http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/files/eng_t_rav_2013-06-27_program_haim-hadashim_n204.mp4
A Talk with Dr. Michael Laitman
A New life
Talk on Parenting
Talk 204
June 27, 2013
Oren: Hello thank you for being with us in, "A New Life" educational series with Dr. Michael Laitman. Hello Rav Laitman, hello everyone, hello Nitzah Mazoz, hello. We want to learn from Rav Laitman along with you, how to build new connections between us, better quality connections that will bring us to a new life where we'll get up in the morning with joy of life. A life where we feel that we are happy that we're alive instead of sorry we're alive, and we take our life to the best place, the most exciting place, the strongest and highest place that it can possibly be. The focus of our talk today is how to build this basic and most natural family unit that we exist in, this big world that we are in, what makes up all of our personal success, and how we can make this family unit more successful. We know there are a lot of problems. Maybe it's not our fault that we're doing things wrong, but we need to learn how to build the new family, the new world, and the connected world of today, but not to look at the past remembering all of the pictures of our grandparents in the village, because those pictures are not coming back. Join us; there's a lot to learn, a lot to apply to your life in the most practical manner. Nitzah, prepare us to begin the show.
Nitzah: In the previous show, you gave a description that we could really identify with. The situation of the family is getting worse. It is coming apart to a place where we all feel separate. We're coming apart, and it's a feeling of a descent into a bad place. We want to start at that point, because we still have this need; that is what brought us to the studio. We have this need to do something to save the situation, to build the family from a place where we exist. Possibly, as a first phase and as someone who sees the integral education, you can give us some broader picture that will create for us an ability to begin to understand how a family living accordingly to the principles of the integral education will appear.
Dr. Michael Laitman: First of all we need to understand that this trend and everything that's happening is happening according to the law of development that's rooted in nature that we're just witnessing, and we're in it ourselves. Until now, we had no ability to control it.
It's not that we went wrong somewhere and could have changed something somehow; that's not the case. But rather, our egoistic desire that is always growing and developing has dictated to us all these forms in which we have been living. As a result of this, we've reached this point that we are now in. We spoke about it a lot. We need to understand that we're now altogether at a point of recognition of the evil of our ego, and we're beginning to see to what extent this is so. The reason for all the dis-involvement of the human society is only our desire to get distant from others. We don't want to feel obligated to other people, especially people who have nothing to do with us, “Just leave me alone, that's it, I have no need for you, and I don't want you to have a need for me, but when I want to, I'll connect with everyone, including relatives and all of humanity.” We see that there's a trend to escape from the city, to get to some island, go to some faraway place for vacation, and forget about everything. The recognition of the evil in our ego brings us to see all these things. Why do we feel bad? Why is it bad? It's because we feel that there are still desires in us that we cannot fulfill, except through corrections of the relations between us: in our family, in parenting, in the relations between relatives, and also between other people. The human race as we know it is beginning to lose its form. It's as if there could be a few paths here. One is that we're heading down this path, and no matter what we do, it won't change anything. So we're continuing: this is the world, this is man, this is nature, and wherever nature takes us, that's where we'll go, whether we want to or not. In other words, we can talk as if we're on a train, this train is moving, and in the train, we can talk about whatever we want to, because it won't change anything on our path. It's going to keep going. It's continuing to some goal that we don't exactly know, to some destination, and at each stage that we go through with this train, we're discovering that life is becoming more unbearable. Here we need to understand why it is like this. If I get distant from others, if I can build a more pleasant, comfortable life for myself, if I’m going after my ego, and I'm really encouraging it, I'm willing to fulfill whatever it demands from me. It wants me to do this, I'll do that, it wants me to do this, I'll do that, and yet, if I do fill myself with all those ego driven passions, inclinations, desires, then along with that, I feel in myself more and more empty. In other words, I suddenly start to discover from the age of my middle 20's and onward I feel more and more empty. I's not just emptiness but great suffering, problems, and desperation; I don't feel that I'm alive and well, I can no longer go backward, and the more that I move forward, I'm more confused. I can't organize anything that's good for me, even though I have all the abilities, technologies, and options. I still feel that this trend is destructive. What does it lead me to? This is where we need to open things up a little bit more. It leads me to a state where I need to see that the real, true, good life can’t be built by distancing and isolating myself from everyone, but the opposite. If I begin to build within myself a different attitude toward everyone, to go back to that same family, that big family, that life where I precisely felt there were no limitations, the sense