The desire to enjoy is a necessary material, because without it, it would be impossible for us to learn to bestow. I can only change the form of my desire, meaning that I can learn to use it for others instead of myself.

Then I will perceive reality differently – not within me, but outside of me. And I will then understand that I was seeing an imaginary world inside me. Something was wrong inside me, making me think that reality divides into me and the world outside of me. But when I correct this imaginary division of the world into its constituent parts and connect them together, incorporating all of the world’s desires, which had seemed foreign to me, or existing outside me, then I acquire one single desire or Kli.

So, it turns out that the problem we are facing is purely psychological, as Baal HaSulam writes in the article “The Science of Kabbalah.” We have to analyze our desires and see how mistaken we are by desiring to exploit others. When you discover that everything around you is your own desires, then you realize: who are you really lying to? It’s as if you are playing with your baby son, trying to confuse and deceive him in order to profit from him.

Well, this is exactly how we behave toward the whole world, which seems foreign due to the force of the breaking. But when the truth is revealed, we will see a different world.

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Bina contains the entire Light of Hochma, but only in order to prefer the Light of Hassadim over it. In other words, it prefers bestowal over fulfillment. What does this mean?

It’s when I don’t want anything except to bestow! Someone gives me a million dollars, but I refuse to take it. They can give me 100 million or a billion, but I’ll still refuse it. This is called preferring Hassadim – bestowal – over reception.

It’s impossible to measure bestowal; it has no bounds. The only way to measure something is when it is inside the desires of reception. If I am able to receive a billion dollars and I want this money, but I prefer bestowal, then this is the measure of my desire to bestow. However, if I don’t have a desire to receive, then I don’t have anything with which to measure the desire to bestow.

These two opposite desires must come together: I need a great desire and a sensation of a great pleasure that I can receive, and at the same time, a screen over the desire. That way, I will prefer bestowal over anything else. But how can we possibly attain this correction?

Only the Light – Ohr Makif – is able to grant us this correction. When I prefer the Light of Hassadim and reject the Light of Hochma, then according to this, I measure the height of the Light of Hassadim, even though it expands outwards. The Light of Hochma, on the other hand, expands vertically, from Above downwards.

In and of itself, Bina has no height. If you want to bestow, go ahead. You shouldn’t care how much you bestow and to whom. But the height of bestowal is measured by the desires of reception, which are opposed to bestowal and can be overcome by it.

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In the World of Infinity, the desire (Kli) is perfect, and it merges with the perfect Light as one whole. Together they descend down to the lowest place in the universe – this world, where the desire is perceived as man’s body and the Light dwindles down to a spark that enlivens the body.

Once these two elements descend, they lose their unity and start to oppose one another. All of this takes place inside a person, and he has to raise these two elements back upwards, in order to connect them just as before they descended. To this end, a person constantly receives a greater desire to enjoy, and against it – a greater Light. His task is to combine the two and make them similar to one another.

In order to do this, a person has to refuse to use his desire to receive. With the help of the Light, he can turn his desire to receive into the desire to bestow, and then man’s desire becomes similar to the Light and they merge together.

Yet, an even greater desire is immediately revealed inside a person – an ego of such proportions that he couldn’t even imagine it before! And he once again has to draw the Light that Reforms through the group and the study in order to connect his desire with the Light and find similarity to it. He has to do this over and over again on all 125 spiritual degrees.

Every time he overcomes a given portion of his egoism, it seems as if he has already overcome all of it. But all of his past resolves to remain steadfast and loyal to bestowal, all of his past corrections come tumbling down when he reveals just another additional ounce of desire. It casts him down into the darkness all over again, together with a lack of understanding, hate, and inability to do anything. And all of this happens just because he received another tiny portion of desire. He must then look for forces and means of correction all over again. And in order to do this, he needs a third element – the Creator.

This was all arranged deliberately, so that while we ascend from below upwards and feel ever-greater darkness inside our growing desire, we will desire to correct ourselves and will feel that we need each other, as well as the Creator.

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Our world is like a single spiritual body that develops and goes though correction over the course of 6000 years. This time can be divided into three periods, each lasting 2000 years, starting with the first man – Adam.

