Question: Let’s say a child is guilty of something, and his parents begin to lecture him: “You are a useless, worthless child! Where was your head? How are you going to live at all?” Kids sit dejectedly and absorb it. What do you think about that?

Answer: This is a big problem for many parents who rudely pointing out that a child that he can’t do anything and is worthless. They deprive their child of the sensation of confidence, safety, and inner opportunity. It is very important to preserve a sense of confidence, safety, and inner opportunity in a child.

Many of us make this mistake. We put pressure on the child by telling him: “You are worthless, look how you are supposed to be. Why can’t you do this,” and so forth. We are making him a very insecure person. He will grow this way and will not be able to escape it for the rest of his life.

Question: How do you think it should be? Here is an action, but it is not a good action.

Answer: Live it down: “You did it incorrectly, wrong. Perhaps you could not do it in a different way. Now look how it is possible to do it in a different way.” This way he will learn from his experience, and he will still retain confidence.

Question: Meaning, we should not touch the child himself and his little “I”? The main principle is to not touch his “I”?

Answer: Yes. We have precisely such people wandering on our planet, without inner confidence, who were “assassinated” by their parents and oppressed since childhood. In order to somehow defend themselves and rise a little above everyone, they make problems for everyone. They do not know what to do in order to feel like normal people.

To achieve this, they suppress others, annihilate others, and so forth. If you take a close look at any monster who kills, tortures others, and leads a gang, you will see why this happened to him. You will look into his childhood and will see how he was damaged then the same way.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 9/3/20

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Happiness is when a person has a true goal, and in this goal, he cannot be disappointed in any way and at any time because it is true, eternal, and perfect. Then a person clearly moves toward it.

Despite the fact that there are always questions from here and there, these questions are precisely so that he constantly directs himself toward this goal. And then everything will be fine.

Question: But you say this as a Kabbalist. Is it the same for an ordinary person?

Answer: Even an ordinary person in our time should already know this.

Question: You mentioned a goal. Is the goal the same for everyone or not?

Answer: The goal is the same for everyone, but who knows this goal? If we knew that everyone had the same goal, we would agree with each other. We would begin to search all together how to achieve this goal.

But now we feel that everyone has their own. Egoism tears us apart and does not allow us to feel that we all must move together toward one goal.

Question: What is this goal?

Answer: The goal is very simple: to attain the meaning of life.

Question: And what is it?

Answer: The meaning of life is to know its meaning.

When I feel the meaning of life, I feel absolutely fulfilled! I know why I exist, I know who guides me, to whom I turn, what I fulfill at every moment of my existence, and where I am going.

New horizons open up before me. I feel like a child who has entered Disneyland. And all this is incredible! It’s all a fairy tale! This is how a person should feel when revealing the plan of the Creator.

Question: Does everyone have their own meaning of life or not?

Answer: A person will enjoy it individually because we are all designed that way. But a person will enjoy that fact that one is constantly connected with others. The revelation of this spiritual “Disneyland” comes from the fact that we are increasingly revealing integral connections between us. And they will be revealed precisely as the attainment of the upper world.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/3/20

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We think about changing the world all the time. This is the ultimate egoism.

Comment: We do this all the time.  But these media outlets will not be destroyed, the government will not be overthrown, and the bosses will not be replaced.

My Response: None of that is necessary. What we need is to try to show the whole world that its very nature—whether still, vegetative, animate, or especially human—is absolutely egoistic. And it is this nature that we must correct. Moreover, it is corrected precisely from the degree of “human.”

Question: So I always start with myself?

Answer: You start with yourself and with others, with the connection between us, with the connection between people. And then nature will change on all levels. From the top down, it will extend to the animate, vegetative, and inanimate world.

Question: If I, an ordinary person, start with my connections with loved ones and try to make them good no matter what, despite any conflicts and so on, will I begin to change the world?

Answer: Yes, of course!

Where is the methodology for correcting the world? It is in the correction of the human being. But not by simply shouting and pressuring others, but through a methodology of education, refinement, and transformation of the person.

Question: If I start to change, what do I see?

Answer: If I start to change, I begin to see that this is exactly what the world needs. And the world will change accordingly along with this. I will see more and more goodness in this world. And so through our attitude toward the world, not just mine alone, we will bring the world into a state of proper balance.
[342103]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/3/22

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Question: I heard that in the U.S., one in five Americans hides at least one bank account or credit card from their spouse. Is being independent from each other a good trend in relationships?

