Egoism That Was Intentionally Forced On Us

Everything depends on the Light that fills the vessel. The level of confidence or the level of life and vitality it feels is determined by this filling.

Baal HaSulam, Shamati, #72, “Confidence is the Clothing for the Light”: This is because the Light of life, which is a force from Above, shines on him and he can work with superhuman powers since the Upper Light is not limited like corporeal forces.

If it didn’t shine on me, I would have no chance of feeling even the minimal signs of spiritual life inside me. This means that without the Upper Light that fills me, I cannot attain or be rewarded with spiritual life.

However, I don’t have any corporeal powers of my own either. But to the extent that the desire to receive in me demands a filling, making me feel that I lack something, it pushes me and forces me to attain the desired filling. Thus, I receive the powers to attain this corporeal life.

It is the same when the desire to bestow shines on me and awakens the desire to attain spiritual life in me. This means that we need to understand and to try to feel that we carry out and fulfill both corporeal life, in order to receive, and spiritual life, in order to bestow, by the Light that operates on us and shines in the desire to receive: either for the desire to receive or against it.

The ego doesn’t appear in us naturally and is also intentionally directed from Above, and we have to see it as a special action on the Creator’s part. This means that a person should see himself neutrally, not belonging to the desire to receive or the desire to bestow.

The fact that we are in a desire to receive now is intentionally directed from Above, but it doesn’t mean that it is natural. The Creator manages us now by the egoistic force, in order to receive, on purpose so that we would want to ask and to demand the opposite force from this state, the force of bestowal. We need it in order to balance these two forces inside us and thus to acquire our freewill. The more I try to think that the force of receiving, the ego, isn’t just a natural force and not my natural attribute but that it was intentionally forced on me from Above, the easier it will be for me to ask for the power of bestowal that will balance the force of receiving.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/7/14, Shamati #72