Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article 34, “The Profit of a Land”: “Hence, it is impossible to attain something in complete clarity if its parallel is absent. For example: it is impossible to estimate and say that something is good, if its opposite is missing, pointing to the bad. It is the same with bitterness and sweetness, love and hate, hunger and satiation, thirst and saturation, adhesion and separation. It turns out that it is impossible to come to love adhesion prior to acquiring the hate of separation.”

If we want to be wise and able to appreciate any state, we need to be in the opposite state, and then we can appreciate what we have. In such a case, we feel the fear of losing what we have, we appreciate what we have, and we do not let go.

This is the true feeling of closeness.

Question: Do we need to constantly feel this trepidation?

Answer: We must. Loving someone, maintaining a constant feeling of anxiety, fear of losing this love, this is a great skill. Otherwise, this love is childish, worthless.

Question: Why is it not enough to simply get over the separation to attain love, but we must hate the separation?

Answer: What does it mean to get over something? You get over and you forget? No! Then you will not feel love but just a slight pleasant feeling. It is said about this that “there is none so wise as the experienced,” that having been through all the states and appreciating the joy of what he has, compared to the fear that he might also lose it, then he really guards what he has. Otherwise, everything will be lost.

In principle, the many lifetimes that we are given are so that we will accumulate experience, will start to appreciate what we have, and will find true happiness. And it will consist of the opposite of the bad state. This is how we were created;  we are created beings and are opposite from the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/15/19

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