Baal HaSulam, “Letter 19”: But not in one time will a person be ready for the high, sublime pairing, called complete coupling. But “only goodness and grace will follow me.” Therefore He intervenes, which is the beginning of the coupling, which means, “a righteous suffers….

The Creator wakes a person, which means that He doesn’t push him forward but arranges him by many tricks, as if flirting with him. We see that even in nature in the animal world there are mating games before the coupling. It’s a whole process in which each side has to show the other that he is ready for the connection and is responsible for it, able to care for the next generation.

It’s the same with a person who is rejected from the coupling by the Creator because he does not have a strong enough desire. A person thinks that the Creator doesn’t want to connect with him and so he suffers because he wants to connect so badly, and is so ready for it having done everything he could in order to attain it. So why doesn’t the Creator reveal Himself to him?

It seems to a person that he is ready to bestow, but we understand that he only thinks of how he can use the revelation of the Creator for his own pleasure. These are not vessels of bestowal yet. If he had a desire to bestow, his sorrow would be different. The sufferings would immediately turn to goodness, to pleasure

But “time will do what the mind doesn’t do”… If a person follows this path persistently: working in the group, studying, doing everything that he can, his successes and failures are already in the hands of the upper Providence and his only goal is to continue. He should try to make the best of every state that he experiences.

It isn’t enough to drag oneself from one phase to the next. Thanks to all the awakenings, all the stings from the Creator, and since he feels bad as a result, he must desire to run forward, to break all the barriers along the way, and this is clearly impossible without mutual guarantee.

A person thinks that he has made such great efforts and has not received any rewards yet! His great passion is unanswered, which means that the Creator does not respond. As a result, he despairs: How long can he chase the Creator without any results? Is there a limit to this or not?

He begins to ask: Where have all his efforts, all his exertion, and all his yearning gone? And he is left with a feeling of great longing. Actually we have to connect all our successes, failures, and disappointments. On the one hand, we should feel a great disappointment, but on the other hand we should rise above it in “faith above reason.”

The times in which the ego power pushed me forward are over. Now I have to break through all the hostile barriers along the way; now I have to feel how many such barriers are inside me and how to rise above them in “faith above reason.”

I have to feel the full depth of my ego, to feel totally disappointed in my powers. Then suddenly I understand that I can’t cope with these enemies and to break through, only because I am trying to do it with my ordinary egoistic powers (the corporeal mind and feeling) by brute force. Suddenly from this disappointment I see the solution and I understand that this isn’t the way to advance: I have to rise above reason and then everything will suddenly work out. This means that there must be a feeling of disappointment and heaviness in which the solution, the new approach, is born. But in order to reach that, we have to reach a full measure of disappointment.

And the one who knows the mysteries knows how much a person desires to be close to the Creator, a desire that may cease. And so the Creator increases His interventions, which means the beginnings of couplings. This is to the extent that a person can bear them.

It depends on the environment. If the environment is strong and sustains a person internally and constantly evokes him, he can go through this process very quickly and end all the preparation stages for the coupling.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/712, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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