Baal HaSulam: “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”: Because of that we are compelled to begin with Lo Lishma (for oneself). Rambam says, “our sages said: ‘One should always study the Torah, and even Lo Lishma, because from Lo Lishma one comes to the altruistic intention of Lishma.

This means that first I have to bestow upon the friends, the others, and the Creator as much as I can, thinking that thanks to this I will feel good. I don’t have the right intentions yet, but still I already perform actions of bestowal. We are used to doing favors for each other in this world as well, hoping to benefit from it. A person doesn’t help others unless he sees a personal benefit in it.

In the meantime, my fuel doesn’t come from the Light that Reforms, but from my own benefit. I receive an egoistic pay for my bestowal, and it is clear to me. But thanks to these actions I awaken the reforming Light, and it changes my reward.

The Light makes “a miracle,” something unfamiliar to me. It enables me to bestow without any reward. I am filled, but only by bestowal. This is a “one-way movement.” At the moment we can’t imagine such a filling, but when the Light will change us, we will understand what it is.

So in the meantime, I act with an egoistic intention of Lo Lishma, as if I want to reach the intention of Lishma. I bestow upon the friends, I learn in order to awaken the Light that will change me, but in the meantime, I find personal pleasure in it. Otherwise I couldn’t begin.

Later the Light that Reforms enables me to act without thinking about myself. Then I discover that I am totally outside myself, in others, or in the Creator, which is the same for me.

So the spiritual world, the altruistic intention, bestowal, is when I can act without any reward, without any personal benefit, consciously and unconsciously. Only the Light that influences us can enable us to do that, even if for now we perform egoistic actions—provided that our actions match the advice of Kabbalists perfectly.

When we study together, understand that we study about the corrected states and we want to find ourselves in them. By our great desire to know them, to connect with them, we awaken the Surrounding Lights upon ourselves.

Actually, Kabbalah books tell us how we are connected to one another, how we bestow upon each other, and turn into one corrected vessel. So if we yearn for this state, at least a little, then from there, like from a spring of water, the Light that Reforms comes and brings us closer to perfection.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/1/2011, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created beings”: But we still do not know what that refinement is. With regards to the aforementioned, we know that “a wild ass’s colt is born a man.” And we are completely immersed in the filth and lowness of self-reception and self-love, without any spark of love for one’s fellow person and bestowal. In that state, one is in the farthest point from the root.

When one grows and is educated through Torah and Mitzvot (commandments), defined only by the aim to bring contentment to one’s Maker and not at all for self-love….

A person is in the right environment, in the right atmosphere, near the group, the teacher, and the books when he is told what the essence of his desire is, how to fulfill it, in which direction, towards what situation, and what goal to go. Then a person grows and learns.

One comes to the degree of bestowal to one’s fellow person. One comes to that degree by the natural remedy in the study of Kabbalah with the altruistic intention….

Ultimately, we study the wisdom of Kabbalah with the right intention in order to reach mutual bestowal and thereby assemble one vessel, according to the principle of “one man with one heart.” Everything that is called “Torah and commandments” is only meant to build the corrected vessel. This is why: “Love thy neighbor as thyself is the great rule of the Torah.” This is because it is meant to make a general corrected vessel of us.

So why do we need unity? In order to bestow upon the Creator and to bring Him contentment. This means that we have to develop the right feelings between us, to develop the right attitude to what we call “the Creator” so that He will be very close and dear to us, so that we will really want to bring Him contentment and to feel pleasure in it. The group can convey this warm attitude to a person.

By that the creature develops in the degrees of the above sublimity until one loses any form of self-love and self-reception. In that state, one’s every attribute is either to bestow, or to receive in order to bestow. Our sages said about that, “The commandments were only given in order to purify people with.”

The actions I perform in order to correct my nature are called “commandments.” Their purpose is to help me tie myself, like with strings, in all my 620 attributes, to all those who are outside of me. Thanks to this I can become the one who bestows and connects everyone into one.

The actions that connect me with others are called “248 positive commandments” of Bina that can be everywhere. Then I use the desire of others and my desire in order to fill them, and these are already “365 negative commandments.”

