Question: What is love?

Answer: Love is divided into two parts: love of oneself and love of the Creator.

Love means that there is someone, and when he feels good, I feel good too; when he enjoys, I enjoy too.

Or my pleasure consists solely in his feeling good and enjoying himself. And then I test this by setting the condition that even if I feel bad, as long as he enjoys himself, I receive pleasure too. How can I do this? First, I perform a restriction, and then I work in order to bestow. This is then called true love. That is, it is love that does not depend on what I will get out of it.

Can we call it love when someone enjoys while I suffer, yet I enjoy precisely because he enjoys? Can I suffer and enjoy simultaneously in the very same Kelim? I suffer because I receive nothing for myself in my own Kelim, and I enjoy because I feel how he enjoys.

Can this exist in reality or not? We see that even in our world, such a thing happens. A mother may herself be suffering, yet she receives pleasure from the fact that her child is enjoying himself and feels good. It is as if there are two kinds of Kelim: one kind is her own, and the other is the child who is included in her; it is her attitude toward him.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/25/26, Rabash, “When a Person Knows What Is Fear of the Creator”

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Earthly Love Is Worthless From The Start

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 288

Is It Possible to Force a Friend to Make Corrections?

It is impossible to force a person to correct themselves, because correction is an inner inclination that exists in the heart. We understand what is bad within us and what we must correct according to the intensity of the light shining on us. Only the light can show us what is bad in us. We can see where the evil is within us only in relation to the light, because ultimately we must become similar to the light. There is a difference between the light of one person and the light of another, that is, the extent to which it shines, the way it shines upon us, its character. We each need different things in order to become adapted to the light. Therefore, correction can take place only in such a way.

It is impossible to take an example or a standard from another person and, according to them, know how we should advance from each and every state. No one can give us the power to change ourselves correctly, and there is no one who can tell us that we have changed correctly. The light fills us according to the change that has taken place in us. Only the light operates and performs all such actions consistently, one after another, within us. Other people can only give us an additional deficiency and a push from the outside. They can arrange additional conditions for us. As Baal HaSulam writes in “The Freedom,” in all these corrections, all that is in our hands is to receive additional deficiency from the society. However, we work with the help of our surrounding light, with the general deficiency that comes with our individual soul, according to its structure.

We, for our part, use the society, and accordingly the society must prepare things for us that, if we wish, we can take from it. The society can provide a general desire for the goal, a schedule, an opportunity for dissemination, study, and social life. To prepare, but not to pressure. We cannot be pressured into correction. A society can obligate a person in general matters according to which the entire society conducts itself, but it cannot come to a friend and say: “This thing in you is bad; you need to correct it.”

Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 287
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 286
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 285

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