It is obvious that we have many complaints to the Creator about our state, the conditions we would like, and about the host who is responsible for everything that happens to us. But this won’t help. We either agree to the conditions we have been given or we have to advance by the path of sufferings.

After all, in order to set such conditions, we have to know the whole process, the whole system; we have to understand that everything is for the best and that it’s impossible to fulfill the conditions if we don’t know the systems and are in constant concealment as we advance from the bottom up. The only thing left for us is to believe that all our work has to be done above criticism and complaints. When we look at everything from our ego, we can’t come to any other conclusion since the advancement is actually with regard to the desire to bestow and not toward the desire to receive; so in our state, we will never be able to understand how we advance.

It says, “Open a gate for me that is as big as the eye of a needle,” which means just exert yourselves a little, “and I shall open the upper gates before you.” But we have to discover the “eye of the needle” by ourselves, and it’s a very difficult task. It is because I have to lower my head, to annul my pride, and to understand that we will not be able to perceive and to appreciate anything inside our ego, but rather it is by the feeling of our lowliness, the lowering of our heads, that we begin to understand what is happening.

After all, it’s by the concealment of our ego that we begin to know the Creator who is concealed and we begin to resemble Him in some way. A mother who takes care of her baby is also in concealment from him, since the baby doesn’t know how much she cares; he doesn’t have to know either. What’s important is that the result of all her efforts will be fulfilled in him, the conditions for his growth.

But if we yearn for the Creator, we have to discover His actions with regard to us and to repeat them by ourselves. In order to do that, we have to humble ourselves like a mother who forgets about herself for the sake of her baby, or like the Creator with regard to the created beings. We only feel the result of the Creator’s care for us, but all His actions with regard to us are not revealed since we are babies who can’t understand anything.

So how can we be evoked so that we will want to know the Creator’s work? It’s impossible to know it until we become parents too. Only then will we appreciate what our parents did for us. In order for us to grow in the spiritual world and to become spiritual parents, the Creator doesn’t fill all our childish desires, He doesn’t serve us sweet porridge like a loving mother, doesn’t change our diapers and doesn’t amuse us with different toys so that we will be happy. He doesn’t spoil our desire to receive, but rather evokes different questions in us, sufferings, and unpleasant discernments with which we have to work in order to discover the reason for it, since this is how we will be able to discover His work.

If I don’t feel good, I must discover why. Of course, first I feel dissatisfaction; it’s my natural response, I resent the fact that I feel bad! The next thought is already aimed at the Creator and at why He acts this way. He is wrong; He should change! But if the problem doesn’t go away and I can’t get out of it, the blows force me to be more patient. I don’t resent this anymore; I ask, “What is the point of this kind of life?” This brings me to study the Creator’s actions.

I am told that I am responsible for everything that happens. Did I do something? All is done by the Creator! But it turns out that everything is opposite from the way it seems to me, “There is none else besides Him,” “the good and the benevolent,” and all the good that He gives me turns into many different contrasting forces within me. I don’t see that all this stems from the good and the benevolent. Although sometimes something good happens, it’s mostly bad.

I have to determine that it’s a fact that everything that I receive comes from the Creator who is good and benevolent and that there is none else besides Him. If I do that in the state I am given now, I will reach my first spiritual level. Later the same kind of work is expected of me but more qualitative and sublime. This means that our work is first to see that we are the source of the problem and not the Giver, and then to correct ourselves so the problem will disappear. The Giver, His action, and I should connect into one whole called “adhesion“. This will be the proof that I have reached an equivalence of from with Him.
[100767]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
A Violin Tuned To The Creator
The Burden Of The Efforts You Haven’t Made
Looking From The Creator’s Point Of View

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, My Similarity to the Creator, Prayer and Intention, Spirituality | Add Comment →