When I am in an ascent, I want to be a faithful servant of the Creator; in other words, I attach all of Malchut to Bina. This is the difference between Tzimtzum (restriction), Masach (screen), and Ohr Hozer (reflected light).

Tzimtzum occurs only on Malchut and stems from egoistic shame in order to avoid the terrible feeling of separation from the Creator.

A Masach is the aspiration to work above one’s desire to receive pleasure; it is an ascent above egoism.

Reflected light means that I take the desire of the Creator and work for Him.

All these actions take place at different levels of the desire to receive. A new Kli is revealed within me in which I receive from the host. I discover how much He enjoys giving to me, and I allow Him to do so. I continue to receive from the Creator, but now consciously and only in order to give Him pleasure, as if an infant understood how pleasing it is for the mother to feed him and opened his mouth only for that reason.

Only through mutual guarantee can we constructively use descents and turn them into ascents. During a true descent, a person is incapable of doing anything themselves; only the friends can help them.

When one falls, it gives the others an opportunity to acquire additional desires and not to fall. If we acted this way, we would always be in ascent. The group would continuously rise if it correctly used each descent by extracting an additional drive forward from it.

The goal of the Creator is not to cast us into despair, but to bring us to true unity. Yet He deliberately arranges things so that along the way we despair and ask Him for help. After all the efforts we invest, we despair in our work and cry out to the Creator, and then He saves us.

But until this happens, we must constantly strive only for unity in order to ultimately discover that we are incapable of it without the help of the upper force. This entire process is called the Egyptian exile.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/8/18, Rabash, “What Is the Blessing, ‘Who Made a Miracle for Me in This Place,’ in the Work?”

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