The problem is that we need an inner connection between the friends and the teacher so that the external forms of the interruptions that are purposefully sent to us will not weaken, but rather, will strengthen this connection. It is indeed very difficult, since our ego depicts everything in an ugly external way and forces us to blame one another.

We cannot rise above the obstacles and external conditions that the Creator places us in so that we would overcome them by ourselves. The external corporeal picture strongly influences us and we cannot leap over it and rise in different states of conflicts, disrespect, feeling distant from others or when it comes to different corporeal accounts.

All this draws a person further from the goal, and it doesn’t just repulse him, but also causes him such harm that he will need to work for a long time in order to repair his past mistakes.

Baal HaSulam tells us in his letter that as long as a student yearns to get closer to his teacher and climbs the hill, the desire burns in him. But the moment he gets physically close to the teacher, his yearning diminishes gradually, until it is totally lost. Therefore, it is much easier to be distant than to be near. We all know that important people try to keep the crowds distant in order to increase the people’s interest in them.

A person creates a kind of image of a friend, the teacher, and the Creator, and doesn’t want to know the truth. He feels good living in the fantasy that he has created for himself and it is hard for him to get away from it, to erase it, in order to accept something new. If this picture is closer to the real picture, then, on the whole, it is less pleasant and more obligating.

So a person who sometimes hears the voice of the Creator and receives an invitation to stroll in His garden for a while, eventually doesn’t attain anything. It is because he doesn’t try to rise above his nature, above the inclination to reject his friends and his teacher and to imagine them as he sees fit instead of seeing the real picture so that the physical closeness or distance will not make a difference and also so that the spiritual closeness or distance will not lead to any changes in his relations with the friends, the teacher, and the Creator.

We have to try to rise as much as we can above our corporeal attributes and to be more objective. This means to judge above reason and to enter the collective vessel, outside one’s self.
[102132]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/3/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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