The Torah, “Exodus,” Mishpatim, 23:8: You shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe will blind the clear sighted and corrupt words that are right.

This is relevant with regard to everyone today, from simple workers to heads of governments.

From a spiritual point of view, “to bribe” means tempting a person through his ego. Every filling our ego receives is called accepting a bribe.

Question: So it turns out that we are all bribed in this world.

Answer: Not bribed, but thieves. A bribed person receives something that he doesn’t deserve, but he doesn’t take it from others by force. We are thieves since we steal from others, sometimes by force. We even can be called robbers, although we don’t feel that since it is standard behavior for us.

It turns out that all of this world’s laws are laws of thieves since the entire world is based on the ego. This is how the ego operates. We are not speaking about the fact that a person finds a million dollars on the street and doesn’t give the money back to anyone, but about the fact that we consciously steal and enjoy the theft.

It isn’t only about receiving, but, as it is written, “Stolen water is sweet.” Remember the story about the Italian princess who sits on the balcony on a hot summer day, eating ice cream, who said,” I wish it were a bit forbidden too!” This means that the feeling of theft sweetens the ego since this is what we consider sweet.

If it is just food, if I feel like it, I just take it. However, when I take what belongs to others, intentionally and without permission, then it is a totally different feeling! If I just take something, there is nothing special about it, but if I steal, I rise above everyone. I must feel a void that is created in them through that and its filling within me. Thus, I rise above them, and the ego thus feels superior.

Arkadi Raikin (a Russian comedian during the Soviet regime) used to say, “If you don’t leave a certain deficiency, then the income tax inspectors will simply remain engineers,” which means that there must be a certain pleasure in being superior.

The greatest superiority is, of course, being cleverer, wiser than others. Feeling superior is a terrible thing in spirituality, and only love can correct this.

When you take care of others like small children, they indeed are smaller than you, but you must cover your attitude toward them with love. Then they are not smaller anymore but rather greater than you since you depend on them, and so they seem greater than you just like a baby seems to his parents.

Question: However, the feeling that you are smarter than this baby still remains.

Answer: It makes no difference! Since he controls your mind, you are great, strong and clever, and, if he cries, you pick him up and bring him to the place he points at, which means that you are his servant. Thus, you compensate for your superiority.

These states can be between a teacher and his students, or between friends since people are different. We must constantly keep the balance and compensate for any feeling of superiority through love.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/24/13

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When we disseminate, we correct ourselves. We bring the parts of our soul closer to us and try to correct them. We were given a chance to correct them as if they were on the outside.

Imagine that you are inside a black point called this world. You begin to feel the great external world that you see before you on the outside around this point. You must correct the world that is external to you, but why was it made this way? Why were all these desires taken out of you and laid out before you?

It is so that it would be easier for you to correct them! If these desires were inside you, you wouldn’t pay attention to the fact that they are corrupt, as now you don’t pay attention to your inner deficiencies.

Just imagine that all the unsatisfied thoughts in every person and all the events that take place in the world are inside you. You never would discover anything negative inside you. So, how would you correct it? If these attributes were inside you, you would just be happy with them, but you look around and the only desire burning in you is to correct them! You see negative attributes on the outside that are actually inside you, but you can identify them only thanks to the fact that you perceive them as external.

So, when we disseminate and want to bring people closer to us, we don’t account for the fact that we actually are correcting ourselves. Our greatest desires are actually in them, in AHP, since they are not under the domination of our point in the heart but external to it. Only thanks to that do we have a chance to correct them.

So, there is no other work but to provide our corporeal body with what it needs for its existence and to approach the correction of the world, which means to bring the nine lower Sefirot closer so they would join my point in the heart. It is a blessing that we see this world as cursed. It is said that Divinity brings its lost parts closer to it, which is exactly what we engage in. We don’t understand the extent to which our time is different, from the point of view of the possibility of dissemination, than anything in the past.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/04/13, Shamati #121, “She Is Like Merchant-Ships”

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Preparation to the Lesson

Shamati #42 “What Is the Acronym Elul in the Work“

The Book of Zohar — Introduction, “Torah and Prayer,” Item 183, Lesson 67

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Peace“

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