Guide For Round Tables, Part 2

 

A Round Table Is a Serious Psychological Training

Question: The circle methodology consists of three parts. The first part is educational. It is necessary for understanding the entire process, the final goal, and means. This can be a mini-lecture, watching a movie, reading sources, and then discussing it.

The second is the discussion itself. It is also divided into different parts: games, reflection, and a workshop.

And the third is practice, that is, the application of skills acquired in the circle, in everyday life. Should we then implement in our lives, at work, and in our families, the attitude we received from the round table?

Answer: A round table—or the concept of raising a person above his egoism in order to get closer to others, not just learning information or getting impressions from each, but connecting among us in understanding the problem and its solution—is a whole set of joint actions. I do not think this is just a small introduction to the concept of the “round table.”

People should accept this, acquire practical skills to understand when they can rise above themselves or bend themselves before others. To understand what kind of communication should be between them, I bend before others, or I am on par with them, or I am above them. How can all this be correctly oriented, etc.

I consider the first educational stage the most important, it is very strong and includes a large number of varied exercises. This is a serious psychological training where people understand where they are and what they should do.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 7/9/20

What Will Become Of Us?

Remark: We see that the virus has changed people. There used to be all these races: where to go to rest, where to fly to, buying plane tickets in advance, what to buy, how to dress. All of these occupied a person’s central thoughts.

Today, a person has an incomprehensible future, he has anxiety, something was born inside him that begins to ask: “What will become of me?”

My Comment: Now a question about the future arises in a person. It has always seemed to us that the future was moving along some kind of developing egoistic steps. Now, this is no longer true and will not be like that in the future; everything is ending. The virus is eating up this future, and therefore we do not know how to build it.

Remark: There was always such a linear development of egoism that tomorrow there would be something, the day after tomorrow there would be something.

My Comment: There would be even more, it will be even better! Let’s fly to the stars. “And apple trees will bloom on Mars,” etc.

Only 20 to 30 years have passed; look at what is being done with the Earth, with outer space, and with everything! There is no solution anywhere! This is a terrible disappointment of all humanity in itself. This is a stunning change.

But that is great! We are finally starting to remove the veil from our eyes. Our selfishness blinded us: I will build it for you; I will do it for you! Come on, look! Go to the sea, go abroad! Look how many beautiful girls! Look what music there is! Look at what is being done! What a life! That is all.

Remark:  So when we hear there will be no life, this is what our egoism tells us. On the contrary, there will be life, but our egoism says: there will be no life.

My Comment: Yes. Therefore, we welcome it. Selfishness moves us forward.

Question: Despite the fact that it is now painting complete blackness for us. Do you call this forward?

Answer: It paints it correctly for us because inside it we will feel like this.

Question: So if we are following the egoistic path that we have followed so far, is there an abyss ahead?

Answer: Yes, but in nature, after all, this is done in advance that all ends well anyway. It cannot be in our life, in our world, in this nature so that everything is so stupid with a dead-end beyond which there is nothing. It is reborn, just as all stages and times in nature are reborn.

The future step determines darkness because it is not darkness. What seems as darkness ahead of us is already a future step that we feel as darkness today because we are not yet determined to see this step.

When we take a good look at the darkness, suddenly we will see: this is not darkness, these are not even silhouettes, these are not even some semi-gloomy states. It is actually a huge light! This is a new world.

Question: Has the highest step been lowered to us now? To us, it seems to be absolute darkness now. We want to live as we lived, but we can no longer live as we did. What should be done now? Grab hold of it?

Answer: We must accept it as it is and try to adapt to it; what is in it is the very best. In this way, we will re-educate ourselves.

Question: What is the next step?

Answer: It is a new world in which a person will exist in the forces of good, connection, bestowal, and love. It is approaching, and therefore it seems to us as darkness. But everything will be fine. The virus will help us.

Question: Does this push from behind drive us exactly to this stage? Does it definitely lead to this stage?

Answer: Yes. Viruses actually define our entire life. We are all just viruses. We can say that we are made of them. Even scientists say so. Therefore, we must see the correct changes in our nature in this.

Question: If I now direct myself even a little bit to this step with good thoughts, will I try to be in them?

