One of the great ideas of the Gra is that every word of Torah is worth as much as all the other commandments put together. And you can see in the Nefesh HaChaim of his disciple Rav Chaim of Voloshin the greatness of learning Torah. So while on one hand I felt the tremendous holiness of learning Torah, I did not appreciate the Litvak world [built on the Gra] as much as I should have. I saw the great advice of Rav Nahman and that got me off track to get involved in Breslov. So while clearly there is tremendous benefit in the books of Rav Nahman, but there is a "consciousness hook" by which I and others can get off track when we do not realize that Rav Nahman is one thing but Breslov is something else.
{I should add that I had a really great time in Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY. So I had no good reason to think the grass was greener elsewhere. But now that I know , at least I figure that I can let others know about the importance of the Gra and Rav Shach. --while still retaining a great deal of respect for Rav Nahman.
I also want to add here that it was Rav Freifeld of Shar Yashuv that told me to go to university. To him the best approach was half day of Torah and half day of university. But I did not listen because I felt I needed to be learning Torah all day at that point. (And after all what could I done in college at that point? I did not know of the method of learning of "saying the words and going on". So I I could do would have been philosophy which in the 20th century was a disaster or music.]
