A question I received: How can I simultaneously fulfill my desire to receive pleasure, on one hand, and identify myself with the Creator, on the other? One contradicts the other.

My Answer: You should understand that the desire to receive pleasure originates from two qualities: bestowal and reception.

If one exists within only one of the properties, then he is a “slave,” and in this case, he doesn’t even understand his actions. Just like any person “off the street” who simply follows his desires like anyone else does, he believes that they are his own for his entire life until he dies.

The Creator’s desire is being fulfilled at all times until a person reaches the condition under which a new desire, the desire to bestow, emerges among his other common, regular desires. Only after this desire for bestowal appears does creation begin to sense the Creator.

The same thing happens to us; we start to feel that besides our actions there is also Someone who acts from within us. Those two sensations allow me to realize that my desires are, in fact, not mine, but rather, belong to Him, and that it is He who placed His hand on me and makes all sorts of changes within me that I am forced to obediently follow.

At this point, I begin to relate to my current state from two points of view:

1. Recognizing that He acts within me, which is what I call “my nature.”

2. Searching for: What is His intention? What does He want? Why does He do this to me?

In other words, at the end of the first state (Alef), we start sensing Someone who created; we start sensing the root or zero state (Shoresh). At this point, the phase Alef is willing to transform itself into the state Bet (the second state) which is a state of giving, bestowal.

Now, we all are at the transition stage from Alef to Bet. Completing the transition depends upon the degree to which we feel the Creator who acts within us. From this moment on, we have to realize that all our desires are not really ours. When I feel, “I am thirsty, ” I must immediately realize, “That’s false! It is not me who is thirsty!”

It means that at each level I rise above my desire, and thus connect with the Creator who is present within my desires. I rise above it and make an effort to figure out what He wants of me. Afterwards, we can do whatever we want with our desires, but only after we observe them, perceive them, arrive at this decision, and then proceed further.

I develop the feeling that it is the Creator who initiates my desires in me and I am simply the one who automatically follows them. This stems from my understanding that He is present within me and it is He who instigates my desires and then fulfills them.

“Where am I in this picture?” This is how a person gets to understand his life in all of its complicity and realizes that he cannot be judged or rewarded and that there is neither hell nor paradise for him, nothing at all.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson | Add Comment →