A Cumulative Process

Comment: Many people are afraid of spiritual descents because they don’t believe they will find the strength to rise.

Answer: In a group we do not fall and do not rise; we simply engage in the group. The more we engage in the group, the more intensely the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) passes through them.

When we begin to unite with other friends, arranging and preparing a connection with them, immediately amplitudes of ascents and descents happen. Suppose I want to connect with a friend and see darkness because I cannot connect with him; this says that I have fallen into egoism.

This is not about the physical ego but about the ego that appears while building the right relationships between people.

So, there is nothing to fear. Do I seem like a person who doesn’t want to live?! On the contrary, I love life in all its aspects.

The darkness that I am talking about appears as a result of despair when you want to establish connections in a group and cannot. In principle, this desperation comes from the same desire that makes it impossible for you to see the Creator.

However, it is still small, there is not enough. It must pass through a cumulative process in which you will see that you absolutely cannot accomplish anything! So you reach great despair when you realize this is coming from the Creator!

The Torah states the Creator says to Abraham, “Don’t worry, your children will go out from this world to the upper world because I will bring them to Pharaoh,” meaning an immense ego.

It is specifically the discovery of the immense ego that makes it possible for us to leave it because Pharaoh (the ego) is discovered to be incompatible with the attainment of the upper world. So it signs its own death warrant, and I must abandon it. I must leave it.
[194443]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/15/16