New Life 685 – Dealing With Criticism In The Family
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Our growing ego even causes us to criticize our children and demand that our children realize what we didn’t attain. But criticism should be minimal, maintaining boundaries that we define for our familial standards, and the child must learn how to activate his critical sense by himself correctly, keeping within the framework of the family. If he doesn’t criticize himself when he goes against the accepted rules of the family, then we parents criticize him gently to provide him with the tools to be self-critical.

A child needs to know that he has a family for his whole life, and that if he goes against the generally accepted rules in the family, he will lose the right relationship with it. The most important general rule is to be connected to the family; this is the highest value, and if he behaves in a way that is not acceptable in the family, he will lose the connection and security, and this will bring him back on the right track.

The family is the basic unit in nature and we must not destroy it. Parents give birth to new life, and if they divorce, they destroy the good familial relationship for the children.

We require preparation to know how to criticize each other with love and to receive it with good spirit. For example, how do we behave with a child who isn’t studying for a test? We express our familial expectation that he will succeed; we help him study, and it is also possible to promise him a reward.

To do this we must gradually build familial standards: everyone must say how he will contribute to the family, and the family will express its appreciation and thanks for all of his daily contributions at fixed times, even if this is artificial and contrived. It is important to open a new page every day without mentioning the events of the previous day. We could give each other a kiss when we meet, and so forth. That is how we set principles, agreements, and habits and provide examples, since personal example is the best influence, more than words.

If I have a criticism, I must restrain myself and only approach it gently and ask: “Did you do that on purpose?” With this I am not expressing my attitude about what he did. Instead I am clarifying with the child his attitude about what he did and his intention. I help him clarify what he did and what he meant by it, with love. In this way I am teaching him how to criticize himself.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 685 – Dealing With Criticism In The Family,” 2/2/16

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New Life 684 – The Need To Criticize Others
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

It is natural to criticize others since we are all egoists. Each of us wants to be the king and to rule, and even in school we can already see who the critical and cunning kids are, qualities that accompany them in political positions and on an international level. The more a person’s ego grows, the more he feels distinct from others and the greater his criticism of others.

Today, social networks and the Internet enable a person to criticize everything and to say whatever is on his mind to let out steam. In the future, the ego will be even more complex, pride will grow, and very few in the world will behave differently. In ancient times, in the early days of humanity, the ego was collective, but as the ego developed more and more, each member of the tribe felt that he was separate. The sense of criticism developed in order to separate man from others to our current state when everyone hates everyone else.

A person attacks the one who criticizes him while allowing himself to criticize everyone else since he feels that he is the clever one who understands everything. On the next level of the development of the ego, a person will feel so distant from others that he will have nothing to do with them, not in commerce or in any other area. Each of us will sit alone in his home and only machines will do the work for us. People will not even engage in sports; everything will freeze.

There can be constructive criticism only toward someone we love, but today everyone hates everyone else, and when everyone feels isolated and lonely and the question of “what am I living for?” awakens in a person, the correction of the ego will follow.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 684 – The Need To Criticize Others,” 2/2/16

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New Life #512 – Virtual Life on the Way Toward Unity
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

We are living in a transitional period in which all of our lives are entering the computer. The world of the future will be entirely digital; the new generation wants to experience the world only through the screen.

In the future the Internet will link us so we will feel connected and mutually dependent, as if we were sitting together in one living room. The developmental trend is to bring us to an integral link between everyone, as if we were a single family.

The traditional family unit is crumbling, each one is immersed in his screen. We will yet see that the future conceals within it a different form of connection. We are standing before a fundamental change in our lives. The screens will be part of our body and we will see the world through them. People will build new connections between them; they will learn a new language, the language of connection.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #512 -Virtual Life on the Way Toward Unity” 1/27/15

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New Life #511 – Internet Addiction
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

We are in the midst of a virtual era in which everyone has a toy—the Internet. In the future it will liberate us from work and we will engage only in our relationships and the connections between us, but until then what will happen if they take away our toy?

