Exchanging Despair With Anticipation

Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut” (Mutual Guarantee): With this collective responsibility, each member of the nation was liberated from worrying about the needs of his own body and could keep the Mitzva, “Love thy friend as thyself” in the fullest measure, and give all that he had to any needy person, since he no longer cared for the existence of his own body, as he knew for certain that he was surrounded by six hundred thousand loyal lovers, who were standing ready to provide for him.

There are two discernments here.

First, mutual guarantee and mutual concern free a person from worries about himself. Each one leans on others and everyone feels good. This is the “psychological therapy” to get rid of fear.

Second, we actually connect in order to be connected with the upper for ourselves. We want unity because we see it as a way to reach this connection. We always yearn upward and every action we take below should be aimed at the final goal and not for self-sedation. Different from a football team that connects in order to succeed, our connection is in order to raise us upward. Even if by that we get rid of all our problems, it isn’t the tranquility we are looking for. We are simply changing the previous troubles and the problems that push us to unite, to troubles and problems of a different quality that are created when we unite with the Creator.

This is called “upper fear,” and this is where love resides. Fear is a vessel, and love is its filling. Now I feel fear in facing the Creator, not in facing the threat of troubles, shame, despair, etc. I exchange all that to fear of being close to the Creator, to the desire to go to Him, to be close to Him in bestowal. This is my goal.

When will I yearn for it? When it doesn’t matter what is behind me, as long as it increases my attraction forward.

Thus we exchange the corporeal problems with spiritual problems called “love pangs.”

Question: But if the friends absolutely support me, don’t they extinguish my main problem, don’t they blur my desire to approach the Creator?

Answer: If I enter the group correctly, I acquire new fears instead of the old fears. No one is promising me a tranquil life; there is a restless adventure that I anticipate, which mountain climbers, pioneers, and world travelers experience. Their concern is the anticipation, they are constantly advancing toward something better; so I also feel a deficiency on the spiritual path, but I anticipate the joy, and this anticipation is better than the joy itself.

We know from experience that the pleasure disappears immediately, but the anticipation can make a person feel alive for many years. In spirituality this is really a filling, which we summon with the help of the Returning Light, above the desire to receive, clothed in bestowal.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”