Valuing The Means As Highly As The Goal
Man is naturally able to take only his own egoistic desire into consideration. Wherever it might throw him in, whatever it may give value to in his eyes, he considers only what is important to his ego. This is how a person evolves.
Advancement by the orders of the will to receive is conducted on the scale of “bitter or sweet.” Without being aware of it, a person always turns in the direction of unfolding egoism. He carries out internal orders of egoism unconsciously, having no idea where they come from. This is how we live our lives, without free will, obeying internal urges of our egoistic Reshimot (informational genes).
If a person is presented with an opportunity to establish connection with the Creator and undertake another type of analysis, on the scale of “true or false,” then in order to carry it out, he must immediately arrange support for this analysis for himself.
Support is the environment. Without it, a person will remain in “bitter or sweet” experiences forever and will surely continue to choose sweet over bitter, in various forms, according to the degree of the development of his egoism. And he will always have an illusion of advancement, although in reality, time after time, he just chooses a more refined sweet.
If a person really wants to grow toward independence, he can do so only if he counters the “bitter or sweet” sensations with the “true or false” analysis. This analysis has to be done according to the external criteria that lie outside of his egoism, which only the environment can provide.
In this case, it’s all in the hands of luck: Does a person hear what independence that he has a chance to form and implement involves? If he does, at least to a small degree, he nullifies himself before the teacher, Kabbalistic books, and the group (the environment).
He puts this in front of him, and then realizes that his advancement depends solely on the awareness of the importance of how high he elevates his view of the importance of this environment compared with the sweetness of egoistic desires.
This is the nature of our work. Is a person able to employ the power of our studies, prayer, and analysis in full and accept the view of the right environment? After all, it isn’t something external, not just the faces of the friends. He forms an internal image of the environment and is willing to lower his head before them. And then, by virtue of the environment, a person receives an awareness of the Creator’s greatness.
Initially, there are only two: a person and the Creator. And now, he starts actualizing this principle. If the environment (the means) is as important to him as much as the goal (the Creator) is, he starts working with this tool correctly.
A person’s job is to value the environment as highly as he values the Creator. And this requires constant work. If a person values the environment because it brings him to attainment of the Creator, then to that degree he advances.
Consequently, one can test himself in practice: What motivates him each moment? Is it internal urges, such as “bitter or sweet” sensations or values absorbed from the environment, such as “true or false”? And “truth” is the greatness of the Creator. That is what a person works for: the integral force of love and bestowal, which he wants to connect to until the point of total adhesion.
Therefore, the opinion of the environment has to be firm and consistent so that it may obligate each friend to remember about the goal (attainment of the greatness of the Creator) and about the means (attainment of the greatness of the group. If the environment thinks about it and places this analysis as mandatory before all of the friends every moment, thereby, it provides great support to everyone.
Here begins the mutual guarantee, and a person receives a chance to come to the revelation of the Creator.
[35286]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/2011, Writings of Rabash
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Boker tov Rav,
As it seems to a soul wandering to the next level, neither the bitter, the sweet, the truth or the false can innerly sustain it : for what has no name can not be attained and there are no names available at this wandering place: just the absence of an important NAME in balance with the existence of many attractive futile names.
But one Name can tell that soul: GROUP. All the emotions conveyed by the stars in the sky shining closely in the ever surrounding light.
Then wondrous eternity inverts it all: out of the absence, the NAME speaks out an eternal emotion and the tiny names, they makes absolute silence.
I see stars because I am gross and uncorrected. All these “stars” I have no names for them. Cant feel their reality, their beauty, their love .
A sky full of stars, its nothing (grow! grow! grow! not enough!) . Some uncorrected vision of the group. Some microscopic desires lost in a black universe of egoism.
I need to read those Zohar exerpts on the stars and the planets and the ways and the tracks.
Amazing lessons lately. The unification of the Creator with the shma I’m still not recovering from it.
There is nothing else in the world but kabbalah, but Him, to generate so many mind blowing emotions, again and again and again with apparently no end to it.
See, its 2.12 AM, I woke up at 6 AM, been working all day non stop, am waiting over reason for the morning lesson, will work like a beast during shabat tomorow until late.
Kol tuv rav
eli feruch