Part 2
Morning Lesson October 17, 2021, Transcription
Shamati 23
1. R. (01:47) We are incapable of ridding ourselves of the evil inclination, our desire to receive and what should we do?
Reader continues: (02:00) “in that state the verse tells us what one can do….”
2. S. (05:00) What is it that he writes, the matter of evil remains and is used as the posterior of the Partzuf?
R. You can't do it without the coarseness without the will to receive there's no created being but it needs to be as the desire to bestow but the will to receive remains. It is this evil form where he wants to harm the other including the Creator and, in this way, it exists in us but it is revealed a tiny bit that we will be able to tolerate it and, in this way, you can't feel it. When you begin to get to know it better and better, we see that the evil is the same level as the infinite light that is revealed. This is how we need to reveal all of the evil, everything that separates us from the Creator and turn it specifically to the good force that we can restrict and place a screen and reflected light and with the help of the evil we can perform the actions above the evil. By that we make ourselves similar to the Creator and we reach adhesion in him, in the Creator. The evil does not remain in its evil form but our nature, its nature does not change, it remains opposite to the Creator we merely subjugate and bind it in two different forms correcting it, but inside of it is opposite the Creator and this is how it stays. All of these external actions except for the innermost point of evil, which is opposite the Creator completely, that point we can't invert, it's also not revealed to us and the evil remains and exists. Otherwise, how will you build the Partzufim, the worlds, bestowing to the Creator, from what? If you are right, what will you give him, specifically above the evil we can perform all the acts of bestowing to the Creator and between us.
S. What is it in the work that a person should nullify in his will to receive, and his evil?
R. Not the will to receive, we don't cancel or erase it, that is not good, we don't do that, we are not vegan. I don't want to say anything against them, we don't erase our attitude towards anything because everything comes from the Creator. We need to have the correct attitude to all of creation, both the evil and the good have to be a balance between them as the right and left lines fully and between them we will reveal the Creator.
S. In the practical work in the 10 that we discussed that one needs to nullify himself to the 10, how do you do this towards with 10?
R. This means the intention to the 10 but not the desire itself, also the intention as we need this in order to build above it the opposite intention to the others. This is why the evil inclination remains and it is the foundation, the posterior of the Holiness of the soul of the Partzuf and specifically above it we construct a good attitude. He who is greater than his friend his inclination is also grader and the desire we don't turn it from the will to receive to the will to bestow. The will to receive remains the will to receive but our intention, how we use it is what we change.
S. The scrutiny between the will to receive and the intention when does it become revealed to the person?
R. When you begin to work with the will to receive toward the other you will then see if you are working with it or not, either you are working with the will to receive, ask yourself that now I am working with the will to receive and I wish to go from that to the desire to bestow and how do I build the desire to bestow? By wanting to rise above my desire to receive and to work against it, I don't have a will to bestow, the desire to bestow is the Creator, I can build a likeness of the will to bestow from wanting to receive and then I turn it into a desire to bestow as if you are in bestowing. Yet my bestowal is like a glove that I invert where instead of the desire to receive that I feel that is in me how can I make the opposite actions that I restrict the use of my will to receive and I try to construct an act of bestowal out of it, the screen and the reflected light.
S. What does it mean to restrict the egoistic desire to receive and not just the desire to receive?
R. The will to receive, I have nothing to do with it as it is a neutral thing, it is like in this still vegetative and animate degrees don't have the evil inclination. It is the will to receive to sustain themselves, to eat, if they have to either kill something they do it they eat and devour it. It's not like the will to receive in man, where man wants to exploit the other, he wants to reveal his control and exert it over others, that is the will to receive but this does not exist in animals. If you give a lion whatever he wants to eat and let him eat 200 kilos of meat, after that he doesn't want to eat anything. He can walk past you and he's not even going to look at you. Whereas man looks at the other and says oh he has a piece of meat greater than my piece of meat and man's ego, his will to receive is impressed by what the other has or by what the others might have. We are human and from the beginning, from nature in it we can grow all of our will to receive through envy, lust, honor and then our will to receive can be as great as the Creator’s in his will to bestow.
3. S. (13:28) I cancelled myself and connect to the group and then I discover the Creator. In such a case what is the collective benefit that we received?
