New Life 403 – Suicide Prevention
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

How does social support and conversation help us contend with life and prevent suicidal feelings?

We are social creations. There is always conflict between a person and his environment.

To prevent suicide, it is necessary to build a new educational-social framework for everyone, to hold daily workshops in small groups to explore life, relationships, and emotions. In these discussions, even someone who is introverted will hear the words of others about life. Openness is gradually created.

At first, all of the garbage comes out of a person; everyone unloads his own baggage.

We try to connect in a circle, nobody criticizes others, and we try to reach a single opinion. Gradually, each one begins to feel that connection with a warm society is more important to him than his personal life. Instead of suicide, he begins to find a higher value to life.

Connection workshops make everyone equal, balance the differences, and help everyone acquire a higher meaning.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 403 –Suicide Prevention,” 6/12/14

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New Life #400 – Sports Education And Group Power
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

You can acquire educational values through sports. What characterizes sports that promote connection compared to ordinary competitive sports, and does group cooperation significantly improve achievements?

Sports can develop a person’s confidence, power, stamina, persistence, and ambitiousness. All this is very important, but we have to fill sports with the spirit of connection. We need to develop sports that require a deep sense of mutuality. It is a good idea to develop activities for the public in parks, physical activities that include dancing and a common motion. The role of the coach is to connect the members of the group. The uniqueness of each member in the group stands out on top of the connection.

We should add training exercises that develop connection, understanding, and a feeling of mutuality. The players should become friends, get closer to each other, eat together, and sleep together until they become one body. They should not compete against each other. They should speak about the connection, the ties between them, about love and mutual understanding. They should get to know each other well.

A perfect group is a group in which all its members move as organs of one body on the field, as one player. We should add a connection workshop to today’s training, to share feelings, to find out how the connection can be made stronger. It is possible to play games with the eyes or ears covered and then try to feel the others internally.

We will see how from one year to the next, the winning group is the one that has the power of connection, and not the group that has individual stars. Today sportsmen use drugs in order to enhance their performance. The power of connection will enhance performance many times more.

It is easy to use drugs, while you have to work on the power of connection, but the power of connection is unlimited. You should not go over board with talks to children, but rather show them the connection between togetherness and success though games. If we nullify the self, we will feel that there is one head in the center of the group from which we all receive orders.

We can perceive these operating orders by creating mutual brotherhood among us and being as one. Such a group will demonstrate perfect harmony and the audience will be stunned and will be drawn into unity between them.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #400 –Sports Education And Group Power,” 6/8/14

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New Life #399 – The Culture Of Sports And The World Cup
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

What characterizes sports in modern society and how can we have constructive competitions in sports? What can we learn from the World Cup games and why should we live in an undending World Cup?

Sports have developed because they help people feel superior to others, which is important in an egoistic society. Professional sports have become increasingly more popular as capitalism developed. People realized that there is a lot of money involved.

Sports can be a recreational activity for the family, a way of getting to know nature, and a way of spending a pleasant holiday. Competitive sports may lead to hatred. Our goal should be to check that in the end everyone has fun.

Success in sports should be measured according to the level of connection we reach at the end of the game. Thus each participant is required to play with his ego, to step on it a little in order to connect to others. We shouldn’t advertise or encourage people to participate in dangerous extreme sports. Only few need that. The World Cup involves the whole world. Millions of viewers feel that it is important so it is very influential. People watch every game because it has the flavor of connection, as we all feel as one.

We will all feel the same good feeling we have during the World Cup when we learn to connect and “drink” the pleasure from the connection between us.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #399 – The Culture Of Sports And The World Cup,” 6/8/14

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New Life #404 – Our Approach To Life: On The Way To A New Morality
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

What is morality and how does it change from one generation to another? How do we determine what is good on the human level and what the new morality is of the new era?

Every generation, every culture, every individual define what is moral and what is not differently.

• Animals examine what is good or bad only physically; human beings also examine things on the human level.
• A human being also has a self, the ego. The two dimensions, the physical and the human, confuse us.
• Morality has been part of our lives since ancient times sometimes through the power of religion.
• The crisis is meant to lead us to the examination of what is really good and what is bad, to the end of our egoistic evolution.

