The Creator created concealment, which distances, separates, pushes away, and confuses us. Instead of revealing Himself immediately and openly, He hides in order to evoke aspiration, passion, and a desire to reach Him!

This is the whole purpose of concealment and the reason for creating impure forces (Klipot), which sustain us until we reach the right desire for the Creator. They hold us back like dogs pulling at the leash in order to leap out at someone.

The Creator hides Himself until we acquire the correct, completely bestowing desire, which can no longer be extinguished by an encounter with Him. By revealing the Creator within this corrected desire, it does not fade like the desires of our world, where having received what we desired, we immediately stop valuing it. On the contrary, we need to value and love this pleasure more and more, since it holds the attitude of the Giver toward us.

Therefore, we have to see all these concealments and repulsions created by the Creator as a flirt, a game that brings us to the right desire, which is not just a desire of enormous strength, but a desire of the right form. This is in order that we will seek pleasure from an encounter with the Giver rather than from an encounter with fulfillment.

This is similar to a woman that demands an inner connection from an external action performed by a man. We have to learn about spirituality from the psychology of our life. We need to understand the essence of the concealment, the flirt and this whole game through which the Creator brings us closer or pushes us away.

We will not be able to achieve revelation until we begin to value Him, and with His help, build the correct attitude for an encounter with Him. We will then have the ability to interpret a connection with Him as a means of pleasure! He waits for us to want Him more than the pleasure that He brings. Then we will be ready to accept this pleasure and reveal the Creator within it.

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A question I received: How can the desire to receive take on the form of bestowal?

My Answer: In my desire to receive, I can only receive and am not able to give anything to anyone. I am not the source of delight or the Light, as it is only the Creator who bestows since He does have the Light.  However, by receiving from the One who loves me in order to please Him, I become a giver! The action of receiving doesn’t change, since I, as a created being, can only receive. I am only adding a correct intention to my pleasure and it therefore allows me to fill another with delight.

However, the bonds of mutual love help me to convert the pleasure of reception into the means to bestow to someone else.  This is just as a guest helps himself to a meal in order to please the host. The desire of another becomes primary for me, as I am then receiving pleasure in order to please him.

This is what Kabbalah teaches us; how to receive in order to become a giver.

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I don’t need to pay any attention to which particular pleasures I find attractive. In fact, all of them come down to the same common denominator – they make me feel good.

If I use this approach, it is easier for me to restrain my aspirations for pleasure and shift my attention from the pleasure to His Source and to the reason why I am receiving this pleasure. Then these desires will be “help against me.” The sequence of events and actions will become clearer to me if I don’t lose myself in a certain type of pleasure (whether money, animate desires, food, fame, or power).

Instead of any particular labels, I use one common notion – pleasure. It stands in front of me, attracts and invades me. So, what can I do? Here I remember that the only possibility to rise above the pleasure is to ask for external help. Only the correct environment will awaken my desire to enjoy bestowal and will surely prove that bestowal is more important than finding pleasure in receiving.

By proving to me the importance of attaining the property of bestowal, the environment compels me to ask the Light (Ohr Makif) for help in order to start ascending! The main thing is the principle or approach of not giving in, in spite of the difficulty of the obstacle. It is then that I will see pleasure against my desire for it.

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A question I received: How can a person avoid suffering?

My Answer: Ask yourself: who inflicts all the problems and suffering on you? If you felt that they all come from the Creator, you’d already feel better.

It’s similar to a surgeon who operates on you: even though it’s a painful process, you know that what he is doing is good for you. In fact, if you have enough understanding of the gravity of your illness and the efficacy of the treatment, then you won’t feel pain at all. If you understand that the operation will make you get well, you will even ask the surgeon to perform the operation sooner!

Thus, it’s because we do not have this sensation that we feel suffering. The feeling of suffering is not caused by the pain itself, but by the fact that we don’t feel Who inflicts the suffering upon us.

If you could feel that the pain comes from a surgeon rather than a criminal, then you wouldn’t experience it as pain, and you would even be grateful to the one causing it, instead of trying to fight what the criminal is doing to you.

So, what you lack is not a disconnection from the pain or from the act itself, but the revelation of the Creator, who is the one responsible for the act as well as its aim. Only then will you sense pleasure instead of suffering.

It is a psychological problem, really. Even scientific experiments show that the suffering and pleasure felt inside a body stem from the same processes. Pain and pleasure are just surges of sensations in two different directions. For the body, they are the same thing, and it’s only later that our mind discerns them as different. The body, however, feels them as the same thing.

