In our work, there are four stages of HaVaYaH, just like in everything else. At first, a person wants to take advantage of the Creator, even though he has no idea of what it is, and selfishly to use the group in all kinds of ways.

Later on, he starts wanting at least a little bit of bestowal. This sort of desire gives him the upper Light by constantly affecting a person and leading him through the four stages of evolution, along the steps of sensing and understanding. Even though he doesn’t reveal what state he is in relative to the Light just yet, the sensations he feels still change.

Thus, he comes to a point when he begins to demand correction. Obviously, it is still an egoistic notion since he is the one who wants to feel good and thinks that he’ll get all the benefit from being able to bestow. In other words, it’s still all about “me, me, me, and me,” but the shadow concealing the Creator from him is being altered in depth and quality.

Previously, he thought this shadow was simply covering the Creator. Now, he comes to realize that it is a kind of game like a grown-up with a child, where the former allows the latter to do something on his own so that he may grow. Then, a person starts to like the concealment.

It doesn’t mean that he wants to remain in it; rather, he is willing to use it correctly. He views it as an expression of the love that the Light, the Creator, nature, feels for him. Thus, he increases his conscious participation in the group and begins to pay attention to every moment.

He starts to see that this entire system “breathes” all the time. One instant it pulls away, another, it draws near, depending on the “attitude” of the upper Light, the greater or smaller concealment. A person gets involved in all kinds of interactions with it, by working with these concealments, the upper Light, the desire, all sorts of “accidental” events, so to speak, that he becomes subject to. He starts tying everything to one root: “There is none else besides Him.”

The shadow that used to conceal the Light and felt like a shadow of the impure force transforms into a holy shadow. Now, he wants to use this shadow so that it won’t disappear, but will remain a shadow covering his will to receive pleasure. As regards himself, he desires to work above it.

This shadow becomes vital for him and turns into an anti-egoistic screen that holds back his egoistic desire. Now, a person controls this shadow autonomously and uses it solely to bestow.

Herein lies another four stages of development, the complete HaVaYaH: bestowal in order to bestow followed by reception in order to bestow. And at all the previous stages he has already passed through, he was learning from the upper Light: It revealed to him who he is, his attitude to the Light as the nine Sefirot of the Direct Light (from the Creator down to him) so that he may come to reveal the nine Sefirot of the Reflected Light (from himself up to the Creator).

Conversely, he is learning from these concealments how to conceal himself, his coarse, egoistic desire, and turn it into one that bestows and is filled with the Light! Thus, a person gradually accepts the entire concealment onto himself by transforming it from a covering over his egoistic desire into the screen and the Reflected Light, into the intention to bestow. He transforms the entire depth of desire that was previously concealed into the force of bestowal, the power of love of others.

Thereby, he begins to feel that there are no others. Miraculously, by beginning to see in the Reflected Light expanding from him, he discovers that the others who used to seem alien, foreign, and terrible to him are exactly the opposite: someone dear and loved.

A person accumulates all these transformations by passing through the degrees of concealment (of the worlds) and builds from them new relationships of love and bestowal. Thus, the impure shadow of egoistic desires turns into the holy one, and all the concealments become a revelation of love.
[43191]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/16/2011, Shamati #8

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