that the whole world is mine. That life I used to feel, my village in the small society, was for me the whole world. I used to feel that we were all one great family. Then I felt myself completely free, not like today where I'm in a single unit, and I'm empty. I can't fill myself with anything, even though I have all the options. Then I was full, I was complete, I was happy. I was like a baby in everyone's hands. This state is beginning now, precisely now, after all of our development over thousands of years, it is starting to exist more and more. It's awakening in me, and it's demanding to be implemented. But now we're reaching a state where, if I'm really researching this, I'm starting to see that it's not through sex, being in a family, friends, and everything. Rather, there has to be a connection here, a new connection between myself and let’s say her, between myself and someone else, and this connection is an emotional, inner connection where we belong to one system. Then to the extent that each focused only on himself, precisely through this, each felt how much connection is necessary. This is called the recognition of evil. Until we can isolate ourselves, it appears to us that we are alone and everything is fine, but when we reach this state of isolation, we feel that we can really be free, not by isolating myself, by not belonging to others, or y not being dependent on them; rather, I'm in contact with others, and I'm still free. There has to be these two conditions existing at the same time. What does that mean? It means that our connection will be in such a manner that it does not obligate me to really belong and be obligated to the other; rather, I will do it through love, from my desire. I will want this connection as strong as possible, it will obligate me and everyone else, but this obligation will be happily. It will be an obligation where we'll discover this commitment where we'll see a great new profit, an additional profit, an upper profit. This is actually the next big degree that humanity needs to reach. There is actually a space open for me to feel life. After I've been alone in my own unit, I have a space to feel life at another level, at a higher level, at a global level, and without borders. I thought I was reaching no borders by not belonging to anyone and being alone, but it is the opposite here. I reach the understanding, the recognition of evil, the understanding that life without borders is actually by being connected to everyone in one system where everyone completes everyone. Then everyone will have everything, because he will be in a tight connection with everyone, and this connection brings him happiness, a breakthrough, a nice inner breakthrough to love. It opens our channels for us, and then we’re able to fulfill ourselves. From this new approach, we're coming to a need for sex that we spoke about in previous programs. We're connected in an internal emotional way with a woman, then I reach her, there is a need for the inner connection, and then sex is an additional aspect; it also connects us. It's a completion. It becomes the wrapping and not the reason. The reason disappears, then I have no connection with her, and I'm willing to separate. But here, first of all there's internal connections, then all the other things come as an addition to that. The family also comes as an addition, the kids, all my connection with relatives and people further away from me, until the entire world becomes as one family. We reach a situation where money, food, family, that we spoke about is the animal level, and through the internal connection, like a trigger, like a springboard, it brings me to food, family, sex. It brings me to the vital existence level, which is an expression of love and the need for this internal connection. Love means that I'm going to fulfill their deficiencies, and they fill my deficiencies. Then we're in the same connection like we wanted to achieve behind the screens.
I'm behind my screen, I have a printer printing my food, and from that, I reach a state with a better connection without any limitations. It becomes not how much you're connected to others, but rather the connection without borders. And not just without borders, but the connection itself disappears, because we become one. So there's no connection between us. There's no you, me, and something connecting us; rather, you and me become one. That's what we reach. That's what we reach, and then it turns out that from there, we start to build all of our relations to our relatives, family, to sex, to nature, and then we reach a new life, the planet, the universe, and everything that's being revealed. In other words, the main thing is what happened here is that we are egoistic with the egoistic type of connection between us. What does egoistic mean? It means personal consumption; each one is building himself on the account of others, and how much is received from everyone else. But now it is important to me how much I give to everyone. Why? Because through that, I'm precisely feeling that I belong to everyone, and then I feel that the filling of others becomes my filling. This is how I fill myself. I tried to fill only myself, and I did it with all kinds of things; I was in my unit, my own single unit, and apparently I had everything. But suddenly, I discovered the deficiency that I don't belong to life, and that I feel a lacking, a lacking greater than the lacking in my desires, and at a greater degree now. Humanity is beginning to feel it, and that's why they're desperate. That's why people are choosing suicide and drugs, and precisely in those same developed societies that are capable of giving everyone the ability to be independent, alone, and as much as possible disconnected from others. Precisely in those societies, we're beginning to discover desperation, divorce, and lack of choice; they have everything, and they have nothing.