We can say that the negative commandments belong to Galgalta ve Eynaim. Hillel said: “Do not do unto others that which is hated by you.” First I refuse to perform any actions because I don’t have the power to bestow yet. Then, I move on to the positive commandments that can be summarized by the principle of “love thy neighbor as thyself.” These are already the commandments of AHP, actions towards actual connection.

And then one cleaves to one’s root, as it says, “and to cleave onto Him.”
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/1/2011, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Question: Baal HaSulam says in the article “Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings” that the main thing is to start and not to leave in the middle. What does that mean?

Answer: You can be off track in the corporeal world too if you consider customs as commandments. A person simply gets used to performing certain actions instead of revealing the internal commandments by himself, as the correction of his attributes.

When a person corrects himself, he is dealing with the Creator, and he wants to draw the Light, to become like Him, and to approach adhesion with Him. But if the commandments become “physical actions” that a person is used to, he doesn’t follow the spiritual path, but simply learns to perform certain rituals accepted in his environment.

We don’t say that this is wrong, but we do say that it doesn’t correct the soul. This is not that reason for which we exist in the world. It is only an external condition that may make the true internal correction easier. In the perfect state, internality and externality should support each other. Unfortunately, however, this doesn’t actually happen.

One shouldn’t stop along the spiritual path. When a person begins to correct himself, he discovers how stupid he is. This breaks his heart and he cannot continue. He discovers that he isn’t the hero who corrects himself and gains from it like he thought he was.

A similar plan can work in ordinary life because a person works egotistically on something external. Here, on the contrary, he has to use something external in order to work on his egotism. This work is completely opposite to, unusual for him. We are not used to the idea that we have to change in our root, our essence. Now it isn’t that I am working on something, but rather that something is working on me. Besides, I don’t have to wait passively, like a patient during a medical treatment, but rather must ask all the time: “Change me! Change me!”

How can we fulfill this? If I could feel and understand more, that would be different. But how can I demand something that I don’t even want? How can I ask for something that is contrary to my nature? “Let me love others, let me connect to them,” it is like asking for the worst troubles. Naturally I want to use the world in my favor, yet I have to ask the Creator to change the program in me: “Change my heart and mind, it doesn’t matter what I was before, just make me care for others.”

At the same time, a burst of altruistic feelings that a person may be able to hold on to for a moment after being disappointed by everything else isn’t enough here. No, one cry won’t help. You have to constantly support it and keep this new, paradoxical desire clean all the time.

This effort seems impossible. This is why it says: “A thousand enter a room, but only one exits to the Light.” All the others also do great work correcting themselves in some way, but the circumstances are different, and it isn’t their turn now.

So the problem is that the commandment to love others is contrary to our nature.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/31/2011, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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We all receive some initial sense of the importance of the bitter fruit of bestowal, but we cannot bear its terribly bitter taste. However, if we constantly tell each other how important it is, then everyone will be imbued with this importance. On the other hand, a person will feel more clearly how much this repels him and is against his whole nature. He will sense that this thing is extremely valuable, but is beyond him.

If a person is in the environment that tells him that there is no choice because this fruit is vital for him, and it is his entire life, then he agrees to change his nature. He begins do discover that there is a remedy for this and demands the force that would change him: the Light that Reforms.

Thus gradually, he discovers a new taste. He begins to find sweetness in this bitterness by adding even more bitterness!

The Talmud gives an example that it is forbidden to sprinkle lemon or grapefruit with salt because it softens the natural bitterness and turns it into sweetness. As it is said: “Salt sweetens meat.”

To the bitter fruit, we add an even more bitter component—the anti-egoistic screen—and then it turns sweet! Thus, a person gets a remedy called the force of bestowal.

And then the bitterness, which he felt before in his egoistic desires, becomes sweet due to the screen. That is, he obtains a connection with bestowal because bestowal turns into pleasure for him. And the Giver, that is, the Creator, becomes close to him to such an extent that a person feels the desire to bestow to the Creator.

He then develops this taste for bestowal, as in our life we develop a taste for new food, and it becomes pleasure for us. A child will not drink wine because it is sour or bitter, he would rather have sweet juice. He will refuse to eat very spicy and sour food that we eat. Our normal tastes also develop over  our lifetime, and we can develop a new attitude to the things that previously we could not tolerate.

The same happens in our inner work. Bestowal is a very bitter fruit. There is nothing attractive in it; just the opposite, everything in it repels. However, if a person cares about the importance of bestowal, this importance turns into the right line for him, and bitterness into the left line. And then he builds a new middle line, a means to taste the sweetness in bitterness.

It is completely like the Megillat Esther (Book of Esther), which means the disclosure (Megillah) of concealment (Esther). Sweetness is felt in bitterness, and “darkness will shine like the Light.” And so everything that we felt as bitter becomes sweet due to a new attitude.

But “the earth will not bear fruit until man is created.” The fruit already exist, and the earth is ready to bear them, just a person has to be born to feel that there is fertile soil, bearing fruit, and it is sweet; otherwise, it is not a fruit. That is, these are the fruits that are revealed as a result of man’s work, and without it, he will not reap the fruits.

To the extent that he built the middle line, a new attitude to what he felt bitter, he will reveal that this is a sweet fruit.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/1/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Imagine your state to be the same as when you wish to give your children something that tastes awful but is very good for them. They don’t understand it at all and are unwilling to accept it. Similarly, we must consume an extremely bitter fruit and enjoy it at the same time. But how can I enjoy such bitterness? It’s like a lemon that makes my mouth pucker just by looking at it.

There is food we eat just to accent sweetness: something very sour, salty, or bitter. We add ingredients to dilute the taste a little and then feel it through the contrast of opposites, like the “benefit of the Light from the darkness.” The Light is sweetness for our desire to receive pleasure.

But here we are talking about the transition towards unselfish love, the bitter fruit. I reject it by nature, and I am unable to feel in it any special ultimate greatness. I need to develop a desire for it so I will constantly increase and develop my aspiration towards this bitter and painfully unpleasant fruit, along with my desire for sweetness that will only keep growing. Is this really possible?

However, this is necessary to pull us out of the animate degree, where we develop under the influence of our ego, in pursuit of pleasure. In reality, animals do not really search for pleasure; they simply operate according to their instincts.

But man begins to rise above the animate degree and acquire human desires, so he invents additional pleasures. His desire to receive pleasure grows much more than the desire of a regular animal that lives its life without developing, as it is written: “A one-day-old calf is already considered to be a bull.”

But as we develop in this world, we search for greater pleasures. Our ego is always growing and keeps creating new sources of pleasure for itself. This way we grow out of the animate degree and turn into enormous beasts.

And then we transition to a completely different—human—degree. And the first thing that happens here is our loss of the drive for egoistic fulfillment. We begin to feel that this life is no longer fulfilling us: Everything becomes bland and flavorless. A person becomes depressed and starts thinking about the meaning of life.

Many people are already feeling this way today. The degree of egoistic development is coming to an end, and we no longer wish to imagine its more and more tasty and tempting fruit. We question the purpose! And this is the next degree.

And here we feel that the purpose is bitter. We discover that if we wish to see the purpose and really reveal it, we can only do this on the next degree, which is opposite to the one where I am now. I need to develop a desire for a very bitter fruit.

After all the sweets I have had: ice-cream, candy, and pastries, I must desire something that causes pain, weakness, bitterness, and soreness in my mouth. This fruit is so repulsive that my nature does not allow me to even come near it.

The only that can be done here is to raise its importance. Everyone needs to keep telling me about its benefits, even though I am repelled by it. This importance can be developed by the environment, which will convince me of the value of this bitter fruit that disgusts me so much that I cannot even look at it.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/1/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: You say that the desires are broken, but I perceive desire as something whole. What is a “broken” desire?

Answer: The desire to receive for one’s own sake is referred to as “broken.” And the desire directed towards “bestowal” to others is referred to as “corrected” or wholesome. Desire does not break—the screen does.

Desire is always wholesome. If my desire has a screen, and when the Light comes, I am able to pass it on to the others and only keep what I need for my existence, this means that the entire upper Light passes through me to the others. It never lingers in me; it constantly circulates from the world of Infinity to everyone else without exception. Then I feel absolutely fulfilled, and the force of life always circulates in me.

