Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself?“

As much as we depict the extent of our love for ourselves, we need to love others to that same extent.

The more we develop, the more we perceive “love your neighbor as yourself” differently.

As the human ego, the attribute of self-love, constantly grows in each and every person, then the more we develop, the more we love ourselves.

Our self-love should then serve as an example for how we should love others.

The path to reaching “love your neighbor as yourself” is thus a path that has a necessary first stage, which is defined as “don’t do to others what you hate.” By exercising not doing to others what we hate, we gradually learn how to rise above the ego that separates us from each other, developing the quality of bestowal above our innate quality of reception, developing our readiness to reach the sublime state of “love your neighbor as yourself.”

In other words, “love your neighbor as yourself” is not merely a pleasant slogan, but a state of absolute positive connection above the ego, where we perceive and sense a completely different reality to the one we feel in our inborn ego.

Reaching such a state requires a surrounding society of people willing to support each other in order to achieve that goal. Otherwise, if there is a lack of agreement among anyone in such a society, where even one remains in the natural egoistic drive for self-love, it then harms everyone’s ability to achieve a common state of love.

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