This new space, this new lacking is being revealed. We're trying to fill it now with virtual connections, but it doesn't work. It doesn't work, and it's still a passing thing. Soon we'll see, people will be tired of computers, cell phones, all those types of connections. They are going to understand that it has to be an inner connection, but that they're not capable of it. Then afterwards, our life falls apart. We're in single units, we're not capable of connecting, and we have no benefit from life. No benefit. It's as if I exist, but I'm already laid out to die in my unit. There's no difference then when I go past the cemetery, and I see they're building units. Imagine that you're already in that unit with your computer and everything, and you're connecting to the other units in the cemetery that are also waiting to be dead, but they're in touch in the meantime. What's the difference? So, this new space of connection, unlimited connection is being revealed, not along the communication lines, but in a manner that I have to feel. I have to feel everyone, because in that, I feel a lacking, a new feeling of lack. That is what is being revealed. In addition to that, I see that I'm not capable of filling myself with all kinds of other things anymore: with food, money, family, sex, knowledge, and that's also bringing me to destruction. There is now a need for the new, true, inner connection, and the understanding that if I am not connected with the world, I don't feel my life.
Through this virtual connection, we can gradually reach a state that the entire world becomes our field for feeling life. Today, if you don't hear the news, you don't know if you're alive or not. If you don't feel what's happening around you, you don't feel alive. It's just the beginning of this new space where, if you're not connected to others, if you don't feel what's happening in them, you don't feel life. Animals don't need this, but a person does. It started a long time ago; it's been thousands of years in development. This is culture that through this, we want to pass on feelings to one another, and everything that humanity has.
Oren: Can I stop at this point for a moment? This feeling, that if you're not connected to others, you don't feel like you're alive. You feel like you're living in a…
Dr. Michael Laitman: It hasn't really been revealed.
Oren: You feel like you're living in a grave, even though it's extreme, it's clear. The feelings are very clear. I can say for myself, as someone who has a family, a father of 4, there are many moments in my existence within the family, whether at home or not, it doesn't matter, from the perspective of my feelings where I have a family and everything's fine, but inside there is this feeling of isolation. Precisely from this isolation, I want to ask, “What is the feeling of the life that you are describing, this that I don't know how to put into words?” I feel I'm missing something, but I don't even know how to say what I'm missing. It sounds like it's in that direction. I have kids, I have a wife; everything is fine. I have many moments in life where I feel that this connection, the feeling is that this could have provided me with some standard of life, some sort of nurturing of liveliness a thousand times more than it gives me now. That's why I stopped on the sentence. Where you said you feel that in this connection, like you are connected to now, “What do I get out of it?” You feel that, even though you have your corner, you don't have life there. What does it mean that I don't have life there? Do you understand what I'm asking?
