Question: When I receive for the sake of bestowal, the abundance flows through me. May I enjoy it?

Answer: You do not enjoy the abundance that goes through you. It is a completely different kind of abundance, not like the egoistic fulfillment. You, like a guest, want to try a delicious cake in order to do the owner, who prepared it, a favor. It would seem that the cake should have the same taste, but it is not so.

Question: But, when I love someone wholeheartedly, forgetting about myself, this feeling emerges in me nevertheless. Love is directed towards another, but I am the one who feels it.

Answer: Yes, the feeling emerges inside of you; however, it consists of several parameters. After all, you receive the pleasure of wanting to bestow to the loved one.

Imagine this. There is the receiving desire of the Creator and the receiving desire of the creation, which is what you are. You must feel His receiving the desire, feel how He wants to bestow to you, to assimilate this receiving desire inside of yourself and to please Him.

Mainly, you are experiencing pleasure in the “head”, meaning in the desire you received from Him. So it turns out that there, inside of His desire, you make the calculation, “How can I fulfill him?—at least to the extent of how much you will involve your receiving the desire.” In other words, in your desire you feel the extent, to which you are fulfilling Him, and this is already the garment of the Light of Hassadim.

As a result, we are talking about pleasure of a very different kind.

Question: So how does separation emerge if everything is inside of me?

Answer: The intention lays out the difference between the one and the other. When the urge towards bestowing to the Creator reigns in your “head”, accordingly, pleasures become different as well.

Question: May we compare this with the love towards our own child? Do I give him a cake without even having tasted it?

Answer: No, pleasure passes through you, but now everything is defined by his desire, not yours.

Question: How do I carry out this differentiation inside between me and him?

Answer: In the first stage, we rise above our own desire and only at the second stage are we able to perceive something foreign, making it ours.

In order to please the Host, I must feel His pleasures, feel how much He enjoys the bestowal to me and what pleasure I must receive from Him. I must feel that this pleasure has arrived from Him and is gifted out of love, and not reason.

By the means of this love, He conveys to me the feeling of shame, which now helps me cope with the situation and to understand it in order to build a different relationship. I take His pleasures, I receive them for Him, but I do not make the calculation for the “cake”, but specifically for this bestowal. The “cake” is the lowest level, Nefesh de-Nefesh, and the pleasure, which I give to Him, it is the whole of the NRNHY.

Here is where one should beware not to consider oneself: “Since I am giving pleasure to the Creator, Himself! Just look at how He enjoys me!” It is here, where the main calculation is located, and not in the “cake” itself, which was given to you simply as a means, allowing you to build the connection with all of the worlds. The calculation in the head of Partzuf is directed at the relationships with the Creator.

And that is why you need to know who is the Creator, how He acts, and how to please Him, since His vessels, desires, are infinite. So how to protect oneself in such a situation? Compared to it, the direct pleasures are no more than a spark, which has created the desire, while everything else is conditioned by the greatness of the Giver.
[81523]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/27/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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