Entries in the 'Children' Category

Learn To Make Each Other Happy

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe second principle of relationships between married couples says: “Each one must try to elevate the mood of the partner all the time.” Every person always welcomes the opportunity to improve his mood. And in a circumstance like this you need to see yourself as more than a partner, like a mother who cares about the welfare of her child.

That is to strive to please the other, to improve his mood, to be concerned that things will be good for him, to try to bring him what he loves, to prepare, to arrange things for him. And I need to show that I am doing this especially for the sake of my wife that I want to give her pleasure. I give her an example of behavior that I would like to see from her in relation to me.

This is talking about a married couple that learns to build the right relationship with each other. We understand that we are two egoists that must correct the condition of our family. Therefore, each one shows a different example and has the privilege to remind the other of how he needs to behave.

Together with this, it is very important to lift each other’s mood because we want to build a connection between us! A good mood helps open the person and a bad mood causes him to withdraw within himself. Therefore, in a bad mood, he is not prepared to connect with others.

If the partner is found in a depressed state like this, it is not possible to make him happy about anything, then it is necessary to descend to his bad mood, to share in his concerns, to try to see everything through his eyes, to agree with his assessment, and to justify him one hundred percent. And after you feel you are found in the same mood, in shared anger, try to take him out from there. For without connection it is impossible to bring the person out of a descent, it is first necessary to grasp him somehow.

And if you try to make the partner happy in this state, then this is liable to create the opposite effect and your optimism will summon within him even greater anger because you are standing opposite each other. First we must attain a connection, solidarity, to feel each other, and only after this, gradually, very slowly begin to lift his spirits, this will be the right psychological approach.

Every state needs to be exploited for the work of nullifying yourself. For example, you come home and see that your house slippers are not in their place, so you are happy that you have the opportunity to rise above your anger and that you receive material on which to work. You know that you will benefit from this in that you will empty an area within yourself for a deeper connection.

A person needs to get compensation for his concession so he will feel that it is worthwhile for him to make this concession, for in a form like this he gains love, a good connection, and even something higher! Within these feelings suddenly some kind of unique elevation appears that he rises from the level of the beast to the level of a human relationship and he can understand that it was worth it.

Question: What if I go home and see that he is wrapped in a storm cloud? My wife is in a bad mood and I’m terribly angry, I’m infected by the bad mood. What should be done in a circumstance like this?

Answer: Go look for a good mood the same way you would look for your house slippers! Search for ways to improve her mood and yours. You now need to become a psychologist in regard to your wife and search for a scientific approach to her, constructive and thoughtful, to build a connection like this with her that will take her out of despair and anger and will raise her to another level of relationship to life. Now you are working like a true psychotherapist.

And you even have stronger tools of influence than an external psychologist because you can approach your wife, hug her, and in a relationship of trust ask her what happened. First of all hug her, this will thaw everything immediately. This is like everything in life that brings a person pleasure and a feeling of support.

The whole method of familial relationships is supported by concessions and the connection that is attained with them by overcoming your ego so that “love covers over all iniquities” by helping the other, by giving an example of how to connect back with you. Everything necessary is already in these words; I have nothing more to add.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 8/1/12

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Two Behind One Wheel

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Suppose I invest all possible efforts in getting close to my wife, yet I don’t find reciprocity from her. Is there some kind of limit to this when I can say that according to how my partner reacts it is worthwhile for me to stop and wait?

Answer: I must help my partner, not just stopping my attempts deciding that I have already tried enough and now I can relax. I simply understand that in a better relationship I would pamper her too much and weaken her, she couldn’t tolerate a good relationship like this from me and remain balanced.

Even while I stop myself from showing excessive kindness and love, I do this out of love. As with children, it is impossible to be too good to them without spoiling them through over-indulgence.

It is necessary to basically consider that we are all “beasts”; we all must work on ourselves to become human. This is possible only through reciprocal work in the family, and then in the whole society.

Question: What is considered a good result here?

Answer: It is possible to be satisfied with the result if we start to feel each other. I no longer approach my wife as if I am travelling in a car to a distant destination; rather, we are found next to each other and turn the steering wheel together. We need to feel that we have common desires, hers and mine, and we both manage them. Our two egos, mine and hers, remain below, while our shared desire to bestow to each other, is found above. We are like two scientists, like two humans, working together on our “beast”.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life #46” 8/01/12

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Incredible Action

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: During the discussion circles a sensation of unity, of identity, is created among the people. How important is it here, specifically, for the person to understand that this is happening to him now?

