There are four states people go through when performing Torah and Mitzvot.

What does it mean to perform Torah and Mitzvot? For religious people, it is what they were taught at a young age: to perform certain actions and they perform them. If they had been taught other actions, they would performed those.

In this case, as Rabash writes, the reason and motivation for fulfilling the Torah and Mitzvot is external influence. This does not mean that I perform commandments because I am afraid of these people or that I want to be considered great among them, good and righteous, a respected person, etc. It doesn’t matter what other reasons there may be, the main thing is that I do what I was taught, nothing more. In general, I fulfill other people’s desires.

For someone who has been used to doing this since childhood, it becomes second nature; otherwise, he feels bad, and by doing his usual actions, he feels good. Whether a person was brought up this way or converted to faith at a later age, he looks at his environment, which obliges him to perform certain actions.

And indeed, the environment has wonderful laws. You must attend the synagogue. It is not right to  not go there to pray. You are obliged to celebrate holidays according to certain rules and to dress in a certain way. You are obliged. Society sets thousands of laws for you. And this means that you fulfill the Torah and the commandments under the influence of external people, and not of your own freewill.

Whereas we are talking about correcting one’s desire. In this case, you set your desire aside, as if you remove it from yourself, place someone else’s desire into yourself, and fulfilled it. This is called a “good soldier,” who uses his body, and, by placing the commander’s desire in it, obeys his orders. For the religious masses, this form of observing the commandments is acceptable, which is very good. Otherwise it would be a mess, chaos.

The second type of motivation for fulfilling the Torah and Mitzvot is the Creator in combination with external people, who promote and compel the observance of the Torah and Mitzvot. That is, a person begins to incorporate a certain admixture into his previous calculations, as if “contaminating” them. He is already beginning to consider not only the environment, but also the Creator.

What does it mean to be with the Creator? This means that a kind of conflict arises inside a person, an internal contradiction. This is not yet a clash of two opposing sides; it is not yet two poles.

Two opposing authorities cannot exist in me at the same time, or I would be torn apart by not knowing whom to listen to, or whom to give preference to. I cannot be aimed in both directions. I have only one desire. I cannot tune in to two, so a problem arises. This is the beginning of the path.

The third condition is when “only the Creator obliges him to fulfill the Torah and commandments; not external people, but the person himself is also the reason for fulfilling the Torah and commandments.” This is the third type of motivation, when the Creator obliges a person to fulfill the Torah and the commandments, and the person himself, as Rabash writes, “is the reason.” I would say that he contributes to this.

And the fourth type of motivation is that the reason for fulfilling the Torah and the commandments is only the Creator, and there is no one contributing to this. This is called “the introduction of the mixed-multitude into Kedusha.” In this case, there is absolutely no other contributing or even supporting factor, where we say that a person strengthens himself along the way and supposedly does something on his own. No, everything is done exclusively by the Creator. But this is the level of complete adhesion with the Creator.

As a result, it is revealed to a person that all these are the ways of the Creator’s governance. It is not that I act one way or another as I advance, but as I work hard, I reveal various factors that compel me to act.

At first these factors seem to be external people, then external people and the Creator, then me and the Creator, and in the end, only the Creator. It is just that in the process of his development, a person begins to reveal what the reason is for his existence, and who is the source of his existence.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/27/26, Rabash, Article 29, “Lishma and Lo Lishma”

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