Question: You are saying that up until now we have been studying nature in a limited, subjective manner, since we base our studies on our ego that limits every research.

This means that we shouldn’t invent new telescopes, microscopes and particle accelerators, but actually something that is totally different. What kind of instrument do we need in order to study the universe?

Answer: We need a new program for mankind. Nature has made us egoists, and in that sense, we are not very different from the animate level. We have only invented different tools and instruments and now we have atom bombs and other such weapons in our hands instead of a stick. We have advanced in the same direction through our evolution.

But if we want to really exit our bubble and don’t want to keep on being the worm that lives inside the bitter radish and who perceives it as its whole world, we need to pay more attention and make more efforts to the acquiring of a second nature. We have to try to program ourselves anew in that direction so that the two types of nature will be integrated inside us: both our old nature that receives and the new nature that bestows and gives.

Then we will really see the other half of the universe, of the world, or even worlds, and we would also see the reason for everything that happens. It is actually by studying the nature of bestowal that we attain and learn about our root and its plan. Otherwise, if we stay inside, we will not discover or know anything about ourselves and will simply continue to improve our mechanical and technological toys and nothing more than that.

The new level is a person’s inner technology, without any clever tricks that we created through the ego. It is a method of acquiring the power of bestowal, and is part of nature that we only have to take out so that it will be dressed in us and form the system of a parallel perception within us.

Question: How will this affect our daily lives?

Answer: First of all, we will discover how and what we should live for and how to improve our lives. The universe itself originated from these two forces, and by establishing the mutual cooperation of these two systems of receiving and bestowal within it, we rise above them to the thought that created the universe. Thus we actually, and not just symbolically, ascend to an eternal infinite state.

Generally speaking, we develop towards this basic question one way or the other. It isn’t just a question about the reason for our sufferings and the meaning of our bitter life, but about the basic initial reason, about its purpose. Only the universe will be able to provide us with an answer when we ascend above the egoistic attraction, which for the time being, is symbolized by our planet earth.

Question: Where is the field of work in which we can properly develop the forces of bestowal inside us? Is it about my relations with the universe or with other people?

Answer: It is about relationships with other people, because they are actually the most developed matter. It is by mutual cooperation and by my interactions with them that I can develop a second nature.

This enables me to discover new things in the universe. When I exit myself, I see a different dimension through the prism of the force of bestowal in which space has no meaning. I look at the world above matter.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 3/2/14

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Our advancement along the spiritual path is divided into two phases. During the first phase, a person cannot and is unable to connect himself to the Creator, and the Light doesn’t have much influence on him. In the second phase, he begins to feel that there is a certain connection, a certain relation to the Creator, thanks to the influence of the Light.

He doesn’t really understand where it comes from, but he begins to notice it. It is just like in ordinary life when you don’t notice a certain person and all of a suddenly he becomes important to you and you begin to think about him and take him into account. The same thing happens with the Creator. A person begins to assess the states he is in, to check and examine whether there is any connection with the Creator, if it will delight Him, if He will enjoy it, and if He will respond to it.

Just like in any other process of development, the change is the result of the influence of the Light that Reforms. A person begins to pay attention to whether he relates to the Creator in any way in his actions and thoughts, how the Creator relates to him, and whether He is happy and enjoys it.

Here the image that he has of the Creator is important: Does he identify the Creator with the attribute of love and bestowal that is revealed in the public, in the people?

Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19: Also, one needs to conduct oneself with the will to receive and say to it, “I have already decided that I do not want to receive any pleasure because you want to enjoy. This is because with your desire I am forced to be separated from the Creator, since disparity of form causes separation and distance from the Creator.”

This determines what side a person is on. The more important it is to him that the Creator receives benefit, the less he notices his own benefit and the more personal pleasure he receives by delighting the Creator. This becomes the most important benefit for him.
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From 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/11/14, Shamati #19

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It is very important to check yourself: “What worries me?” Every moment that I feel alive and well, I am full of worries. So what do I worry about?

Am I worried about my own well-being, tranquility, achievement, what will make me happier, peace and quiet, security, food, and family welfare?

Or am I worried about friends, like a mother with a baby, searching for what they are missing and what should be done for them?  Do I worry about the group like a faithful nanny? This means I must check the intention of my worries.