Answer: The person doesn’t need to do anything at first. We arrange workshops with very different people like those who are opposites, who hate each other and disagree. They are completely different people in mentality, nationality, age, profession and so on, gathered into the circles.

Very gradually, over the course of the first half hour, surprisingly, they begin to connect internally, to understand each other, to complement each other and they don’t interrupt each other and don’t argue in any way. They try to find a common point of view, to rise above themselves. Then, suddenly, something in common begins to form between them, an agreement that shines on them with some kind of inner light, an inner energy. This is specifically what a person lacks today.

Our world now is entering into a state like this. Around us, nature is revealing more and more of its integrality, its mutual cooperation that fills all of its parts, and we, humanity, are like a cancerous tumor. We don’t want to be integrally linked between us and with nature itself.

Through attaining the most minimal integrality in a group, we become like the nature that surrounds us (except for humanity) and begin to feel a kind of radiation from it, some kind of influence, and this feeling of receiving a unique energy makes the world more resonant, more subtle and fine. This is so soothing, relaxing, and balancing for a person that he doesn’t want to be separated from it.

A sensation of wisdom descends upon him because he is found in balance with nature, meaning with the entire universe. He begins to feel that there are special goals in a state like this and that through these states it is possible to go out as if through some kind of matrix to the next level of existence. Apparently, a group in which this is found is, in fact, not a group, but a unique body, a schema, an instrument, with whose help one can organize his ascent above this world.

From a physical point of view, he might have everything: a house, a family, salary and the like. However, this sensation of “suspension in the air” above our world fills him with meaning. This gives him rest from everything that he usually feels in this world. This is very important to people. For this, they would be ready to give everything if only to attain such a state.

Therefore, from my personal experience, I would claim that within an hour to an hour and a half of being in a workshop, a person reaches this kind of state. He becomes completely different.

Taking part in integral workshops are: Arabs, Jews, Druze, the old, the young, right wingers, left wingers, fascists, and communists. It doesn’t matter who or how. They sit around a roundtable as enemies that don’t usually complement each other and within an hour they transform into comrades. An absolutely incredible activity has taken place!

Afterward, they will travel to visit each other, meet, wanting to feel that feeling that they had found again, and precisely in contrast to that initial sense of opposition, they feel the new state more prominently and clearly.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/17/13

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The Golden Key To The Solution Of Problems

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Are there any indicators or evaluations for determining whether there is a healthy situation at the level of the family, for instance?

Answer: I think that we are not taught properly about the behavior in a family. We study in the group that spiritual attainment requires us to move forward. It’s based on the fact that the ego is constantly growing and unity is constantly growing above it. That is, if we feel 20 kilograms of mutual egoistic repulsion between us, then we have to rise above this. This means that the uniting force needs to be at least one gram more than repulsion.

Is it not as it should be? We are brought up incorrectly. We, egoists, are constantly growing and changing. Each spouse is in his internal egoistic states: by strength, character, etc. I want romance and she wants cosmetics. I want to go fishing and she wants to dream.

We are not taught what we should constantly work on. As a result, family life is destroyed. Why do families break up? As soon as egoism starts growing and switches from the animal level to the next human degree, we no longer understand how to cope with it.

It becomes integral and people do not know at all how to work with it, “It’s easier to get a divorce!” It becomes a normal phenomenon and we do not criticize it. And it’s really true because we fundamentally do not understand how we can work with our nature. All of this is manifested in this way.

So, when we go out to the general public with a lecture or dissemination, then everything that we studied in Kabbalah earlier becomes the magical golden key to solving any problem in integral education. Just as we are trying to unite in the group, we can unite in family by exactly the same system. Otherwise, the family will cease to exist!

Even in those modern civilizations where the family still maintains the historical foundation and way of life, nothing will be left there either if we do not introduce integral education. And it’s entirely based on Kabbalah. What you do in the group, do at home and at work.