Dr. Michael Laitman: You cannot determine what you feel that you're missing. It's not life with the family, it's not life with the wife, it's not with the parents; you feel that you are empty. You go to work, you come back, and you are going around just hanging around like everyone. The benefit from that is that you are not seeing that your ego is growing and asking you what the point of life is, and you are not finding taste in life. You're gradually developing all kinds of vacations, hobbies, sports, music, theatre, movies, TV, etc. Look what we're developing. It's all to fill a person with the feeling that he's alive. It’s according to his needs, and even above his needs. Before the needs that are being revealed, there are people that are worried about what else will fill them, and we see that it doesn't work. Humanity is declining, because it's not capable of supplying. We're just filling people. We are a desire to receive, to enjoy. I need to receive filling that is called pleasure, and we're not capable of receiving pleasure. You come to me and say "What are you missing in life?" You work, you make money, you go on vacation, you go for weekends on trips with your kids, you go to restaurants with your friends, with your relatives from home, and you have at home everything a modern person has, two cars for you and your wife. What's missing? But if you really make a proper calculation, then you feel that you're missing something. What? You can't put your finger on it. I'm missing a feeling of life, a feeling of filling, or in other words, pleasure. Pleasure is what I'm missing. Pleasure is a word sort of like an ugly word, "He wants pleasure." Yes, I want to enjoy at every moment. It's hard for us to imagine that at every moment, I want to feel that I'm enjoying, that I'm happy all the time. I'm not used to it, I don't know. I don't understand. How is it possible to be happy all the time? It's disgusting. Maybe I need to be a bit sorry about something to feel even greater happiness, a bit of hunger, and then maybe I'll have an appetite. I started to enjoy, and I'm already thinking how I'll be sorry about something, so that I can even enjoy it more. We're not used to enjoying ourselves, and this is the problem. This is what awakens in a person, and then he says, “I'd rather die.” You see how many people are committing suicide, "I'd rather have drugs; bring me something." You'll soon see how, like today, we don't allow people to smoke, I'm telling you it's just a preview for the fact, soon drugs will be allowed in society. It's a trend that is coming. What does a person need to smoke for? He should smoke something serious that will disconnect him from life, give him a feeling of filling. This is how it will be.
Nitzah: I want to talk about how I felt through this whole description. Actually, I felt that at someplace, you switched a disc in me. Because I always had in my head, there's an expression "free and happy," but when I translate it inside, “free,” “Free is completely alone,” like the song. Now you say to me that "free" actually means to be connected.
Dr. Michael Laitman: Like that free person was thousands of years ago inside his big family.
Nitzah: So now you changed it in my head. I don't feel it in my heart but in my head. You switched my disc. Free means to be connected. I feel this emptiness, Oren spoke about. I feel that this aloneness is not good for me, but I still don't know how to actually enjoy the family connections. How can I enjoy it? Apparently it's the same connections that I ran away from. How can I suddenly start to enjoy these connections? What suddenly changed inside of me or in my attitude, from a state where I ran away from the family, to a state that I'll suddenly start to enjoy them again? How will this happen?
Dr. Michael Laitman: If love will be before everything else.
Oren: What does that mean?
Dr. Michael Laitman: In the past, it was an egoistic need, and now it needs to be an altruistic need. We connected to families. The sex we spoke about before, and in sex we already verified this, that if we come with love first, then it gives a good addition. The same thing here. We connected through family ties from a natural urge, and from public opinion, because of the natural urge or through the ego, and in accordance with that, the public opinion, and pressure on the family from the environment. So the term “family” at this time is coming apart. It is distancing. It's become like light switch, “Yes, no, maybe in some manner; I can live here, she can live there, kids somewhere else,” and it's called family. In other words, these are very light things coming loose. It’s not the same as the term that used to mean being at home together, and everything is connected. I’ll say it like this, we can return to the family issue, if we develop, first of all, love, but love as we spoke of,…
Oren: We want to learn each subject as standing alone, so we'll go back to the family issue if we are starting with love.
