Receive a Palace Instead of a Room
Question: On the spiritual path, a person discovers, time and again that when they ask for something specific, they receive something completely different.
Answer: Even if I am engaged in spiritual work, say, on degree “X,” then for me, “X + 1” equals infinity. I am not capable of doing, thinking, or feeling anything that belongs to that degree. I have no screen; my desire at the degree X + 1 is a Klipa. How can I take those desires and want the opposite within them? It seems unnatural to me; it does not correspond to my nature.
Suppose that now you live, you have a room and some clothes. To renounce all of this now means that you would relinquish everything, give up your room, your clothes, and be content with just one pair of trousers and one shirt. There are people who live this way. You wouldn’t even need the room anymore. You would be capable of giving it all up.
Now, let’s say you have made this correction, and instead of one room you are given a good apartment, full of all kinds of comforts and nice things. Your car is parked outside of the building. But you are told, “All you need is a shirt and pair of trousers. Why do you need all this? Why do you need such a large apartment? There is plenty of space in the yard. Give it up.”
In other words, time and again, you find yourself in a state where you have no strength to carry out corrections, and no possibility to ask for these corrections to come to you.
Question: But couldn’t you say: “I gave up the apartment, and now I received a palace in return”?
Answer: No. The fact that you gave up the apartment is true. Subsequently, you do receive a palace. But since you receive it in the left line (uncorrected desires), you feel that this palace is bad for you. If you were simply to enjoy the palace, you would descend into the Klipot, you would forget about Kabbalah and forget about the purpose of creation.
Within the surrounding light you reveal what this palace really is. It does not come to you as even greater pleasure. Otherwise, everyone would give up something small in order to receive something greater.
Spiritual work is never a direct path to correction. We have absolutely no direct approach to it. In our work, everything happens indirectly.
I am given the possibility to evoke this, to be its cause. But the work itself is done from above. That is why it is such a complex matter. I do not feel that I am working because I am not working on the correction directly. I do not feel that the Creator relates to me in a straightforward way but always through such unpleasant, difficult revelations. Sometimes there are pleasant ones, but only to give me strength.
A person who works correctly and truly advances feels revelation and some small illumination only for a very short time. These illuminations that show them something are revealed for very brief moments, say, five minutes a day. All the rest of the time they work through effort. And this brings benefit until the effort itself turns into light.
If the effort is truly for the sake of bestowal, then there is light, there is pleasure from the effort itself. In such a case, this effort becomes clothed in the light of Hochma.
Just consider how opposite we are to bestowal, in our Kelim, in our preparation, in our sensations, and in our thoughts. See how, through the Klipot, we are pulled toward correction.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/2/26, Rabash, “What Are Banners in the Work?”
Related Material:
Symbiosis of the Right and Left Lines
The View from the Left Line
Why Correct the Left Line?
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