There’s a story about a man who was lowered down a deep shaft, lower and lower, until the darkness was so dark he could touch it with his fingers, the damp cold so damp and cold it seeped through his bones and made them shiver.

Finally, without warning, he hit the hard rock bottom.

When they pulled him back up, they asked, “So what did you find down there?”

“It was cold,” he answered.

“What else?”

“It was dark,” he answered.

“What else?”

“What else do you want?” he answered. “I hit rock bottom and it was cold, dark and full of dirt!”

“We know it’s full of dirt!” they retorted. “It’s a mine! Now, where are the diamonds?”

If you read the introduction to the chapter on Tikun, you may have already figured out the story. It’s about us, about how our souls come down to a fractured, light-deprived world.

If you don’t know why you’re here, sometimes all you can see is dirt. And there’s no shortage of dirt in this world.

But if you know you’re here on a mission, the supreme mission to rescue the lost divine sparks and repair the universe, and if you know that the most brilliant, precious stones are to be found in the darkest, deepest places—then the dirt becomes almost irrelevant. All you see are diamonds.

The first place to look for those diamonds is in your own home. Then in your community.

Once you can find them there, you’ll see diamonds everywhere.