Answer: Yes, but it should be based not on financial or any other kind of independence, but on love. When I feel that my partner loves me, I feel confident because I have a helper, a person who cares for me. And in this, the feeling of independence is revealed.

Independence can be negative or positive. I am talking about positive independence. When I feel that my partner loves me, and besides him my children and maybe even a few more people, then I feel secure. And security creates a sense of independence.

At the same time, I feel dependent in that I must show them the same qualities and provide them with a sense of their security and independence.

Question: In what should we be dependent on each other, and in what should we not?

Answer: We must reach such a state in our relationships where we do not feel any dependence on each other, but we perform everything necessary for one another with love. There will be no coercion, no pressure, and no obligations because when a person loves another, they are ready to do everything that the other desires.

Question: What is love? Is it some chemical reaction in the body? Or is it some kind of entity that is created?

Answer: To love means to treat another person better than yourself.

Question: How can we learn this?

Answer: To make this possible, it is necessary to find the right environment, a method of correction, self-education, and upbringing. I propose starting to engage in this seriously. This is the main subject of the science of Kabbalah, the foundation of its existence, its development, and its ability to make a person such that they can love others.

Love must be cultivated in a person. Love is when you accept the desires of another above your own.
[226580]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/7/18

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Comment:: Oscar Wilde said it beautifully: “The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously – and have someone find out.”

My Response: “Someone find out” underscored.

Question: Is our world built in such a way we cannot do any altruistic acts?

Answer: Such is our nature. How can we?

We can only damage, use, break, and violate. That is all; that is our nature. We cannot be any other way. Therefore, we must think about how to limit ourselves reasonably to such an extent that we minimally disrupt everything around us. This is possible only with education.

Question: What about a good deed at the level of our world, does it exist?

Answer: A kind act at the level of our world is when we treat our world as our home, which is one for all of us, and we are like one family and we take care of everyone.

If a person has such an attitude, then, of course, we will put this world in order, then it can be returned back to some state. Not even back, but we have crossed some peak of excessive consumerism, destruction, and distortion of everything possible, and now we have to put it all in order a little. That is, we need to limit ourselves in everything that is not necessary.

Question: Can a person come to this?

Answer: His nature will force him. There is a concept of necessary and sufficient. Mutual restriction of all, voluntarily accepted by each one of us in order to make our planet comfortable for us and future generations is necessary.

Comment: But you can hear the voices that are saying: “That is what we want.” Whole movements exist.

My Response: They do not really do anything. Because you cannot do it by force, and you cannot do it by shouting in squares.

Question: And how can you do it?

Answer: By re-educating people! That is, all these environmentalists and other Greenpeace groups, they only create a lot of noise and arouse hatred and distrust.

Question: What should be the basis of this re-education?

Answer: To turn all of humanity into a family and the entire globe into one comfortable apartment for everyone; our home.

Question: It is beautiful, and I really want it to be that way.

Answer: Nature will force us to do it. We are in such a state. Maybe we will go through something else. Or there will be a world war, half of humanity or most of it will be destroyed. It is going to come to that anyway. Nature brings everything to balance anyway.

Question: Do you realize that this is a very long-term educational question considering who a person is?

Answer: It is a long process, but it depends on the awareness of the necessity.

Question: Who can be a teacher in such schools, such universities of life? The one who came to this understanding?

Answer: The one who has risen a little above his egoistic natural level can be a teacher.
[342209]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/2/21

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What do we need to do to live in peace? How can we live in peace?

Comment: That would be a scream.

My Response: No, humanity is not screaming. I do not see anyone screaming. Humanity is only wishing to see how everyone can appear right and suppress his neighbor.

Question: So when will it ask? When will it turn to the Creator correctly?

Answer: When it feels the need to live by the laws of nature. And people do not
want that yet.

Question: What can make it happen?

Answer: I want to develop a proper, cosmic vision of the world within me. I want my mind, my feelings, and my forces to be directed toward feeling nature and wishing to agree with it.

Question: So, you want this little world of mine to open up to the universe?

Answer: Otherwise, nothing will happen. Precisely because I am only content with my little world, and everything else does not matter to me, and I do not even care if it gets worse—that is why I do not see a solution.

