answer: No. This will be in real demand when you can pay teachers well.
Comment: To pay teachers, and then they will build the process like this? But they themselves should want this to happen in the classroom, right?
My Response: The point is that it will not last long because they do not have that kind of upbringing yet. You have to spark their interest.
Question: But money does have a serious effect here, doesn’t it?
Answer: Of course material interest does have an effect. That is, there are two components here: material interest and ideological interest.
Question: Can teachers spark each other with ideas?
Answer: I do not think so.
Question: Do you remember your first teacher? I remember you speaking about her with such warmth.
Answer: Oh! She was a special woman—young and married to a military man at the time she was teaching us. We lived on the edge of a military garrison. He often met her on the way back from work. I remember myself waving to him.
She was very, very devoted to us. She loved us.
Question: Maybe this is the key to real success?
Answer: Yes. But then the next year I moved to another school. It was a different life.
Question: If a teacher lives like this loving the class, loving the students… Or will this not last long as well?
Answer: This has stayed with me for the rest of my life. These are childhood experiences.
They gave me an example of what the first teacher could be.
Question: We started with rap, with an attempt to transfer the material to music understandable for a child, and then things will advance. What needs to be done to still have this atmosphere in the classroom?
Answer: If teachers can speak confidentially with children, then they can easily set the children on the right attitude to studies, to life, and to others.
Question: But in this way or another, you say it should go through the connection that exists in class?
Answer: Yes. This is the main thing. This is the basis.
[306190]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/10/22
Related Material:
Ten Reasons Children Do Not Want To Go To School
Was School Created by the Devil?
When The Teacher Becomes Desirable
Question: You often say that we do not destroy our egoism because it is our nature, but we destroy its egoistic intention, its egoistic use. What is the difference?
Answer: The most important thing is the intention! The fact is that you can stab a person with a knife with malicious intent and kill him, or you can use a knife with good intent, as a surgeon usually does to cure a patient. In principle, both actions are the same, but the intentions are different.
A person who does not understand the meaning of the actions will think that it they are the same thing, but in fact it all depends on the intention. Therefore, we must understand the intention of each person and judge him only by his intention.
[307901]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/8/23
Related Material:
The Main Thing Is Intention
The Intention Determines The Act
When Everything Is Fine
Сomment: Recently, you gave the following definition of a hero: A hero is one who gives all his strength, but does not win, and yet he is a hero. This is completely different from what is accepted in our world.
My Response: All the definitions in our world are opposite to the spiritual ones. In the corporeal world they are based on my victory or my achievement, and not on the victory over myself.
When we watch movies, especially American ones, we admire them and even cry with emotion: “Finally they meet! Finally he achieves it! Finally something happened! Finally he was acquitted!” and so on.
It all boils down to the fact that a hero achieves his dream. It is realized despite all the haters and spiteful critics who wanted to trip him up. He was heading for his goal, for his dream, despite the hardships, and now he has broken through the thorns to the stars!
In principle, this is how the victory of egoism is implanted: I am going on my own, achieving my goal, and as a result, I am a hero.
But in spirituality this is not the case at all. It is amazing how different it is! After all, spirituality is achieved by revealing that you are inside your egoism in a completely wrong state, that your desire to perpetuate yourself, to win, and to prove your case is a purely egoistic desire, which in principle is harmful and deceitful, and that at the same time you are following the lead of your ego, your animal being is pulling you forward!
This is a huge lie that our nature plays with us, and it constantly urges us: “Come on! Do it! Prove it to everyone!” And we obey it all the time like blind kittens. We are slaves of this nature!
Such heroism is extolled in Hollywood films. But these are the most terrible manifestations of egoism because they are detrimental and harmful to others.
In his blindness, a man does not understand that nature is simply playing with him like with a small child: “Come on! Do it! See how you can do it! Well done!” This is how we all are, and we are still proud of it—vanity, pride, and arrogance. What for?!
Where are all those rich and wise, those supermen?!
All this is so petty and does not go beyond the level of small blind kittens, although in principle it looks like we are talking about strong and smart people. But they sit in their egoism and realize the instructions of nature and all the time seek out how they can even better realize their ego. Therefore, Kabbalah laughs at this “Hollywood.”
[307841]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Who is the Real Hero?” 1/28/12
Related Material:
A Hero Is One Who Conquers Himself
Who Can Be Called A Hero?
A Hero Among Heroes
Preparation to the Lesson
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Zohar for All “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” “On the Night of the Bride,” Item 136
| [media 3] | [media 4] |
Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 70
| [media 5] | [media 6] |
Selected Highlights
| [media 7] | [media 8] |
Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why as a society are we so corrupt?“
Behind our every action and thought is an egoistic desire that makes us want to enjoy at the expense of others and nature.
Moreover, this egoistic desire constantly grows.
If in the past we could have been friendly with each other, today we view each other through the lens of how can we use each other to gain something. And we are not to blame for such an attitude. It is because our ego grew.
What can we do about it? Inside of us is some kind of an animal that constantly grows, and it demands that we exploit everyone and everything around us as much as possible for self-gain.
In fact, we have always been driven by such a desire, but it was not as big as it is today, so we did not experience it in the increasingly negative ways in which we feel it today.
The reason the egoistic desire grows in us is not simply for us to experience our lives and our society becoming increasingly corrupt. It is for us to reach a realization that our nature is indeed egoistic at its core, that we truly wish to use others and nature for self-gain purposes as much as possible, and that such a drive leads us to a plethora of negative outcomes throughout society. Then, this realization should develop in us a desire to make a fundamental change in ourselves: to change our egoistic nature to an altruistic one, where instead of thinking how to use others to gain from them, we will think about how to use ourselves to benefit others. If we will not undergo such a transition, then society will eventually fall apart.
Based on the video “Why Is Society Becoming More and More Corrupt?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Daily Audio Version-MP3
Get the Weekly eNewsletter
Follow on Twitter
