Question: How can we want to connect if we only seek what is pleasant for our ego?

Answer: We have to yearn for the corrected state or at least ask that we should find it attractive. You can study out of curiosity, out of a desire to know something, to hear; you are pulled from Above by some bait.

But when you are already in a group, your desire has to undergo some treatment, a change, a new manner. It isn’t just the desire to receive that wants to enjoy wisdom, to know the future, to become stronger and more dominant in this life. This egoistic desire is only the beginning to entice a person, but later it has to change.

When we begin to work with it from the outside: through the group, using the Surrounding Light, the desire begins to change and a person doesn’t know what exactly he should do with it. He suddenly loses all interest and doesn’t want anything. The group and his state don’t seem right and he doesn’t like them. He doesn’t see any nice reward for his efforts to come to the lesson every morning and to work in the group. He is not ready for that because in his heart and mind he doesn’t believe that he will get any reward, and so he escapes.

We have to work on changing our desire. You can only receive the power, the patience, and perseverance needed for this from the environment. The main thing in our work is not to ask for or demand changes from the Creator, but to actually establish connections in the group so that you will respect it and see that it is great and sublime, since otherwise you will run away from it.

The Light comes to you from Above according to your connection to the environment. If you are not connected to your friends in the group on its level, then you will not be allowed to advance from Above. If advancement comes from Above against your ego, you will simply run away. But if you are connected to the group and are under its influence on all sides, then the Upper Light can influence you to the same degree and perform changes in you. These changes are unpleasant, but thanks to your connection with the society, you don’t escape.

People who don’t work on the connection with the group usually leave, or even worse, they begin to see that the advancement is wrong and they blame the society. Since they have to justify themselves for leaving the group, they are sure that the group is bad. Because they are not connected to the group, the Upper Light throws them off the spiritual path.

So if you want to advance, you have to constantly worry about the connection with the friends, which is actually the whole exile in Egypt and the whole redemption from exile; it is the condition of mutual guarantee and unity, of being as one man in one heart at the gathering at Mount Sinai, all the forty years in the desert, and then the entrance to the land of Israel. All these states are determined only by increasingly stronger connection with the group.

We don’t have to think about the Upper Light and about the Creator now. All this will come if you connect with the friends and prepare yourself for the changes. They will not be pleasant because you are approaching the attribute of bestowal and detaching yourself from the attribute of receiving, which is totally opposite our nature. So it is possible only if the environment supports you.
[131316]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/30/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
When You Start Looking For A Group
Stages On The Way To Bestowal
The Door To The Creator’s Territory

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