Entries in the 'Children' Category

Being President Is an Unpopular Profession


News Report (translated from Washigton ProFile): American children do not want to become President. The Boys & Girls Clubs of America published results of a survey that asked American children whether they would want to be the President. 67% responded that they would not want to be the President of the USA. The young Americans said that the most important qualities for the President to have are a good personality, high moral standards, an ability to inspire people, education, and a history of being a successful leader in the national arena. Results of surveys published by Newsweek and Gallup show that the children’s views are very different from the adults’.

My Comment: The young generation’s egoism has outgrown all conventions. People do not want to put on a show all the time. To be President means to be under constant pressure and to always try to have everyone like you. This is a feeling of being absolutely controlled and dependent; it’s a non-stop theater where you have the most difficult part!

Today’s egoism makes people want to take care of themselves and their personal fulfillment, to throw aside all the conventions and strive for individual fulfillment. Otherwise one’s egoism will feel unfulfilled (depressed) and will be ready to suppress itself (through drugs), or even to annul itself (through suicide).

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The Meaning of Prayer and Blessings


During the international children’s lesson that was held on 10.10.2008, we talked about prayer. Prayer is the most secret, concealed desire in one’s heart. It hides so deep down in our hearts that we don’t even feel it. But precisely this desire has a connection with the Creator, or we can say that the Creator dwells inside this desire.

In order to reveal the Creator, we must reveal this desire for Him. But how can we influence this desire? A person cannot reach it himself, but only through the environment (the group). He evokes all sorts of influences from the environment, which make his desire for the Creator, for love and bestowal, grow. In fact, these influences have a direct effect on one’s heart.

In this manner, through the group, one can evoke such a great desire for love and bestowal in his heart that it will become similar to the Creator in the minimum degree, and then he will immediately sense the Creator within it. This is the meaning and purpose of prayer – to gradually reveal the Creator in one’s heart!

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During the following international children’s lesson, held on 10.17.2008, we talked about blessings.
A blessing is a sensation of gratitude that involuntarily appears in one’s heart. It is gratitude for the corrections that take place within a person under the influence of the Creator’s Light:

“Blessed are you, Ruler of the world… Who opens eyes to see the Upper World… Who spreads the earth (the desire to receive) upon the waters (the desire to bestow)… Who gives the heart the understanding to distinguish day (the Upper Light, the quality of bestowal) from night (egoism)… Who clothes the naked (with the Light of Hassadim, in which the Light of Hochma is revealed)… and so on.

Women’s Spirituality Is Finally Being Revealed

What Does a Man Look for In a Woman?A question I received: I’ve noticed an obvious growth in the number of women studying Kabbalah, and I’ll be honest: this makes me very happy! Is this happening because their desires are increasing?

My Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah was concealed from humanity for millennia in order to allow humanity to develop their egoism and finally reveal the global egoism – the “small village” where all people are completely interconnected. As long as Kabbalah was concealed, it was passed down only through men, because in our world a man represents the quality of bestowal, and a woman – the quality of reception.

However, as soon as we reached the level of global egoism – which is how our souls are connected inside the system of the single soul of Adam – the wisdom of Kabbalah started being revealed to everyone, because it is the method to correct our common egoism, which is represented by the woman in our world.

This is why more women than men are attracted to the study and application of Kabbalah. However, this cannot be done without the male part because it is precisely the male part that evokes the Light’s influence, but it does so by using the female desire and hence draws the Light onto both of them. This is similar to how a woman takes care of the home and children while a man acquires the means to realize the woman’s desires.

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The Soul Is Ageless

Two questions I received on the spiritual advancement of children:

Question: If there are still 232 years left until the full correction, then why do we call our children “the children of the last generation”?

My Answer: Because the “last generation” starts from our generation on – it’s the generation of egoism’s correction and ascension to the Creator.

Question: Do children and youth go through the same degrees on the spiritual path as adults? If a child expresses worry about evil, what’s the right way to deal with this?

My Answer: The soul is ageless, and this is why Kabbalah can be taught to anyone and at any age. One must go through all the states. This is determined by the emergence of the Reshimot (the chain of informational data about each state). It’s because the soul must go through the same states it went through during its descent from above downward, but now it must go through them in the reverse order, ascending from below upwards.

However, the rate of one’s advancement through every state depends on the environment (the group), and can be virtually instant. The best remedy for all the “problems” along the way is communication with friends and watching our materials.

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A Spiritual Revolution Is Inevitable


A question I received: You look serious and wise, but your ideas and proposals to humanity are utopian. Are you really sure they can be implemented, or that there is even a chance of implementing a spiritual revolution of all humanity?

My Answer: Because I understand human nature, I know that all our desires, thoughts, and actions are absolutely egoistic and cannot be any different. However, because I also understand the nature of the Upper World and the Light, I am absolutely sure – and know from personal experience – that the Light which created our egoism can change it to altruism in an instant. However, It will do so only if we desire it.

We can develop this desire only by recognizing that our egoism is evil for us, by seeing how much suffering it causes us. The question is: How much suffering will it take? We can do it by studying a small crisis – such as the present one – and recognizing that our attitudes to each other are opposite to the global “village” of humanity. We can recognize this so deeply that we will start advancing to “Love your neighbor as yourself,” to equivalence with Nature or the Creator.

For example, we can institute a global education system that will teach everyone about the fact that we live in a world where everyone is interdependent. In addition, this can be explained by all the mass media and the educational institutions worldwide, from kindergartens to universities. (For more on this, see my “Lecture in Arosa.”)

Any attempts we make to this end – even the smallest first attempts – will already reverse our opposition to Nature, because through these actions we will turn to face Nature (the Creator) and come closer to It. If our overall desires will be to change, then this will happen easily, because the Creator hears none other than the request of the society.

Nature will execute its plan one way or another, and this plan is already complete and existent in the spiritual world. Still, it would be best to avoid the catastrophes, whether social, ecological, military, biological or others, which will force us to detach from egoism. There is a pleasant path to Nature’s goal (see the article “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose“); this is why we were given the science of Kabbalah. At the very least, we have to do everything that’s up to us, but the spiritual revolution will happen in any case!

A Parable: A man walked along the seashore and saw a boy picking something up from the sand and throwing it into the sea. The man came closer and saw that the things the boy was picking up from the sand were starfish; he was completely surrounded by them. It seemed like there were millions of starfish on the sand; the shore was literally filled with them for many miles ahead.

“Why are you throwing these starfish in the water?” asked the man, as he approached the boy.

“If they stay on the shore until the morning tide, they will die,” answered the boy, without interrupting what he was doing.

“But this is stupid!” yelled the man, “Look around you! There are millions of starfish here, the shore is filled with them. Your efforts won’t make any difference!”

The boy picked up the next starfish, thought for a moment, then threw it into the sea and said, “No, my efforts will change a lot… for this starfish.”

Then the man also picked up a starfish and threw it into the sea. And then another one. By the time the night was over, there were many people on the shore, and each of them was picking up and throwing starfish into the sea. When the sun rose, the shore was empty – no soul was left unsaved.

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The Lost Sons Are Disillusioned With the American Dream

A New Year's Wish to the WorldNews Report (translated from news.ru): Between the years 2000 and 2007, 3,500 people per year returned to Israel. In 2008, however, the number of people who have returned jumped to 7,000, and another 15,000 have submitted their applications to the ministry of absorption. In the last two months alone, as many as 2000 people returned to Israel.

My Comment: The return of the “lost children” marks the end of their wanderings in search of a heaven on earth, and the beginning of their search for the real heaven – the revelation of the Upper World. The Book of Zohar says that this precedes the return of the truly lost sons – the return of the ten tribes that were lost 3000 years ago. Today there are hundreds of millions of them in the world…

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Part 5 from the book Interview With the Future: Spiritual Exile

Reflections On The Crisis

crisisGlobalization is the revelation of a new level of connection between us. It should be beneficial, but as we can see, it only causes more problems.

Why is this happening? It is because we are using the integral global system backwards – aiming to suppress one another, instead of learning to work together. We keep trying to defeat each other, to put others down and be superior to them.

