Who Doesn’t Wish To Be Eternal and Happy?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If Kabbalah offers us a means to grow an eternal soul in us, it’s as if we choose from two possible conditions: One is the “I” who is handsome, rich, healthy, young, and eternal, whereas the other “I” is weak, transient, and mortal. Then why do people have such difficulty agreeing to study it?

Answer: Is this choice really up to us? If your egoism were given a choice between a good and bad condition, you would undoubtedly choose what is good. If you were given an empty and a full glass, you wouldn’t hesitate to pick the full one.

It isn’t a choice per se. You simply act instinctively as Nature dictates and you cannot do otherwise. If you chose incorrectly, it means that you either made a mistake or were sick. In other words, there isn’t any free will here.

However, the problem is that this opportunity to become healthy, handsome, perfect, and eternal is blocked from you by a wall, a concealment. You don’t see this state; you don’t feel it in your egoistic desire.

In this corporeal life, I feel and see what can give me pleasure, and even though it is temporary, at least it is clear. Such pleasures are approved by my ego, my animate body, my “Self,” all my family, all that I am connected to, and public opinion. This is how the entire world is living.

Suddenly, I am offered something that I have neither desire for, nor support from the others. How, then, may I choose it? Clearly, I will go with my beastly interests.

Therefore, we need to cultivate the desire for this hidden part called “the desire for bestowal.” It is something totally new, and when you get to know it, it will be a completely different world, a new reality. You, yourself, will be different because you will grow new organs of perception and new desires within you.

You will simply split yourself into two with a clear-cut line: On one side there will be everything that you have today and, on the other, everything new, without any connection between them. What you will have on this new side will be called your soul. However, you will have to cultivate this system from only the point you possess at the moment, which doesn’t have any aim or direction.

The problem lies in the fact that you don’t see what your benefit is. It is impossible to see it in your ego. And if you think that you picture and desire some spiritual world in your ego right now, it means you are seeing the same material world. You just think that it is part of spirituality, but, in truth, all of it is nothing but matter.

Yet, all this deceitful, illusory picture is needed solely to build the authentic one specifically with its help.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/24/10, “Body and Soul”

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2 Comments

  1. Dear Rav,
    It seems that coming to study Kabbalah is ‘”An offer from Creator That One Cannot Refuse” especially as it gives one a complete and satisfactory answer to the meaning of one’s life.
    Naturally, we come to fully and gladly accept it (of course after rigorous and often heart-wrenching work) once we see and feel the answer as truth, meaning we arrive at a place of NO CHOICE but to want and desire only to be turned into Givers just like the Creator-accepting nothing short of completely merging with HIM. And in so doing, making the Creator an offer HE Cannot refuse: Agreeing and accepting wholly, His Will for us, namely to rise to or attain His degree whereby we will be good and do only good to His creatures in this world.
    Why is it not enough or is it enough to arrive at such a place before one can begin sensing and working in bestowal in practice; what are we lacking?

  2. Continuing from previous question: Could it be that for one to begin sensing and practice bestowal all others (every member of the World Kli) must also be at a place of NO CHOICE, Agreeing and Accepting wholly, Creator’s Will for us, namely to rise to or attain His degree; If so, how can we accomplish such a task and how should we understand what is written, “With the purification of one soul from Israel, from all of its filth, it will attract to her the state of Atzilut, and as a result, all of its generation souls will be corrected….”?

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