The whole of creation gradually descended down to our world in which we exist in physical form and in the most inferior situation. We feel as if we are detached from the spiritual world, when in fact that can’t happen. So this world is called the imaginary world.

We suppose we exist in a vast world filled with lots of physical objects. However, in fact, it is all spiritual, but we don’t recognize or feel this.

So it is very important to check what I am worried about at every moment. Entering the spiritual world means continuing to be concerned about what is essential and vital in life: food, sleep, health, money, and relationships with people, but subconsciously, I am always troubled by the thought of how to organize the group so that it will become the Shechina (divinity), a place for discovering the Creator.

I must get used to being happy about my concern for the group. If I stop worrying about it, then I am worried about why am I not concerned about the friends. This must become habitual. In our world, habit becomes second nature.

Suppose that they give me a baby who is a stranger for whom I have no feelings. But I have no choice; I am compelled to worry about him day after day. I begin to be concerned about him and he becomes important for me. Ultimately, I begin to think about him all the time. It is the same thing in relation to the group. We must attain this state that is possible thanks only to determination and constantly returning to my thoughts about the group.

And after all these nice plans about taking care of the group, about my supporting it, attracting Light into it, about the Creator and giving Him satisfaction, I must ask myself, where He is and where I am subconsciously. I must always clarify what I am doing all this for. Certainly I hope to receive some reward, but what exactly?

It could be that in the meantime, I am not ready to imagine a reward for myself. It could be that I understand that afterward, for my effort I will demand control, respect, and transcendence of life and death, something tangible and very important for me. And here I must examine what is more important for me: Is it my reward or the ability to give satisfaction to the friends and the Creator?

Can I forego the reward, or at least part of it? And when I forego a reward, won’t I replace it with something else other than fame and the pursuit of honor?

What does it mean to give pleasure to the Creator? By what means can I do this and with which desires do I feel it? Through what will I feel that the Creator gets pleasure from me? It is necessary to try to separate my desires and perception into as many parts as possible and see how to work with them. The more parameters that I have, the more I will develop my perception.

This is like pixels on a computer screen that determine its resolution: In one square centimeter there can be two hundred pixels, there could be a thousand, or there could be ten thousand. The more points there are, the better and clearer the picture becomes.

The same thing happens also happens with our desires. The more we scrutinize them, the closer we come to the truth, to true perception.
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From the Convention In Los Angeles “Day Two” 11/01/14, Lesson #4

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A real Kabbalist realizes that he is under the domination of the ego and only one inner point inside him, the so-called the point in the heart, is free of the egoistic influence and can connect him to the Creator.

If he exerts himself and connects his point in the heart with the Creator, he receives the force that raises him above his ego and he begins to gradually correct the ego by using it for the sake of altruism.

All our work in spiritual correction is to ask the Creator for the powers to correct the ego. Therefore it plays such a positive role here, by awakening in us the need for the Creator.

When we turn to the Creator we receive from Him the power needed for correction and in the corrected ego we feel a relative connection with the Creator. It isn’t contact at one specific point but a wider and stronger unity. Then an even greater ego appears, a thicker ego, and once again we ask the Creator to give us the powers to correct it.

This means that the ego that is constantly being revealed wakens us to connect to the Creator and is therefore called help against. Our constant appeal to the Creator asking for the correction of the ego is called a prayer.
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/22/14

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Shamati #1 “There is None Else Beside Him”: Rather, for those people who truly want to draw near the Creator, and so they will not settle for little, meaning remain as senseless children… And only if that person has a true desire…

Is it possible for a person to have a true desire? I must feel inside, within my belly, within my heart, and examine with my mind how much at each and every moment in life I am alert to maintaining myself for my benefit. The main thing for me is not to harm anyone so that no one will harm me. I am only concerned about how to defend myself from all the evil that surrounds me, from all the dangers and bad influences from all sides.

If I feel that I am so focused on protecting myself, I will understand that this holds my entire attention, and even my desire to discover the Creator is derived from the same Kli, from the same intention to further improve my situation. However, I am not prepared to be released from my beastly nature of self-defense.

