Question: Why does it say that the soul is absolutely separate from the Creator and at the same time that it is similar to Him in its attributes? According to spiritual laws shouldn’t they be one whole if they have identical attributes?

Answer: A soul is a desire to receive and not a desire to bestow. So why is it called spiritual or one that bestows? Since, although it is a desire to receive, it performs an action by which it resembles the desire to bestow; even though there is a wolf inside, it seems like a lamb on the outside. Now it all depends on the extent to which this wolf will wear the lamb’s skin or take it off, according to his freewill and his desire.

In the world of Atzilut, everything is white; it is totally a lamb. In the world of Beria we already begin to discern that it is a wolf but one that wants to be a lamb. He actually behaves like a lamb, but we still see that there is a wolf inside.

This means that it is still the spiritual world, that it is still a soul, but there is already the discernment that the soul isn’t in adhesion with the Creator. There is something that separates them here, and that is the wolf inside, the ego.

In the world of Yetzira it is even more so; there the desire to receive doesn’t control itself any more. There, the fact that I am connected to the Creator, that I depend on Him, and am totally under His domination is the only thing left of the positive attribute. The Creator determines everything that happens and I cannot determine anything. I have no powers, I am weak, and I am completely in His hands. The wolf acknowledges that he is a wolf more and more and he feels an increasingly greater inner resistance, but holds himself.

If we look at this from the opposite direction, from the bottom up, and we ascend to the world of Yetzira, which corresponds to the state of smallness (Katnut), I perceive that I am small. There are greater and better levels than I am in, and in the meantime, I am in this state. It turns out that there are positive moments and there are negative ones.

In the world of Assiya the recognition that I am incapable of anything brings me to a state of an embryo. I only close myself and place myself completely under the domination of the upper, and I have no way to identify with him except in the form of a single point.
[129098]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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