Today, we bring our methodology to various businesses and managers who also complain that people lose motivation; a person cannot force himself to work. He needs money, he needs to live, but he cannot force himself.

The world will suffer until it becomes convinced that we cannot manage without the system, which you derive only from the knowledge of the spiritual structure; you need to implement it because the world is entering it yet doesn’t know how to act within it. It turns out that it adjusts itself according to the new spiritual structures, but everyone still tries to live in it by the egoistic principles.

That is why the family crisis can be solved easily. Show examples of workshops and all kinds of integral interactions through the same television series. Start teaching people the method of bringing them together and you will see how it will begin to work. People will not know from where they get the desire for unity; they will not have a clue that they learn this from the heroes of television shows.

The dissemination of the method of integral education is not just going somewhere and telling something to someone. It should be our main weapon. In this case, we calm the world down. Moreover, this spreads as fast as anything else.
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From the 1st Preparation to the Convention in Krasnoyarsk 6/13/13

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Contact With The Information Field

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Will the communication between people change in the integral society? Will they move on to some kind of deeply sensitive system of communication?

Answer: By their complementing each other, people will create such devices and mechanisms for measurement that they will feel the next level, the world, that in the meantime they don’t feel today since we aren’t connected to each other.

The thing is, despite the presence of the relative repulsion, there is no attraction between us which means there aren’t two forces which work to build the picture of this creation.

A person has to have a new sense organ called the “soul.” By uniting in integral groups, people find contact with their soul and then start communicating with each other on the level of the general soul—the unified information field to which they have to connect.

Therefore, there is the appearance of a large group of sensitive children because humanity is now more prepared to have contact with this information field.

Question: Can we expect some evolution on the level of biological bodies?

Answer: No. The biological body exists only within our feelings. To the extent that our feelings will begin to change into being higher, then the body will gradually lose its importance within our feelings until such a state that the whole world will begin to disappear like in a fog. Already physicists and psychologists are speaking about this. These are purely scientific statements.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/20/13

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The EU Will Begin To Fight Youth Unemployment

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from EUbusiness): ”… European Union president Herman Van Rompuy on Friday called on Europe’s leaders for help in fighting youth unemployment, now at record levels across the 27-nation bloc. …

“‘The number of unemployed people in our Union, especially of young people, is at record levels,’ he said. ‘It has become one of the most pressing issues in most, if not all, of our member states. That is why we must do our utmost to deal with it together.’ …

“The June summit ‘will be an opportunity to mobilise efforts at all levels around one shared objective: to get motivated young people back to work or education,’ he said, urging leaders ‘to actively contribute’ to fight youth joblessness.

“Fears are rising of ‘a lost generation’ with almost two out of three under 25-year-olds out of work in Greece and in Spain.”

My Comment: It is good that there are calls because the problem is growing, but as usual, funds will be allocated, plans will be created, hundreds of jobs for office workers will be created, and then one day they will remember them and see the result: wasted money… The only way out of unemployment is to occupy young people with integral education: It is inexpensive, reliable, promising.
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Child Cruelty

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Elena Galkina, historian): “Violence among children is multiplying. They have much more opportunities today to immerse into the virtual space, in the TV world, computer games; between the ages 5 to 15, they see approximately 20,000 murders, horror movies, thrillers, a huge amount of blood, and treachery. They conclude that he who is successful is a rapist, a murderer, one who views others as stepping stones, steals, and take bribes.

“A child needs to see an example of a good behavior towards others. Otherwise, as a biological creature, he sees how he should compete and, of course, he will choose this path of crime, violence, and social dominance.

“If we don’t resolve this issue, our society will turn not just into beasts but into a population that will not be able to reproduce because for reproduction even animals and birds require an element of altruism, an element of social cooperation for the common good, and not for the benefit of just oneself through the misery of others. If no attention is given to this, we will be faced with social collapse and the collapse of individuals.”

My Comment: This is the path of the realization of the evil of our nature, and only after recognizing it as evil will we be able to begin our correction as the only inevitable, sensible, and desirable action. The realization of evil can be long and cruel if we persist in remaining in egoism, or it can be fast and easy if we study it as a tendency to realize it as evil in order to rise above it by means of integral education, and then replace it with kindness and love with the help of integral upbringing.
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Learn From The Children And Not From Television Talk Shows

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The integral discussion is a very unique program. Basically, people will come to see how problems that interest them can be solved at the roundtable. However, regular talk shows that attract television viewers generally remind one of conflicts or fist fights.