A new morality: no one cares only about his own well being, everyone cares about the wellbeing of others; it is a new life.
From KabTV’s “New Life #404 – Our Approach to Life: On The Way To A New Morality,” 6/15/14

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Question: How does the wisdom of Kabbalah relate to the role of the mother and her influence on the adult life of a person?

Answer: In the Torah it is said that a child must leave his parents and adhere to his wife, establish a family with her, and have his own children.

The parents must not cause trouble for their children or intervene in their lives. There is no other way. Rabash used to say: the best thing in relationships with children is to open the pocket and not say a word.

It is up to us to help them as much as possible and to let them take care of themselves without hindering their freedom of choice.

According to the Torah, the role of the child regarding his parents is to care for them to the end of their days. He must do this to the degree that it is possible because his mother granted him life and he will never be able to pay back his debt to her.

There is no doubt that caring for parents is an obligation of adult children because this is part of their correction.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/9/16

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In the News (Ynet): “An upcoming report from the World Obesity Federation (WOF) has shown that over half a million Israeli children are overweight. Compared to European countries, the group in which the Jewish state is categorized, Israel is in first place for overweight persons and in second place compared with Europe and third place globally when children are included. …

“The report maps the state of children’s health in different countries and states that 28.8 percent of Israeli children under the age of 18 are overweight. The forecast for the future is worrying: The report states that within eight years, that datum is likely to jump 50 percent, and the number of obese and overweight children in the country is expected to reach 740,000, an unprecedented number by any measure. …

“Israel is in first place in the European group for obesity, with 12.6 percent of its children being considered obesity by this index. Globally, Israeli children are only behind their US counterparts, 12.9 percent of whom are obese. The European average is 7.4 percent for children. If children with BMIs of 25–30 are included, that figure increases to 23 percent of European children. …

“‘The parents need to teach their children how to behave correctly and to choose the right food amidst the jungle of advertisements for harmful food,’ concluded Dubnov-Raz. ‘Like a parent teaches their child how to act safely on a bicycle in the urban jungle—that’s how it needs to be with food. Otherwise, we’ll wake up in a few years, and we won’t understand how we got ourselves in this situation.'”

My Comment: The food products in Israel are of relatively high quality and we usually don’t indulge in high-calorie foods, but we still consume large amounts of foods.

The main reason is that we are a high-tech nation in which very few people have manual jobs where they engage in hard physical work. In fact, we are a high-tech nation in agriculture, computers, and military technologies, so it is only natural that people, including young people, sit for many hours and move very little.

How should we handle this process? We need to produce low-calorie food, and of course launch a campaign promoting participation in sports.

I believe that sports should become an integral part of our social frameworks since otherwise we will end up with a huge “army” of people who are sick and weak and have to be taken care of. It is of course better to invest a little in sports, in promoting participation in physical activities, than to invest in healing sick people. A person has to live a healthy life and die healthy.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 11/2/16

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New Life #586 – Between Culture And Spirit
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

There are many conflicting opinions regarding culture. Many works of art were based on hatred. Of course, those who rule want to influence education and culture, and this is true all over the world.

An artist or a composer is blessed with talent, but this doesn’t mean that they are mentally more developed than others. There are endless examples of books and plays that were written by people who hated mankind and were not intellectuals.

A person who is with a developed mind is a person who loves others, and he can be a very simple person. Education and broad cultural knowledge do not mean that a person is necessarily good or bad to others. This is measured by a person’s heart, his attitude to others, not by how much he has learned.

Studying the wisdom of Kabbalah changes a person for the better and corrects his egoistic nature. An intellectual is a spiritual person who values the good relations between people above anything else. An intellectual is a person who is above matter, above the egoistic relations between people. An intellectual doesn’t criticize others since he understands people and that a man’s heart is evil from his youth. He knows that it is only human to take advantage of everything for one’s own good, to suppress others, and he aspires to help people ascend their nature.

