New Life 811 – The Right Attitude To Parenting
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

“Teach a boy according to his way.”

We should not force a small child to share something with others because it is against his nature. Until the age of two children actually don’t understand that they should be considerate of other people around them. We can give a child examples of how we are considerate of others, but not expect him to behave that way.

We should combine the middle line and the measure of judgment, which means our expectations of the child and the measure of mercy, which is our love for him. When we don’t give a child something, he screams. We have to show him that it doesn’t affect us because the reason for our behavior is above us, as a law.

We have to act according to the approach of “teach a boy according to his way,” because one kid is slow and another is quick etc. Instead of requirements we should give more examples. “Teach a boy according to his way” means letting a child choose what he wants to be in life according to his inclinations.

We shouldn’t try to develop a child’s confidence by challenging him and forcefully putting him in stressful situations. The feeling of confidence is built by a balanced attitude to life, when a child decides what he can or what he cannot do by himself.

The most important thing is to let a child develop the right relationships with others. This is the precondition for success in everything in life. When a child succeeds you should compliment him on having thought and planned his actions in advance, which has led to his success.

You shouldn’t call a child a prince or princess because it makes him or her feel superior to others and this will hinder the child through life.
[200501]
From KabTV’s “New Life 811 – The Right Attitude To Parenting,” 1/12/17

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Comment: You have said that robots will soon replace people. The decline in the price of energy leads to the fact that every object will soon be worth the price of the energy it takes to produce it and will be totally worthless, and therefore robots will also become cheaper.

In addition to that, robots leave us much free time and we will have nothing to do but to study how to be human and improve the technology that will leave us even more free time. American youth today are getting more and more education because they cannot find jobs, and education provides them with a framework, progress, a perspective which they live for.

The trend you speak about, that humanity will begin to study how to be human, has already started.

My Response: We are not talking about studying simply in order to make more advanced robots and computers. We want to teach people so that they will understand what they are living for, why man evolves, and where evolution is leading us, why we have undergone such transformations, and what we have to attain in the future.

We have to realize that and look at the whole process from above, from an upper perspective, not from within ourselves, to establish a balanced society now and not by trial and error as we have done in the past through suffering, revolutions, and wars. We can use all that as a model and reach the right conclusion.

Comment: Humanity can reach this on its own. Kabbalists don’t necessarily need to guide it.

My Response: No, if humanity goes through the natural way, it will be a path of terrible suffering once again. What is the use of inventing more sophisticated machines that can replace people? What will happen to billions of people?

Comment: They can spend their time in continuous studying the structure of the world, geography, or history, what’s wrong with that? It is better than sitting at home or demonstrating and going wild on the streets.

My Response: It is pointless. Suppose we force millions of people to study, what will happen to them in the future? A person cannot engage in something that is pointless and that he doesn’t feel he needs. After all, he will not be able to use it anywhere. We have to see a beneficial outcome, at least some payoff. Such studies will bring no gain.

Question: What will they gain if they see or study the goal of life and about being human?

Answer: They will know that they are doing it in order to ascend to the next level of existence and will begin to feel that they exist in a different reality. They need to be taught this.

Question: And what if they have no desire for it?

Answer: We can gradually develop it because the bud of this desire is in everyone, but in some it is deep inside, whereas in others it is closer to the surface. We can quite easily awaken this spark called the “spark of the Creator” because the suffering that stems from not knowing one’s destiny and the fact that everything is going to end and we are facing death exists in everyone. We just suppress it. And here we don’t need to suppress anything, but quite the contrary, we should stimulate hope and progress and choose life instead of death. We offer life.

Every individual has an internal element that enables him to understand what the true, eternal, perfect life or inevitable death is.
[200148]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/14/16

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New Life 810 – A Parent’s Influence On His Or Her Children
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Education is only through example. We cannot influence innate characteristics, what depends on us is the education that is given and an understanding of life. If parents understand the great goal of life, this influences a child and helps him in life. All education takes place through the example that must be given to a child.