Here, I make a decision that I must get away from it, simply to tear myself from this concern for self-preservation, and all of this depends solely on this: How much does the importance of the Creator become greater than my own self-importance? When a desire, a decision, an imperative, like this ripens and awakens in me, I will begin to hate “my body,” meaning the ego that obligates me to be concerned about my own self-preservation all the time, and then a desire, a prayer, a scream, a request, awakens within me for the Creator to change what has been created for me, and I will begin to be concerned about the greatness of the Creator—about “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”—more than myself, and I will see myself only as a means for bestowing to others.

I must reach such an inner explosion that I will be ready to do anything. This is a critical point where I decide that I would rather kill myself than live a life like this if I won’t be able to be concerned about others more than about myself. I perceive my egoistic, beastly state as being so despicable that I simply must change it.

Those of us who have not yet passed through it are very close to this turning point, and we must pay special attention to it.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/14, Shamati #1

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Baal HaSulam, “There is None Else Besides Him:” Then he comes to the decision that no one can help him but the Creator Himself. 

A person makes this decision after he has tried all ways to somehow connect the two planes of the material and spiritual.

On the material plane, he fights for survival and earnings, and he experiences all the hardships of life, as does every person in this world. At the same time, he is in the upper world where he does not yet feel the upper force, its nature and uniqueness, but only tries to form within himself sense organs for the revelation of the next dimension.

After all attempts to bring these two worlds closer and, beyond all the material problems, not to allow himself to forget that everything comes from the sole and absolutely good upper management, he sees that he is not capable of this.

This is arranged on purpose so that a person needs the Creator, so that this upper force comes and creates within him the correct desires for its revelation.

This causes him to make a heartfelt demand that the Creator will open his eyes and heart, and truly bring him nearer to eternal adhesion with God. It thus follows, that all the rejections he had experienced had come from the Creator.

To understand this, one needs a supporting environment. Otherwise, he will forget about it every moment. A new informational record, a Reshimo, new external conditions, are revealed in every moment of our lives. Therefore, a person must provide himself with the guarantees for the future so that in the next moment he does not leave the spiritual path by suddenly finding himself a few meters or even kilometers away from his chosen path leading to the king’s palace.

Therefore, he needs to organize an environment that will support him and make him stay under its influence. In other words, he bows himself before the correct environment that in general is going by the path of the revelation of the Creator, the only force in the world.

Then during each descent a person will get help back from the environment to the extent of his contribution into it, as much as he surrendered himself to the environment. Indeed, a little one can receive from great ones by being influenced by them and inspired by their values, and, due to this, he continues his internal clarifications.

After a certain number of such actions, having gone through the vicissitudes of life, a person comes to the true cry. He already has the correct vessel of the right size and quality ready to accept the revelation of the Creator. He cries that in the conditions of concealment he is not able, to remain in the feeling that there is nothing except His good governance.

He appeals for help because he does not want to blame the Creator, and the Creator gives the person this opportunity. He cannot just be revealed because revelation is possible only in the correct desires. That is why when the person completes the required measure of efforts, the Upper Light rewards him with the property of bestowal.

Then, a person finally understands what was said in all the Kabbalistic books. As he obtains the property of bestowal, he reveals the Creator inside of this vessel.

This happens every time. A person does not ask for the revelation of the Creator in his egoistic desires like we are asking now. The Creator is revealed as the property of bestowal in the desires in which a person is able and ready to accept Him.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/14, Shamati #1

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Question: If we connect in caring for a friend’s healing, the outcome will be positive and then we will feel proud of that. It turns out that it would be an egoistic receiving of reward.

Answer: It makes no difference. We must look at things realistically since the egoistic awakening and the reward are also necessary. We need to be sure that we are a force. We are not on the level of working without feedback, yet when the mere effort or working for the Creator without a reward is the reward for us.

At the moment, we cannot even do that and don’t feel the system on a level that allows us to work in a void. I operate and all my efforts disappear, while I must feel bestowal and certain limitations. Therefore, we need feedback.

Question: How can we improve the quality of our concern for our sick friend?

Answer: First of all, the concern we feel for him should teach us to be together in one thought, on one level. At the same time, we must hope that we will learn to add our intention to this thought, that we unite thanks to our concern and use this connection on the next level in order to think about the Creator and to establish the necessary conditions for His revelation. The Creator is not revealed in each of us, but in the connection between us.

