The First Level Of Eternity

Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: Therefore, they were certainly liberated from the angel of death, for death is necessarily an absence and negation of the existence of a certain object. But only while there is a spark that wishes to exist for its own pleasure is it possible to say about it that that spark does not exist because it has become absent and died.

However, if there is no such spark in man, but all the sparks of his essence clothe in bestowal of contentment upon their Maker, then it is neither absent nor dead. For even when the body is annulled, it is only annulled with respect to self-gratification, in which the will to receive is dressed and can only exist in it.

However, when he achieves the aim of Creation and the Creator receives pleasure from him, since His will is done, man’s essence, which clothes in His contentment, is granted complete eternity, like Him. Thus, he has been rewarded with freedom from the angel of death.

The desire to receive must only get rid of the intention to receive for itself, but the desire itself is never refined and doesn’t disappear, but acquires the intention of “in order to bestow.” If a person can fulfill this condition internally on its minimal level, on the first degree, if he wants this to happen, then the Light comes to him and illuminates on him, and makes him worthy of the first level called the gathering before Mt. Sinai.

In order to do that, he must accept all the conditions, rise above all the hardening of the heart, all the worries, and all the interruptions that were sent to him in order to attribute everything to the Creator’s dominion, to “there is none else besides Him,” and to decide that He is good and benevolent—to accept all this in faith above reason and to annul everything that belongs to him in order to aspire as much as he can for the Creator.

If a person wishes to detach himself from all his affairs in this world, not because they are unpleasant or threatening as it was during the time of preparation, but rather the opposite—when he can receive all the goodness but still gives it all up and attributes himself to the Creator—then the Light comes and builds the first level of bestowal, ofLishma (for Its Name) in him. This is called the receiving of the Torah since, for the first time, he sees how the Light in it reforms.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/13