How Do Nature and the Environment Impact Nourishing a Spiritual Connection?
Erik Bertrand Larssen, a well-known coach and business consultant, developed a methodology based on his military experience, which he detailed in his book Hell Week: Seven Days to Be Your Best Self. He identified three models of highly effective cultures: the military, business, and sports. According to him, the military teaches us to push beyond our limits to discover untapped potential, athletes show us how to systematically set and pursue goals, and sports teach that victory is achieved not in the spotlight of the final stretch but through consistent, painstaking daily effort.
However, from the perspective of the wisdom of Kabbalah, the mind merely serves the desires, and we should not attempt to go against desires because we cannot change our desires. What we can do is divide a desire into smaller parts, creating a chain reaction: one becomes two, two become four, and so on. Our main problem is in how to prioritize one desire over another, higher one, which is entirely influenced by the society around us. If we are members of a group that values higher desires over personal ones, we can more easily let go of our lesser desires in favor of their higher values.
Military, sports, and business rely on self-coercion, but I do not believe in forcing myself to extremes. The body naturally resists such states. Instead, the key is in the environment. If we join the right environment — one that knows how to motivate and influence us through subtle hints, exercises, and nurturing guidance — it can shape us entirely. Like a child responding to encouragement, we can be transformed by a society that supports our growth.
Kabbalah emphasizes the importance of building a society that supports, encourages, and cares for its members’ spiritual development. A Kabbalistic society operates on the principle of gradually bringing people closer together by rising above their small, personal egos. Its members participate in specific exercises called “workshops,” where they discuss ideas, connect, and open up to each other. This process requires overcoming one’s inborn egoism, the desire for self-benefit at others’ expense. It is like stepping into a cosmic elevator that lifts us above our egoistic nature, transporting us into an entirely different, anti-egoistic universe based on the qualities of love and bestowal instead of reception and hatred.
Through the influence of such a society, we undergo a transformation. We begin to feel as though we rise above the confines of Earth, detaching from our limited reality, and entering a higher dimension. This shift elevates us beyond the boundaries of life and death, letting us perceive ourselves not as physical bodies but as a higher unified consciousness — a soul. By rising above our egoistic nature, we rise above biological life and death and start experiencing the eternal.
The method of Kabbalah enables us to rise above ourselves, revealing the upper world and the upper force of love, bestowal, and connection, which it calls “the Creator.” It lets us break free from the small, narrow space in which we exist and transform into an eternal and perfect entity. Anyone who feels an interest in what is beyond life’s corporeal realm, and what is the meaning and purpose of life, might just find what they are looking for — and even much more — in this wisdom.