Related Material:
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Baal HaSulam Article: “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation”
Shamati #50: “Two States”

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The first stage on the spiritual path is recognition of evil and its purpose, which is to lead me to the understanding of my entire nature. The program which draws the picture of reality for me by giving me the sensation of this world and my part in it, is called ego, or the desire to receive pleasure only for myself.

It locks me inside, engulfs me and draws all of my attention, making me think only of myself. I act according to that program, unable to even imagine that there is another option, another reality. What can possibly be done to change this perception and behavior?

Our nature itself leads us to recognition of its evil, leaving us no chance to escape it. It has power over us, locks us inside and constantly coerces.

This is the worst kind of slavery, when a person reveals that he is a prisoner of his own nature and can only obey its orders. He knows in advance that he has no choice but to obey, even though each order he follows, will further harm him.

Kabbalists have a parable, where the angel of death comes to a person and extends a sword with a drop of poison on its tip. A man obediently opens his mouth, knowing that by taking it he will die, yet he licks it. He has no other choice.

It is a great inner drama. All of man’s work is in realization of his exile and bondage. When a man is completely in despair, the point in the heart awakens inside him and begins to shine for him, showing him that there’s another world and a blessed shore on which to land.

He can’t continue to sit inside a shell forever! He has the ability to hatch  and climb out as a worm that comes out of bitter radish and suddenly sees the sun and breathes the clean air.

A person can then hear that there is a method that allows escape from the servitude and terrible life where the pointless cycle repeats itself: birth is succeeded by death. He discovers that there’s a means to break that vicious cycle and rise.

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A question I received: When a person crosses the Machsom, where does he sense this attainment?

My Answer: Everything is sensed internally. It is similar to how you sense yourself and this world today. You always feel either suffering or pleasure within. This is also how you will sense spirituality.

The method is very simple. You will learn what pleasure and suffering are, how you currently sense them, and how you can begin to interact with them, enjoy them and gain control over them.

After all, our material is the desire to enjoy, and the Creator is the pleasure that’s revealed inside this desire, along with the Source of the desire. This is why there is nothing besides the Kelim, and why you will sense the spiritual world in the same way that you sense the physical world. Don’t think that spirituality is far away or out in space somewhere. In Kabbalah, you are learning precisely about what is currently taking place inside of you, as well as what will take place in the future.

However, there is one big difference in spirituality. Today, I sense my life and my existence inside my small Kli. In fact, it is so small and limited that our lives can’t really be considered real life. Once we expand our Kli, however, we will feel life and existence based upon a new condition: that we want to use our lives as a means to help us pass pleasure on to others, to bestow, to love, and to come out of ourselves. Otherwise, if the Kli remains egoistic, the pleasure is negated within it.

In other words, even now you are filled with Infinite Light. But you neutralize this Light with your egoism, because when the Light of Infinity reaches a desire, it immediately turns off, as though it short-circuits between two opposite ends that have no resistance between them. You have to use your own egoism as that resistance, and then you will feel the pleasure. Otherwise, the pleasure is not sensed and leaves. What we are left with is this minuscule corporeal life, where all we sense is just a spark of Light in order to have something to cling to.

But the pleasure that is ahead of you is billions of times greater. There is no obstacle to getting this pleasure; you only have to expand your Kli. Everything depends on you. All you need is the Kli, but the infinite pleasure is sitting right in front of you.

What does “infinite” mean, and how can the Kli be infinite? When your Kli reaches the size initially intended by the Creator, it will feel unlimited pleasure. This is what an infinite Kli is.

Related Material:
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Lesson on Baal HaSulam Article: “Finding the Creator Within”

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A question I received: Sometimes in life there are those rare moments when you feel that everything around you is permeated by a special force, enveloping you with kindness and filling the whole world with love. This sensation is the most intense pleasure you have ever felt. And you know there’s a line of people extending across the whole world waiting to feel this pleasurable sensation.

And if all this is just a microscopic part of what one feels when ascending to the very first spiritual level, then is it even possible to bear that kind of pleasure? I myself have had an experience like this, and I can’t imagine how you can possibly have room for anything more inside your feelings.

My Answer: Of course you won’t be able to bear it! Say you are about to win the lotto with a prize of a million dollars: your heart would just burst, because we are equally impressed by the bad things and the good. You feel good up until a certain point, but once you pass that limit, you have “too much of a good thing” and the experience becomes too intense for you.

This happens because our abilities to feel are very limited and we have to expand them. We have to feel eternity, perfection, boundlessness, and infinity – in every sense and from every perspective. Every person in the world will have to feel the Creator fully and entirely. Every one of us will have to feel all of the Creator’s might and scope, to experience His entire program and inner abilities.

