The group is my mirror. To the extent that I build it, it builds me. Both my attitude toward it and its attitude toward me are detached from my desire to receive, which helps me build relationships of bestowal rather than expand and fulfill vessels of reception.
If I were working directly with the Creator, I would certainly use the vessels of reception. Baal HaSulam writes that if the Creator were revealed, I would rush toward Him shouting, “Stop the thief!” The desire to receive itself would tell me how wonderful it is to work for the Creator; I would want to be close to Him, to do something for Him.
After all, if He fills me with a sense of confidence and pleasures, then why not work? Why not perceive Him as good and great? We always want to be near greatness.
Thus, the desire to receive would strive toward the Creator for personal benefit. But if instead of the Creator I have a group in which I do not find great personal benefit, power, confidence, or a strong influence on me, then within it, there are conditions that allow me to work not with my desire to receive, but in the direction of bestowal. I want to grow vessels of bestowal within myself, and therefore, I turn to the group.
It turns out that the shattering of the vessels is the opportunity to work with the desire to receive of others, those external to me, as though with the Creator. That the Creator placed before me someone else, someone “other,” aside from Himself is truly my salvation.
In this case, I can genuinely practice how to be a giver and not a receiver. I can determine whether I am giving or receiving. I can perform exercises that later will allow me to enter into a relationship with the Creator in which my attitude toward Him will truly be one of bestowal.
The group helps me exit my desire to receive because it is not a supplier of pleasures for me. Whereas, if I were working with the Creator, I would only work with Him as the source of pleasures and would never be able to exit my desire to receive.
[353596]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/26/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘The Saboteur Was in the Flood, and Was Putting to Death,’ in the Work?”


