Train Your Egoism To Serve You Like A Circus Lion
In order to enter the spiritual world, one has to perform a “restriction” (Tzimtzum) on one’s egoistic desires. Malchut (the quality of reception) has to become completely incorporated in Bina (the quality of bestowal) and submit to its power.
There are no obstructive barriers or curtains separating the permitted from the forbidden. There is no coercion in spirituality. There are no walls or “No entry!” signs, or situations where you want something and someone on the outside is forbidding you from it.
We cannot crush any of our desires or forbid ourselves from wanting. What we need is an inner correction within the desire itself.
The desire remains, but at the same time, we gain a new feeling that it is important not to use it egoistically. We realize that there is an opportunity to put the desire to a higher use, for the sake of bestowal, in order to benefit others.
Although the desire was created as desiring fulfillment, it can be corrected so it won’t receive anything besides what it naturally needs to consume, because it feels the importance of bestowal. For instance, have you seen a trained lion in a circus? Why is it that instead of gobbling up the trainer, the lion obediently opens its mouth and allows a person to put his arm or even his head inside? Doesn’t the lion want to bite it off? Yes, it does! However, the lion feels that this person is very important because he feeds it. Therefore, the lion suppresses its natural desire.
In the same manner, we preserve our desire to receive pleasure. It just begins to feel the importance of the quality of bestowal, and therefore, it wants bestowal to govern over it.
We are always dealing with the Creator alone. There is no one in front of us besides Him. All the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, as well as the people that appear to surround us in this world, are just sensations inside our desires. All the images, actions and situations are perceived inside our desires. They are actually sensations of the Creator, who desires to appear to us in the form of this material reality instead of letting us feel Him.
