Stages On The Way To Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn order to reach the goal of creation, we need to develop a desire towards that goal, a vessel, a place, in which we will be able to imagine, feel, and realize this goal. Everything depends on the type and the character of the desire we need to prepare.

For that reason, there is an initial stage when a person leads a beastly existence, caring only about the materialistic needs: food, sex, family, wealth, respect, and knowledge, meaning natural desires he was born with.

Then follows a stage when a person starts to search for the real meaning of life. He feels that regular earthly pleasures no longer fulfill him and finds it hard to believe that he was born to live a life like this. He doesn’t believe that the whole endless universe exists only for man to be born, live somehow, and die. There has to be a more exalted goal here!

This is a sign that the point in the heart started talking in a person, which compels him to search. Now from this point he needs to develop a whole vessel. This stage is called “a scanty and unhappy life.” It’s so even if a person has all of the material blessings, and it will not help him if he limits himself artificially, living on “bread with salt and water.”

Humanity went through several stages during its development: 2000 years times three, a total of 6000 years of world’s spiritual development. The first 2000 years there was chaos, followed by 2000 years of the Torah, and the last 2000 years is the era of the Messiah, the final correction.

That is why different laws were in effect during each time period. Each period corresponds to its level of desires: HBT, HGT, and NHY, and each level is further divided into the same levels of HBT, HGT, and NHY. This way we can divide the whole process of development into increasingly smaller stages, 6000 levels. And accordingly, we will be able to understand what changes occur in each part and during each segment of the path.

That is why during this period of time, the qualities of the souls coming into our world for the correction suit the concrete stage of development and belong to HBT, HGT, or NHY. In our time, the correction is only possible by the Light that Reforms. During previous generations, before the time of Talmudic sages, it was possible to correct oneself by restraining corporeal desires. After all, people at that time acted at the zero level of the desire to enjoy.

Of course, life is felt as scanty precisely in the spiritual sense. It can also be divided into three stages: A person finds himself in Kabbalah and at first doesn’t know what is happening, where he ended up. He studies Kabbalah theoretically, hoping to become wiser. He dreams only of his own success, augmenting his egoistic desires, until he understands that achievement doesn’t mean that he develops the receiving desires but rather that he acquires the bestowing ones.

The Surrounding Light illuminates upon him and gradually changes him. Like a penny that helps to a big capital so does he eventually begins to understand that this is not the goal and that he will not get anything this way. The egoistic form in which he tried to fill his egoistic desires becomes unacceptable for him. Now he is ready for everything just to transition to the bestowing desires.

This turnaround is a sign of the transition into a state of Lo Lishma. That is, a person discovers that he is not in Lishma (Lo Lishma), not in bestowal. Everything he did in his life, not in the everyday life, but namely in terms of his participation in the group, the studies, and different states he went through, all this was only for his own sake, consciously and unconsciously!

This is revealed to him, but to the extent that he wouldn’t get completely upset and could go on, that he would appeal with a prayer and wouldn’t run away completely. This is how a person advances until he discovers all of his desires, which depends on his hastening of time and perseverance. And most important is the support from the environment, mutual help that allows him to transition from Lo Lishma to Lishma.

This becomes possible because he has formed the vessels, the need for reaching the goal. This is expressed as raising the prayer, MAN, the desire aimed at the Light, at the Creator, the only one who can do anything, even change man’s nature. There is no other source.

When a person obtains the intention to bestow, this intention is realized in the very desires that previously were aimed only at the beastly fulfillment. Then he expected to fill them with the help of Kabbalah, egoistically, and afterwards, during the period of exile, attempted to reveal the quality of bestowal in them. But in the end, he receives an opportunity to bestow in the same desires, and sees it as liberation. This state is called Lishma, in which he becomes worthy of the true life, both in this world and in the world to come.
[93622] 

Related Material:
Life Is Good If You Know Its Meaning
Following Wisdom Or Following The Light?
The Teaching Of Exile

Discussion | Share Feedback | Ask a question




Laitman.com Comments RSS Feed