Since the end of the 20^th century we have entered the new phase of human development: We are the “screen” generation and have no reason to even leave our home since I connect with the whole world and get whatever I want through this screen.

We are educators who work to build relationships between people and therefore have to call for a public war against negative phenomena, the garbage that is on the Internet—just like the war that was declared on smoking.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #511 – Internet Addiction,” 1/27/15

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New Life #641 – Violence and Incitement on the Internet
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

What happens on the Internet reflects what happens in human society, but a virtual battle is preferable to a physical battle. The more rapidly we recognize that we are evil animals, the sooner we can advance to the correction of human nature.

The Internet, and not archaic bodies like the UN or UNESCO, will determine the future of humanity. Seemingly civilized people allow themselves to go wild on the Internet and in the future will come up with techniques for eliminating entire peoples through the Internet.

Today, a “School for the Young Martyr” is conducted on the Internet; in the future they will explain how to build an atom bomb on the Internet. Bad things spread more rapidly than good because that is tailored to our ego; we benefit from evil. In the future the Internet will become so vile that we will understand that it is an X-ray of the malice within us.

From this we will reach the correction of human nature, correction of the malice in a person, and we will learn how to communicate well to everyone. People love looking at evil, our open atmosphere is evil, hatred, and violence. The network spares us from a lot of bloodshed and basically it, not the schools, is the educator of people. In the future the Internet will help us change our nature and relate to everyone with connection, sympathy, and love.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #641 – Violence and Incitement on the Internet,” 11/1/15

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New Life #647 – Human Development to the Next Dimension
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

There is a desire within a person for pleasure from everything humanly possible; this desire is divided into 613 different desires. Overall, our lives are an escape from evil and an approach to good in which the definitions of good and evil change every moment.

We get values from the environment that influence us, and we operate according to them throughout our lives. Sometimes existential questions arise in us such as what are we living for at all? It is necessary to remember that our body will live and die, but the spark in us, the inner part, wants to discover the meaning of life.

The wisdom of Kabbalah engages specifically with this. For thousands of years it was concealed, and now it is bursting out onto center stage. The wisdom of Kabbalah makes it possible for a person to ascend to the upper world, to a higher dimension, to build a “soul.”

Psychology, meditation, and so forth serve only as tranquilizers. They don’t lift a person to a new dimension. The wisdom of Kabbalah is the only wisdom that investigates the inner nature of our world, the law of development, and a spiritual person is a person who lives within the mechanism in which all of us are connected together, from within, into a single soul.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #647 -Human Development to the Next Dimension,” 1/18/16

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Question: My friend listens to your lectures and finds them very interesting. The problem is that he cannot advance in his study since he works 14 hours a day in order to provide for his family and his kids; he cannot change that. When your organization affects what happens in the world, will my friend and others like him join the process of correction?

Answer: Our organization will be able to affect what happens in the world when many people like your friend join us.

Question: However, there is no way that he can join you.

Answer: He can join us, just like everyone else. He can begin to learn how to connect and how to turn our society into one whole through the wisdom of Kabbalah. When part of society begins to unite, it will affect all of the others.

Kabbalah explains how we should unite so that a special force will appear between us, like small signal that enters an amplifier and exits much stronger. This is exactly what we can do with our society. We need to learn how to unite a small number of people who can change the whole system, the whole country.

We don’t operate according to socialistic principles or any other movement from the left or the right side of the political map. We live according to the education method of the wisdom of Kabbalah that teaches us how to coexist with all of humanity and be compatible with the laws of nature, in cooperation and unity. Since we are trying to get closer to the level of connection in nature, an enormous force of overcoming is revealed in us through which we can do everything.

Question: Does that mean that it is enough to understand the idea and to support it?