The first desires (or Kelim) to be revealed are the thinnest, or the egoistically weakest ones; they are called ChaBaD. They are followed by the desires with a medium strength of egoism – HaGaT. And during the final 2000 years – our time, the most egoistic desires – NeChY – are revealed.

The thin Kelim were very elevated souls – the Patriarchs, the nation of Israel that came out of Egypt (Galgalta Eynaim). However, they could not reveal greater depth, wisdom, and the Light of Hochma, because they lacked the depth (thickness) of desire.

On the other hand, over the last 2000 years, we were in exile from the quality of bestowal and love, in egoism, and we are now approaching freedom from the power of egoism over us, even though our egoism is actively developing now.

It turns out that our most egoistic desires (Kelim NeCHY) can draw the most powerful Light – Hochma – into the system of One Soul of Adam. In spite of the fact that our minds and feelings are very limited, when we make a slight effort and perform a correction on our low degree, we draw an enormous Light into our higher Kelim – HaBaD, and great corrections occur there. This is how the system of souls of Adam works according to the law of reverse correspondence of Lights and Kelim.

Therefore, while we make great changes in the system of souls, we don’t even know or understand what we’re doing. We are like infants who just smiled or put two blocks together, and the grown up parents rejoice over our small success.

So, we don’t know what Light we draw into the higher souls; this will only be revealed at the End of Correction, when everyone begins to feel this Light. Our souls are the worst, most egoistic, but that is why through our correction, we bring the most powerful Light – the Light of Hochma – into the world. This is a Light that the world has never experienced before.

This is why our correction is called redemption. Through our simple and small work, we carry out the redemption and bring life into this whole system! The whole past, our whole history, and all the great Kabbalists of the past – all of this was only the preparation for the correction that you and I now have to perform.

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Preparation to the Lesson
There is one, indivisible reality before us, but every person reveals it depending on his own qualities.
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Part 1, on Shamati #97
The spiritual embryo “flips over” before the birth: what used to seem like garbage, now becomes the most important thing for a person. He is now ready to ascend to the next level.
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Part 2, on “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”
You shouldn’t fight your desires; you will need them all. It’s not the desires that need to be restricted, but the way you use them.
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Part 3, on “Disclosing One Portion And Covering Two”
Kabbalists never reveal what is not necessary and what the generation is not ready to realize.
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When a person wants to work for the sake of bestowal, his egoism puts up a fight. It takes a lot of different actions to divide a person’s general desire into two camps: that which a person can do for the sake of bestowal, and that which he can’t.

One has to “give gifts” to his egoism in order to make it calm down and understand that it wins out by taking part in your path – bestowal. We can’t just completely cut off our desire to receive pleasure. Rather, we constantly have to awaken this desire in order to receive new desires from it, which we could then correct and thus ascend toward the goal.

This is why it is not enough to simply restrict your egoism. Instead, you have to nourish it: give it gifts, hug it, and tell it, “We are brothers!” We have to be like Jacob who went to meet Esau bearing gifts.

We will still have much more use for the will to enjoy! However, as long as we’re unable to work with it, we have to nourish it and show it that all our spiritual work is for its benefit. After all, it doesn’t know that you are planning to correct yourself for the sake of bestowal.

You have to treat it as a foreign, alien body, which remains uncorrected for now. And you have to nourish it in order to be able to build the middle line. It’s like the mafia, which comes to you the minute you want to open up some great business, and it tells you: “We are allowing you to start your business, but every month you have to give us a part of the profits.”

This is exactly how we have to work with our egoism, but we have to be much more cunning. Every time we lie to it, we extract new parts of desire from it which can be corrected, while assuring the ego that it’s all done for its own good.

We continue nourishing it so it will allows us to work even more, very much like the mafia which is happy about the fact that your business is growing: “Do whatever you want as long as you pay!” This is how we trick our egoism. The desire to receive pleasure is the matter of creation, and we can’t neglect or extinguish it. We have to sustain its life, hoping that one day we can bring it to complete correction.

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A question I received: When a politician comes to power in our world, then even if he is motivated by compassionate goals such as a desire to do good for the society, he still can’t avoid getting mixed up in political power struggles and petty troubles that make him forget about the compassionate goals he had. On our spiritual path, how can we make sure that we don’t stray from the goal and fall for the tricks our egoism plays on us?

