Either Him Or Me!

How can we be taught what bestowal is? In order to do that nature has planted a desire to enjoy in us through which we learn about bestowal by its oppositeness, by its opposite attribute.

Our desire to enjoy receives certain impressions that evoke different responses in it and imprint different holes, cracks, pits, and dimples in our desire. Thanks to that, the desire begins to feel to some extent that these impressions are different in size and character, and that there is a certain connection between them that we don’t understand.

We suddenly discover that our desire to enjoy is versatile, multi-layered, and very complex, and accordingly it receives different complex impressions. Thus we learn about our nature. The more we know about it, the more we attain the opposite attribute, the opposite nature. After all, all our study is based on the clash between two opposite attributes: receiving and bestowal.

It says, “And they shall have no other Gods before Me,” which means that by studying precisely about these “other Gods,” we study about the Creator and can form His image in us. Otherwise, He has no image and no form allowing us to somehow imagine what it is, who He is, and how to discover Him.

How can we discover that which is impossible to discover? Only by negative impressions that are perceived negatively in the desire to enjoy can we gradually build an opposite attitude so we begin to imagine what the attribute of bestowal is. We cannot attain it any other way: not by using our imagination, not by our feelings, or by any action on our part that can be directly adapted to Him.

Everything takes place only due to some special force, the Light that operates in different states and evokes different responses in us. Our work is to attribute everything to the one upper force as we determine that there is none else beside Him. This, however, encounters great resistance on the part of our desire to enjoy, which until then thought that there is none else beside itself and now has to settle for this. One annuls the other, which means that an argument begins: Who will rule?

Both of these claims nullify one another: it is either Him or me! This conflict is the basis of all our states. We shouldn’t be afraid to stand between these two opposing sides and to deal with the two insoluble dominions, to endure it, to accept, and to surrender, but to attain and justify, to understand and resemble the force of bestowal. If a person doesn’t escape this clarification, but can work under the conditions of this split, the conflicting opinions and the feelings, if he doesn’t count on his animal mind and doesn’t escape from the battlefield, he receives a new mind and feelings from Above. In that case he acquires a form that is similar to the Creator.

Until then, it is impossible to understand what bestowal is. When a person finally attains it, it is called the Creator’s help, a finding. A person who accepts all the forms of work that are given to him and who lowers his head, not following his own mind, which seems to understand everything and determine everything, then he succeeds. The main thing is, as it says not to believe in yourself until your dying day, which means the death of your ego. After that you already acquire faith.
[102425]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/13, Shamati #15