Giving Is Life, Receiving Death

Laitman_053_06The Creator begot the creature from the desire to receive pleasure. But He had to instill sparks of bestowal into it so that the creature could exist and develop. In addition to receiving, the creature should also bestow since the force of life consists of these two parts: consuming and giving.

Life amounts to clarifying what is bad and good for you, to rejecting the bad and attracting the good. Any living creature – of vegetative, animate, and spiritual or speaking levels – acts in this way, according to its state and degree.

To enliven creation, the desire for bestowal has to be added into all of its elements except for its initial material, the desire to receive pleasure. Otherwise, it would be dead, lifeless dust. To make a living creature out of dust, a spark of Light, the property of bestowal, needs to be introduced into the desire to receive.

The intermixing of properties of reception and bestowal occurs in every “atom” of creation in the process of the soul’s breaking. Until the breaking of the vessels and the state of the First Restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph), Malchut receives the Light because the Creator gives her such a power, and not because she herself possesses it.

Only starting from the World of Atzilut and onwards, does Malchut mix with Bina and start acting herself, wanting to unite with Bina, to rise to it and become like it. This is the work of the creature itself. Until that moment, everything occurs by the power from Above.

For this reason the receiving desire became able to perform acts of bestowal only after the breaking of the vessels (desires) whereby the sparks of bestowal penetrated the desire to receive pleasure. It then also revealed how opposite it is to the Light. The breaking of the vessels is actually the revelation of the true nature of the creature, the desire to receive pleasure, in relation to the Light.

Their oppositeness, the egoistic desires property to feel and care only about itself becomes revealed. So does the Light of bestowal and love. Then the creature realizes its oppositeness to the Creator and what it wants to be like. It attracts the Light from Above in order to become similar to the Creator. Thus the work of the creature commences.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/10, The Zohar

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