Question: What if the group work and studying bring me egoistic pleasure? How should I relate to this?
Answer: A person cannot make a single move without pleasure. We don’t pull anyone into a monastery; we don’t call anyone to live in a barrel like Diogenes, sleeping on the bare ground, limiting our diet to bread and water. We are talking about internal changes, which we can realize in our nature solely by the external force, the Light that sustains the life of the entire universe. Together, through our collective efforts and with correct organization, we can influence this force so that it changes the inclination in us.
Today we are approaching the moment in human development when we do this ourselves, having formed a request, prayer, intention, in advance; otherwise, the Light will do this without our request. Here we have a choice. Having realized it, we will go ahead of the wave of change, desire it, and ask the Creator to give us the force of bestowal. If we do not realize our choice, disasters will come and take it away, systematically sending us series of suffering. Then there again will be a period when we will have to understand that it’s better to head towards bestowal than to remain in reception because here we get blows, and there there will be no blows.
Thus, we begin this path with a very primitive, “cheap” degree: with the calculation of gain. After all, a person lives by egoistic feelings. Later, however, when the second force is added to egoism, something new starts gleaming between them.
Our problem is that we don’t understand the nature of the spiritual vessel, don’t see its brilliance and uniqueness. It sounds as if we just move from one power to another. “It was bad there, and I have chosen something better,” is this a choice? And what is so special if earlier, when I suffered, I cursed the Creator, and now, when I feel good, I praise Him?
We don’t feel the point of freedom hidden in the middle of Tifferet, where we can act based on understanding (Daat). After all, “Man” is the Sefira Daat. We build it on two authorities, and then we begin to understand that the Creator has given us the highest “supernatural” gift that does not relate either to the nature of the receiving desire or to the nature of the bestowing desire.
After all, bestowal, too, is the power that obliges us to obey. But knowledge (Daat), which we form between the two authorities, cancels everything. It cancels the origin of the creature, inherent in the giving desire, and the necessity to go through the receiving desire in order to choose bestowal again and then to use both of these forces….
Daat raises a person to Keter, and thus we seem to soar above the point of creation. It’s true that we act within the parameters oriinally specified by the Light. But in the point ofDaat we rise even above them as well.
Thus, a person who strives to the goal discovers that the Creator has created a special opportunity for him to rise above His own creation, ascend above the parameters, conditions, and laws acting between the two desires, between reception and bestowal, between good and evil, which leave him no choice. We rise above all this to a certain point, preceding the Creator’s decision about creation.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/2012, Writings of Rabash
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