“Does Freedom Depend On Where You Live?” (Quora)
Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Does freedom depend on where you live?“
Freedom does not depend on where you live.
The environment you live in is given to you from nature, i.e., from forces outside of your control. You do not choose your environment, just as you do not choose the society you are born into, the upbringing you receive, and the values you grow up with.
We can realize our freedom according to a single condition: freedom from our egoistic human nature. We can free ourselves from nothing else.
Freedom from our egoistic nature means living outside the laws and constraints that our egoism dictates to us at every moment, i.e., the urges of human nature from within. It is possible to realize such freedom if we prioritize benefiting human society over self-benefit. In other words, freedom comes from rising above our egoistic nature that automatically and constantly functions in the direction of self-benefit, in order to benefit others.
When we live in the desire to benefit others, we rise from the egoistic level of life to the altruistic one, and then we gain access to the flow of nature in its perfection and eternity. We thus also feel ourselves as perfect, eternal, and free.
Realizing this shift in consciousness depends not on where we live, our nationality or gender. It depends on how we each organize ourselves to rise above our inborn egoistic nature.
Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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