Dr. Michael Laitman: …and love that is not dependent on anything. What is it for us? Love not dependent on anything is a very high spiritual manner, but we are talking about corporeal. Love not depending on anything is that I first begin to recognize the person according to our mutual ability to fill desires and spaces, one inside the other. That I, through real exercises, begin to see myself in him and begin to feel to what extent I enjoy filling him, and how much I enjoy opening myself to his filling of me, pleasuring me. That actually has to exist before any other connection. As we spoke before, I reach the same connection as with a woman, we're connecting like this, and it's of course through workshops and the new education, everything we do is there. It truly has to work in that manner. It's not that a person can do it himself, clearly. We can already do it a little bit; we can shorten things. We can talk about what connection is, what a seminar and workshop is. We're talking about what connection is: how to open the other person, how I open myself, how we can connect, how we distance ourselves or how we get rid of a person's external form in order to feel his internal part. I precisely want to know his character, inclinations, desires, all the internal things in him that he himself doesn't know, but together we check him, and together we check me, and together we learn how we fill one another. When we see that in this manner we can connect and develop, and we start to feel some type of new fillings. The pleasure we spoke about before; I begin to feel a new pleasure here, a new kind of filling that is much higher than anything we had through food, family, sex, because here, I'm opening a new space, a new desire that I can fill and enjoy. I can fill it and enjoy it, and I can enjoy filling it. Love is actually starting to work here, like with our children and what we feel now in our situation in this world. Then if we can advance in a mutual manner that is already called a foundation for a family. That is already called a covenant, the chuppah, the wedding, the contract, the ketubah. What is a ketubah? We want to make the connection between us blessed. What does it mean blessed? To bring it to mutual bestowal. That's called kodesh, hashba'a, bestowal, mutual bestowal. Then, in the connection between us will suddenly reveal desires, mutual desires, and mutual fillings; new fillings that are called shechina. Man and woman, there is divinity between them. It’s a term.
Oren: I have a technical question. This connection - this decision to connect - first of all, I can't go back in time. I'm assuming that I can go in a new direction and a new approach to the connection between us, even if we're married and have kids. It doesn't mean that I have to go back to the ketubah, and go back to the wedding and everything; rather, we're doing it now, and it will be the new foundation. You mean you're starting from the relation between us as a foundation for the new relationship.
Nitzah: You mean that the basis for a good family relationship first and foremost requires a good connection between the parents. It's between the couple.
Michael Laitman: Yes.
Nitzah: Because let's say we already created a family, and we're parents. In other words the kids learn from the example. So first of all, in this process of being a parent - for me to be a better parent I have to work on the relationship with my spouse and only from there start to develop it with the kids? You won't know where to learn it from.
Michael Laitman: Towards the kids, you have a natural attitude, but to create mutuality with them, that they'll be connected to you properly, and you to them, you need to pass this from the living level.
Nitzah: From the animal level - from the natural level that I did it without thinking?
Michael Laitman: To the degree that you build with yourself.
Nitzah: So we can say one is unconscious and one is conscious.
Michael Laitman: Yes, yes.
Nitzah: So in a conscious manner, I start to build some process where I start to look at the family ties in some other form that I'm not aware of. Now when I look at this system as a family - a family as a type of system - first there's one relationship, and from there, you get other connections. Each connection has a different character.
Michael Laitman: We spoke about this. Why a couple? A couple is a unit that becomes one through this mutual connection, and then in that, they cause the connection of all of humanity. They start with a couple, and then they have an example how to connect to everyone the same way. Because it has nothing to do with the couple. It's not our intimate connection. With our intimate connection, we see how we can be connected with everyone in the same manner. Because it doesn't really mean we have to have kids, sex, and a family. It's a connection in one heart.
Nitzah: Ok, now you described a situation that if I know how to connect with my partner, then I can connect with everyone.
Michael Laitman: But, with kids, it's in circles: kids, parents, relatives…
Nitzah: But in a family, there's some type of role for each person; rach gets a different character. In each family let's consider the principle of equality: how is it expressed in a family? There some type of hierarchy. Not a little bit, there's a lot. Compared to the hierarchy that you explained before. In the old days the roles were very, very clear. Part of the process of where everything began falling apart, we lost our roles in the family. So as a result of different roles, we have types of connection that have different attributes. How do we learn the different connections of these individuals in the family? I can even say, I feel toward one child one thing and toward another child, I can feel something else. How do I begin to build these connections in the family? How do I build them? I'm looking, and I'm seeing…
Michael Laitman: You're not looking, you're doing workshops.
Nitzah: What's the first thing, the foundation that I need to do as a parent?
Michael Laitman: There's no parents here, there's no kids, there's nothing, everyone's equal.
Oren: Wait, who is taking part in the workshop?
