Only 30 Minutes A Day

Criticism is allowed for only 30 minutes after a person has worked for 23 1/2 hours a day in the right line, that is, he has justified everything.  The work in the right line is to transfer our left line, our discontent, into the right line, through our efforts.

After a person has made the correct preparation during the 23 1/2 hours, keeping himself in the right line all the time and having trained himself to work in it, he should force himself to awaken the left line, the critical attitude. It is not easy for him to do this; he has already become accustomed to being in Hassadim, in mercy, merged with the Creator in the right line, and now he checks how much he can add to this bestowal for the sake of bestowal, to the small state.

One should always strive for a small state (Katnut); a big state (Gadlut) is only an addition, AHP de Aliya (AHP of ascent), that is, a tiny part of the desires to receive that can join the desires to bestow. The main thing is that a person moves to the left line not when he suddenly dislikes something, but only after he has built the right line with his efforts and has the right to awaken the left line.

We are constantly positioned against the Creator: “There is none else besides Him.” But the Creator clothes in outer garments, representing the whole of reality: inanimate nature, plants, animals, and people. We must penetrate through these garments, clothe in them, and accept and reveal the Creator in them. In order to break through these garments, we must first gain the desire for bestowal. Only then, as small additions, do we add the desires to receive to it, which is called the 30 minutes a day.

You can determine this proportion not only by time, but by weight or size. The idea is to strive for the small state, it is important, and the large state is only an addition that must be carefully weighed. We should understand that we do not work with genuine desires to receive, but weigh what desires to receive we can work with to add pleasure to the Creator above our desires to bestow.

The work with the desires to receive is much more difficult, high, and sublime than the construction of desires to bestow, the giving attitudes toward the Creator.¹
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/19, Writings of Rabash, Vol. 1, Article 30 “What to Look For in the Assembly of Friends”