About The Benefit And The Harm Of “Good Intentions”

Question: There is a new global phenomenon, a sort of “time banking.” They receive investments not in money but in work hours. For example, someone invests in hours of gardening and another donates an hour of teaching math and so on. Could it be that humanity has identified the problem of inequality, when a person’s abilities determine his wellbeing?

Answer: I don’t thing that this is the right way to go. As usual lack of understanding leads to distortion.

A professor can do things that are a thousand times greater that a plumber, for example, and a million times greater than a simple worker. He can build an instrument, for example, or invent something that millions can use.

In spiritual terms on every level there is a state of Hafetz Hessed, but these states are different and each is on a different level. You build bestowal above your desire to receive and someone else above his desire to receive. So you are not equal.

People who exchange services according to this formula annul competition and ignore the desire to receive, and yet, without which it, it is impossible to exist. It seems that everyone is generous and all is divided equally. But history proves that all the attempts to create artificial equality lead to collapse and even greater competition. So such ideas will not succeed in the long run.

The true advancement is in three lines, not in one. It is a great wisdom, which can only be received from Above with the help of the Light that Reforms. It isn’t simple. The middle line cannot be conveyed from one to another. It needs someone who understands how to manage it from Above. You connect to him and learn from him and attain his approach—only then will you be able to act on your own.

Eventually, no one will understand why the “time bank” will suddenly go bankrupt. People will check themselves and look for reasons and will then come to us and beg for help. They will understand that there is a special “patent” here, although they don’t quite know what it is yet. “You have something that really works,” they will say. “So lead us to it!”

There are quite a few such initiatives that people have to go through. Otherwise humanity will not feel helpless and will not cry out from the level it is on—like the outcry of the children of Israel in Egypt.

Then humanity will realize that the solution that we offer stems from the Creator. They will come to us because we have a connection to the spiritual root that is drawn through the wisdom of Kabbalah. This is what will attract them. Today they are repelled by it and tomorrow they will be attracted out of despair, out of an internal breaking point, when they try to reach bestowal their own way and fail.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/24/12, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”