If a child scatters his games around and doesn’t want to pick them up, turn picking them up itself into a game. If a small child doesn’t want to go to sleep, so you should go to sleep. He will be left alone, become bored and go to sleep. If a child doesn’t stop playing with the electric outlets, seal up the outlets.

Treat the child like a small friend, reach a mutual understanding about what you are doing with each other. Show the child that you love and respect him, but demand a similar attitude in return. Explain to a child everything that you are doing even if he is small and doesn’t understand. It is most important to be friends with the children, and each party would be uncomfortable not to have what the other wants.
[200498]
From KabTV’s “New Life 810 – A Parent’s Influence On His Or Her Children,” 1/12/17

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Question: Can you detail the basic principles of the educational methods of the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: The first principle: a person cannot educate himself on his own, and the teacher or educator cannot raise him! To do this a group called a “group of Ten,” of which he is a member, is needed. A guide who is outside of the group explains in how they should interact with each other to strive for the positive upper force. The negative higher force already exists in us. It is our egoism.

How do we attract the positive higher force? This occurs as a result of the correct interaction within the group, as much as ten egoists long to unite with each other. Along with this, each one nullifies himself with respect to the others and tries to increase and elevate the importance of the other nine people in his eyes. He tries to make an equivalent connection with all of them, thinking about them equally and absolutely balanced.

All ten people build a mutual connection between them on equal terms: Each one is higher than the others when he shows how he wants to give them everything that he has, and each one is lower than the others by demonstrating a desire to listen to each and every one of them equally in that he wants to create the correct network of mutual links between them. That is how there are three forces present in this network, positive, negative, and neutral.

So to the extent that they are ready, they gradually cultivate and shape everything and weave a network from the correct forces. Along with this, they pass through ascents and descents on the way and overcome every possible problem together. The Light then works on them in a positive manner because they are longing for it.

The Light eventually begins to be revealed in them and basically each one gives a negative force from himself, and all of them receive the positive force together. They begin to exist within a sandwich of the common collective positive force and the common collective negative force, which balances them. In this manner, from the two forces, they create a balanced system called a soul.

Within it they feel the upper world and the flow of special forces, emotions, and characteristics. This is the implementation of the method.
[199646]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/3/16

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New Life 806 – Good And Bad Qualities
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Don’t take care of yourself; take care of your relationships with others.

• How is it possible to determine which qualities are considered good and which are bad?
• There are no good or bad qualities that we are born with, but only a lack of understanding of how to implement them correctly.
• A successful person is one who knows how to integrate with his environment correctly.
• Not much of our innate characteristics can be corrected and we don’t know why we received particular qualities from nature, we just need to find how to use them properly within an environment.
• We were intentionally created differently from the start so we would complement each other in the connection between us.
• Our entire lives depend on the correct use of our qualities within an environment, meaning within the relationships between us.
[199718]
From KabTV’s “New Life 806 – Good And Bad Qualities,” 12/29/16

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Question: In my opinion, humans are a bunch of well-dressed savages. This is proven by the experience of the Nazis being cultured, informed, and educated. How many blows of fate are required for us to become human from the viewpoint of Kabbalah?

Answer: I believe that the blows will not help here. Only education will help,  in which we can attract the positive force of nature. This is the only problem!

We can talk, discuss, think, and philosophize about the necessity to somehow balance a person to make him good or maybe beat him with a stick to drive him toward happiness, but this won’t help! All of these methods have already been tried!

Without the positive force of nature, the negative force cannot change anything by itself. You can drive a person in a corner, sitting there trembling with fear and continue to beat him, but this will not change his nature! It is impossible to demand that a person change his nature! It is only possible to offer to show him how to awaken and attract the positive force to balance the negative force, but not destroy it! Nothing in the world was created without a reason! We just need to awaken and attract another force.

We will not accomplish anything with the blows! Humanity has already gone through enough suffering so that with the help of Kabbalists they will also understand that what we need is for the positive force to operate in balance with the negative force.

Question: I understand how electricity or electromagnetic waves appear. But how does the positive force of nature appear? How will I know that I have attracted it?

Answer: A person begins to feel that he only wants to use a positive attitude toward those who are near or far, toward all of humanity, and toward all of nature: the still, vegetative, and animate.

In the first stage of correction, he puts the positive force into his life. In the next stage, he corrects his negative nature with the positive force because it is not only necessary to bring out the positive force, but he must also correct the negative force with its help.
[199014]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/3/16

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Question: What should I do with the knowledge that I have acquired and accumulated until I discovered the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: You can leave all the knowledge you have accumulated aside, but you may still find some of the previous knowledge helpful. If, for example, you studied education, the skills you have acquired will be very useful.

You can always apply Kabbalistic knowledge to traditional knowledge.
[199630]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/3/16

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New Life #341 – Altruism: Real Freedom
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

What are we missing to feel free; specifically how is this connected to relationships between people, and what is the profound difference between narcissism and altruism?

The influence of the surrounding society on us is very great. It determines values, norms, and goals for us.

At home, a small child runs from corner to corner and feels free because an umbrella of love is spread above him. Even an adult lacks a feeling of being loved. Only for this are do we need to love others. That is where freedom is. Altruism is what is most fulfilling. See how much joy children bring to their parents.

If you don’t have a feeling of altruism, you can never feel free. To be free is leaving the narrow concern for only myself and beginning to live for others. When we are involved with altruism, we awaken a special power inherent in nature, the upper force, the power of love.

The wisdom of connection develops a feeling in a person that there is a very pleasant and warm feeling with connection with others. Later on, a person begins to feel that the characteristic of giving is itself something sublime.

Every person can learn how to be free, to become freed from tensions and pressures. And beyond this, one can even break free from the limitations of death, leaving oneself and living within the whole forever.
[141399]
From KabTV’s “New Life #341 –  Altruism: Real Freedom,” 4/6/14

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New Life #340 – Freedom And Independence
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

Under what conditions will we truly feel free? What should we do and how does our feeling of freedom depend on building relations of love, closeness, and connection between us?

We have gotten used to all sorts of limitations that life imposes on us and it is within these limits that we are seemingly free.

Different desires continuously rise in us and we have to work hard to fill them. We are slaves to the beast inside us. We will reach a state in which there is abundance and everything one may desire in the world, but the question “what am I living for?” will torture us.

Today people in different places aspire for political independence, but this will not give them a sense of independence either. No one can isolate himself from others and feel free in today’s integrated world.

We will be able to feel free only when we annul the borders between ourselves and others, like a child in his mother.

Today I look at everyone with envy. Everything they have drives me crazy, their cars, their homes, their lawns… Escaping from the stress we feel is not a solution since it keeps coming back. We have to build relations of love and friendship. The frustration people feel today stems from the lack of the right good connections between us. There are barriers and limits.

We will be able to feel a good, unlimited, free life only when we are connected like organs in one body.
[141369]
From KabTV’s “New Life #340 – Freedom And Independence,” 4/6/14

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Comment: The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the UN General Assembly and opened for signature in November 1989. This is the most comprehensive international document for the protection of children’s rights. This convention is supposed to ensure the lives of children all over the world, but unfortunately in many places in the world children live in miserable conditions. Every year about 11 million children die before their fifth birthday and millions are hurt physically or mentally.

My Comment: No declaration can help. The UN is becoming an increasingly ineffective organization. You can declare anything, but it all depends only on people receiving the proper education. First of all, they must think about how to reach the true level of a human being and how to actually fulfill it.

But everyone in the world acts out of a need for control, and the UN, despite its assertions about its successful progress, it is really just “talking shop” for the great powers, and more recently, the Islamist extremists. The UN itself has led to the fact that no one takes them seriously.

Question: What do you think should be the rights of a child?

Answer: Adults must realize that they are responsible for the lives of young children more than for their own lives. We have to educate adults that way.

We are living in the 21^st century and children’s lives are not considered of value yet. In many countries, like Syria and Lebanon, for example, minors are turned into terrorists and are sent out in front as a defensive shield. This, of course, is terrible.

Every adult must value the life of a child more than his own life, just like in a family. It is only through the right education that we can write a meaningful convention of children’s rights.
[197699]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 11/21/16

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