Love Isn’t What We Thought

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”: It is because, indeed, with respect to a person who is still within the nature of Creation, there is no difference between the love of God and the love of his fellow person. This is because anything that is not him is unreal to him.

I cannot feel others. I feel them to the extent that I depend on them. In other words, I don’t actually feel others, but I feel my dependence on them, how much I can lose if something happens to them.

This is the only way we calculate everything. Even a mother feels how much she can lose if her baby has any problems. This is the scale we call “love.”

“I love you” means that I depend on you. So, it is by no means spiritual love, but corporeal love. I enjoy someone and the fear that something might happen to him since otherwise I will suffer. I love someone with whom I feel good. He may be my son who gives me pleasure.

We, however, are talking about something that is totally different: about how, from the love of the created beings, we reach the love of the Creator. Although we use the example of a mother’s love in our world, we don’t know actually what love means on a “human” level.

We must develop a totally new type of love. The word itself is misleading, and we have to be careful of making mistakes. It is about a totally different relationship and discernment, about bestowal that comes from me outward to someone who is outside my feelings.

Today, I feel everyone. I feel what is going on in the world, and it is only according to the calculation of gaining or the fear of losing. The desire to receive is looking for sources of pleasure and stays away from what can harm it.

These are the only things that enter me, but I don’t feel anything that is not part of my pleasure or suffering. This is because my “sensitive material” is a desire to enjoy. It is the Masach (screen) on which the pictures of my reality are reflected. In such a display, I only can see things that are within the range of my interest, which might bring me self-benefit or pain and suffering.

There are things that I don’t feel because they don’t cause me pleasure or pain, like different fields, waves, X-rays, and so forth. As we develop, we recognize more things to which we should pay attention because they can be either beneficial or harmful.

It is the same when it comes to love of friends. We don’t know what it means and we don’t feel it in our senses. What can we compare it to? Is it bad when you are loved? It isn’t the love of the friends toward me, but my love toward them when I totally give myself to them, take care of them, worry about them, help them, and bestow upon them.

Who needs such love in our world? If they loved me and served me, it would be another issue: “I am ready to receive your love. Go ahead; who is first?”

However, we are speaking about a transition to the level of the love of the Creator, about mutual guarantee. The goal of creation is to love thy friend. Through that, we enjoy bestowal, but only the bestowal not in order to enjoy. We are bestowing against the desire, by overcoming it.

So, we must pay a little more attention to the right meaning of our work in the group. It is impossible to interpret it according to the images in our world. Closeness, love, and connection are all concepts that exist above the overcoming, above the Machsom (barrier). Until then, I won’t overcome anything, but am simply going through the period of preparation.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, “Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah)”

Related Material:
About the Value of Love for Friends
Love that Egoists Are Not Familiar With
Creation Starts Here And Now

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