Don’t Slip Into The Swamp Of Life

No one can tell me what I should do. I need to clarify this and to decide by myself which goal is fictitious and which goal is real. I have to take the responsibility for the steps I take. Otherwise, why was I given this life?

My life is like being in a middle of a swamp in which there are only a few places I can step on to cross it and not to sink in. It has to be my decision. No one else can move my feet and put them in the right place.

If I slip, I will drown in the swamp of life for several decades. If this happens, I have to understand that it had to happen. I should do whatever is in my power to clarify everything in advance. If later I still make a mistake and drown for several decades, it is a sign that it had to have happened. I don’t know why and for what reason now, but I will find that out later. It is like it says about the direct and the indirect Providence, “Thou hast hemmed me in behind and before.”

Question: How can I make my own decision, if I am totally under the influence of the environment, in a spiritual society or an external one?

Answer: This is all your freewill—to be impressed by the spiritual society as much as you can and not to go around with “your nose up high,” considering yourself superior to everyone else. Otherwise you will not be able to be positively impressed by them.

But this doesn’t mean that you can come to the friends and ask them what you should do: whether to go abroad to make money or not. You mustn’t let others decide for you. Your decision has to be the result of you inner clarifications, the result of your efforts to subdue yourself before the society, which means before the spiritual idea, before the yearning for connection and unity, for advancement towards adhesion with the Creator above reason. This is what the society, the collective force, means to me. To the extent that you subdue yourself before the spiritual idea, you will decide what is important for you in life.

Then I look back and don’t see my body! It already disappears somewhere in my previous life, long since eliminated from my path. I have to provide it with some basic food and I do that. Basic necessities mean that I do something since I must, since I have to take care of the body. I force myself to think about my animal body, which is called a basic necessity. But in all my other thoughts I am in the group, in the connection, and then I make the right decision.

This connection sustains me and doesn’t let me leave. I am so strongly adhered to it that I can worry about some basic necessity only by forcing myself. We can test this by how happy I might feel if I didn’t have to take care of my body but could only worry about the group and the Creator 100%, not leaving even 1% for myself.

But when I begin to worry only about the basic necessities of my animal body, I suddenly realize that it isn’t mine! Then dealing with my body and my family become spiritual work. I felt that they were mine as long as I received some egoistic profit from them, but if I don’t receive any profit from these necessary dealings, it is simply a game that I was given, a means for spiritual clarification.
[100012]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam