If the Creator pokes you with sharp thorns, these are not real thorns, rather simply the natural evolutionary steamroller that develops you just like the nature of the still, vegetative, and animate. This is not the development of the Adam (man) in you.

You indeed evolve, acquiring a little more intelligence, feeling, and understanding. But you don’t develop on the human level. Because the human level is the development in which you need to construct yourself through the creation of an environment and ready yourself for this environment to “poke” you with its thorns. Only then is this called the hastening of time (Achishenah).

The Adam in us is developed only by the way of hastening time. And the pokes that we receive from above, from the smallest things to terrible wars and disasters, all of this still doesn’t add anything to human development, but is used to prepare for this.

It is impossible without these troubles, but they are said to bring us to a state where we decide that from now on we must develop independently. We have now reached such a milestone. And so if we don’t go out to the wider public and don’t begin to work with them actively, to agitate and wake them up, along with agitating ourselves through our active deeds, we summon more thorns from the higher power, further blows at the still, vegetative, and animate levels.

And so we will need to escape from the blows like beaten animals as long as we are no wiser and begin to think: “Why do we need all this? Wouldn’t it be better for us to develop evolutionary forces for ourselves, desirable both in the eyes of the Creator and in the eyes of the person? We must awaken the dawn ourselves!”

This is to say, that Israel (those who yearn for the Creator Yashar-el) hastens the times. This is the difference between the level of “Israel” and the level of “nations of the world,” that advance naturally through the influence of nature.

What is the difference between the pokes that I receive from nature and the pokes that I create in myself through the group? The blows can come from a wife, from children, from a boss, from neighbors, from the police, from the internal revenue service, from the bank, or from something greater, like wars and diseases. All these blows belong to the animate level, to our earthly life.

But the level of the speaking (the Adam) is when I myself understand the goal of creation and want to advance towards it. Therefore I build a group that will influence me in a selective and goal-oriented form, so that I will advance towards that goal in a precise form. I relate to this environment in a unique, intentional way and want to get from it an exact reaction that obliges me in a particular way to turn towards the goal of creation.

The environment must arouse jealousy in me, that they advance and I do not, they influence each other, and I don’t, and they look at me as lagging behind them. These are also thorns, but are qualitative, compared to some kind of illness, adjudication or familial problems. These are no longer earthly problems, but spiritual. I myself need to create a state like this that will inflame and oblige me to forge ahead.

And I enjoy these thorns because they stimulate my advancement. And a dual relationship is formed in me towards them. On the one hand, the beast in me suffers; but the Adam in me rejoices.
[107079]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/03/13, Writings of Rabash “Shlavei HaSulam”

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