With the appearance of the screen (Masach), the order of desires, actions, thoughts, and intentions completely changes. The Direct Light and the Reflected Light, everything becomes completely different; everything follows another design, another purpose, another scale of priorities.

Now, I am no longer concerned with my own “stomach” that I used to fill by consuming everything around me. I value something else: how to bestow, how much to give, and to whom I bestow. Previously, I felt fulfillment in me, and now I do so in the other. And that is what governs my actions.

Let’s take an example: I am preparing a feast for a friend who is flying from overseas. For myself, I would make something totally different, but suppose my guest is Chinese or American. So, I cook what he or she likes although it doesn’t match my tastes at all. All my desires and abilities, all that I am, I focus on my guest, with love and from the bottom of my heart.

Imagine to what extent I have to sacrifice what I like and am accustomed to so as to do it all for my friend, to please him, “insert” myself in him, and settle there. Instead of each of my taste buds, I have to acquire those of my guest’s, and instead of my habits I have to assume his. I need to transform myself into him or her.

Try to sense what a Reshimo (informational gene) which used to be my own and with which I now must work for the sake of another is. It isn’t easy at all: I need to get to know a person, study him, and come to love him so that by faith above reason, without liking his tastes, I still do it. I rise above my desire and enter his. I live in him, in his throat and stomach, everywhere where my cooking will echo in him. That’s where I settle in and verify the result of my action.

So, a Reshimo is an extremely important thing. The previous state left in me a Reshimo which is deprived of image, contours, and isn’t clothed in any particular form. And this is precisely why I can add a new direction to it, a new form that derives from me. Before, I enjoyed to please myself whereas now, in the new form, new connection and new direction, I wish to please the other person.

Everything is aligned with him, in his direction; everything is experienced within him. And the previous Reshimo is a mere basis to get to understand how I used to please myself and now I wish to please him.

This will require much multifaceted work before it can be accomplished.
[34429]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Explanation of the Article “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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