Enveloped In A Cloud

Question: What is our ego, is it a feeling or a mental perception?

Answer: We can compare the brain to a movie screen since it is actually blank. Today, for example, you seem to be ugly and disgusting, and tomorrow after a change of state, I may look at you and see before me a fine guy that radiates vitality. Does my brain depict these pictures, is it the screen? Or do I project them? My ego, my interest, depicts all these figures, but we don’t understand this until the end.

We believe that we are objective when it comes to the still, vegetative, and animate nature, but on the level of the speaking, in the relations between us, there are different variables. Generally speaking, we don’t actually understand that we are the ones depicting our own world on every level of the desire to receive.

This is why our world is called imaginary since it doesn’t actually exist. The moment you clean your ego from the perception of this world, it will disappear. And what will be left? Nothing?

So what will we be left with? Start establishing this “something” now. Start building a new world. It all depends on what you draw on the screen of your perception.

Question: But how do we draw these pictures if they immediately seem real to me?

Answer: I imagine a force that controls me, that surrounds me, that manages me and confuses me, sending me positive and negative things. This whole situation, the bubble I am in, operates on me; it is like a science fiction movie since we have to imagine something and work on something in our imagination. So I imagine a certain space in which a certain force or a force field operates. In the meantime, I cannot manage without this three dimensional illusion with the different phenomena of time and space. I am connected to it whether I want to be or not.

I imagine a force that surrounds me as if I am in a cloud. This force operates on me in every direction and in every possible aspect. Even now when I think about it, it actually operates me; I am relaxed, let it operate me. But what do I have besides this operation?

Because without any additions of my own, I can only constantly yearn for a good feeling and how to thank this force for its good care. It has created a deficiency in my feeling, a desire to receive, and I feel good in this world under its domination.

It turns out that we don’t need anything but that. The whole philosophy of the epicurean school is based on this approach. Other Eastern methods also believe in nirvana and peacefulness. This attitude is in fact the deepest since it is based both on the fear of disrupting something in creation and on the fear of cursing the Creator. So I have to constantly feel good. I constantly try to be calm and relaxed and to be happy with what I have, not because the ego drives me to do so but because of a more sublime intention. In short Abraham worked well with this approach in Babylon.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/02/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam