Our entire life comes down to trying to fulfill our desires, or anticipating the moment when our desire will meet the pleasure, such as the first sip of water you take when your are dying of thirst. But we only feel the pleasure at that first moment of contact between the desire and the pleasure. As soon as the pleasure enters the desire, it immediately begins to nullify the desire, and consequently, the pleasure.

Even sexual pleasure, which is so powerful that it is considered the root of all pleasures, lasts for just an instant. Then the person must think of other ways to fulfill himself. Thus, we are always compelled to chase after something, because this encounter between the desire and the pleasure is what we call life.

Without this constant chase of trying to bring pleasure into one’s desire, a person cannot be considered alive, for he has nothing to live for. In fact, if a person cannot fulfill his desire, he will be willing to take his own life. Yet, humanity is bound to reach a point where people will feel this way, but they won’t even be able to take their lives and bring an end to their horrid state for lack of strength. So what are we to do?

Baal HaSulam says that there is only one solution: “Instead of egoistic reception, we must reach bestowal. Fill yourself with bestowal, because you will never be able to fulfill yourself by receiving. You have tested it and seen it for yourself. But I will tell you a secret: there is a method that can give you the ability to feel perfect, unlimited pleasure. It will give you fulfillment which includes everything, even that which lies beyond the boundaries of this life. But you must know that this fulfillment does not happen through egoistic reception, but through bestowal. It is because everything that pertains to your human qualities exists outside of you – in the desires or souls of others.”

This is what Baal HaSulam means when he says: “Taste and see that the Creator is good.” Try and see for yourself that bestowal (the Creator) is fulfillment, goodness, and perfection. And then you will feel an infinite desire and infinite fulfillment.

The sole purpose of the science of Kabbalah is to bring a person to this state.

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A question I received: In Kabbalah, “to come out of exile” or to want to come out of exile means to want to rise above one’s egoism. But why would people want to come out of it? A person feels that his egoism is him. Why would he want to come out of himself?

My Answer: Because it’s inevitable! The Creator is the Light that created our desire. Sometimes He shines on a person with the Light a lot, and sometimes not so much. He uses these changes to build new desires in us. However, He does not fill these desires; He simply awakens them and causes them to grow.

This is why, with every passing day, we feel worse in every aspect of our lives. This is also why we want change, since we want changes to happen in order to feel good in our desire to receive pleasure.

And then one day, a small spark appears inside our desire, which comes to us from the Creator Himself. It’s a spark of Light, the property of bestowal, and from this spark or desire, we start to yearn for bestowal.

At first we don’t understand what it is we want. We only feel that what we want must come from a different world. All of a sudden, a person starts feeling that it is useless to receive, that there is no end to reception, and that it doesn’t have any meaning. He wants something different.

Thus, instead of the question, “How can I have meaning in life by receiving pleasure?” a new question arises in a person: “How can I have meaning in life by giving pleasure to someone else?” This question originates from a desire called the point in the heart.

Gradually, a person continues to grow and reaches Lo Lishma, a spiritual search for one’s own sake, and from there he reaches Lishma – for the sake of bestowal.

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In the News (from The Independent): “Just 96 months to save world, says Prince Charles” Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, the Prince of Wales has warned in a grandstand speech… Charles’s speech was described as his first attempt to present a coherent philosophy in which he placed the threat to the environment in the context of a failing economic system…

Charles said that without “coherent financial incentives and disincentives” we have just 96 months to avert “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it … If we don’t face up to this, then Nature, the biggest bank of all, could go bust…”

My Comment: The ecosystem doesn’t depend on us, but the economic system does. However, the way to change it for the better is not by trying to influence it directly, but by correcting our intentions from “reception” to “bestowal.” How can this be done? It is only possible by drawing a spiritual force from above, the force that created our egoism and that can change it, turning it into the opposite quality, that of bestowal and love. The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us how to draw this force of correction.

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A question I received from my student: The desire “to bestow to others” also implies an egoistic desire to receive something for oneself, because “I want” to bestow. So is this really bestowal?

My Answer: The desire to bestow is not related to one’s regular desires. However, “giving to others” as most people understood it today, is not a desire to bestow at all, because this is the same egoistic desire for pleasure, which simply appears as if it is being used for the sake of another person.

This is why a desire to bestow directly to another person does not exist in Nature. It is impossible, because it is equivalent to coming out of oneself.

So what are we to do? We have to try to “come out of ourselves.” If a person makes this attempt, he will reach the understanding that only the Creator can do this for him. And then he will reveal the Creator!

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A question I received: What is faith in Kabbalah?

My Answer: In Kabbalah, faith is bestowal. It’s when one is able to bestow despite his will to receive. This is called, “faith above reason.”

A person’s nature is the will to receive, and faith is the property of bestowal that’s opposite to our nature. The only way for us to acquire the property of bestowal is with the help of the Upper Light, because it gives us the ability to rise above ourselves and to act out of a different desire: for the sake of others, or for the sake of the Creator. One then acts out of this desire, instead of one’s own, natural desire. And because of this, one becomes dependent on the Upper Level (one becomes “the Creator’s slave”) rather than on oneself (a “slave to oneself”).

Therefore, if you have faith in me, it means that you act for my sake with all of your abilities. Actually, you become like me. That is because normally, every person is completely opposite to another. But if someone has faith in me, it means he has neutralized his desires in regard to me, and through these desires, he and I are one.

