The Breakthrough To Freedom Through The Thorns
We begin to work with the environment from a period when it seems that everything is fine and that we manage to connect with it and are empowered by it. For the time being, a person doesn’t see his desire to receive as his enemy. This period is called the “seven years of plenty.”
During this time, a person doesn’t really need the Creator, and he begins to think about Him only when despairs from this work. He learns and works with others, but then begins to understand that nothing works.
It isn’t that we don’t receive an egoistic filling. We can cry out about this from the start. What we see is that we will not be able to attain connection. We begin to realize that connection is possible despite the ego, against it, above it. But we don’t want it! So, we despair and fall. We begin to think: “What do we need all this for?”
We grow weak. We fall asleep and lose interest in everything. It is as if we cut ourselves off from life, and both the spiritual and corporeal life seem tasteless. If the desire disappears, we have no power to move ourselves. This is how we are built. The biological system works according to this principle.
A person sees that he has no control over himself. Gradually, his eyes open up, and he begins to look for how he can affect the states he goes through and advance. He understands that the advancement isn’t in feeling good, as if he has taken some drug.
This is why if a person works only in order to receive some egoistic filling from it: to know more, to understand, to feel, or to decorate his life, the Torah can become the potion of death. He checks his state according to the way his egoistic engine turns and thinks that he is advancing. After all, his ego is receiving the energy of life.
However, if he begins to work with the right environment, the Light that comes operates on him and ruins this idyll. He begins to examine himself not only when it comes to feeling good, but he also tries to find out what the result is and what he is working for.
The Light constantly influences a person. Eventually, he understands that he is working for his ego, and this kind of work becomes tasteless. He wants to rise above it by receiving new values from the Light. He doesn’t want to be a small beast that obeys its feelings: A pleasant feeling is good; an unpleasant feeling is bad. You receive a bit more energy. You rise, you lose energy, you fall asleep. A person objects to carrying on this way.
Finally, he decides that the most important thing for him is the connection with the Creator, no matter what he goes through. These are the corrections that the Light that Reforms performs in him, providing him with such values. In a way, it is already work above reason. Although it is still egoistic, in slavery in Egypt, it is just before the exodus to freedom.
Now, a person feels that he is in true exile, under the blows of Pharaoh. He begins to clarify things gently: “I am ready to connect with the Creator since this connection is pleasant, but what should I do if it is unpleasant? Will I always be able to perceive the connection with Him as good, despite the bad feeling in my desire to receive? Perhaps it is even preferable because I can be sure that I am not biased in my ego so that I won’t run before everyone like a thief and shout: ‘Catch the thief.'”
A person just wishes to work for his own benefit as little as possible in order to not receive any reward in the ego, but the Creator plays different “tricks” on him to show him that he still is working for himself. Thus, he clarifies things more deeply, until he realizes the need to rise above his desire to receive and to stand between it and the Creator in order to make decisions by himself.
Thanks to this, he acquires a head (Rosh) and a spiritual Partzuf. The Creator is the upper Light: the Surrounding Light and the Inner Light, and a person makes an independent decision with regard to it, above his feelings and his desire to receive. This symbolizes a person’s exodus from Egypt to freedom.
[76041]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/23/2012, Writings of Rabash
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