Question: What does it mean to choose the best environment when a person is already in spiritual attainment?

Answer: The environment is not the people around you but rather an abstract expression of your friends’ attitude toward the Creator. The environment does not sit at a table like you do; it is not in any particular place.

It is the sum of your intentions, aspirations, inclinations, expectations, all your efforts toward the goal. It is in your interest for these to be as broad and strong as possible, so that you have the strongest possible connection with these intentions.

It is a spiritual force both now and when you are already beyond the Machsom. It is just that now it is relatively hidden from you. You imagine it in some form, and every time you have different doubts and new definitions arise; sometimes you know what a group is and how you are connected to it and at other times you do not. After the Machsom, it takes on a more distinct, conscious, and clear form. Yet the work remains the same.

Therefore, even now, we must imagine as accurately as possible the sense of the environment. It is not one, two, three, twenty, fifty, or a hundred friends I study with, whose names are so-and-so, who look like this or that.

The environment is what stands behind all these people, a kind of spiritual force: an aspiration, a desire for the Creator, and persistence with which friends hold on with their teeth so as not to waste a single moment in their movement toward the goal. If they also want to unite these forces to benefit everyone; this is called a group.

It is about the spirit: that each person supports the other, and that we all drink directly from this common source of the spirit. Otherwise, there may be a billion of us, like the Chinese, but… The main thing is the spirit within the group. This is what we must care about, and evaluate everyone according to their contribution specifically to this.
[357023]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/22/26, Rabash, Letter 59, 1962

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