Big Soul – Big Efforts

Baal HaSulam, “Letter 11”: I will also ask that you make great efforts in love of friends, to devise tactics that can increase the love among the friends and revoke the lust for bodily matters from among you, as this is what casts hate, and between those who give contentment to their Maker there shall be no hatred. Rather, there are much compassion and love between them.

We are participating in the correction of a broken vessel, a desire that once split into many broken parts. Now we have to connect them together, and as we join them, we begin to increasingly feel the Creator.

Each of us represents a single egoistic desire. Connection with anyone requires us to be altruistic, giving, yielding, possessing a quality of bestowal at least in some way. Such connection is called “love” because to do so I must  feel the desires of another and fulfill them, and that person should also relate to my needs and mutually fill them. Our desires are clearly directed toward the Creator. Therefore, I understand my friends’ aspirations, as does each of us.

The more we unite, the more the Creator will be revealed between us. Therefore, we have to constantly think about how to rise above ourselves so that the connection between us will be more important than a person’s connection with himself.

This is possible. We just need to think about the mutual connection, to read more. This is how the surrounding light’s influence grows on us, and I begin to understand that this has become very important to me.

Sometimes our efforts take months, even years. The higher a person’s soul (that is, his desire), the lower it fell after the breakage and became very coarse and heavy. A person with a bigger soul has a harder time connecting with others because in the broken state he is further away from correction. The heavier the soul, the worse it is in its uncorrected state, thus the better and higher than others it becomes when corrected.

Therefore, one can never despair. On the contrary, more effort should be applied. In general, the work in the ten, thinking of how to reach connection and reveal the Creator in it, all these thoughts and efforts attract the light and the light corrects us.

We have to apply as much effort as possible toward attempts to connect, toward thoughts on this topic, and then we will succeed. Especially now, when many of us are beginning to feel the need to connect and others feel the necessity of increasing the importance of the Creator in obtaining the desire to bestow, we approach a state where these actions become actual and real to us.

The extent to which a person is engaged in the group, even if, due to the heaviness of his soul, he is not easily influenced, he will still advance under the group’s influence. Therefore, we have to try to achieve full connection between us and the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah lesson in Russian, 2/11/19