Family And Marriage, Part 7

Go Beyond Your Ego

Remark: You said that a person instinctively experiences first love at the age of 12 or even earlier. Then for the first time one feels love for one’s children. All this in order to feel the model on yourself, how to correctly relate to our neighbor, to all of humanity.

My Comment: Yes. And then to the Creator.

Question: Are these relationships similar?

Answer: Each time they emerge at a different level.

If we are talking about children’s love, or love for children, or love for the family, then this is the natural love that exists in everyone as a bud, one needs to develop it.

If we talk about love for strangers, this goes beyond the framework of our egoism. Our egoism includes some kind of field: “This is mine, and this, and this.” Whatever is mine, I love, attract, and cherish it. I do not cherish anything that goes beyond the scope of my egoism. On the contrary, maybe I don’t need it and I don’t want to see it near me.

So, work on yourself is necessary here. Here I must see what is beyond my egoism. And practically outside of it is the Creator. As I begin to relate to what is beyond my egoism, so I relate to the Creator. Therefore, I must determine my attitude to the Creator and, based on this, relate to everything that is outside of my egoism.

Question: It turns out that if a person has a big ego, then one’s framework is narrowed? He doesn’t even feel family as his own?

Answer: Yes. But this does not mean that one cannot go beyond one’s ego. Maybe, on the contrary, in this way a person is pushed forward, given the recognition of evil.

Our movement forward is based on contraction and expansion: inhalation – exhalation, exhalation – inhalation. Therefore, if a person has great egoism and he does not feel anyone but himself, although, perhaps, he does not realize it, this moves him to deeper comprehension of the Creator.

The greatest Kabbalists, before their correction, were very big egoists.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/1/19