Answer: Basically, yes. This is the reason that your friend need not leave his job in order to study the wisdom of Kabbalah in depth. It is enough if he is in contact with us. There are thousands in our organization, all working for a living, who simply study how to connect correctly in order to attain the force of overcoming so that we will really be able to influence all of society.
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From the Webinar on zahav.ru 1/13/16

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Question: You say that everything depends on a person, but what can I do against the entire country?

Answer: No one can do anything. For that, we need large social systems that would understand how to act and would be able to join together to influence the country.

If the majority of people in Israel would understand that they must create a new connection among themselves, then they will be able to influence everything.

One person is unable to change anything! He must join the system that demonstrates unity. We must learn how to unite. The wisdom of Kabbalah explains how to do that. Only then can we influence the entire nation.

When the people desire something, the government has no choice but to give in. We won’t even need elections to the Knesset. The people themselves will create a different system of relations.

Question: What do I need to do for that to happen?

Answer: You need to sign up for the course in Integral Education and begin learning how nature acts upon us and how we can reach balance with it, and thus come to harmony with nature and each other.
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From the Webinar on zahav.ru 1/13/16

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Comment: A few years ago, the Kami-Shirataki railway station in Hokkaido, Japan was closed because there weren’t enough passengers. But it turned out that there was one passenger in that town, a high school student, who took the train to school every day. So, the railway company kept the station open, stopping to pick her up and drop her off after school according to her class schedule.  The railway management will close the station in March, 2016 when the student concludes her studies.

Answer: On the one hand, when you ignore your mind and listen only to your emotions, you can be moved to tears about this story and make a movie about it. It is good for humanity to feel such concern for one another.

On the other hand, if you think about it, there are people who are hungry and who lack the basic necessities. It is expensive to operate the train back and forth from that town and probably costs several thousand dollars a day. It is totally useless and uneconomical, and a state shouldn’t be run this way. This is an obvious PR campaign, and what it is more, it is not good public relations because there are other issues that could be identified and fixed.

This action doesn’t make sense from a Kabbalistic perspective because it doesn’t change anything in the world. People don’t undergo correction this way. The world undergoes correction only by the right connection and unity of minds and feelings. There is no mind here, only emotions.

I don’t know what led them to make this decision. Perhaps it is indeed pure Japanese philosophy, but nothing more than that. If I had the chance, I would stop this pointless operation of the train immediately, provide another solution, and aim all of the means to dealing with other problems.

Let’s wish this girl good luck. It’s nice to think that there still can be actions that are seemingly out of absolute love.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/11/16

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Question: 88% of women claim that boredom and the routine of life sabotage married life and cause the disintegration of the family unit. But now psychologists from Canada determined that it is completely the opposite. It is specifically the routine, boredom, and quiet at home that help to protect and support the family unit.

They believe that the guarantee for familial happiness is not really wild passions with breaking plates and pans flying in the air, but rather sitting quietly at home next to the computer with a cup of tea and a good movie. This is what brings people together more than anything.

Answer: Children depend on the education and the example they get from their parents and see what a family should be. The parents should be aimed at creating the right family atmosphere for the children. Even when they quarrel with each other, they still work together. Of course this passes before the children’s eyes.  Therefore, the parents should cancel themselves for the sake of preserving the family connection.

Since everything comes from our spiritual source, there is great importance to maintaining the nuclear family at all costs, and we need to preserve and develop it. In order that the children will absorb this, it is worthwhile for them to grow up with two parents while maintaining order in the family organization. The current outbreaks of egoism, the technical and technological developments, don’t need to interfere with the strength of familial relationships.

The media present incorrect information and impose upon society incorrect examples of human behavior and create great harm with this. The society must uproot this problem since we are killing the foundation of humanity this way.

Freedom of choice is irrelevant to the development of life and the continuity of the generations. In this, there is no freedom of choice. We need to differentiate between the natural, familial lifestyle and the attitude toward spirituality where freedom is internal and in no manner touches upon the undisputed framework called the family. Otherwise, humanity will cease to exist.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/4/16

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