A Deficiency Without A Deficiency

Laitman_170A Question I Received: How can we feel a deficiency for bestowal if this deficiency did not exist in the Creator?

My Answer: The Creator’s desire to bestow comes from perfection. However, if we wish to remain creatures and to differ from the Creator, bestowal within us cannot come from perfection. Therefore, our need for bestowal should come from a feeling of deficiency.

Yet the need to love based on a feeling of a deficiency is not good since then it seems that I wish to love Him for the sake of creating a better situation for myself. Therefore, we have to build within ourselves a need not based on deficiency, but rather to be above our nature for the sake of bestowal. Thus the desire to receive has to remain in me, but above it I have to build the desire to bestow.

The Creator is perfect and His love comes from perfection. The creature’s love cannot come from perfection, so what kind of love is this? A person needs to achieve a feeling of “a deficiency without a deficiency,” meaning a “double vessel (desire),” so that likewise, our love would seemingly come from perfection. Then our love would be truly pure.

The whole process is already determined by the final state – the only state that exists and was created by the Creator.  However, in relation to us, it unwinds in a sequence of states, like a carpet being rolled down the stairs toward us.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/3/10, Article “Matan Torah”

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Building Your Self Between Two Magnets

Laitman_160A question I received: Why does the desire to receive pleasure have to suffer and go through so many blows in order to become the desire to bestow? If I feel that bestowal is a good quality, then why is it so difficult to give up the desire to receive?

My Answer: You feel the blows and difficulties because you identify with the desire to receive pleasure and don’t see that it doesn’t belong to you. Both the desire to receive and the desire to bestow are angels; they are Creator’s forces that are sent to you. They are two lines that come to you from Above. You need to identify with the middle line which consists of both of the lines. The middle line doesn’t belong to either of the two lines; it is when you start feeling a new reality that is totally separate from them, that is above them.

The lines are there to help you, like two distant magnets exerting force on an iron bar from two opposite sides. You are connected to these forces so that you can build a middle line as a result of their influence. You do not identify with either of them, not with the desire to receive pleasure or the desire to bestow.

The desire to receive pleasure was created by the Creator as “existence from absence,” while the desire to bestow, the Creator Himself, already “existed.” You are not connected to either of them, otherwise you couldn’t become independent. Your independence comes from building your “I” out of both of them.

So why do you feel bad? It is what causes you to leave the desire to receive pleasure, to stop identifying with it, and to be above it. First, the blows come in the form of shame and humiliation to push you away from the desire to receive because it makes you suffer. After that, the opposite is true: a person wants to grow a bigger desire to receive because he builds himself above it, like above a magnet.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/10, The Zohar

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Love That Turns Reception Into Bestowal

Laitman_166A question I received: It is written that the pleasure is in the attainment of the Creator’s properties. It follows that we derive pleasure from receiving?

My Answer: The pleasure is in becoming like the Creator. The action itself – reception or bestowal – does not matter that much. The goal is adhesion to the Creator. It is the ultimate level that I am trying to reach. Adhesion is attained through my bestowal to Him and His bestowal to me.

However, in order to bestow to one another, we need to receive from one another. Otherwise, there will not be a connection between us. And in order for us to have a connection with mutual reception and bestowal, we need love for one another. Love is the means. Reception and bestowal also are means. They all are means for attaining adhesion.

The action itself does not matter. When I love someone and this person loves me, does it really matter whether we bestow to one another or receive? We simply enjoy one another! The mother receives so much pleasure from an infant who receives from her. Of course she gives to him, but he gives her so much more. What does he give her? He only demands, screams, and soils diapers. Yet at the same time, he gives her the opportunity to enjoy. Everyone understands this very well, there is no need to explain this.

The spiritual world is characterized by somewhat similar actions that we observe in the material world. However, their entire meaning lies in the intention: why I do all these things. The action itself, giving or receiving, does not matter at all.

An even better example: A person takes a knife and cuts through someone’s stomach. His intention determines everything. If he does it in the interest of the other, his actions are those of a doctor; if he is driven by his own interest, he acts as a thief or a killer. This is the entire difference.

An action can only be evaluated according to its intention: Why was it done, what was its purpose? You keep discussing whether to receive or bestow. What’s the difference? What matters is why you do it, whether you want to give pleasure or receive it.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/10, Article “Matan Torah”

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The Mother Will Come And Feed Her Child

A question I received: Do we have to know what our personal function is in the general system in order to perform it correctly?

My Answer: You don’t recognize your function yet, but you will get to know it in the course of time. As you advance and act with a greater awareness, together with the others, your connection with them, your function, and the way the whole system influences you will become clearer for you.

You will reveal a lucid, multilayered world. Besides what you already discern in it, you’ll disclose its depth; you will distinguish active forces and learn how to trigger them. The air will suddenly become “compressed” as if filled with multiple forces, but you will know how to operate them.

You will be like a little child who discovers a new world filled with many interesting things: He can open, close, and manipulate them, and he sees they are all interconnected. Slowly, he gets a better grasp of this world. At the time of his birth, the child is not aware of anything around him, nor can he see or hear. After a while he starts to hear, see, and taste. The same happens to us in the spiritual world.

What you do at this time is called a “miraculous force” (Segula). You activate the system without knowing how you do it. Similarly, an infant screams and has no clue about his surroundings. But his scream concerns his mother and prompts her to take care of him.

Similarly, our desire, just like an infant’s scream, can affect the Upper Mother (Ima Ilaa), Bina (it is also called Ima – mother) and then she will take care of us. We don’t have to know anything else, similar to when we were little and didn’t know what exactly we are supposed to demand. We didn’t explain to our mother which bottle she had to get out of the refrigerator and to which temperature it had to be heated. We simply screamed! The same happens in spirituality.

Later on our screams become more mindful and we start demanding and striving at something more concrete. We build relations with the Upper One and gradually develop them further and further.

Lecture on Lag BaOmer 5/1/2010

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Has Anyone Called The Spiritual Ambulance?

Physical Qualities Cannot Give You an Advantage In Spiritual Development I don’t lack problems in life. Sometimes it seems that I am so sick and tired of everything, I have no desire left for any of it. Thus, I have to set aside for a moment all that is animalistic and earthly and discern the most important thing: What are my current relationships with those around me? I hate them, I don’t care about them one bit, they might as well disappear for all I care… This negative, which I aim at the environment, is my evil inclination.

It is being expressed as a result of the breaking of our souls: We were once united, but now we are discovering the reverse – total disconnection. This discovery is extremely important; it is what I need. I mustn’t discard these negative moments, but collect them. They show me how much I hate others, and it’s wonderful that this is being revealed! Yes, I hate them and scorn them, they make me sick to my stomach, we are mindboggingly distant from each other – and that’s wonderful. Now I have an opportunity to begin the correction.

Thus, I start moving toward them. I make efforts, participate in the study and dissemination in order to feel out at least some sort of connection, to bend down anywhere I can. If I feel that today I am powerless even to look at my friends, then I have to take on some sort of mechanical work that benefits the goal, until I gradually return to the general flow.

Every person can be cast down into a state from which he cannot rise on his own. That is why he is simply obligated to receive support from his group and from our entire world community, like someone who has lost consciousness and needs outside help.

On their part, the groups have to identify these cases and immediately offer emergency, professional help to the "victims," like doctors that save the patient’s spiritual life. When doing this, we don’t "stomp out" the evil in a person, but offer support in order to awaken him and bring him to the middle line, which will build him up. Then all the evil will turn to goodness.

From Lesson 5, World Zohar Convention 5/8/10

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