At The Turning Point

Shamati #1 “There is None Else Beside Him”: Rather, for those people who truly want to draw near the Creator, and so they will not settle for little, meaning remain as senseless children… And only if that person has a true desire…

Is it possible for a person to have a true desire? I must feel inside, within my belly, within my heart, and examine with my mind how much at each and every moment in life I am alert to maintaining myself for my benefit. The main thing for me is not to harm anyone so that no one will harm me. I am only concerned about how to defend myself from all the evil that surrounds me, from all the dangers and bad influences from all sides.

If I feel that I am so focused on protecting myself, I will understand that this holds my entire attention, and even my desire to discover the Creator is derived from the same Kli, from the same intention to further improve my situation. However, I am not prepared to be released from my beastly nature of self-defense.

Here, I make a decision that I must get away from it, simply to tear myself from this concern for self-preservation, and all of this depends solely on this: How much does the importance of the Creator become greater than my own self-importance? When a desire, a decision, an imperative, like this ripens and awakens in me, I will begin to hate “my body,” meaning the ego that obligates me to be concerned about my own self-preservation all the time, and then a desire, a prayer, a scream, a request, awakens within me for the Creator to change what has been created for me, and I will begin to be concerned about the greatness of the Creator—about “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”—more than myself, and I will see myself only as a means for bestowing to others.

I must reach such an inner explosion that I will be ready to do anything. This is a critical point where I decide that I would rather kill myself than live a life like this if I won’t be able to be concerned about others more than about myself. I perceive my egoistic, beastly state as being so despicable that I simply must change it.

Those of us who have not yet passed through it are very close to this turning point, and we must pay special attention to it.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/14, Shamati #1