Even if we wanted to maintain the proper interconnection – the commerce principle of “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” – this would still bring us to a crisis today. It would happen even if we did not lie to one another and conducted honest commerce. That’s because nowadays we are all interconnected, like parts of one body. Under these conditions it is useless to be egoistically honest, just as it is useless to create a global government or a world bank – to seek a common regulator.

The world’s political and economic leaders want to arrange a joint meeting between the G20 (heads of the leading countries) to discuss a joint global government. However, this will not help us come out of the crisis, because we are in opposition to Nature and Its general law. The system must not just be based on the correct interconnection, on agreements and honesty, but must operate in accordance with the inner connection between the elements of a single system, at whose basis lies a consideration of others as yourself.

This is the root of the problem. Kabbalah warns humanity that if we continue to try building our relationships according to the corporeal, egoistic laws – even the most direct and honest ones, following the principle of “what’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine” – then the system will not work and we will elicit an even greater explosion.

As we start to reveal that we are all part of a single global system, we must come to the conclusion that everything is collective, and everyone must take care of everyone else. The only things that are “personal” are those necessary for one’s existence, while everything else is the collective property of the whole world. This pertains to natural resources, goods and production, education, health care, and so forth. Everything must be collective, global property. Otherwise the crises will not stop, and no matter how hard we try to set things right according to our egoistic logic, we will continue experiencing one crisis after another.

Kabbalah warns us that nature has already elevated us – in terms of our development – to the level of a single integral system, which follows the law of absolute interconnection of all its parts. No one can escape this law. Essentially, this is the ancient Biblical principle of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” And we must use our ego in order to establish the correct connection with others.

Even if we create a rational system of interaction between different countries, according to the egoistic principle, “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours,” then this quality of Sodom will actually bring about an even greater crisis. That’s because in doing so we will seek to use the interconnection between people in order to raise the usage of egoism even higher, instead of correcting it. In this scenario a crisis will arise which will reflect this pseudo-correction, in order to expose the error. And it will be stronger and more acute, in order to teach us a lesson of what not to do.

What does Kabbalah suggest? To already take into account the future form, the functioning of the integral system as one body, by the principle of “the end of an action lies in the initial thought,” and actualize this end state to the best of our ability right now, even if we do it gradually and fragmentarily.

Does “actualize it right now” mean “fair distribution”? No. However, even if we initially accept the distribution of “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours,” and at the same time begin to intensively teach all humanity the laws of coexistence, which are based on the discovery of our society as a single organism; if we teach people the laws of behavior and distribution – then we will already be on the right path. We will shift to the path of correction and will stop being opposite to nature. We will then feel an immediate reduction of the suffering.

Baal HaSulam has a parable that says: We have lost our way in the desert and don’t know where to go. Now that we’ve completely lost our strength, we’ve realized that it was impossible to avoid wandering in the desert. And now we are revealing the path that we must walk. At the end of the path lies a castle full of all the goodness in the world. We are desperate; we are ready to sink into depression and drugs. All of a sudden, in this situation, we receive a global positioning system (a GPS map or GPS navigator) from people who can see everything from above. If a person agrees and changes his attitude to the world, then he discovers that the whole world was created for this path, and he suddenly has the strength to reach the goal.

How can we implement this change? We can do it by revealing the goal and the method of attaining it. The method comes to us from Ancient Babylon, when this problem of civilization came to light for the first time: a closed civilization is like a single body and must function as one organism. That is also when Kabbalah was revealed, in order to change the use of egoism – to use it for the benefit of society. However, the people didn’t want to use Kabbalah, and solved the problem in another way – they scattered all over the earth and globalization receded.

Now we are faced with the same situation, but this time we must utilize it, because we can no longer “run away” from one another, just as we cannot destroy the interconnection between us. Should America, Russia and Europe decide to isolate themselves from one another, they will face the emergence of Nazism in their countries and bring the world to a Third World War – a nuclear one.