But if I do not have this quality, meaning I don’t possess the screen, the upper Light does not even reach me. It immediately returns back to its source, carrying out the condition of the First Restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph or TA): the Light does not enter the desire to receive without a screen. This is why I feel that I exist “within myself” and not in the Light.

“The thing within myself,” which I am, is called “this world”—that which we perceive for now. “This world” is what I perceive within me.

The upper world is what I feel outside of me, when I connect to the rest. Then I perceive the life of the entire body, and all of the Creator’s Light passes through me to all the rest.

This is why the state when I have a screen, when I am connected with everyone else and pass the Light to them, is called “corrected.” And the state when I do not have a screen is called “broken.” The desire is not broken, the screen is, even though we frequently use the conventional term: “broken desires.”
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From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 10/23/2011

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The fact that our desires are broken and distanced from each other is a great help. Thanks to this, we are in a situation similar to the one described in the parable about the king who wanted to transfer his entire treasure from one place to another but was afraid to put it all in the hands of one person since all were thieves.

So he divided his treasure and gave each person one coin so that each one could stand up to such a small temptation and would not steal, but would bring the coin to the repository. In this way the king transferred his entire treasure to the new location.

This is exactly what happens to us. Our vessels (desires) are broken, so each person has his own small desire. However, if he connects to others, thanks to that, he doesn’t take the bad, broken desires from them, but takes the force to overcome his own desire.

This gives us a number of advantages. First, all that I need to restrict is my small desire. Second, around me there is a big society with huge forces, and it can influence me with its values.

After all, despite the fact that our desires are broken, they are connected to one system. That is, we are not connected to one another by our own desire, but against our will, not from our side, but from the side of nature. If I am under the influence of the desires that are so distant from me, I can use them like a foreign instrument, external help, instead of the Creator.

It turns out that thanks to the shattering, I receive “help against Him”: I can use part of my desire that was separated from me by my egoism. It seems to me that these desires are opposite to me, far away from me, and rejected and hated by me. Thus I can use them like assisting forces.

This means that we greatly gain from the breakage. On one hand, I am not required to correct, all at once, the entire great desire and resist all of the treasure of the king. It is enough to overcome the temptation of one coin placed in front of me.

On the other hand, I receive from everyone the forces that don’t allow me to steal. Everyone convinces me of the greatness of the king. If I can somehow connect to them with my broken desire, yield to them a bit, even in an egotistic way for the sake of my gain, which is called “Lo Lishma, then even that is good. And through them I receive the Light that Reforms.

After all, the Inner Light can’t shine within me, but the Surrounding Light can!
[59308]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/31/2011, TES

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Question: How can we fulfill the first stage of the group’s goal in the upcoming convention?

Answer: First, we have to prepare so that we understand that only thanks to our connection, mutual guarantee (which is also the name of the convention), we awaken the Light. The Light operates on us because it is drawn by our desire. We want it to appear and to change us so we place ourselves under its influence and let it do whatever it wants with us.

After all, we are filled by the Light thanks to the desires we receive from the world, as if they were our own desire to receive, our AHP. So we receive the Light only to enable us to exist and to carry on and develop the method of correction. All the rest will flow onto the world.

Thus, the group will achieve a state of greatness (Gadlut) in spirituality. The group doesn’t have to be big. We don’t need millions for that. It isn’t one percent of humanity, but much less. I don’t know the exact number, but what is important is to awaken the Light. With regard to that, the quality of the group is more important.

So at the convention we have to focus on quality, on the connection between us, and thus we will advance.
[59295]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/30/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: In our group, a certain number of friends meet when they have free time. I feel that these meetings get in the way of deep unity between all the friends in the group.

There are more and more objections to such meetings. We think that we should meet not as separate groups but all together. How should we behave? If we continue in this way, then how can we explain this to the friends who are against such meetings?

Answer: It is desirable to meet at least once a week for my Sunday lesson, festive meal, and the gathering of friends. Come with your families and spend a few hours together so it becomes your tradition.

Question: You talk about love and filling the desires of others unconditionally. If one satisfies these desires, he boosts the ego, and that creates a sense of superiority. What desires are you talking about, and how can a person fulfill them, without thinking about himself?

Answer: To love the other means to fill his or her desire for spirituality because all the other desires (except for life’s necessities) are to a person’s detriment!
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