The Benefits of Spiritual Development

543.02Question: Rabash writes that when friends gather, they should talk about the benefits of gathering. What does he mean by that?

Answer: The benefits are an abstract concept. It can exist only in relation to my desire. Accordingly, I envision a future fulfillment, which I can earn, with less effort than the pleasure I will receive. Then it is called a benefit—you invest 99, you get 100.

But my desire must be greater than the invested effort, otherwise the desire to receive will not allow me to exert. Therefore, every time we calculate what kind of pleasure we will receive, what the disadvantages are, and how much effort we need to expend.

The benefits we want to get from the process we are going through, I cannot relate to someone else. If a person is still in pursuit of benefits from animal pleasures (food, rest, family, sex) or the pleasures of money, honors, knowledge, then I cannot give him other pleasures instead because abstract ones are not clothed in what he understands. He does not feel them. There has to be a different Kli for this.

The Kelim we initially have are Kelim in which we feel pleasure clothed in something of this world: power, knowledge, education. The closer the pleasure, the more palpable and greater in magnitude it is.

These are animal pleasures; the greatest of these are the pleasures felt through touch and sight. They are followed by more abstract ones, pleasures brought by money, honors, which are things that require a certain level of development.

But it still comes clothed in something: I am honored, respected, more knowledgeable than others, which is a kind of power (knowledge is, in the end, power, albeit a little more abstract).

But if the pleasures are even more abstract, they are not perceived by the Kelim of receiving. They relate to Bina, which is inside Malchut. Even the Klipot are the pleasures Bina feels inside Malchut, and not Malchut itself.

You cannot explain it to people who do not have it. This requires preliminary development. So when they asked me on American radio: “What is special about Kabbalah? Why did it suddenly become open? What do you want?”

I replied that we are in a state where we do not see what will happen tomorrow. The life we live is no good, people are using drugs more and more, there is no family, children have no connection with parents, we do not even know what will happen to us in a second, we are increasingly immersed in such life problems that it becomes necessary to know about reality, how to control fate, how to see which of my actions will lead to enjoyment, confidence, and a good life.

You cannot talk to people in more abstract terms because they will not understand them. They ask, “How do I do this?” Come and learn. If we want to do something in this life in a logical way, we must study it, in any profession, even a shoemaker. Even there, you will find many professional secrets you must master before you start working, and even more so with us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/19/26, Rabash, “Concerning Hesed [Mercy]”

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