Kabbalah Today Issue 24 Kabbalah Today Issue 24

AUTHENTIC KABBALAH KABBALAH T DAY ISSUE #25 A PUBLICATION OF THE BNEI BARUCH ASSOCIATION FOUNDED BY DR. MICHAEL LAITMAN adults demonstrate and explain. Adults have always created various means of development for their children, such as games, toys, playgrounds, music, and books. Children naturally explore their small worlds by taking apart and reassembling their toys in an attempt to understand them. By engaging in these activities, the world begins to take form and make sense. In this issue: p.2 The KabbaliSTic neW year guide to Spirituality p.3 climaTe criSiS: Who can Save The planeT? hear me? by Dr. Gene Shklover Mother Nature has prepared a unique path for our development. Just like parents help a baby develop in this world, The Book of Zohar teaches us how to develop in the spiritual world p.6 men and ShoeS Won’T maKe you happy p.7 The beST giFT For your liTTle oneS p.8 KabbaliST anSWerS your QueSTionS Mother Nature created an innate program for parents and society to ensure that each new generation will grow up prepared for the demands of the world we live in. We are instinctively driven to teach our children everything that we have learned. However, unlike animals, we cannot give our children, right after birth, all the necessary information, education, and knowledge for living in our world. We cannot help them develop the entire spectrum of feelings and reactions all at once. It can only occur gradually, through a step-by-step process. Our children accumulate greater feelings, impressions, and knowledge as they slowly go through their maturation. Through the course of 20 years or longer, children develop into adults. p.4 maJor Tom, do you p.5 diScover Kabbalah www.kabtoday.com A baby is born into this world tabula rasa (Latin for blank slate), without any knowledge aside from its ingrained genetic predisposition. Then he begins to instinctively acquire impressions from his surroundings and to distinguish between warm and cold, dark and light, and to recognize different sounds: mom and dad’s voices, footsteps approaching, silence, and so on. Gradually, he begins reacting to stimuli such as ambiance, sounds, colors, and light; and eventually he starts reacting to its mother’s actions with laughs or cries. Soon, a baby begins to actively explore the world, and then he is unstoppable. He grabs everything and tastes it in his little mouth, crawls everywhere, demands to touch and feel everything, and opens his small, curious eyes trying to grasp whatever his mother tells him. A baby doesn’t understand these things, but he gazes at his mother and radiates happiness. As the growth continues, the baby begins to differentiate various feelings in each of his senses. Although he does not have full awareness of what is happening, his naturally embedded instincts make him continually more familiar with the world. Through all these experiences a baby begins to think and to build connections between bits and pieces. He begins to understand and have greater demands. In our world, children develop through the impressions they receive from outside influences, initially from their parents and older siblings, and then from the models of behavior that SpiriTual birTh A similar process happens when we are born tabula rasa into a different dimension of our reality—the spiritual world. We cannot comprehend anything beyond our routine physical reality, and thus, we need the spiritual father and mother, surroundings, games, toys, teachers, education, and explanations to help us become acquainted with and develop in the spiritual world. The great 20th century Kabbalist Baal HaSulam writes in the article “Body and Soul,” that as no person can exist without information about the world he lives in, so a soul cannot exist in the spiritual world without receiving information about it. Our spiritual advancement cannot occur without receiving various new impressions. Initially, we may not understand them; thus we may feel as an infant, yet these sensations will “fill us up” and cause us to grow. continued on page 2