Question: So if my thought is “I just want to feel well, and that is why I live”—is this thought flawed?

Answer: It has already depleted itself. We see what is happening. The world can plunge into such a wild showdown that it will be, as they say, a war for peace.

Question: But it is all in the hands of the Creator. Why does He not make it so that we can ask now, right now? All the conditions seem to be there.

Answer: He is making it so that we would ask, but we do not want to.

Question: Are we resisting even at this moment?

Answer: We do not want to. We are ready to do everything to suppress everyone.

Question: Can you still explain how you see this turning point within us, so that we will suddenly want it?

Answer: It will happen gradually. It is emerging out of all this hopelessness.

Question: Do you think that suffering accumulates in humanity and in a person? Or does it just disappear like water in sand?

Answer: We need to look mainly at humanity and see how it gradually realizes that this is not the way. The Creator pressures us so that we realize there must be a correct response, and it must be contrary to our nature. But we must want to make a decision that is above us.
[341942]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/5/23

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Question: Do you know how many elderly people are abandoned now? A lot! And for some reason, their children do not care about them. They do not even call them. What about my responsibility to my parents? After all, there is a natural bond with them.

Answer: But why is there an attachment to parents? Do I think that they should be concerned about me all my life; why else did they give birth to me? As long as they live, they should think about me. Or if they do not relate to me, so they do not. I leave them, and that is it.

Question: How can a child feel this way toward his parents?

Answer: He doesn’t feel it.

Question: Does he feel any pain, nothing?

Answer: No.

Comment: His parent is dying and he…

My Response: He does not feel! Because he has outgrown his animal egoism and does not feel any connection to his parents, that he should help them, provide for them, think about them, and so on. Do not invent what does not exist! It cannot be brought back!

Lately, this has all been dying down, and today it does not exist. If you help your children, then they need you. You can be close to them. But if you stop helping them, then they do not need you. That is how it happens.

Question: If I, as a parent, help my children, do they need me then?

Answer: Then they will need you, and you will be close to them to some extent.

Comment: I am just confused by one thing: that you generalize. There are normal relationships too.

My Response: I am talking about the trend of nature! That is why I generalize.

Question: And what next?

Answer: In our generation, parents can still give something to their children: guide them, leave what they have earned to them, etc. But in the next generation, there will already be a gap.

There will be such relationships between parents and children that if they have the same spiritual goals, then they will be somehow connected through them. And if not, people will start to completely forget about their parents. And parents, frankly speaking, will also not think about their children.

Question: What will parents think about?

Answer: About how to spend time peacefully with their elderly friends and companions.

Comment: With their dogs and cats.

My Response: Yes. There are various clubs opening for playing dominoes, I do not know what else.

Question: What is good about this?

Answer: Nothing! A person just needs to understand how he should be connected to others today. It is a totally different system—not a system of an earthly animal connection.

Question: Is the “parents-children” system not an animal system?

Answer: It is a system in which parents and children reveal a common goal for themselves. And then this goal connects them together.

Question: What is that goal?

Answer: That goal is the attainment of the meaning of life. For parents, children, and grandchildren, it is always the same. If they reveal it, attach to it, then they will feel the need to connect with each other and help each other in this.

Question: What common goal of life are you talking about? That parents and children have one goal that they strive for?

Answer: Then parents will be able to push their children toward the right goal. Then there will be unity between them, both earthly and spiritual, for the revelation of the Creator between them.

Question: What is the revelation of the Creator?

Answer: The revelation of the Creator is the revelation of mutual connection and love.

Question: Only between them?

Answer: First and foremost.

Question: In this unit of children and parents? To reveal this force?

Answer: Yes.

Question: And do they not want to reveal it now?

Answer: They do not want to. Who told them about it? Who pushed them toward it? Who?

Question: So these natural connections, that is not “someone told them”?

Answer: No, of course not.

Comment: This is my father, my grandmother, my… no?

My Response: No, nothing at all.

Comment: You are harsh today.

My Response: I am not harsh. This is what is being revealed in the world. Am I harsh? It is you all who made the world this way.

Comment: But this truth that you are talking about now… I can imagine how many comments will follow.

My Response: I am for revealing this truth and not hiding it so that people can see what a low, base state they are in, and what it leads to.

Question: What conclusion should a person draw after your harsh words? That there will be a gap between parents, children, and grandchildren, and that this is natural?