Michael Laitman: Everyone of all ages. Everyone in the family. The soul has no age.
Oren: Why did you say that by the way?
Michael Laitman: Because this internal part of us that's born in the mutual connection between us, this common desire that we are filling - her and me and me and her - we are connecting this way as one. This is called a soul.
Nitzah: In other words, our workshop is a family workshop. Not just for parents?
Michael Laitman: At the beginning, it's between the parents in order to understand this technique. They go to external workshops that teach them, because they don't know how. They learn there, and after they found a connection between them, an internal connection that works more or less in all the events they are going through in life, this same external workshop then teaches them how to be with kids. Even though it's with the kids, they have to be with them at the same level.
Oren: I'd like to stop on this for a moment, even though it's not according to the order. I understood it this way. There is a principle; it's like an umbrella principle that you named in three words. First, love. If first of all Love…
Michael Laitman: What’s the reason for the connection? First of all the reason was the ego; the aim to take advantage of everyone for myself. We reached the evil recognition; I am sitting in a single cell, and I have nothing. I'm empty; it's like existing in a grave. We need to come to another connection, not in an egoistic manner but in giving. There is nothing apart from these forces in nature. There is plus and minus. That's it. There's nothing else. How do we reach a true connection through giving? That's what we began speaking about, and now we are talking about this giving; I move toward her in a connection, in a connection I want to fill her: what does she need, what will be pleasant for her? To love means to make the other one feel good, pleasant. She feels that I always want her to feel good. For her, that's what it means that I love her. But she also has to wake up from her ego, and relate to me in that same mutual way: to understand what I want, to hurry up to fill me, to fill those spaces, to fill those desires. The fact that one is filling a fellow man's desires without any demand in return, is called loving them. And through this mutual inclination, we get so close to one another that it's like I'm going into her, and she is going inside me, and then we become one. And they’ll be man and woman.
Nitzah: And how do the kids come into this?
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Michael Laitman: Hang on. After us understanding, spiritually one another, soulfully we do a workshop with the kids. Gradually, what we went through ourselves, we begin to do with them.
Oren: What do we do?
Michael Laitman: First of all, kids can be in external workshops by themselves to develop them slightly. But we teach them how to connect correctly to one another. We're all friends, we all sit together: the mother, the father, whoever. The smallest is apparently the biggest, and whoever is the biggest, is the smallest. Whoever the father is serves everyone, and whoever the mother is looks after everyone, even though she is also controlling.
Oren: Hang on, I lost you. I got so excited. Everyone is sitting together after the mother and father started to love each other.
Michael Laitman: The laws of the workshop is that there is no big or little person in the workshop; everyone is equal - everyone is equal. We can feel ourselves higher or lower? Lower than everyone. Once I can feel that I am saying what I think, and another time, I receive what another person says, so I'm less than him. And this is how we reach an equal place, compromise. Everyone starts to develop his sensitivity to others. We don't cut each other off, we don't argue, there is no discussions back and forth; rather, we agree, we agree and we complete, we complete until we begin to find in this some type of inner flow that truly can be in agreement. From our work in agreement, from our effort, we reach connection, more and more internal. Through this connection, we reach the point where everyone begins to feel the other inside. We try to fill our fellow man. It's not really our fellow man, it's the wife and kids. You are filling them, you try to fill them, you show them that you are filling them; you are trying to, and they do it back to you. These exercises reach a state that's called love between family members. Not between husband and wife but between everyone, and then this connection, this mutual connection that's been born, is called the family. If it doesn't exist then there's no family.
Nitzah: In other words, it's really nice what you said. The connection is born; you have a family. The fact that I have a physical family does not mean I have a family; it's just at the animal level. The connection that's created - I want to verify a point that I didn’t understand – as you said, once everyone is equal is once I'm big, once I'm small. I translated it to myself like this, correct me if I'm wrong. I felt that when I'm big, it means that now I'm talking and everyone is listening to me in the group, and when I'm small, means actually that when my son is talking, he is the big one. I am listening means that I am small toward him. Is it right that translation?