What is the most practical solution that we can offer people? They have to know about the world they are living in today. Today we must learn about how to live in an integral system, where we’re all together “in one boat.” In this boat, the salvation of all depends on each individual. This is what we must also teach our children. We are dealing with nature: a global ecology and a global human society. We must teach ourselves and our children how to be incorporated in this system, where every person must care for the others.

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The Secret of Good Communication


A question I received: How should we react to people who try to use us?

  • Like parents with children, knowing that they wouldn’t act this way if they were on your level;
  • To understand that children can be sly and lazy;
  • This can help you say “No” firmly, if the situation calls for it;
  • To ask yourself “What is the Creator teaching me here?”
  • To realize that everyone has his or her role in this world.

I use these rules and find them very helpful.

My Answer: If it isn’t someone who must definitely be convinced of the authenticity of Kabbalah (a journalist, for example), then you should simply leave people with a good mood and a positive impression from interacting with you.

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Analysis of the Crisis

Analysis of the CrisisIt is written, “The only people one does not envy are one’s children and one’s students.” I am proud of my students. Hence I am proud to publish texts and clips that my students send to me. The following was sent by my student Tasha Fridkin from New York:

An analysis of the crisis
It is known that the laws of nature work regardless of whether we know about them or not. No one will test the law of gravity by jumping out of the window, since we know the result from our life experience.

However, few people know that besides the laws affecting our physical bodies, there are also laws affecting our souls. We don’t see the souls in our world, and the interactions between them are also concealed from us. Nevertheless, this does not make the laws any less strict – they still inevitably affect us even if we don’t clearly perceive their influence.

According to these laws all of our souls are interconnected into one harmonious and balanced system that is based on the principle of bestowal. Every individual contributes the most he can to the system, taking only the necessary minimum from it.

Humanity, however, has developed differently. It has reached the state where every individual desires to give the minimum and to use everyone else to the maximum to get personal gratification. Moreover, we have even stopped noticing this. Every person wants to win the lotto – to spend a dollar and win a million. But where does this million come from? It comes from a million people who spent one dollar. In other words, every individual wants to snatch from everyone else, for his own self benefit. And this is considered absolutely normal.

But there is an imbalance between our spiritual and corporeal existence. The violation of the spiritual law evokes the apparent and tangible manifestations in our physical world, such as the current financial crisis. This crisis is but a particular manifestation of the general crisis of all the social connections. The financial system is the most vulnerable one, similar to the blood in an organism, connecting and permeating the entire worldwide community. Nothing has changed in any part of the financial system; the crisis is purely psychological. We have revealed our incorrect usage of the connections between us, and as a result we have lost our trust of the system and the entire system has collapsed.

That is to say, we have reached a state where the externality – the structure and principles of our integrated systems, is losing importance compared to the internality – our thoughts and intentions when using these systems.

If every one of us will not change our attitude toward the people around us, adopting attitudes that match the connections between the souls, then we will continue to oppose the laws of nature. Then these laws will affect us more and more negatively. No one can run away from this; there won’t be any place on earth where one can hide, waiting for things to improve.

The world is crumbling. If you want to be saved, then start with yourself – with your attitude to the people around you. No one else is going to save you.

The world is built by every one of us. The world is our common home, and it is built according to the laws of nature. It can either bring us enormous, inconceivable abundance, or – if it is founded on egoism – it will bring us inconceivable suffering, which will nevertheless force us to change.

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The Need to Nurture the Proper Perception In Children


I’ve received many questions from parents who wish to see their children develop properly, and whose children suffer from the results of the education they receive in school.

It is important to nurture the correct perception of reality in children from an early age. This brings out a completely different attitude toward the world in them; they begin to perceive the concealed connections between everything that happens around them, to interpret events accurately, to find the causes of what is happening and to answer questions regarding behavior on their own.

This is obvious in the group of children that I work with. But how can this become an asset of every family? Ideally, in the proper environment, it’s possible to develop spiritual vision in children from an early age, and to bring about spiritual growth alongside the physical growth. Rav Kook (who lived between 1865–1935 and was the chief Rabbi of Israel) wrote that if he could, he would study Kabbalah with six year old children.

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