Answer: I always talk only about our need to influence each other in a positive manner, without “opposition.” You might deny this and say that this is incorrect, unimaginable, and unacceptable, that through this kind of a discussion, we won’t attract anyone, but I know only one thing: A problem cannot be solved through argument.

From the screen, I show the television viewer how a problem can be solved without actually touching upon it because the problem exists on level “A,” and I raise the panelists to level “B.” When I take them to this level and maybe even to level “C” or “D,” they transform into something else.

Question: In Wikipedia, it is written that, in a roundtable, people don’t accommodate themselves to the opinion of the other. Rather, they add their own opinion.

Answer: I relate respectfully to the public roundtables, but integral roundtables are something absolutely different. What I mean is that its form is absolutely different. It is only positive!

In no way should you express opposition. Rather, everyone is completed on a new, corrected level. One doesn’t enter into any confrontations or expressions of dissent. In this way, we are playing at being on the next level; we only add. If someone expresses his opinion, I explain that it is possible to do even better, saying, “Adding to what my friend said, I suppose that we can do more of this and that.”

I am always building our next integral level together with the others. This is based only on agreement between us—only on agreement! We always rise higher and higher. This is never done through opposition and contradiction. There is no opposition and contradiction!

Question: However, if there are no arguments or reservations, we cannot reach a decision.

Answer: If this is a true and proper workshop, the people are like children playing at building a common home. This makes it more exciting and engaging for them than if they were destructive or directed against each other.

I see how children instinctively use this when they want to play together and not alone. When they are interested in the results of their labor becoming some kind of structure, like trains or cities, then something will turn around and they will work together.
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From KabTV’s “Wisdom of Crowds” 5/14/13

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Seven Billion Happy Children

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When people rise to the integral level, does their personal view remain, or do “shared eyes” appear for them, so to speak?

Answer: When a person rises to an integral level, his expanded personal comprehension remains with him, but in an integral manner. That is, he begins to see how he can be useful to this society in general and for each of its members individually.

Today, each of us sees how we can get something from our surroundings, take more for ourselves, grab, and so forth. This is a pretty narrow working track: In what way can I fulfill myself even if I don’t need it? It is because I don’t want something to be left for others. I take it from them, and not because this is something that I need for myself.

Integral relationships open a person, expanding him so much that his need becomes unlimited. That is, if I have seven billion little children and I want to give them all fulfillment, I have something with which to be involved and all of this activity brings me a feeling of happiness. In a case like this, we really reach the next level of existence, which is a level of virtually unlimited fulfillment.
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From KabTV’s  “Wisdom of Crowds” 5/14/13

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How Can We Understand One Another?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: According to the method of integral upbringing, men and women should have a warm, good, and kind relationship. But in experience we see that the woman is never satisfied and is always pressuring the man. What is the right way to work with this state?

Answer: During workshops, it’s necessary to discuss how men and women properly complement one another on different levels. I think that as a consequence of integral upbringing, they will reach a level of mutual understanding when they will no longer separate things into “this is your responsibility and this is mine.” Gradually, people will mutually begin to combine and redistribute responsibilities and mutual help, and then everyone will clearly see how easy it is to do it.

There is no place here for demands. Demands appear when one of the sides lacks understanding of what its part is and what it ought to do.

Personally, even though I, in general, understand human nature, I had problems with my wife until we started doing 40 minute morning walks, during which we calmly discussed all our issues. Talking during walks helped us better understand one another. In addition, we have an agreement not to argue and not to demand anything from one another. We are constantly moving above our natural qualities and, in this way we reach the proper understanding of any circumstances.

However, the problem is that people do not have time for this. I think that, during the workshops, we need to teach people how to find time for this type of communication. Let us hope that people will have enough free time for this in the near future. But we will still need to organize them.

Even my teacher compelled all of his students to spend at least fifteen minutes a day calmly discussing the method and the conditions of their mutual development with their wives. This is very serious, social work. If we also did this with children, if we were to hold round tables in our families, the world would be a different place.
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From a Talk About Integral Upbringing 4/4/13

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