The Ego’s Evil Under The X-Ray Of Hatred

We examine love relative to the hatred that awakens in a person toward the source of evil: whether he can love the source of his suffering despite his feeling bad. By that, he has to isolate himself from the evil, from the place in which he feels the suffering, as if it isn’t his nature.

This is a very delicate point. In the ordinary egoistic nature I hate the one who brings me sufferings, the source of evil. It’s just as we often soothe a child who hurt himself by hitting his head on a table, by telling the child to hit the table back. It’s a natural, instinctive animal response.

But the spiritual work was meant for the correction of man, and all the corrections are possible only if I feel that someone makes me feel bad and I realize what comes to me is only love and goodness. So all the painful signs should focus me not on the source of this bad feeling but on the source of evil inside me, on the place where I feel this evil, on my evil inclination. It’s there that I feel sufferings, bad relations, and that is what I have to detach myself from, to put a Masach (screen) on, a restriction, so that eventually it will turn the evil to its opposite form.

It’s as if there is a table before me with a five-course meal and every dish tastes horrible, smells bad, and looks rotten. It isn’t just that the food is a bit salty or too spicy, but that it’s actually poisonous. I, on the other hand, have to correct my vessels of perception so that I can love this food, which at first seems impossible. In the same manner we also reach love on top of the correction of our vessels in which we feel hate.
[104123]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/3/13