Answer: Then you will adapt to it quickly, easily, and you will not feel there is some kind of abrupt transition to the next step at all.

Question: So is the future world good and bright?

Answer: It is already coming; it is already here. Let’s take it! Let’s not do any virology at all. We will all work together to adapt to each other. Suddenly this virus will be between us as a link. We will begin to feel each other closer to our hearts. All will pass.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 6/22/20

Turn Life Into A Game

Question: Our entire life is based on a game. Russian sociologist Vladimir Ilyin wrote, “The game is a different life, acting as a man-made oasis inside the chaos of real life.”

If the game is our entire life, how can a person distinguish what is real life and what is a game?

Answer: There is no need to distinguish, you need to turn life into a game. This will be good.

Question: How can you not remain a small child?

Answer: Let me be a little child. I should feel like a little kid. What does it mean that I am big? What am I so big in? Nowhere and in nothing.

On the contrary, let me feel that I am small in comparison with the entire universe, with all the huge cosmos, and there are things for me to comprehend, to receive, and to be filled with to live with my eyes and my mouth open.

Question: The first function of the game is to compensate for the unused energy in the struggle for survival. A person accumulates energy, often negative, which he must somehow throw away, realize.

How can a person realize this negative energy today, so that it does not lead to fatal outcomes? How can a person use the negative energy that accumulates in him or her for constructive causes?

Answer: You must show a person the meaning, that this meaning is directly connected to him, and what can be the reward for realizing this meaning.

Question: The game ensures the preservation of the qualities given by nature, but are not required in the real life of an individual. How can a person reveal and recognize the hidden qualities, the hidden opportunities, that nature has implanted in him?

Answer: Only in a group. In a particular group of people when all of them are engaged in discovering their internal, unused, potential opportunities in order to rise above themselves. Above themselves is only in the society.

Thus, we need to gather together into a group where everyone wants to rise above themselves to reach such a connection between them when they will rise together into something common. Let us say ten people come together and become one. This “one” will consist of all of them, but together they will feel that this qualitative change in themselves that everyone became ten times smarter, ten times stronger, ten times more perspicacious, and so on.

Question: In an imperfect world with a hectic life, the game creates temporary, limited perfection. This is always some kind of a short cycle. Can the game be turned into an infinite game so that it does not end?

Answer: Yes, this is what a game is. A real game is one that can be turned into an endless game, an endless activity. However, only if there are many of us.

You cannot play the game alone. When there are many of us, we create completely different combinations through the game, as in a kaleidoscope. Have you ever looked through a kaleidoscope? When you turn it the pieces of broken glass inside it move into some kind of structure. So, do we.

When we make a kaleidoscope out of ourselves in this way, we get such pictures! We begin to discover ourselves as joint, compatible in such a form that in the end we receive one single whole, we become Adam (Man), that is, a combined element.

Question: What is a real game that is a win-win for everyone?

Answer: This is when a person reveals the true universe and begins playing it for real. In earnest!

Question: What does it mean to play in earnest?

Answer: It is when one plays above life and death, not for life and not for death, but above them for connection with others and builds perfection together with them. Only perfection can fill a person with meaning.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/12/20

What Will Make People Kinder?

Question: Some social networks help people become kinder. In this tense time, when the pandemic is raging, politicians fight for votes, and protesters demand racial justice, human communication is becoming more important.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed an automated method to make communication more polite. Scientists are sure that politeness and kind communication will do good for us. Now they have developed an automated method to make communication kind.

Can such algorithms really teach a person a different way of communication and a different line of thought?

Answer: In principle, they can, to a very small extent. It depends on how seriously we will relate to such a communication model, how much we would be able to follow all these rules: sorry, please, thank you—and all the time instill positive emotions in each other, and so on.

This can soften society in some way. But to a very insignificant extent because by this we deviate from the purpose of creation.

The purpose of creation is to bring a person to the awareness of his nature as evil. Therefore, we need to understand that no matter how good, white, and fluffy we are externally, outside of ourselves, inside we will still remain nasty, black, dark, and evil. So, it will not change us from the inside, but it will help us quickly understand who we really are inside. Just like when you turn on the light in a room, you can better see how dirty it is.

