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Dr. Michael LaitmanWe are created from the material of “the desire to enjoy.” Therefore, we need energy in the form of “pleasure” in order to perform any physical or mental action. In other words, nothing moves in our world without an egoistic stimulus. Consciously or unconsciously, we weigh everything in our “desire to enjoy,” and in the assessments of this desire each thing acquires “its own” qualities: color, weight, height, and distance.

In order to be successful in this world, we need to have the right scale of values, or in other words, the right set-up of “the desire to enjoy.” And this is what we teach our children: to strive for the good things and to avoid the harmful things. To distance oneself from evil means not to have the energy to work for it.

However, there is no motivation in our “desire to enjoy” for reaching the spiritual, “the desire to bestow”! After all, the spiritual world is opposite to me; it is the desire to bestow rather than to receive pleasure. This attribute doesn’t exist in me at all. Therefore, I do not feel the spiritual world. I can “see” only what I evaluate in “the desire to enjoy” as more or less valuable, determining it as something close and important to me or distant and insignificant.

In spirituality, “the quality to bestow,” all the criteria, thoughts, and actions are based only on bestowal. Yet my “desire to enjoy” does not understand what that is. Bestowal passes through me like an invisible illumination, which I do not sense in any way. Whole worlds and actions are performed beside me, and I do not notice them in my “desire to enjoy” just like an animal doesn’t understand the sensations of a human being.

What can I do if I am created this way? All the worlds and most importantly the One who controls me, the Creator Himself, remain unnoticed by me! In order to feel them, I need to begin to value “the quality of bestowal.”

This is why we are given the environment: the books, the teacher, and the friends so that they will instill the importance of bestowal into me. Although I personally don’t think so, they tell me this, and their opinion is important to me. I am created to absorb the influence of the environment, and what is important to the people that surround me becomes important to me.

Thus, even bestowal, which is of no value to me, begins to be important if everyone talks about it. It becomes important in my “desire to enjoy” as a good acquisition. I am willing to exert effort to attract the Upper Light which brings me “the desire to bestow” because this is important to my “desire to enjoy.” In Kabbalah this is called spiritual work for oneself, Lo Lishma.

However, the Upper Light that I draw changes me and replaces “the desire to enjoy” with “the desire to give enjoyment” (from Lo Lishma to Lishma). I then enter the perception of the Upper World.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/30/10, Shamati #15

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: An Exercise With Pleasure
Shamati #64: “From Lo Lishma to Lishma” – Lessons
Kabbalah Moments: “Greater Pleasure”

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