Thus, when worrying about a sick friend, each one should feel not his own personal concern for him and how we should spur each one to feel that, but how we all are mutually connected. We want to feel the network of connections among us and the revelation of our concern for a friend in it. This is the only thing we care about since our networking is working on the correction.

The main thing for us is to feel the connection since it is our only collective soul in which the Creator later will be revealed. Thus, we move on to the next level, to the system that is external to us, and begin to feel the cobweb of the actual connection, not ourselves and our egoistic desires that are in its meeting points and its connection.

If we begin to work this way, we begin to affect the whole system. By reviving the cobweb of the connections between us, like the web system on the Internet, we begin to prepare it for the revelation of the Creator because the force that goes through the system that ties, revives, regulates, and manages everything is called the Creator.

When we begin to tune into this system of mutual connections, we will be able to feel the Internet web system that was created by people. Our connection will begin to affect it according to the law of equivalence of form and people all over the world suddenly will begin to wake up.

Can you imagine how everything will change? Just as a person’s thoughts constantly change, so will the mechanical, electric system of the mutual connections between people begin to change. The general egoistic human brain—the mutual connection that includes everything that is revealed today in the Internet web system—will begin to change in form thanks to the fact that we are becoming active parts in our spiritual system.

People all over the world suddenly will feel the new current that the system of the relations between them has entered: a new force, new thoughts, and a new moral state. They will feel it since the spiritual system will affect the lower web system like a root affects the branch. Therefore, we soon will discover very interesting options.

However, going back to the question about the sick friend, it is important that we understand that he is the factor that spurs us to collective bestowal unto the whole system so that we will be able to connect and bestow unto the Creator a form of bestowal that He expects of us so much.

We really want our friend to be with us constantly and to recover and return to the group. We constantly must think about it seriously together. The Creator provides us with a reason from above so that we will connect and focus all our thoughts and actions on our unity and eventually for the sake of the Creator.
[145459]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Writing of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, Sages Fruit, Article “Wrong Time to Gather the Herd”: It’s prohibited to separate oneself from the society and ask for oneself, even for the sake of pleasing the Creator.

One should address the Creator, having the purest thoughts and ideal desires that are not for one’s own sake, but for the sake of others or for His sake. But if one prays to the Creator on one’s own, alone, the prayer won’t rise to Him. Rather, it will stay with the person who prays.

We can continue screaming for a thousand years, but it won’t help us at all. The spiritual system doesn’t hear solitary requests. A single person is unable to raise the desire to be connected with others, the desire that elicits the correction from Above. This demand has to be raised together with other similar desires, as part of a common desire to unite. Then the Light that fulfilled these desires before the shattering took place, when all desires were one whole, will automatically descend.

Praying for the entire society is the only possible type of prayer. Those who are detached from their surroundings as well as those who pray only for their own sake harm and destroy their souls. The Light won’t respond to such an appeal. It is said: The Creator says to all proud men: “We cannot dwell in the same abode you and I.”

It’s impossible to get out of one’s surroundings if one doesn’t wear the vestments of pride. One’s separation from the group automatically implies that one becomes more selfish. Detachment from the group is a result of various spiritual “moves,” not physical ones. No matter how justified one’s separation looks, it always is an outcome of one’s increased pride, wickedness, and egoism.

Praying alone makes one involuntarily abandon one’s community, thus ruining one’s soul, an aspiration towards the Creator. A sensation that one’s soul is implanted into a corrected community, in each of our friends not as a discrete part, but as an inseparable element of the whole system signifies a complete correction of the body (the general desire).

The category “we” becomes the only one that really exists. The sensation of “I-ness” vanishes since it is given to us only to make us understand that we are placed outside of the spiritual ladder.

“I-ness” exists only in this world. The lowest spiritual degree, as well as all other 125 spiritual steps, is based solely on “we” and the sensation of “we” becomes higher with each next step. The “I” disappears at the level of this world that is called the imaginary world since it exists only in our shattered desires.

Spirituality is felt only in the “we.” This notion includes me, you, him, and other friends connected together. It is quite a weak spiritual level of the world of Assiya at which clarifications and shatterings still occur. The world of Yetzira is nothing like that. There, in the world of Yetzira everything is truly connected into one whole. The world of Beria is a preparatory link for attaining a complete correction in the world of Atzilut.