Question: Is it that all kind messages, all kindness, and politeness only help to reveal the negativity that lurks inside?

Answer: Of course.

Question: What happens to a person further?

Answer: We begin to feel who we are within ourselves.

Question: Is it necessary to have both internal negativity and external kindness, external politeness, a positive attitude toward each other? Or should there be only kindness, grace, positivity, and harmonious communication?

Answer: We must constantly struggle with our greedy egoistic nature, and not just manifest all this on the outside in a beautiful form in relation to each other, like all the methods—both those you are talking about and others.

We must understand that everything lies not in beautiful outer packaging, wrappings, bonbonnieres, but in changing ourselves, our nature. Only then can we really achieve a state when humanity will become different. It will become different from within itself—giving, loving, and sympathetic.

Question: What help does this evil in man bring? Why is it given to us at all?

Answer: This evil is necessary in order to reveal our nature to us. This is our nature, this is us, not something artificial, external, extraneous. This is how our nature is revealed.

It is not easy to reveal to a person how evil he is. Talk to people and you will see how they react when you tell them who they are. They will hate you; they will beat you. They will not agree with you. How can you accuse them of what is allegedly wrong?!

A person does not like it when it is pointed out to him. We need to reveal it—to reveal it each to himself and to others, and to help everyone together come to the conclusion that we are terrible beasts and have no other choice but to correct ourselves as soon as possible; otherwise, we will eat each other alive.

Remark: You had an interesting tweet that said it is hatred that gives knowledge of how to fill the desire of another person. Therefore, the basis of life is self-love and egoism and the rest is its spice.

My Comment: Yes. So, it is written: “I created the evil inclination, and I made the Torah as its spice.”

Question: Why does hatred help fulfill the desire of another person?

Answer: Because it turns into hatred of its nature, and thus inversely in the opposite direction, toward love for another person. It turns out that by turning my hatred inside out, I can hate it in myself and love another person.

Question: Can we say that this hatred, this evil that is in a person, should be treated as a sparring partner that helps us become better?

Answer: Yes. This is called help against Him.

Question: What would you say to all people who really expect kind attitudes, warmth, and harmony in communication from others?

Answer: Do not wait. Do not expect anything good from anyone. Just understand that everything depends on each of you. Change yourself—and the world will change.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/1/20

“Is This World Going In A Right Direction?” (Quora)

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is this world going in a right direction?“

The world has been through enough preliminary phases, including regimes tilted to the far-left and the far-right, and it has experienced a great share of turbulence, turmoil and mistakes.

Now the impending question is: What path will we take next?

Over the course of humanity’s history, we were constantly trying to work out what way to head next: to the right or to the left.

What are we left with today?

We have reached a stalemate in every field of human engagement, personally, socially, educationally, economically, ecologically and globally.

We worked with all the systems we could devise, and ascertained that there is no single system or plan remaining that could steer us confidently into a bright future.

We have entered a deadlock with no vision of a better future motivating us, and also nothing to goad us forward from behind either.

Our era is thus characterized by the end of our egoistic trials and tribulations. The human ego gracefully stood behind every human endeavor, and every prior breakthrough and progress, giving just enough fuel for it to unfold and reveal how it fell short in providing lasting fulfillment and happiness.

While engrossed in our ego, we can either receive egoistically or give egoistically. With an egoistic intention lying behind any act of receiving or giving, destruction is the inevitable conclusion.

Nazi Germany was a harsh example of a regime based on receiving egoistically taken to an extreme, and on the other end of the spectrum, communist Russia was also a harsh example of a regime based on giving egoistically taken to an extreme. Both led to devastation.

We have squeezed out all the juices from these egoistic forms.

We now need to leave our egos alone, acknowledge that they lead us to no positive outcome, and build a new level above them.

This new level should be one of giving above receiving, and connecting positively above detachment and estrangement to each other.

In order to build this new level, we need access to a new kind of fuel and motivation, which doesn’t emerge naturally in our egoistic desires and thoughts.

Such access can be granted via a new method of education—a method of connection—that shows us how we can develop positive connections above our egoistic differences and divisions.

If some person, organization or movement wishes to pull people to a certain direction, to the left or to the right, then it is bound to fail, and we have the examples of such failure in Nazi Germany and communist Russia.

