The Deficiency Is The Reward

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How do I measure my readiness for the St. Petersburg convention?

Answer: According to the level of sufferings that you feel. After all, I suffer when I lack something important.

I see a fancy car in a store window, a shiny Rolls Royce that costs a million dollars, the type of car that attracts everyone’s attention on the street and stops the traffic. It is in front of me, I am captivated by it, and I feel that my life is meaningless without it. I ask people to help me raise a million dollars. I beg them to help me as much as they can…

I don’t sleep at nights, cannot eat, drink, or relax because of the image of the shiny vehicle; “I would rather die than live without the “Rolls Royce.” I suffer desperately when I see my dream car through the window that separates us.

So what should I do? Break the window? Start a revolution and split up everyone’s property? Rob a bank? I look for different solutions so I can purchase what I lack. It is because I have a strong feeling that this is the only thing that I lack.

It is according to such sorrow that we measure our preparation for the convention, but in our case it is not enough. I also need a point in the heart, the spark in the ego in relation to which I measure the goal that the friends and I are yearning for. The spark illuminates the sublime and wonderful goal and although I really long for it, I don’t want to blur or to erase it. On the contrary, I am sure that it will be mine and that I will attain it. Therefore, I am full of joy along with the feeling of sorrow.

The combination of sorrow and joy is the middle line which I have to form. So I measure my preparation according to the level of sorrow that I feel as a result of not having attained what I want. I check the sorrow that I feel in my heart, in my ego, from the point in the heart.

So before the St. Petersburg convention we put a great emphasis not on the greatness of the goal, but on the preparation that determines the reward. You will receive exactly what you have prepared.

In ordinary life we bring the vessel to a source of water and fill it. In spirituality it is different; there you receive exactly what you have prepared. Your vessel becomes the filling and you don’t ask for anything else. The yearning, the deficiency, the longing for the goal is what fills you. There aren’t any changes on the outside and nothing enters you; the deficiency becomes the reward. The preparation formats the deficiency in such a way that it becomes the filling.

What are these tricks? An empty vessel in return for our efforts?

No, it isn’t empty any more, it is actually full… this is bestowal.

Baal HaSulam speaks about that in Letter No. 19: “During the preparation, the beauty and grace appear and the essence of perfection that one yearns and longs for. However, at the time of correction, when ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord,’ then, ‘I shall see an opposite world,’ because only fear and longing are the essence of the desired perfection. Then one feels that during the time of preparation, one was lying to oneself.”
[111731]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/8/13, “They Shall All Know Me From the Least of Them to the Greatest of Them”

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