Question: From a letter: “I am full of hatred for the parents who brought me into this world! Why? Did they not see that this world is a garbage heap, that it is not fit for a living?! I do not want to live in it and I cannot leave on my own. I live with constant pain.

Despite this, I am married. But I said to my wife on the first date: “We will not have children.” She agreed. We have been married for five years. My wife asked me to write to you and ask for your opinion. But so you know, my mind is made up.”

That person writes with an unambiguous opinion that he is not going to bring children into this world. But his wife seems to want to. What do we do with all this? Is the world really such that it is scary to bring children here?

Answer: So, what? It is scary, but you bring them. Do the right thing, what a person should do. Do everything for it.

Question: Should I think about children?

Answer: You should think about children, you will think about children. Now you are not thinking about children, you are thinking about yourself.

You have to give birth to the next generation. Because that is the way in nature—look at animals. As for the next generation, we are like animals. Each couple should give birth to a boy and a girl.

Question: Those who have decided that they do not want to, can they be called a family?

Answer: This is the highest egoism, and you cannot call them a family.

A family is a male and female individual who create their own kind.

I say what is written in Kabbalah. Kabbalistic wisdom is higher than our world’s, and it speaks about how it is established by nature. Call it nature or the Creator. We are obliged to reproduce our own kind, and thus we continue ourselves in our descendants.

Question: And for those people who deliberately do not continue themselves in descendants, does something, somehow later respond to them or not?

Answer: Their story ends with them. But a person should strive to continue oneself.
[276602]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/30/20

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Question: How can we teach children to be happy? And is it worth teaching them something related to Kabbalah?

Answer: Naturally, we want to teach children to be happy, and we can teach them. We tell a child: “Do not be a bully, do not hit others, be kind, be polite,” and so on, because we understand that in this way he seems to be guaranteed better circumstances.

This is how we should educate our children until they reach the age where we can teach them the method of connection. And then they will definitely have guarantees for a good life.
[276365]
From KabTV’s “Ask the Kabbalist” 12/31/18

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Question: I recently watched your video where you say that you cannot get a divorce, only as the last resort when there are children involved.

So what can I do when there are no feelings left for each other and the children see that? When there is only fighting and annoyance with each other? How can it be good for the children to grow up in such an atmosphere? I don’t love him, do you understand? Don’t hold me back.

My Response: I am holding you back. I would like to restrain both you and him. Because you are no longer children like your kids  you need to understand that it is still much better for you, for your children, for your family, and for society for you not to divorce, but simply to stop paying attention to certain feelings.

Question: But how can they achieve peace, more or less?

Answer: They should agree not to annoy each other. That’s it! What else is there to do? Let your relationship involve a bit of politics, some agreement and reasoning, rising above yourselves.
To say: “I don’t like things about him, he doesn’t like things about me” is childish!

Question: In general, it is possible to agree on areas to avoid?

Answer: Absolutely! If they already have children, then they are clearly mature people. If you have children, you have no right to divorce. For the sake of your children. The kids won’t forgive you. They will carry it with them throughout their lives.

Question: So, if she thinks about the children at this moment, and not about herself, about her annoyance?

Answer: Then she will not be annoyed.

Question: What does it involve? Forgiveness of all his mistakes or what? How to make concessions here?

Answer: To reduce each other’s vulnerability, your sensitivity to each other, claims against each other. Imagine that the other has a right to his behavior, to his life. And at the same time, you have a common life. And this common life, first of all, concerns your children, and not you personally. Don’t be so selfish! Live for the sake of the children. This should not be a source of pain for your children.

Question: Is this the real responsibility?

Answer: Yes. Of course.

Comment: People don’t think that children are affected by this their whole lives.

My Response: No. This will have a big impact on the children. And the children will also get divorced because their parents did the same.

Question: Does it follow the chain?

Answer: It does.

Question: And it extends to the next generation?

Answer: Yes. And if they didn’t see the parent’s divorce, then, despite the fact that there are very big differences between them and general fighting, children will still preserve their families.

Question: So you also look at other generations?

Answer: Certainly. Because “what parents do serves as an example for children.”
[276411]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/23/20

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New Life 1289 – Parents Of A Child With Special Needs
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

There are no blows from nature that cannot be complemented including having a child with special needs. There is no point asking, “Why do I deserve this?” or comparing ourselves with a perfect way of life. Disabled people are usually happier because nature gives them a greater spirit. We can see mutual support, connection, and joy in groups of disabled children. Parents should accept their fate and learn to cope with it. They should not stop any activities and keep searching for how to complement the disability with the use of equipment and exercises. It is very important that they have a supportive environment of people in the same situation from whom they can learn how to live successfully with the disability and who will bring them examples of disabled people who have greatly succeeded in life. Society needs to help disabled people grow stronger, manage, and find their place in society.

The connection between people always helps because we are all a part of nature, which is absolutely integral. We need to build support mechanisms in society so that each one feels that the whole society covers him with care.
[274727]
From KabTV’s “New Life 1289 – Parents Of A Child With Special Needs,” 11/29/20

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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.
[274234]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/14/20

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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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Question: There are seven basic emotions that are accompanied by facial expressions: sadness, anger, contempt, disgust, fear, surprise, and joy. Charles Darwin also considered love as a basic emotion, although it has no facial expression.