Answer: If they do not find a common goal, then nothing will connect them. Nothing will connect them!

Comment: That is, you are calling on them to look for this common goal.

My Response: Yes.
[341795]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/6/20

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There is a strict law of nature that says my attitude toward others determines their attitude toward me.

This seems so strange to us. But if we try, if we make an effort, then gradually, we will see that the world depends only on our attitude toward it, and it will begin to change for the better.

In other words, you paint your own world.
[342061]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/3/22

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We are getting to a state of radical re-evaluation of values. That is, what was valuable to me, for which I fought, lived, died, tried to put aside and pass on to future generations is all losing its value and is worth nothing today.

Question: What will truly be worth life or money?

Answer: Only thought.

Question: Doesn’t that seem too abstract for a person?

Answer: But what does a person have that is not abstract if he lives and dies? The most valuable is what he can take from one state, when living, to the state when dying, beyond death.

Question: Can he take his thoughts there?

Answer: Of course, he can. Thought is what remains with him.

Question: What kind of thought should one develop now so that it is valuable and necessary?

Answer: A positive attitude toward the world and others. It does not disappear. It stays with you constantly because it is not in your egoism, which dies with your body and decomposes, but in altruism, in the good qualities that you acquired during your earthly life. And then you fly away with them and enter a different space, the space of positive qualities and forces.

We exist to accumulate such positive emotions, thoughts, desires, urges, and aspirations, and leave the world with them.

I leave this world, having conveyed, as much as I could, a positive attitude toward the world, people, and life to my children and grandchildren, and to everyone possible.

Question: Do you think this is your mission and that of all of us?

Answer: Of course. But this is my opinion.

Question: But is this also the opinion of Kabbalists of all generations?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Comment: And what I see now, as everyone writes in comments: evil, horror, hatred, division…

My Response: This pushes us to evaluate what we really need to reveal in our life, to collect and pass on, to teach the next generation.

Question: Is it like pushing away from this darkness and moving toward a good thought?

Answer: Yes, everything will be fine.
[341862]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/15/20

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Question: People wonder why the most unnecessary things for a person, like diamonds and gold, are so highly valued?” And psychologists answer that it is precisely exclusive jewelry that can preserve one’s individuality in this world of universal globalization.

What does it mean for a person to possess something that others do not?

Answer: It is only because diamonds and gold are accepted by people as something that brings confidence, a treasure. But what exactly is this value? It exists only because people attribute these things to it and nothing more.

Question: In the besieged Leningrad, a piece of bread was a treasure. And that truly is a treasure. So, why do we need all these shiny trinkets?

Answer: To give value to life. That is all! But this will pass. I believe we will reach a state where completely different carriers of value will emerge.

In reality, the true carrier of value is the spiritual screen (Masach). This is what matters the most. It is eternal, it is a person’s personal spiritual attainment. No one can take it away, you cannot sell it or transfer it. It gives meaning to your existence, and most importantly, eternal life, the eternal threshold of eternal life.

Question: Then all these trinkets become just trinkets?

Answer: They will be worth nothing, just like everything else in our world. As soon as we begin to master the upper world, our money and material values will immediately be replaced by spiritual currency.

And spiritual currency is Kesef (Kisuf—covering) not the fulfillment of egoism but its covering above it, the Masach.

How will we measure it? It is individual.

How will we exchange it? It cannot be exchanged; it is only possible through connection with the Creator.

Thus, I am as rich as I am able to connect everyone to myself, enter into them, and fill them. Connection with others, fulfilling others—that is my wealth.

Where is my “treasure chest” that I fill? It is within everyone else. This is eternal, perfect, it never disappears. It is mine.

Question: What is most valuable in these relationships, the biggest diamond?

Answer: The quality with which I fill other people: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, Yechida. I do not fill myself, I only give. I am precisely the vessel of fulfillment. It is very interesting.

Question: What is the equivalent of gold, diamonds, or a simple trinket in spiritual relationships?

Answer: Power! Diamonds, gold, trinkets, whatever it may be, all represent power over others. If I am in a desert and there are no people on Earth, trinkets or gold give me nothing.

Power over others is wealth in our world. But power over oneself, which connects me to the Creator, is spiritual wealth.

Question: Is power over oneself control over one’s egoism?

Answer: Yes. That is, the screen.
[236841]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 8/26/24

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