The opposite of faith is knowledge, which is when we act for the sake of our own desires. Faith, however, is when we act for the sake of fulfilling the desires of others. When a person has this quality, he is able to sense things outside of himself, through the desires of others. And what one senses through these desires is the higher, spiritual world. This is why faith is closely related to love (love for another person), because love is the ability to replace one’s own desire with the desire of another person, and to fulfill that desire.

As you can see, in Kabbalah, faith is when a person masters the quality of bestowal – a higher quality. Clearly, this bears no relation to faith as it is understood in our world: believing in what someone else says and accepting it as a fact. With this kind of faith, I may accept another person’s mistake or false belief as a fact, and then use it as a foundation for all my actions and my entire life.

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A question I received: How can people determine what is a necessity today?

My Answer: The level of necessity of today is a medium level of well-being in the place where a person is living. There are many methods of verifying the actual mean level. Baal HaSulam covers that in detail in the article The Future Generation. He refers to creation of all kinds of committees that would check the actual needs of every person, and fulfill them.

All of that is measured according to the needs of an average person. Let’s say that each family must have a room for each of its members. Each person must have a job. The family must have a car to get to and from work and for other needs. All of that is determined in accordance with changes that occur in the world. Notwithstanding, a family must have everything it needs to exit normally.

As a matter of fact, the problem is not what you have, but your attitude towards it. After all, the Creator doesn’t want you to suffer. The purpose of creation is to delight the creatures. Therefore, you confine your earthly life to the needs of your physical body – no more and no less.

You have to fill your desires for food, sex, family, wealth, honor, power and knowledge. You should feel no lack in those desires, and they should be filled to the measure that is an essential necessity for the life of your animal body. Anything that is beyond a necessity should be used to bestow to your fellow man.

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Spiritual Search: “Our World and the Spiritual”

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No matter how much the bankers and the economists search for a regulator, they will not find it. After all, the only regulator for our state is in the rule “love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the only form of correct participation in the global system.

Otherwise, you will never have the freedom of will or the opportunity for independent action, and you will remain an inanimate little screw within a rigid system, forced to twist and turn as the system sees fit. But none of it will be done by you – you will be twisted and turned by others.

In order to make decisions and act independently, you need faith above reason and pure bestowal. No other method can be used to influence this system. If everyone were to begin to act this way, suddenly we would find that we are all rising above our previous egoistic calculations of trying to guess how each person would act, which is entirely impossible.

After all, by trying to reveal this formula and coming closer and closer to it, you suddenly switch from a numerical system of calculation to an analogous one. In other words, you stop counting 1+1+…, breaking the whole circle into segments. Because the calculation continuously gets harder, and there are more and more segments, in the end all of them merge into a common integral – into one common circle. You are then no longer able to perform a calculation according to your egoistic nature – you are forced to ascend to bestowal. And this is the only action that can be performed.

This is like a common integral, when you need to measure the area, so you break it up into segments, estimate the area of each, and then add them up, which is how the segments form a circle.

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A question I received: What are Godly deeds and goodness?
My Answer: This is the goodness that fills the world that is discovered in my corrected desires. Even at this moment, I am surrounded by the world of Infinity filled with absolute goodness, but I have no ability to feel it.

Godly goodness is what I discover in place of the evil that I sense today. My egoism is constantly growing and by this it shows me that everything is bad. It shows me two opposites: the Light and that same Light in the form of darkness. This is how one feels the Light in this world, since he is opposite to bestowal.

The stronger the Light works on me, the harder and darker life seems to be. This is because I am opposite to it. The Light that is revealed relative to all souls and not only relative to me, shows me that everything that happens to me depends on the whole world.

This is why the world doesn’t understand why all of a sudden it experiences stagnation and inactivity. Subconsciously, a person feels that he depends on everyone. So, how should he act? He must be able to scrutinize when he bestows and when he receives. But the revelation of our global connection blurs the desire to receive and renders us helpless. If I am told that I am to complete some work and receive payment for it, this I understand. But I cannot work without a reward!

The difficulty here is that as the connection between us appears, the Light will increasingly reveal itself. We will feel its influence as increased darkness and crisis. But if we begin to play the game of bestowal with each other, we will be corrected. The science of Kabbalah, even as a game, will unite humanity in mutual bestowal with the source which will correct us. As a result, we will indeed find ourselves in a corrected state.

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To be in the egoistic desire is to lack the instrument to turn this quality of egoism into the quality of the Creator. The Upper Light, the very quality of the Creator, is that special force that reforms us.

But it only does so in conjunction with our desire to change our qualities from egoistic to altruistic. It must be a true desire, i.e. it must come from the heart, and not by way of words or tears.

To reach such a genuine desire to change constitutes our entire work on ourselves in this life. Those who have undergone this process of transformation of their egoistic desire into the desire to bestow tell us about it in their books.

Just as in our world, parents provide all the necessary conditions for babies and their development, so have the Kabbalists prepared for us all that is necessary for our spiritual development. They have already united into one great soul over the course of centuries and have prepared our future world – and they are waiting there for us.

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Imagine that you’re an egoist in your own family and that you treat your family members the same way you treat the rest of the world: “maximum reception and minimum bestowal.” You lie to your son in order to get something from him, all the while feeling great as you do it! You steal your children’s food from the refrigerator and you try to con and swindle them. This is just as your attitude toward the whole world is: “work less, earn more.”

If the whole world today is interdependent and we’re all one family, whether or not we want it to be this way, our behavior towards the world is like using our children for personal benefit. 

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