Question: If a person wants to ascend from one degree to another, he seeks the possibility of greater bestowal, opposite to reception. On the other hand, he must paint a picture for himself as though there are great enjoyments there. How is this combined?

Answer: How can a person, by means of the picture he presents to himself in the right line, withstand the left line?

Therefore, we do not stand before the Creator as one person; rather, we have an environment that can pull us either to the left or to the right. It is said that one who constantly chooses the better environment—that is, one that would be “on the right side”—by his free choice shortens the path.

Two weeks ago I returned from North America. If you ask me whether I was there at all and what I did there, I already do not remember. So much has happened since then. Every day is so saturated: before the holidays, after the holidays… Do you see what a contraction of time is occurring for us?

For a person from outside, everything is completely different. For him, several years pass almost identically. But for us, the contraction of time is not simply a mechanical compression, but a contraction of spiritual time, the time of development.

People do not understand this. Some sit here for five years and think that they have gained nothing from it. They do not know that during this time they may have passed through seven or eight cycles. I speak without exaggeration. We simply do not feel what is happening to us. In fact, the correct clarification is what will help me build something that will pull me from the left line into the right line.

In fact, I am constantly in the left line; I dwell in passions, desires, and various thoughts. Everything belongs to the left line. How can I build such a magnet on the right side so that it is always stronger than the attraction from the left pulls me, and I would be given something even greater in the left line so that I constantly jump back and forth? It is precisely the frequency of these transitions that determines advancement.

There is a story: A student tells his rav that before prayer he had a fall. And the rav answers him that within ten minutes he had four hundred such falls. Do you understand at what tempo a person works? How many states he passes through and analyzes? But for some this happens once in several generations or once in several years. There is such a slow swinging back and forth.

And even for us there are periods when suddenly you feel that for two or three months you are as if dead; nothing changes. It is as if you are traveling somewhere, but along the way nothing happens.

When I came to Rabash, I was very nervous compared to what I am now. I asked him questions similar to yours, but not so gently. So, he told me: “On our path, enormous patience is necessary, and I hope that you will endure it.”

I thought: How will I endure it if even more patience is needed? For I am already exploding, practically foaming at the ears. This is impossible to describe. Rationally, it is impossible to imagine how this can be endured. Patience is necessary. But this too is given from above.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/26, Rabash, “What Is the Work of Man, in the Work that Is Attributed to the Creator?”

Related Material:
Bestowal—A Means to Pleasure
Raise the Environment in Your Eyes
Work Together With Your Environment Like A Sophisticated Device

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