In “Man Is Rewarded with Righteousness and Peace through the Torah,” Rabash explains the stages a person goes through before reaching the goal. Since we begin with matter, and our matter is the desire to receive, the desire to enjoy, our path is to turn this desire around and work with it against its natural intention.

When we study the descent from above downward, we see how matter, and then the desire to receive, are created through the four phases of the direct light. As this desire descends and reaches the shattering, it still has a property that is not yet the desire to receive as we know it.

Only after the shattering, when sparks of Bina, sparks of bestowal, enter this desire, do they become an intention to receive within it. Although these sparks come from Bina, both Malchut and Bina undergo the shattering. As a result, the intention of the desire becomes to receive for its own sake, for its own pleasure. It becomes completely closed within itself both in its action and in its intention.

Therefore, our work is different from the original state, when the Kli in the world of Ein Sof decided to act in order to bestow. There, we are talking about the matter of the worlds where there is no evil inclination and, initially, no intention to receive for oneself.

This intention appears only later, in the impure worlds of BYA. We, however, begin from the opposite state. Therefore, first of all, we must undergo a correction called the degree of faith, the degree of righteousness, so that our intention changes from receiving for ourselves to bestowing.

We must reach the state called the first restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph) in which we do not use the desire to receive unless we have an intention to bestow. This concerns our attitude toward the Creator and not corporeal things. Under the influence of the Klipot, a person may start thinking that they are forbidden to eat or drink and must restrict themselves in this world.

No! What is meant is that in everything related to the Creator, in all our thoughts and actions connected with our spiritual development, we must maintain the intention to bestow. We must strive to achieve equivalence of form with the Creator, equivalence of intention, because in our actions we can never be like Him. We can either receive or not receive, whereas the Creator only gives.

But if we attain that very intention: not for ourselves but solely for the benefit of the Creator, we become equal to Him in form. This correction is called faith. Then our action of bestowal is called righteousness. In other words, when a person reaches a state in which they expect no reward for their thoughts or actions, this is called performing an act of charity (Tzedakah).

If a person truly tries to act in this way without expecting anything in return, they begin to discover that they are incapable of doing so. They do not want to do it and cannot even come close to this degree.

Then a state called “stiff-necked” becomes revealed in them. They strongly reject spirituality, blame the Creator, and do not want to attain righteousness, or the next degree called peace (Shalom).

That is why Baal HaSulam speaks about four angels, as though they were four fundamental qualities through which the Creator wishes to bring a person, meaning their desire to receive, to correction. At the final degree, called peace, the desire to receive is revealed as being entirely filled with conflict and unwilling to be at peace.

Thus, the desire to receive truly cannot bring itself to want to receive in order to bestow. But the means to achieve this is not found within the person or within these four qualities, these four degrees. It comes from above and is called the light that reforms (the surrounding light). This light corrects the desire to receive and enables it to attain what is required.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/14/26, Rabash, “Man Is Rewarded with Righteousness and Peace through the Torah”

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