This explains why we should never forget that spirituality can be felt only through the connection among us. It is said, the minimal Kli (vessel) is comprised of two. Ten people constitute an ideal structure. This is stated in The Zohar and Rabash’s articles.

For thousands of years, humanity did not have such wonderful conditions! We have to take advantage of our developmental stage and implement the transition from “I” to “we” as efficiently as possible.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Two” 9/20/14, Lesson 4

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It seems to us that a prayer is a canonized appeal to a “human-like” object. However, in this world, we understand the notion of prayer incorrectly. In fact, at any given moment, whatever we do, we always pray, meaning we express our desires. The expression of our desires is called a prayer.

Kabbalah is a system of relationships with the upper force that began at the time of Adam. It is the most ancient wisdom in the world that began 5,775 years ago; a human by the name of Adam initiated the relationships with the upper level of nature that is now called the Creator because it stands for the system that created us. This explains why the most basic and correct definitions should be borrowed from the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Adam called the manifestation of human desires a prayer because our constantly changing desires modify the system we live in. The system reacts to our prayers directly since we act within its boundaries. So, we constantly pray, thus the system continuously changes, thereby impacting us.

That’s why we have to correctly direct our desires, concentrate on the system we exist in, thus shaping joint intentions and promoting our internal advancement so that we can influence the system purposefully instead of chaotically impacting it by having diverse desires. For that, we unite in groups and encourage each other, thereby approaching certain intentions and desires, and defining a vision of our future. Our focused exertions affect the system greatly; therefore, it begins reacting to our influence very sensibly.

When we interact with each other, we start feeling a great need for the property of bestowal and love, the quality of integrality and mutual aid. When we effectively and strongly influence the system, it begins influencing us. This “feedback” can dramatically modify us even if we don’t have a desire to change deep inside us.

Because we are egoists, we have only one type of desire. That’s why we are unable to demand from the system that it change our desires and intentions. No matter what, we will always bring up our egoistic incentives. However, the system is built in a way that even if our request is not sincere, it still reacts to our demands correctly. This is because the shattering, the inversion from altruism to egoism, progressed from top to bottom. That’s why when we raise our requests from the bottom up, the system corrects them.

When we are together with the group, we unite; thus, each of us receives a desire to move correctly inside the system. When we impact the system by our willingness to change and rise above our egoistic nature, it responds to us.

Most important is to remember that we are constantly under the system’s influence. Even if we are not yet a corrected element of the system but we manage to stick together in a group and continue our efforts to self-correct, then we influence the entire system in a good way. In return, the system modifies us by its reciprocal influence. By doing so, the system corrects, revives, and rectifies itself.

This explains why everything depends on our prayer, meaning on our having good aspirations even though they are still very small, weak, and primitive. Our aspirations are being calculated within the system. It is a constant cumulative process in which all sorts of reciprocal corrections take place.

It’s essential not to cool down when working in the group. We should support each other, mutually enhance our individual desires, and take advantage of our egoistic properties such as jealousy, envy, and competition. We should use these features to reach the desirable results from others, particularly from our tens, thereby multiplying our desire to improve by dozens of times.

Every friend, becoming ten times greater, will tell the others about their new increased desires. Then, each one of our friends borrows a hundred times more from others, and so on and so forth. It means that when we are in a circle, there are no limitations in strengthening our desires to change.

Moreover, when one falls, others rise. This counterbalance keeps us on a constant move to correction. In this case, we truly can raise our huge desires to the system, urge it to change us and ask it to influence us by reciprocal reaction, the so-called Ohr Makif, the Returning Light, that gradually corrects us.

A self-tuning, self-correcting spiritual system, as any other type of a search engine, constantly explores how to better react to us, absorb us, adapt us to it so that we completely correct and turn into its useful elements. This is how it is built.

The Study of the Ten Sefirot teaches us that the system of the upper worlds consists of 125 levels: five worlds each of which includes five discrete multifunctional blocks (Partzufim), and  each block in turn consisting of five sub-levels (Sefirot). It is a very flexible system that quickly adapts to our demands. When we strive to coordinate with it through our desires and become similar to it, rise to its highest levels and enter a state of absolute homeostasis, connected with it, then the system immediately reacts to our desires and corrects us in a certain way so that we turn into its active, useful, and internal components.