Michael Laitman: Yes, and it is the same in your relations with him. He is great. If he demands something, then he is bigger than you. If you are serving him as a mother, then you're smaller. It happens this way, and at another time, you tell him what to do, etc. We're always in these relations from both sides.
Nitzah: But organize my head, because when I talk, I'm big, and when I'm listening I'm small. That's why it's called equality, because each person actually has value. The minute he's the spokesperson, then the role of the rest of the people in the family change. What I am listening to is a small person in comparison to him. What I have to do to listen to him is to make myself smaller. I think I'm smarter, I think I know more, I think I have life experience as an adult, but I allow him to express himself; I put myself on the side, and consider what am I listening to now?
Michael Laitman: You want to buy his deficiencies.
Nitzah: What does that mean?
Michael Laitman: That you'll want to fill what he needs afterward, so you'll need to understand what he needs. When I make myself small, in that way, I can get into him; I'm cancelling myself. I'm going into him. it's like I'm going into the deficiency, his desire, and then I see and I feel what he really needs, what he is demanding, from what he is suffering, and what is happening with him. That's when I'm small. I can go into him and acquire his deficiency. When I make myself small, he talks to me. He also discovers, reveals, that same deficiency, and opens up more. Then I become big toward that deficiency of his, and I go and I fill it. So one time we're small toward others, sometimes we're great toward others, and from there, we have a mutual connection at an equal level. We're all equal. In what are we equal? By the fact that each of us wants to discover the other’s deficiency and wants to fill these deficiencies. Then we're all equal. Once we're smaller than everyone, and once we're greater than everyone.
Nitzah: When you described it, I'll explain the feeling. Let's say I'm making a comparison. Let's say there's two adults going through this process. Let's say I can be listening to Oren, and Oren can be listening to me, but we're coming from some place where I can say we're equal. We're both adults. We have life experience. When I look at a child, let's say 4 or 5, naturally I have more experience, I understand more than him, he's very small, so it's more difficult for me to be small and to listen.
Michael Laitman: You're smaller than him, because you also have natural love toward him. You're listening to him very closely. You're listening to him very closely. The smaller he is, the more you're listening for what he wants. As in a baby being held, what's the mother looking at all the time? What does he want, what can I give him, or what can I do for him? Maybe I'll give him something else. She's looking at him the whole time.
Nitzah: So is she small or big?
Michael Laitman: She's small.
Nitzah: But I'll tell you where the problem always is. I'll tell you from my experience.
Michael Laitman: She controls it.
Nitzah: But I'll tell you what the problem is. I'll tell you my experience. He's small. What does he know? What does he know about what he wants? I know what's good for him.
Michael Laitman: So fill it up.
Nitzah: But then I see many times that it's a mistake, because it’s as if I think I know what's good for him.
Michael Laitman: No, no, no, no. Here we're talking about good, correct scrutiny, and if you are entering into a state that you nullify before his desires, you don't want to feel yourself and your criticism and nothing as you're saying now, rather only his desires alone. Otherwise it isn't called love. Love is that I'm filling up what he wants, not what I think he needs. Don't be the kind of mom that is like a dictator instead of a mom.
Oren: I have a question.
Michael Laitman: Yes.
Oren: You've explained here the manner by which they're approaching the family workshop.
Michael Laitman: Yes.
Oren: However I didn't understand, and I want to realize it. What’s being talked about. You didn't say the topic. You explained the technology and relationships between us during the talk, etc., but when sitting down, what are they talking about?
Michael Laitman: Anything you want.
Oren: Give me an example, please.
Michael Laitman: Whatever is of interest to them? Relationships between friends, TV shows, soccer, it doesn't matter what; rather, we're talking about the attitude, our attitude to those phenomena. I understand that with kids it's a bit hard. Yes, they don't have a big, broad world with such emotions, however in their attitude. They also can't open themselves up, they're not psychologists; it's hard for them to explain sometimes what they want. Yes. But we're talking about the games and what occupies them.
Oren: Something from their life.
Michael Laitman: Yes, from their life. But we want to enter their life in a manner that is truly equal.