My Answer: Indeed, when we are doing spiritual work, we have to lie to our egoism. We are standing opposite the Creator whether we want to or not, and He is the one setting up all the forces that come our way, all the disturbances and all our inner discernments.

As soon as you forget about Him and veer off the path leading directly to Him, you start to feel suffering. And this suffering eventually brings you back to the right calculation: that all the forces must unite together into a single aspiration toward the Creator. This is how things work in spirituality, because the Creator controls everything that happens to a person.

The Creator is above and a person with the point in the heart is below, and there is a system of two forces between them: the right line and the left line. You advance from below upwards, toward the goal, which is the middle line. As soon as you deviate away from it in any direction, you start being affected by a force that brings you back, because only being in the middle line allows you to feel unity with the Creator, where unity is balance.

Yet, as soon as you attain balance, you immediately shift to a higher level. Then, the search for balance on that higher level once again forces you to research all the parts of the system and to ask for help from Above. After all, it is only by correcting your matter – your desires, that you ascend above them and perceive the new world in those corrected desires.

All of these forces come from Above in order to help you advance upwards. It’s impossible for anything to get “mixed up” here. The only thing that depends on you is whether to advance toward the goal by the short path or the long path. This is up to you!

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When reading a Kabbalistic text, it’s important to understand that it is only talking about spiritual processes that take place inside a person, rather than about different characters and external actions. Everything that is described in a Kabbalistic text is inside a person.

For instance, the entire Torah talks only about how a person discerns different desires and qualities within: which ones belong to bestowal and which – to reception, which are fit for correction and which are unfit for it; and how a person experiences an inner world through these qualities, which is the only world that actually exists. A person then discovers that he perceives our world inside him as well, and there is never anything on the outside.

The way to enter the new world is by expanding your perception of your internal desires and qualities and by taking care to use all of them for the sake of bestowal. This is how one realizes oneself to the fullest.

A person contains all the characters of the Torah – the whole world to the fullest is within him. Kabbalah explains how a person can arrange the entire sum of all his desires within, and thereby reveal a new world.

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There are two forces leading us to our goal. One force is our desires and the desires of the environment, which develop us in this world. But the second force does not pertain to this world; it pulls a person toward the unknown and brings him to a special, spiritual environment – a teacher, a group, and Kabbalah books.

If one connects with them properly, then he builds the spiritual world for himself, which is his future world. One’s body remains in the material world, while one’s soul becomes born in the spiritual world. This is the only realm where a person has freedom of choice.

A person is always inside the field of these two opposite forces, and he has to balance them out. However, he shouldn’t try to replace one with the other; one needs his life and the desire to enjoy in this world also.

On the spiritual path, one always finds oneself between two opposite forces. By balancing them within oneself, a person uses his free choice to build his “self” between these two forces. He does this freely and independently.

A person receives everything else from Above: his desires, mind, strength, and examples, but he builds himself on his own. It turns out that he creates a creature out of himself, becoming equivalent to the Creator!

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A question I received: What is the fundamental difference between humans and other creatures?

My Answer: Unlike animals, we humans have the opportunity to attain a connection higher than our bodies. There are two forces or desires at my disposal: I feel my “self” or my life, and I also feel the need to find the source of my life – the Creator.

In the physiological sense, humans do not differ from animals in any fundamental way. Man originated from the animate level. At some point in the past, we used to be apes, and we later developed into “modern apes.” Everything happened due to the development of the Reshimot in us. For more on this, see Part 3 of Talmud Eser Sefirot.

So, there is no difference between humans and animals, except for the spiritual desire that is instilled in us. This desire is a part of the Creator, and it is above and beyond our lives. If this desire awakens in me, then I become a human being. Meanwhile, in every other respect, I still remain an “ape.”

Granted, it’s an ”ape of the best sort” – one that’s more complex and more adapted to carrying out the human function: to attain the Creator through its desire. Our bodies are smarter and more sensitive than animals’. Yet, whatever a person in this world has that is above and beyond the animate level, he needs it for only one thing: to develop and understand what his soul desires.

You have received a point of spirituality that bears absolutely no relation to the body. It will remain even if you were to replace all parts of the body. It would still want to advance forward!
(From Part 2 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, on Baal HaSulam’s “Introduction to the Book, ‘From the Mouth of a Sage’”)

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