Question: How can one use the law “Love your neighbor as yourself” in order to choose the right environment?

Answer: Baal HaSulam writes about this in the article “The Freedom.” A person must find an environment that exactly corresponds to the Hisaron (deficiency) he would like to acquire.

You see that in our lives society dictates what to do to us. Since we already have desires to enjoy, society can impose on me what to enjoy, for example, Coca-Cola. I don’t know what it is, but according to what society instills in me, I go and buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, in which there are a certain number of grams of pleasure.

In a Kabbalistic society, it is different. I must build an environment that will correspond to my expectations. If I want the spiritual world, something sublime, and society tells me that it is worth desiring, then it will thereby force me to constantly think about spirituality, and I will study the method for eight hours a day, but my request will still be in order to receive. I want spirituality, give it to me! Such a demand is not answered from above.

Of course, this is an intermediate stage, and it also exists. But the demand that is answered from above is a demand for the forces of bestowal.

Therefore, I must look for a society that will value this Hisaron. Even if I do not know what it is (I do not yet have this desire), when society begins to “brainwash me” with the message that this is very important and that this is exactly what I lack, I will receive this desire from them; there is bestowal, something that is above my nature, and that it is precisely this that I should demand.

I begin to study books that speak about spirituality, and through them I want to reveal what it is. I want it to make me feel good. When I receive this desire from the group, the surrounding light begins to shine on me and changes me.

Slowly and gradually, the group must show me what I should demand during the study, and then I will reach the desired result.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on 2/2/26, Rabash, “For Man Is the Tree of the Field – 1”

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