Even if you are educated, a composer, or a philosopher, it doesn’t mean that you are an intellectual, that you are above the ego. A cultural person is a person that everyone feels comfortable being by his side. He is not proud and doesn’t think lightly of others. Culture means knowing human nature and thus relating to everyone with love and understanding.

The original Israeli culture is a culture based entirely on “love thy friend as thyself,” and it is on this basis that the nation of Israel was founded. An educational process that will turn a person into a cultured person who can change his evil nature as required in order to reach this level.

But engaging in composition and art makes people even more egoistic than others. It is not their fault. The great egoism that is built in them doesn’t enable them to sit quietly, and they have to express themselves. It is only natural for such a person to belittle others, not to regard them as equals, and not to want them near him.

An educational process that changes a person’s nature for the good makes good use of art and composition. Theater, for example, can illustrate our current situation, how low we have plunged, and what the correction we need is.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #586 – Between Culture And Spirit,” 3/31/14

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In the News (The Huffington Post): “A Marie Claire piece published last week presented readers with one of society’s biggest taboos: parents who regret having their kids. One woman in the article describes motherhood as a ‘life-altering mistake’ and a ‘middle-class prison.’ The mostly career-oriented interviewees resent that changing diapers has kept them from writing books and describe themselves as ‘not mother material.’ Facebook groups with names such as ‘I Regret Having Children’ and books such as The Mother Bliss Lie: Regretting Motherhood prove these women are not alone. …

“The decision about whether to spawn or not won’t truly feel like a choice until there’s no longer a taboo against women who don’t want to be moms.

“Fewer millennials are looking to motherhood for fulfillment. Last year, the number of births in the U.S. hit a record low and a 2012 survey from the University of Pennsylvania found that in a 20-year span, the number of students who planned to have children dropped from 78 to 42 per cent. Yet cultural attitudes haven’t caught up with reality. …

“Women should choose motherhood because they want kids, not because of societal pressure. The horrible reality that some parents regret having children proves our expectations need to change.”

My Comment: Society’s distorted view of life is reflected in its attitude regarding offspring, the future of the family, the nation, the world, and further influences every individual’s opinion about his own life and family. The solution to the problem is undoubtedly only by changing society’s attitude, which depends on educating society. It must be addressed in a comprehensive manner, involving mass media.
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In the News (Media Polesye): “Recently the generation took shape following the millennials – centennials, they are called Generation Z. For the first time in history, children are so different from their parents.

“These are people who were born after 1996 or after 2000 (according to various studies). …

“This is the first generation that was born in the Internet era. They do not remember what life was like without the gadgets and they spend more than 8 hours a day with smartphones and tablets, at every step of the centennial – they use apps as naturally as breathing. Generation Z does not divide the world into the digital and the real, their life flows smoothly to the screen and back. …

“Minus – centennials do not like to concentrate for a long time. …. They need to catch the maximum amount of information in a short time. …

“Centennials study in an embrace with technology and are used to cross the subjects of study. In their head, every paragraph of the textbook is permeated with hyperlinks of ‘Wikipedia.’ In addition, they are used to thinking globally, because they instantly receive information from around the world. …

“This generation, which prefers to see. Communicating on the Web, centennials use Emoji, emoticons, pictures. …

“They need to visualize everything; any information needs to be visible. …

“Everything must be done quickly. Speedy work is becoming more important than ever. …”

My Comment: This generation will establish the basis for the correction of man and society. It was born for that. And we need to adapt to them in order to teach them the method of correction according to the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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New Life #380 – Behind The Scenes
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

How do we create a play that is timeless? Which compositions do we need today that would correspond with the changes that humanity undergoes, and how can a good play contribute to our development?

The director gives an updated interpretation of old classical plays. There are actors who dress up just like the hero in the play and there are those who add their own. We live in very special times today, and the world needs new compositions. Compositions were always based on the power of the ego. The hero was the one who overcame others.

Today the world is integral. The new hero is the one who knows how to connect different people and establish mutual complementation, connection. Modern plays have to be based on today’s life, on how to heal the world. The moral of the play should be that there is one remedy for all the illnesses in the world: the right connection between us.
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From KabTV”s “New Life #380 – Behind The Scenes,” 5/22/14

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