Building Your Self Between Two Magnets

Laitman_160A question I received: Why does the desire to receive pleasure have to suffer and go through so many blows in order to become the desire to bestow? If I feel that bestowal is a good quality, then why is it so difficult to give up the desire to receive?

My Answer: You feel the blows and difficulties because you identify with the desire to receive pleasure and don’t see that it doesn’t belong to you. Both the desire to receive and the desire to bestow are angels; they are Creator’s forces that are sent to you. They are two lines that come to you from Above. You need to identify with the middle line which consists of both of the lines. The middle line doesn’t belong to either of the two lines; it is when you start feeling a new reality that is totally separate from them, that is above them.

The lines are there to help you, like two distant magnets exerting force on an iron bar from two opposite sides. You are connected to these forces so that you can build a middle line as a result of their influence. You do not identify with either of them, not with the desire to receive pleasure or the desire to bestow.

The desire to receive pleasure was created by the Creator as “existence from absence,” while the desire to bestow, the Creator Himself, already “existed.” You are not connected to either of them, otherwise you couldn’t become independent. Your independence comes from building your “I” out of both of them.

So why do you feel bad? It is what causes you to leave the desire to receive pleasure, to stop identifying with it, and to be above it. First, the blows come in the form of shame and humiliation to push you away from the desire to receive because it makes you suffer. After that, the opposite is true: a person wants to grow a bigger desire to receive because he builds himself above it, like above a magnet.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/10, The Zohar

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