Are We Setting A Good Example?
March 23, 2009
Our good future is entirely dependent on education. The moment we reach a state where our children are being raised properly, we will no longer need to worry about the development of the human race, because we will surely be on the right track. Our decline from generation to generation is simply a result of our failure to provide our children with the proper education.
Children absorb everything from us, because a child learns through examples, by behavioral models that he or she picks up from their parents, and later on from the environment at large. If we knew how to give them the proper example from the day they were born, along with the ego growing in them from day to day, we would supply them with the means for correcting themselves above this ego and in that manner they would be in perpetual progression.
Education means giving children the means to be above their own nature, to control their own nature. This of course includes educating the parents to enable them to pass on to their kids the proper behavior.
We adults are quite lost nowadays. We were educated incorrectly and we need to correct ourselves. We will be the first generation to correct itself, but it is just as crucial for us to make sure the generation following ours is a corrected one. It is up to us to create a situation where our children recognize the solution to all the problems and troubles in this world. Even from a very tender age when they begin being capable of absorbing things. That they will know how to rise above it all and attain not only a disconnection from the troubles we have here, but to reach a happy, eternal, complete and satisfying existence full of all the fillings imaginable.
All this is in our hands, and it has never been done before. We are the first generation that must set the correct educational foundation for children.
What Kids Really Want
March 23, 2009
Kabbalah explains that humanity is progressing in such a way that each generation is more evolved than its predecessor. To put it differently, the new generation has new desires, higher aspirations, and new dreams. According to Kabbalah, the level of egoism in the youth is always higher than in their parents. This is why the values that predominated in the parents’ generation are cast away in the next. The old values seem empty and meaningless since they do not fulfill the new and greater needs of the youth. This is also why they reject the education we provide them and find no interest in life.
The problem is that we have yet to acknowledge this process and learn how to cope with it. We will only be able to change the poor state of today’s youth by adapting our education system to the level of evolution (egoism) of our children.
The message of the wisdom of Kabbalah should be adapted to suit each generation. The message can be conveyed through movies, games or stories. If we begin to explain to children how things work beneath the surface, they will feel that they are being taught how to succeed and how to better understand their own world. They will feel that they are being exposed to new channels and new avenues in life.
You do not need to talk to them about spiritual matters or about abstract issues, but simply hand them the right approach to life, teach them how to see life on a slightly deeper level. They will get the message naturally and easily. In truth, it is not at all difficult to explain that behind the scenes of this life lies something hidden from our senses, that there are subtler forces at work in our world than the ones we perceive, and that we should consider them. As they live their normal lives, children will begin to sense the existence of an inherent tie to nature, one which we, adults, have grown accustomed to overlook.
Children will still live their normal lives, except now they will know that there is a higher, systemic order, and this will provide them with a fuller consciousness, a broader outlook on life. They will no longer be frustrated and disoriented, and they will not need pop stars as role models. Instead, they will grow up finding their own paths to self-fulfillment.
Creating Lasting Change
March 23, 2009
The current education system was developed over thousands of years. Throughout all those years it was adjusted to suit our varied systems, philosophies, historic and politic development, and so on.
Over time we managed to gradually set up some sort of system. That is how we arrived at the state we are in now with an entire system for training teachers, creating content, and preparing kids in nurseries for when they go into school.
Obviously a process of change cannot take place from one day to the next but must rather be over a number of years. As a society we must agree to work on bringing about this change in a diligent manner. Mankind has never succeeded at solving anything overnight.
The beginning of the change requires us recognizing the evil within us, meaning our lack of understanding for the younger generation, which will allow us to solve the problem from the root and prepare for change.
The change could be brought about by dedicating hours of national television coverage to the subject with all the concerned parties seated at a conference table to discuss the solution. This must become the most important issue on the public agenda and this will allow us to educate the children, parents, teachers and education authorities together.
All other systems provide filling for the growing ego but in this generation we will see that along with the ego increasing its demands will not be to fill its ego but rather to achieve something beyond it, to fill himself with something beyond our life. That is why we will need to give this generation filling that is not in this world, that is what the younger generation yearns for– spiritual filling. That is the only way it will feel full and satisfied.
Out of lack of choice a child will go to a psychologist or psychiatrist that will give him medication but when that does not help he will turn to drugs to shut his mind down and forget. But the precise thing that he wants, right before he drowns himself in his sorrow and turns to a psychiatrist and drugs – is spiritual filling. This is precisely what is happening in this generation. That is the generation’s demand. That is why they are restless, hyperactive from a very young age and sometimes older.
Only the wisdom of Kabbalah can provide a solution. It is possible that the student has no idea what is happening but inside he is demanding a higher filling than anything he can get in this world.
Where Did We Go Wrong?
March 23, 2009
We are living in a world where parents work very hard and are often not with their kids for most of the day. Children spend much of their time in front of TV or computer screens and are essentially getting their values from society and not from their parents. Apparently, the kids are not too thrilled with this state of affairs.
How did we end up in this unpleasant situation? Fifty years ago we were taught in school that in fifty years parents will have much more time to spend with their children, because they will have so much spare time on their hands. In those days parents worked eight or nine hours a day and thought that they would eventually cut down to five or six hours a day; that more time would be devoted to the family, to education, to culture, and building the child’s personality.
They also spoke of a change in child education, that it would be more interesting, integrate more examples, that they would take groups of children to an airport for example and all sorts of interesting places and allow them to come face to face with the richness of society.
Those fifty years have gone by and what have we done? We work for longer hours, the family unit is disintegrating, the father does not want anything to do with the mother, there is no connection between parents, the children are disconnected from the parents and even their grandparents. The only means of communication they have, the internet and TV, completely isolate them from their parents, and they do not receive their education in school but rather from many other types of sources.
As we can see, school is not intended to provide a person with an education and build him. There is not some special character that we expect to see upon a child graduating, but simply that he received a basic education, to prepare him somewhat for a profession he will learn in the future. After completing their studies every child will make a living according to their character, and a lot is left to chance. No one is talking about the “person” that has to come straight out of the oven with a whole collection of values and tendencies.
Learning The Laws of Giving and Loving
March 21, 2009
The wisdom of Kabbalah deals with education and with the building of society as the means to attain the Upper Force. In their writings, Kabbalists reveal the evolution that every person should undergo in a spiritually based society. Just as each soul receives what it needs from its environment in the spiritual realms, a person should receive the right education in each phase of his or her life.
In a society based on the principles of the wisdom of Kabbalah, we can learn from childhood to appreciate life on a deeper level. We will understand that this world is far richer than our five senses can perceive. From an early age, we will learn through games and examples to identify the causes and the latent forces that control reality. Thus, we will know the spiritual laws of love and giving, learn to use them correctly, and be able to live in harmony and balance with nature.
Teachers and Students Advancing Together
March 21, 2009
Teachers and kids need to be bound together in the same goal, with the teacher himself being in the same development toward the same goal. Based on his experience the teacher shows the child slightly more than the child knows. If the entire world is on the same path then humanity becomes like creatures marching toward the same huge goal together. Kids would be taught as they were in the jungle – what is allowed, what is not, what is good, what is bad, what is dangerous and what is not.
This is the way to teach how to manage in nature in order to reach the goal with the parents and children being in it together. Together we are one soul, and when we are together in this world we get strength and security, and the children are equal to all.
The key aspect here is the togetherness that should be used in games and to explain to the child, “I am in this with you, equal to you and playing with you”. In this way the parent plays with the child and with all of humanity. That is why the children’s attitude to the parents, educators and everyone changes the moment they begin learning the wisdom of Kabbalah. They become mutual friends, tied in a single goal, in one system. The study transforms the child into an active partner who is equal to the adult. What tremendous pride and confidence the child receives from that.
In education according to the wisdom of Kabbalah we are talking about a mutual connection between the teacher and student with both of them in the same process for the same reason and goal. The only difference being that one is big and the other is small. The bigger one takes the smaller one by the hand, and knowing what to do leads him toward the goal.
Teaching Kids About The Meaning of Life
March 21, 2009
At a time when educational systems are being criticized for their inability to turn children into mature, confident adults, Kabbalist Rav Michael Laitman believes that now is a unique time to introduce a new concept —teaching them about the meaning and purpose of life today through the ancient wisdom of Kabbalah.
According to Rav Laitman, to bring about a true and lasting change in our education system we must look two generations into the future, and begin today by explaining life’s purpose to the young. “Once we do that,” says Rav Laitman, “many things will change for the better.”
Kabbalist Rav Michael Laitman, PhD is a scientist and a Kabbalist who has been studying and teaching Kabbalah for the past thirty years. He is certain that the challenges our education system is facing can be solved, and solved well. “The surprising thing about it,” he adds with a smile, “is that the solution is right in front of our eyes.”
Education is not about stuffing the child’s brain with knowledge and information. Education should connect children to the unique process called “life.” Where does life come from? Why do things happen the way they do? What are we living for? Where do we have freedom of choice in our actions and thoughts, and where do we not? All these questions should be answered as part of the process of educating our youth.
To provide our children with practical tools for coping with the reality we live in, we must teach them the rules that govern nature, and where nature is leading us. In other words, we should be teaching our children the purpose for which nature has created humans.