How can you properly express your feelings, including love?

Answer: It depends on the character of the person. Everyone expresses emotions in their own way. Certain expressions correspond to certain types of people.

But, in principle, you don’t have to think about how to express them. You just need to be more frank with others, try to make them feel good near you, and then any of your facial expressions will be read correctly.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 11/6/20

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Question: According to research, there are four main forces that enable a person to determine what they are talented for.

First: a positive state. A person experiences strong positive emotions from an action performed with his inner talent. Second: feedback from the environment, external recognition. That is, if a person does something well, then the environment reacts to it and shows him that he will succeed in it. Third: the will of another person or a teacher who is able to evaluate a person and say that he will be talented at this. Fourth: analysis of the results. A person himself, or with the help of others, analyzes his actions and determines that he is more successful in a certain area.

How do I know what my calling is?

Answer: What you are drawn to the most. There is no need for all those clever definitions listed above. Pay attention to what you want and not what you are forced to do.

As a child, my parents wanted very much to make a musician out of me and forced me to study music. I did everything but that. In the end, nothing came out of it. I grew up a normal person, I think not worse than others.

That is why, there is no need to chase after anything, you just simply have to understand what you have inclinations for, what you can do so that life will give you pleasure and you will give pleasure to others.

Question: Do you think that in this way one can come to understand one’s purpose?

Answer: Yes. When you think about how you can be useful to others, but eventually do what you like, then from these two combinations, you can find yourself.

Question: And how to sort out the huge number of influences from others?

Answer: Do not listen to anyone! No one knows you and no one can give you any advice. Think about what you would like to do, what is closer to you, and how you can give pleasure to others with your profession or craft. And you will be happy.
[274454]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 11/6/20

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New Life 1287 – The Challenge Of Distance Learning
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Distance learning puts teachers under a lot of pressure to cover the material while it is hard for students due to the many distractions. Teachers and administrators need to ask themselves how to make studies seem more important in the eyes of children. Parents need to see their children’s studies as very important and also take part in them by, for example, depicting the teachers as kings and queens. Cell phone companies should disconnect phones during school hours.

We need to arrange the education system differently so that teachers and students will work together, integrating and sharing in mutuality and connection. The study has to be done in a group and should include many exercises and activities so that the students will remain focused. Competitions can be held in which the kids are divided into two groups in order to encourage and motivate them.

We need to take problems from daily life, from the family, and from what happens in the country, things that the kids are familiar with, and work on them as part of the study material. The social aspect is important to students as well so we need to establish the right communication between them during the lesson. We have an opportunity today to really change the outdated education system and to participate in the building of man.
[273655]
From KabTV’s “New Life 1287 – The Challenge Of Distance Learning,” 11/6/20

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Question: There is speculation that future generations will pay for the coronavirus. In addition to debt, we leave them two huge problems: looking after us when our pensions are left without funding and solving the problems of climate change, which we did not solve and passed on to them. On top of that, we have limited investments in their health and education. In short, the next generation will feel bad. We have robbed our children and grandchildren.

But in principle, I still keep thinking about my children and grandchildren. Why does a person suddenly become disconnected from this? They will live in some kind of environmentally dirty, broken world, with a supply of nuclear weapons, whatever you want. We do not even think about what kind of future we have arranged for them.

Answer: Nobody thinks that he leaves it to his descendants. Why should I think about it? This is natural for a person!

Question: To not think about future generations?

Answer: No. This is his real face, Homo Sapiens. “Knowing man”!

Question: Is this what intelligence is about, to think only of yourself?

Answer: Of course. To snatch for yourself as much as possible. I live while I am alive. That is it, nothing else! “After us the deluge.”

We can do nothing with our nature; it is higher than us. Nothing! There is no natural desire in us to do something with ourselves for the sake of our descendants. We know that we are putting them right under nuclear bombs, climate problems, whatever.

Question: How does one start a dialogue with nature so that it gives us a feeling of both guilt and responsibility that we must do something for future generations?

Answer: This can only be done through the realization of the evil of our nature and the way to get out of it; is there still a way out? But humanity is not suffering enough to seek this way out.

Question: But what is the solution?

Answer: Only dissemination of Kabbalah, which talks about how to correct human nature, reveals all the ignominy, all the improbability of this nature, its horror! It reveals the emptiness in a person, so that he realizes that he needs to fill it.

Question: What is this emptiness revealed in?

Answer: In hopelessness.

Question: Is there no future? Does my nature allow me no future?

Answer: It will not allow you anything. A man is the most terrible creature.

Question: Then why did the Creator create us in this way?

Answer: In order for us to realize our evil and correct it, to ask Him for correction. And then we will become participants in our new, spiritual development.

Question: If He simply did it without our request, then we would receive everything simply for free and would not appreciate it? And here we do have to appreciate it?

Answer: We should achieve it. And then we will feel that we received the opportunity to work with this new sensation, with these new forces.

People should know this. People should understand that they are faced with a very serious task to correct their own nature. We can do this.
[272999]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 9/7/20

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