You are here: Kabbalah Library Home / Michael Laitman / Books / The Psychology of the Integral Society / Educational Work in Summer Camps / The Environment Works on Everyone

The Environment Works on Everyone

– Should there be permanently operating centers so children could come there, leave, and return? And should the groups that get together there be small or large?

– It is easier to manage small groups in order to teach them the method, put them in the right kind of communication with one another, for them to hold dialogues, debates, research, analyses, and “court hearings” where they judge themselves and others.

This is tremendous inner, psychological work that a young person has to perform, and it requires certain conditions. Naturally, this work has to be interspersed with physical exercise, meals, trips, walks, and so on. That is, everything has to be coordinated. We have to give them time to let out the energy that builds up inside before we can sit them down to discuss something.

This can be done outside, in Nature, during a walk in the woods, in a park, or anywhere really. Say they went to the zoo, or to a river and something happened between them—they should immediately sit down and discuss it.

And we inconspicuously videotape ourselves from afar. When we observe something special, the person recording immediately makes a note to himself. Later we will watch this part of the recording and discuss what happened, how, and why.

In this process every person rises above himself, explains why this happened inside of him, and tries to assess everything absolutely objectively, with our help. Also, every person plays various roles. All of this has to be interspersed with various kitchen or cleaning duties.

During this period we show the children that a person should try to never leave this new attitude toward others. The most important thing is the fact that this does not consider just every person’s individual work inside of him. We build the environment in a way that it influences every person and compels everyone to change. A person simply starts to feel the environment through his skin, as if he is in some kind of sphere that envelops him from all sides.

He feels the density of this environment around him and senses how everyone influences him, not allowing him to be different. That is, he is constantly held by others in a state of a good attitude to everyone, in a state of bestowal and love. They help him to instantaneously understand his inner egoistic urges and show him how to work with them.

A child sees his environment as a good force that constantly supports him like a kind mother and protects him from the inner enemy—egoism. A child has to receive precisely this sensation.

He starts to feel himself in the middle, between his egoism and the external environment. And then, like a judge, he comes to a state where he constantly decides whose side he wants to take. At every moment, he starts to feel how the opportunity of free choice, free will, emerges in him.

This is the point that nurtures the human within us, where the constant growth of egoism and the constant influence of the environment allow us to analyze and constantly choose which way to lean, with what to connect, and if we want to associate ourselves with our egoism or to embrace society, against egoism.

Back to top
Site location tree