We do not realize that our entire worldview passes through the prism of human society. The difference between the animate level and our, human level lies precisely in the fact that we build an environment.

We used to live in herds, just like animals. But then we started organizing special relationships among us, arranging people according to a hierarchy, and distributing functions. Our development thereby took on a social character even though it still unfolded egoistically, naturally, instinctively, by nature’s command. Yet we were becoming human.

We cannot even imagine what it would be like to live completely alone, without any memories of human society. In this situation a person would live by himself, on the level of an animal.

From this it is clear that we do not perceive reality the way it is, but through the environment. Society has raised me, endowed me with habits and models dictating how to look at what is happening, how to evaluate things, and how to accept everything that I see. My mind and feelings are programmed according to the value system that society has conditioned me to have over the course of the first 20 years of my life. I do not see the world the way it is, but the picture imposed on me by society.

Likewise, in the spiritual society we have to give a person our view of the world, funneled through the prism of love, the aspiration to bestow to others instead of personal benefit. Bestowal has to acquire the greatest importance in every person’s eyes.

At the same time a person’s worldview will still be built on the program “installed” in him by society. This is natural because it is the only way he can look at the world. A person by himself is just “an observation point,” whereas the analysis and understanding come from the norms of society, which tells him: This is important and this is not, this means one thing and that means something different. It’s as if we build a matrix in front of a person through which he sees the upper Light. Otherwise it would be impossible to see it.

On the other hand, right now we observe the upper Light through the matrix of human society. This is our world.

Thus, we have to become maximally included in the group, using the materials of Baal HaSulam and Rabash. That is how we build a new vision of the world inside of us. This is seen very clearly when looking at beginners. They come to the lesson or lecture as if they were coming from another world, but gradually they adopt a slightly different direction, a different perspective, and different values. Gradually we come closer to them and they change their point of view, the “polarization” of their picture of perception. In the same world, a different form of being comes through before them.

Then the lecture ends, the connection with me becomes severed, and everything disappears. Next time they return defocused again, with a distorted “resolution.” At every lecture it takes time to focus them anew, to bring the details that diffuse in their eyes back into one.

I am unable to do this all of the time. You have to focus on your own by uniting so that every mutual action will constantly keep you in the spiritual focus. It has to become focused a bit more and then a bit more, as if you are adjusting the resolution on binoculars by turning two lenses so they would come together on the spiritual goal. When you achieve this, you will immediately reveal the spiritual world.

Everything is determined by the love between friends. This is the “focus” that enables us to see the Creator. The friends bring together my feelings and mind in one direction, toward love for the neighbor, and then demand that I look only at them and that I think only about how to help them. I constantly concentrate on this and by means of the group I focus my attention into the thinnest line. That is how I reveal the Creator.
From the 5th lesson at the WE! Convention 4/1/11, Purpose of the Group

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Perception, Society, Unity | Add Comment →