Question: All kinds of thoughts and desires are awakened in me and I find myself in all kinds of states in life. If I know that they all come from the Creator, how should I react to them? How can I strengthen the link with the Creator through them?

Answer: First, if I am detached from the Creator, I must be sorry about this. After all, in our world there cannot be anything worse than detachment from the connection with him.

Therefore, I need to hold myself “on the line”, and not forget that this is the Creator who constructs all of reality for me. He portrays in my imagination this “picture of existence” that is drawn with the five senses: There is myself, the world in which I exist, and there is some kind of external force that causes this sensation for me. And so I don’t want to divert my glance from this “picture” with the three components: I, the world, and the Creator. To the degree that I relate the feeling of myself and of the world within me to the Creator, to that degree I am found in a connection with him.

In the meantime this link is not apparent, not clear, but is already felt internally. In order to strengthen it, I need a group, study, and teacher—the unique part of the reality that I can use. All the rest of reality is opposite from the Creator and conceals Him from me. It only confuses me, even though this is for my own good. In contrast to this, the teacher, the group, and the study help me on the way if I relate to them correctly, don’t make light of them, but value and respect them. When I want to approach them, they approach me, are ready to help me and influence me more strongly. Thus I also try at every moment of my life to go together with the higher power.

And the picture of reality is the divider between us until I discover its activity in everything that happens between me and the higher power. And then the entire world transforms into a bridge that links between us.

When I look at everything that happens to me, in thoughts and desires, and at what happens in the external world, I want to see the thought of creation behind all of this: Why does the Creator act like this? As is understood, He acts for my own good and helps me build the right connection. And I am excited all the time and from morning to evening go through an incessant series of exercises.

In other words, I must keep in the direction of the unity of Israel, the Torah, and the Creator. “Israel,” this is me trying to discover the Creator, and specifically by discovering the Creator, I see my goal, the “Torah,” this is the entire world that I must connect into one Kli, one desire. Gradually I discover my part and my Kli to which I relate without hatred already, but with love and empathy. After all, I know that behind them stands the Creator, and therefore these parts lose their negative character. Now I look at them like I look at the Creator who activates them in order to change my attitude.

In a form like this, I begin to love the worst things in the world, and they transform into the best means of advancement for me. This is speaking about the hatred, the ugliest events, wars, and so forth. Suddenly they transform into states that bring me closer to the Creator, and by way of them, on a background of threats and pain, I feel how the negativity transforms into a good, wonderful feeling, into absolute love from the side of the Creator. The evil transforms to good.

In the essay, “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation,” Baal HaSulam explains this transformation. The concealment adds a minus to everything, and so everything in my eyes is harmful, all people are evil, the payoff is not enough, and the family endures illness, and so on. And suddenly I see an opposite picture: Everyone is healthy, the payoff is enough, there are no enemies, there aren’t bad and disgusting people, and so forth.

Everything depends on discovering the higher supervision. It is not necessary to correct anything externally; there is only one task: to discover the guidance of the Creator.

This changes our relationship to correction from the root. It becomes clear that only the work between us, with whose help we are strengthened in order to discover the higher supervision, can change the world. And therefore, if we advance in a large group that makes massive and widespread dissemination to the degree that the Creator reveals its potential, with this we transform all parts of reality into active parts directed at discovery of the Creator.

After all, I feel the world and myself with my desire as two parts: an inner Kli and an outer Kli. And this is saying that I simply connect to myself, attribute to myself, more and more parts, in particular those that are related to human nature in which there is free choice, and after that, according to the degree of correction, also the parts of the nature of the still, vegetative, and animate.

This happens like this. First we attract to ourselves the components of the still, vegetative and animate that relate to human nature, and then their counterparts that are portrayed for us as the animate, vegetative, and still of this world are also combined with us. Thus all of reality transforms into being a single corrected Kli.

What is derived from all this is that we lack only one thing—maximal connection—so that with the help of the teacher, the group, and the study, it will be possible to make all of us as active a part as possible that is directed throughout the day towards discovering the unity of Israel, the Torah, and the Creator.

In addition to this, the Creator appoints us to correct the entire external world: our external parts, the desires, the external Kelim. And we are obliged to combine them also, to discover in them the guidance of the Creator who is good and does good, that there is none else besides Him.

Therefore, a person must seek the Creator at every moment when he grasps the end of the rope, the thought, or the desire that is a reminder of the higher guidance that he is required to discover.
[114131]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/07/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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