A question I received: If a person asks the Light to bring him closer, isn’t this an egoistic request? After all, he wants it to happen in order to feel better.

My Answer: That doesn’t matter. It’s called Lo Lishma, which means that a person desires spirituality egoistically, for his own sake. He wants to feel the spiritual world, to gain a spiritual life and the sensation of the true reality, and to see that his life is not going to waste. One way or another, life keeps going on, and no one knows how much time they have left. A person doesn’t want his life to end in a meaningless way.

From the start, we cannot think about anything besides our own benefit. Therefore, if we don’t desire spirituality egoistically, by imagining how good it is for us, then it would be impossible for Kabbalah to reach us. The spiritual path starts with egoistic attainment, called Lo Lishma, and then, as a person keeps being influenced by the Upper Light, Ohr Makif, one’s egoistic attitude to spirituality is replaced with an altruistic one, called Lishma.

This is why a person’s egoism is called “help against himself” (Ezer Kenegedo). It’s because it brings him to a state where he suddenly realizes, “My own egoism is standing in my way!” He reaches a point where he has to annihilate the same ego that always used to help him and pushed him forward. However, he shouldn’t annihilate his desires, but only their egoistic intention.

This is how a person is gradually transformed by the Light.

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Two questions I received about humanity’s previous correction and survival of the Jews:

Question: If I understand you correctly, humanity has previously existed in the corrected, ideal state several thousand years ago. What was the reason for the appearance of egoism that led to the downfall and “destruction of the Second Temple?” Could egoism and imbalance again appear when humanity reaches a new balance by correcting itself?

My Answer: Only part of humanity, the people of Israel, went through correction and breakage so that correction can take place again in our times. This time, however, the correction will include the entire world.

Question: Did the Jews survive as a single nation because of Judaism? If they didn’t survive as a nation, then would Kabbalah not have been revealed in our time?

My Answer: Everything goes according to Nature’s plan. Therefore, the Jews, who were part of the Babylonian civilization, survived in order that today, they can bring a method for everyone to change themselves in order to achieve the level of the Creator. Yes, we do have to change that much according to Nature’s plan!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What happened in Ancient Babylon?
Laitman.com Post: Israel Are Those Who Aspire Straight To The Creator
Kabbalah Today Article: Havoc in Modern-Day Babylon
From Chaos to Harmony: “A Reality of Wholeness and Infinity. Nature’s Plan”

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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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In order to enter the spiritual world, one has to perform a “restriction” (Tzimtzum) on one’s egoistic desires. Malchut (the quality of reception) has to become completely incorporated in Bina (the quality of bestowal) and submit to its power.

There are no obstructive barriers or curtains separating the permitted from the forbidden. There is no coercion in spirituality. There are no walls or “No entry!” signs, or situations where you want something and someone on the outside is forbidding you from it.

We cannot crush any of our desires or forbid ourselves from wanting. What we need is an inner correction within the desire itself.

The desire remains, but at the same time, we gain a new feeling that it is important not to use it egoistically. We realize that there is an opportunity to put the desire to a higher use, for the sake of bestowal, in order to benefit others.

Although the desire was created as desiring fulfillment, it can be corrected so it won’t receive anything besides what it naturally needs to consume, because it feels the importance of bestowal. For instance, have you seen a trained lion in a circus? Why is it that instead of gobbling up the trainer, the lion obediently opens its mouth and allows a person to put his arm or even his head inside? Doesn’t the lion want to bite it off? Yes, it does! However, the lion feels that this person is very important because he feeds it. Therefore, the lion suppresses its natural desire.

In the same manner, we preserve our desire to receive pleasure. It just begins to feel the importance of the quality of bestowal, and therefore, it wants bestowal to govern over it.

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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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A question I received: You said at a lecture that the soul of a man consists of 613 egoistic desires and that one has to correct them to bestowal by attracting the Light during Kabbalah studies, thus coming to the quality of “loving one’s neighbor as oneself.”

This correction of the 613 desires is called observation of the 613 commandments. You also told that the soul is like a pomegranate that consists of 613 seeds in the same manner as the soul consists of 613 desires. But who checked this?

My Answer: You have described it correctly. There was an article written about the pomegranate which recounts a project where the researchers took a number of pomegranates from different countries and counted their seeds. Each pomegranate had a different number of seeds – some less than 613 and some more, but the average number of seeds was 613.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Faith Above Reason Is Bestowal Above Reception
Laitman.com Post: Discover The Correct Desires Within You, And You Will See Where You Really Are
Baal HaSulam Letter: “Igrot (Letters) P. 63”
Shamati #13: “A Pomegranate”

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On the spiritual path, we always advance through states that consist of two opposites simultaneously. This really bothers a person, since he exists in just one quality – egoism, or the intention, “only for my sake.” A person just cannot agree with the fact that two opposites can be together.

However, in the spiritual state, opposites coincide. After all, we are opposite to the Creator and we have to attain adhesion with Him. We are able to attain adhesion with Him while keeping our initial nature; this is called spirituality. We do it by adding the spiritual nature to our nature, by combining the two. We thereby exist in both worlds.

However, right now we only have the desire to enjoy, and therefore we don’t understand how it is possible to have a unity of opposites. In fact, this state cannot be described or conveyed using our earthly language. Our language is an expression of our nature, and therefore it is only able to convey what we understand. But in the spiritual state, even the cause and effect change places: what seemed to be the cause turns out to be the result. This is why spirituality is concealed.

But it’s not because someone is concealing the spiritual state from you. Rather, you simply don’t recognize spirituality because you are built according to the material world, which consists of just one component rather than two opposites together. It’s as if you walk right by the spiritual world, in a different dimension, and you never encounter it. You simply don’t have the sense to perceive it.

Spirituality can only be perceived within two opposites. It’s when the Creator and the creation unite together through creation’s equivalence of form with the Creator. When you create this equivalence between yourself and the Creator, between your intention and His desire to bestow, while your desire to receive remains, then you have two opposites within and are able to perceive spirituality.

You begin to understand it, and you can start researching and measuring it. You are then able to understand how it is possible for there to be something above the speed of light: two opposites together, which don’t contradict one another.

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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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The spiritual world is not in a different dimension or up in the clouds. It is something you find inside your attitude to other people, when you see that your neglect toward them becomes replaced by attentiveness toward them and a feeling that they are important. This happens because you wish to reach spirituality, and you start to see that they are your partners on this path.

You then begin to worry about them and to take care of them just as you would with anyone who is important to you. At first you do this egoistically, but you gradually start to feel that you want to give to them.

That is when the Light begins to work, making you feel that there are qualities inside you that you have to correct. You wish to treat others with love, and you also feel that only the Light can carry out this correction. If you really want this to happen, then the Light will come and correct you.

However, this Light works only inside the connection between people, turning hatred into love and correcting the breaking which once turned love into hatred. Inside this new attitude to others, you begin to reveal the spiritual world that was lost during the breaking. You realize that your connection with others is a connection of souls, of your inner desires, and inside it, you reveal the Creator.

All of this occurs precisely inside this net of desires that bind all of you. They create a vessel (Kli), in which your spiritual life becomes revealed. Meanwhile, the material life turns out to be but a dream, like an imagined world.

Deep inside the connection among people, you reveal the quality of bestowal, and you realize that it is the only thing that exists in the world. Everything else was a fantasy, a concealment of the spiritual world, which was necessary in order for you to reveal it.

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