Therefore, all of our work and the sole purpose of our studies and of our life, is to expand our sensitivity to the reception of pleasure. This is why the science of Kabbalah is called Kabbalah, which means “reception.”

One needs only to learn how to do this correctly. Right now we all receive egoistically, and therefore we constantly keep destroying our desire, and it always disappears. Say I enjoyed something for a moment, but then the pleasure disappeared. It may have lasted for several minutes, hours, or even weeks (if the thing I received was really big – such as a new home or an exciting trip). But eventually, everything ends and disappears.

We have to build a Kli or desire that will be eternal and not disappear. The Creator wants just one thing from you: to learn to enjoy, so you will feel pleasure from everything, even from this earthly life. You don’t have to restrict yourself in any way or be a hermit.

The pleasure you will feel will continuously grow and get bigger. To do this, you must only study all of nature (including this world) and discern how you can feel that pleasure.

But this is something we don’t know! It’s a fact that we have lived in this world for many thousands of years, and we still haven’t learned to derive pleasure from it. We only feel more and more miserable with time.

At the end of the day, what does an intelligent person want from life? To enjoy it! And he cannot do so even in this small, earthly life. And he isn’t learning how to, either! He is only making his life worse and worse. But at the end of all our attempts, when we grow completely disillusioned with everything, the science of Kabbalah comes to us and teaches us how to enjoy.

Just think: how much pleasure can you actually take in? You’re like a child who dreams about a carton of ice cream, but in reality he isn’t able to eat more than three servings. So it is with you: you received a small spiritual glow, and you can’t fathom how anything more than that is possible. But the smallest spiritual level is billions of times (or even a billion to the billionth power) greater than what you felt at that unusual moment, when spirituality became slightly revealed to you.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: You Don’t Need “Treatment With Death” To Feel Eternity And Perfection
Laitman.com post: The Recipe For Eternal Pleasure (Advanced)
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Attaining the Worlds Beyond: “Merging with the Creator”

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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.

Related Material:
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Shamati #207: “Receiving in order to Bestow”
Shamati #30: “The Most Important Is to Want Only to Bestow”

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Two questions I received on consciousness:

Question: Once we acquire the sixth sense, come out into the spiritual worlds, and cross the Machsom, will our physical brain start taking part in the attainment? If our five senses’ reaction to the Light is reflected in the brain, how will this happen with the sixth sense?

My Answer: You will engage a new sense and a new mind, which will supplement and expand your corporeal senses and mind. It’s impossible to convey this, but every person is able to feel this.

Question: Albert Einstein – possibly the greatest genius of all time, said that matter is energy, that energy is fluctuating atoms, and atoms are composed of quarks (quantum physics), and then there’s consciousness. Does this mean that consciousness is also energy?

My Answer: Matter is an external manifestation of the desire, or its shell. Consciousness is the desire’s perception of itself, of its own existence. In Kabbalah matter designates the desire – the only thing created by the Light, by pleasure.

Related Material:
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Laitman.com Post: Some Quotes by Albert Einstein
Article: “Finding the Creator Within”
Lesson on Baal HaSulam Article: “Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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News Report (From NewScientist): “Artificial Molecule Evolves in a Lab” A new molecule that performs the essential function of life – self-replication – could shed light on the origin of all living things. If that wasn’t enough, the laboratory-born ribonucleic acid (RNA) strand evolves in a test tube to double itself ever more swiftly. Gerald Joyce, a biochemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California hopes to imbue his team’s molecule with all the fundamental properties of life: self-replication, evolution, and function. Joyce’s team created its own molecule from scratch…

My Comment: Creation is an act of “something emerging from nothing.” However, it is not when we take ready made ingredients, tinker with them, and end up with some “concoction.” After all, if that was considered creation, then we would also be able to say that the act of conception is the same as an act of creation as well.

Of course, scientists understand that they are only using matter, and its laws and qualities. Still, I hope my comment will help people avoid the pitfall of thinking that we can create in a similar way as the Creator, whose act of creation was to create “Something from nothing” (esh Mi Ain).

Kabbalah reveals the beginning of creation to man: the Light created a desire from nothing, from non-existence, so this desire would desire Him and receive pleasure from being fulfilled by Him. All of creation consists only of these two: the Light and the Desire. The Light is the Creator, and the Desire is the creation. All the changes occur only in the desire, which changes from being opposite to the Light, to being similar to the Light. All the worlds and everything inhabiting them, including us, are parts of this desire.

Related Material:
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“Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” Items 1-5
“Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” Items 6-12

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