Today, we have the additional advantage of such experiences—that we can see how our egos devise systems that ultimately divide one people from another, and that such systems are setup for failure.

Recognizing the failure of working according to our egos, we would thus be wise to accept a new kind of education: one that guides us on how to connect harmoniously above our egos.

Connection above the ego is the world’s only path left.

This path means that we accept the fact that humanity is a single whole, and that we are all parts of this whole, as cells and organs in a human body. If a single cell takes from other cells more than it needs to survive, then it becomes cancerous and spreads disease throughout the body.

Today, we experience such disease as myriad problems and crises spreading throughout humanity. And they all share the same root: each person locked in their narrow egoistic corner, acting in a tug-of-war battle with everyone else.

We thus need to conclude that the human ego, which has based all of our development until today, has reached its expiry date.

Using the ego unabated—with no inclination to acknowledge how it constantly operates on us, and with no motion to rise above it—delivers us all the problems we experience.

The days of moving back and forth between left and right have reached their dead-end. Today, our survival, at the very least, and moreover, our ability to draw motivation, happiness, success and confidence from a fresh new source of vitality, depends on us rising above our egoistic nature, period.

New Life 1279 – The Code For Success In The New Year

New Life 1279 – The Code For Success In The New Year
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

In order to have a successful new year, Israelis need to discover the connection between all their diverse citizens such that they achieve Arvut or mutual guarantee between them. The coronavirus was sent by the Creator to arrange us in ties of mutual love and connection according to an evolutionary plan. Humanity doesn’t understand this so far and is busy hiding and trying to protect itself. Subsequently, we are frozen in terms of our international and cultural relations.

It is the role of Israel to show the world how to connect correctly according to the principle, “love your neighbor as yourself,” and therefore become a light unto the nations. It is not enough to be brothers in times of war, but Israelis must understand that they are locked into an integral system and that they have to change themselves in order to develop inner closeness between them.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1279 – The Code For Success In The New Year” 8/31/20

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Guidelines For Round Tables, Part 1

Purpose of Round Tables

Question: In ancient times, our ancestors gathered around the campfire to discuss conflicts, resolve serious issues, and simply to strengthen social bonds.

More than 2,000 years ago, during the Sanhedrin, the sages continued to solve state-level issues in a circle.

In the 5th – 6th century according to legend, the leader of the Britons, King Arthur, also used a round table to make the knights who gathered at it feel equal.

In the modern sense, “round table” has been used since the 20th century as the name of one of the ways to organize the discussion of certain issues.

What is the main purpose of using round tables?

Answer: The main goal of the round tables is to show that all participants are equal; each of them has their own opinion, which they can freely express.

Question: In which cases can a round table be used to resolve state-level conflicts, and in which cases can it simply be used to strengthen bonds?

Answer: If there are serious prerequisites, it is possible to organize round tables at the state level.

However, in the political environment it is very rare to gather people who feel equal corresponding to the concept of a round table. This is usually done to show that everyone seemingly aims for the same thing, although this is almost impossible between politicians.

Remark: When working in a circle, a special effect is formed that allows us to say that the circle is larger than the sum of its participants. This effect can be compared with such concepts as “wisdom of the crowd” and “collective intelligence.”

My Comment: The fact is that here the sum of effort is more than just the sum of the components. Since the participants who make up the round table must rise above their egoism, humble themselves in some way, and agree with the opinions of others, their joint efforts add up and sum up.

It turns out that the round table effect is not just an arithmetic addition, but much more. If the participants’ contradictions were very serious, then if they want to rise above them and reach the “round table” state, they achieve a major effect of connection, communication, and integration.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 7/9/20

Live By The Laws Of Nature

Comment: On one hand, you say that you need to live by the laws of nature, and on the other, you welcome that everyone has finally stopped producing unnecessary things and they can stay at home with their family.

My Response: This is a temporary phenomenon. I don’t think people can spend all their time at home. In principle, this is not necessary because it is an unjustified waste of time and life. It is necessary to do what is useful for society, for nature, for maintaining homeostasis.

Question: How do you think household responsibilities should be distributed among family members?

Answer: In a natural way. A man should help a woman, and a woman should maintain the home.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/21/20