When I restrict myself in order to care for my neighbor, I am not secretly worried about my own well-being. I simply do not think about myself. This correction is performed within me by the light. This is what it means to rise above the desire, to carry out the first restriction, and to acquire the quality of bestowal. All of this is the result of the action of the light alone.

My care for my neighbor is in no way connected with material needs. I continue to eat, drink, sleep, and provide for all my necessities. The matter lies in the desire, in my inner attitude toward the act.

For example, I may greatly wish to help a sick person, to feed and give him a drink, but the doctors allow him nothing more than a piece of bread and a glass of tea. Thus, even though I would like to give him a plentiful meal and I have the ability to do so, I am limited.

So it turns out that it is all a matter of intentions. We build our relationships, the mutual guarantee between us, not on an artificial basis. That is why it seems impossible to achieve bestowal and unity, impossible to detach from concern for ourselves and to think only of the neighbor without worrying even about the essentials. But those essentials are supplied to me by others so that I may simply sustain myself. In our mutual guarantee, they care for my material needs and 100% for my spiritual success.

All of this must be properly arranged. Who are the friends? They are receiving desires that are corrected by the light that returns to the source. Nothing here is produced by our own efforts. Efforts must be invested only in order to draw the light, which will come and correct us. It is simply ridiculous to think that we will act in bestowal by ourselves. Can a person jump higher than his own head?

Our problem is that in all our actions, we do not aim toward the light. We think that the action itself will bring the result, that if we embrace one another, we will come to love our neighbor. But no, one must embrace with the intention that through this, the light will come and bind us in an inner embrace.

Everything is accomplished by the light that returns to the source. We forget about the most important element—the only force that acts in reality.

It seems very difficult and impossible to connect into one whole mutual guarantee, adhesion, unity, the neighbor, bestowal, and the urgent need so that they become a single vessel for the revelation of absolute bestowal, i.e., the revelation of the Creator to the creation. And the reason is only that we do not summon the force that will build this state for us. We mistakenly believe we can create it on our own.
[50124]
From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/11/11, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah [The Giving of the Torah]”

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