Oren: What does equal mean?
Michael Laitman: Like them.
Oren: What does that mean?
Michael Laitman: I receive the desires he's telling me, because we are working with their desires. The desire is still small, not ripe yet, correct; however, nevertheless, if I want to be in contact with him, I need to be on his degree.
Oren: What, for example, I'm saying, “Let's sit and share experiences about what we've been through today”?
Michael Laitman: Anything he wants. Whatever he lives. You know, the games, the issues, what is his attitude in the classroom, the courtyard, etc.
Oren: Yes, so I'm asking that we sit and talk about that?
Michael Laitman: Mom and Dad must go down to the degree of Zon in order to care for them. Period.
Oren: I didn't understand the point. I'm gathering the family, and I'm not sure everyone understands the parents’ role. I collected all the family, I myself make that connection that I'm small in order to listen to everyone, and maybe I'll lead the discussion. I'm asking, because I need to know what to do. I've gathered everyone, Mom, Dad and the kids, and I'm saying "Guys, we want now…” What I am I saying? What do we want?
Michael Laitman: Why? To talk.
Oren: Yeah, but we talk many times in life.
Michael Laitman: Okay so there will be a reason. The reason is that, mom made a nice cake, dad would buy ice cream, a drink, or Coke, or whatever.
Oren: Alright. We order pizza and coke. We're sitting all together. What's next?
Michael Laitman: That's it. Now I'm igniting a discussion.
Oren: Yes, so what am I saying?
Michael Laitman: Well, what's going on with a friend of theirs, or we start talking between us in such a way that they are listening and participating in the conversation also. Some kind of topic that relates to the family, to everyone, that is to some extent of interest to them.
Oren: Alright, so you started describing how we sit down, and what do we do? You said that the soul has no age, because the inner desire that is in everyone can be filled up only in the connection of love and is in everyone. Is it in a child?
Michael Laitman: It can be adult, but he is developed as a child, and believe me the whole world is like that. So what?
Oren: How do we succeed in this sitting down, in this discussion, this family workshop?
Michael Laitman: What, to close the gaps?
Oren: No, not to close the gaps. How do we succeed in awakening the point, the inner point that is thirsty for connection inside of each and every person? How do we manage doing this family action from this point?
Michael Laitman: That comes gradually from the talking and the listening, from within you wanting to bring in a certain atmosphere of warmth, of concern, mutuality, patience, consideration, and by that, you're giving an example. Both of you are giving an example. And the kids are very sensitive to that. All of a sudden, they begin to open up, to connect.
Nitzah: As a matter of fact, can you say that the purpose of the discussion, or any discussion that would exist, there's always a desire, or a goal, an inner desire called listening for a need?
Michael Laitman: Of course, because the whole goal is to discover the fellow person's desire.
Nitzah: So listening to the need.
Michael Laitman: Besides that, an important advice. The moment you two do not know how to start the conversation, do a workshop in your group. You will see how, all of a sudden, you will discover in a discussion between you such brilliant starting points. This becomes the wisdom of the masses in the parent’s workshop. Yes, and there won't be a problem.
Oren: I have another question. Oh our time is over. Alright because our time is over, I'll leave this question for next time, but I'd like you to summarize. Write it down at least. I have many more questions, but I'd like to ask the following. What, as our compass, is the big principal pointing to the new direction of building a family anew?
Michael Laitman: Locating families and individuals who desire to feel a warm family cell and don't know how to do that, being single parent families, being singles, etc.
Oren: This is us already. If we are a couple, and we have a family, and we want to build it anew with all the processes we studied today, give us one sentence that would be as a beacon that we know it's the right way in building our family anew.
Michael Laitman: First of all, we build the right connection between mom and dad. That is obvious in our workshops, education workshops for the family, and then teach them how to do the same exercises within the family. Or even for the kids, you do an additional course among the kids in the workshops.
Oren: Ok, our time is over. Thank you very much Michael Laitman. Thank you Nitzah. Thank you too also for being with us. Until our next time, all the best, a new life.