Inside us is a model of our surrounding environment. It is where we create and feel the environment. We receive impressions from our surrounding environment, which in turn builds its systems into the inner model that we host.
People specifically can develop inner models of their environment much more than animals. For instance, a dog can feel its master, and a cat can feel the moods of people in its vicinity. A human being, however, builds a model of the environment within that includes the universe, nature and human society. We relate to our environment through our inner model, and our environment also lives in that model. Accordingly, we interact with and feel the environment, beginning life on the human level.
Behavioral change begins from our inner models, which incorporate with and feel our environments, and which develop attitudes in relation to those models. If we are critical of other people’s behaviors, we might simply ask them, “Don’t you understand what you’re doing?” “Don’t you understand…?” means that we actually ask whether the person has a certain inner model, i.e. a set of attitudes that have developed toward people and nature, and why that person cannot understand something from the model they host.
Some people are internally deaf, i.e. they cannot build these models within themselves, and likewise they have a certain level of detachment from their environment. They do not understand what is required of them. It is like babies who have not yet developed such systems within themselves. They observe other people but do not understand what everyone wants. There are many such people. Most people live their lives without the accurate inner models of the universe, nature, society and what is required of them in this vast system.
Building accurate inner models of our environment—the universe, nature and human society—is the education we need today. The behaviors that we assume depend on the measure to which we, according to our inner models, can correctly work with them. We then realize those models in practice through our behavior toward the world. Behavioral change is thus the result of our finding the correct model of the universe, nature and human society.
Based on the video “What Is Behavioral Change?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Tal Mandelbaum. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Photo by Eduardo Sánchez on Unsplash.
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