Then we begin controlling the system due to the fact that previously we were its corrupt elements, whereas at this point we approach a state of correction. This is an extraordinary, miraculous property: If an uncorrected particle strives to self-correct, it influences the entire system much stronger than its already corrected elements.

Due to the fact that we are positioned between the system’s corrupt and corrected layers, we have a chance to sense, understand, analyze, and synthesize the properties and possibilities that are a full degree higher than the mechanistic system itself. Our egoistic “I” that we strive to alter helps us become a totally different entity and rise to a new level in the structure of the higher force that created the entire system. I rise above the system and become similar to the property of bestowal and love, to the authentic quality of everything there is, to the Creator.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Shamati #5

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Question: It is said in Shamati #5 that the properties of Lishma (for the sake of bestowal to others and to the Creator) are awakened from Above. If this property appears in us “on its own,” without our participation, then why do we need to apply efforts, i.e., try to awaken this property from below?

Answer: The thing is that without our participation, no changes will happen to our egoistic, receiving nature. We won’t start caring for others, nor will we orient ourselves to serve them.

This mission is impossible in this material world. Any system, even a purely mechanical one, requires some energy to perform work. It always loses a certain amount of energy.

The only exceptions to this rule are low-temperature, superconducting systems in which upon certain conditions there appears a property that doesn’t allow the system to consume energy for its own sake, but makes it give the energy away. This example sheds some light on what “acting for the sake of others” means.

We are constructed in a way that we always have to gain something. Without this feeling, we cannot do anything at all. That’s why changing our nature to its opposite, bestowal, seems unfeasible and incredible to us.

We should learn how to feel other’s desires and how to fulfill them. We have to regard ourselves as a remedy to fill others. It’s not natural for this world, nor does it exist at the inanimate, vegetative, animate, or speaking levels.

That’s why Baal HaSulam raises a question about how to acquire the property for the sake of the Creator, i.e., how can we start caring for absolute strangers with whom we have nothing in common and to whom we don’t have the slightest feelings that even remotely remind us, let’s say, of the relationship between a mother and a child. This situation implies an absolutely clear understanding that we are acting without any feasible possibility to get anything in return.

Unless we acknowledge that our nature is a hundred percent egoistic, we won’t ever understand how it is possible to go through such an inversion. A human brain is incapable of comprehending how this kind of inversion can take place in this material world.

Anything that happens to us teaches us that our work that we conduct on ourselves and things that we are trying to achieve in the group is always done solely for the sake of getting a reward. It can be a “restitution” that compensates us for only 1% of our efforts; the other 99% of our activities we do for the sake of others. Still, anything we ever do is done only because of this 1%.

For example, many steam and mechanical engines have efficiency not higher than 3-5%, but they were created specifically to perform with this level of efficiency. That’s why for us 1% has a huge significance. All we do is just for this 1%. If not for this 1%, we won’t be able to give 99% to others.

The question is: Do we really work to get 1% and for this kind of reward we involuntarily give away 99%? Let’s say, I have a boss who exploits me and pays me the minimum wage, but this wage somehow supports my existence. On the contrary, the work I do for my boss equals 99%, and I get back only 1% even though I don’t approve of this state of affairs. However, I won’t be able to exist without this 1%. If I don’t understand this “plan,” I won’t be able to work for my boss at all.

If we explore ourselves deeply enough, we’ll see that in order to achieve complete bestowal without receiving anything for our own sake, we are unable to make a single move, our body just won’t let us! Therefore, it’s possible to come to a state of absolute bestowal only under a special influence from Above.

Those who are subject to this kind of impact go through the process of internal inversion and relate to themselves in a totally different way. That’s why it is said: “Try and see how beautiful the Creator is” since the property of complete bestowal “outside ourselves” is a quality of the Creator.

If it is so, then we just have to understand why we should apply all kinds of efforts, follow numerous tips, try to reach the property of complete bestowal even if we know that no advice can ever help us to re-arrange ourselves unless the upper force descends and corrects us, thus giving us a chance to work for the sake of others.

In this case, why should we keep trying? The thing is that each one of us has a responsibility to apply maximal efforts and strive to correct  ourselves using any remedies that are available to us. Exertions that we make are called “a prayer.” In other words, a prayer is a demonstration of our intentions and desires. A prayer is a manifestation of what in fact we are aspiring to.
[145427]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Shamati #5

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