R. First of all the group benefits from having a friend who is directed correctly to the purpose of creation, second you have to work on those things together, the fact that each one as personally is correct. Yet besides the personal thing that you build, let's say that we're having a meal together and each one brings something to the meal and you are then all together at the table. Then from all of the things that you brought you create some sort of common portion. That is something else as each one has to see what he brings to the group and how the group can be incorporated in what he brings so it is to the benefit of the group and then how you enjoy together what you have prepared because no one can have more or less but what you're prepared. This is what you live from and this is called connecting into a Partzuf, into ten Sefirot and in the Partzuf the Creator begins to be revealed in a complete manner, perhaps on a small scale but it is complete it has all of the manners of his relation to you. We will talk about it as it is still ahead of us. How he relates what he wants by what he influences you and how you through the changes when you begin to turn yourselves in the 10 you influence him in all kinds of ways, that really becomes some sort of a conversation between you and the Creator. You to the Creator and the Creator to you and you feel the relationships between you and the 10 that you begin to feel what he is trying to say and by your response, your reactions to it and by how you change your relationships to the 10, this is how you speak with him. Then you have an instrument by which you connect to the Creator and he can next to you and that instrument is called Neshama, soul.
4. S. (16:52) What I know about hate has a lot of feelings in my body, like the bile in my stomach, or anger, so what is the hate that Baal HaSulam is talking about. What is it to hate evil, is it like that thing I feel in my stomach that's turning or is it something else?
R. Much more than that, you hate your own in nature, that is the hate that he is talking about and to the extent that you hate your own nature, which is the will to receive, your ego which separates you from the friends, from the Creator to that extent you begin to feel that you are approaching love. Love of the Creator through the love of friends, this is the same thing. The Creator is only the common thing that is revealed either in the separation between us in the 10 or in the connection between us in the ten and this is how we advance. We go from the love of people to the love of the Creator, this is how we get there and that's another way because love of the people is the vessel in love of the Creator is the feeling that is revealed in the vessel.
S. In our life when we hate something either we explode in a fight or we try and distance ourselves so to really feel hate and come close with expressions of love, how does a Kabbalist do that?
R. You add a constant prayer to the Creator so that in everything that you want to do you turn to the Creator so that the Creator will be as your partner, as an assistant, as the one who explains, one who does and executes and this is how you achieve adhesion with the Creator.
5. S. (19:31) We know the way the reception of this world tastes like and in this flavor of the quality of receiving we can't give up on it, but how to ask for the quality of bestowing that we don't know what it tastes like, how to ask for it correctly from the Creator?
R. Start connecting among yourselves in the 10 and you will feel that you are missing the power of connection and then you will turn to the Creator to help you connect, then in the connection you will be able to discover the column in force of bestowal and the force of love among the friends and the Creator with in it. Just do this.
6. S. (21:23) If you can make some order from hatred to the ego after each to love of others so I start from hatred and go to love?
R. Yes, except it's not immediate but it is through the hatred because the hatred is revealed in our first of all as our natural quality, our natural characteristic and we have to go from the natural characteristic of hating everyone and instead come to hate our own ego, our own will do receive that separates us from the friends and to that extent, meaning 10 times more than my separation from the friends, it also separates me from the Creator.
S. Where do I make that transition from hate to love? How do I stop hating my ego and start loving the friend?
R. You don't stop hating your ego, you continue to hate the ego and you want to be above the hatred in love for the friends and out of this you begin to acquire a vessel to turn to the Creator in such a way before you discover, as Rabash writes about the friends, before you discover in you such a disposition to the friends you can't think of the Creator. It is irrelevant and it is your fantasy.
7. S. (23:14) This hatred is a result of working with the lights?
R. I don't want to answer this, what is not included in the article I do not want to talk about.
8. S. (23:39) We learn and try to practice the whole process of recognition of evil as something that is blessed, something happy but even Baal HaSulam writes that you caused the Holiness of the day
R. Yes.
S. So I don't see how it goes with hate.
R. I the Lord hate evil so if I have my hatred which is now revealed that caused the Holiness of the day, the sanctity of the day and at the same time I am in love to the Creator on top of my hatred for my ego then I am in a great situation as one does not interfere. On the contrary it sustains the other, the bad is at the end of the Partzuf and I respect it, I push it down, step on it and on top of it I develop a good attitude, a good relation.
S. How to hate some detail or elements in creation without slandering the Creator without going out of none else besides him?
R. It all depends on the extent to which we reveal the goal. If I have a necessity for all of the bad qualities that I have which I previously thought we're good, afterwards I started feeling that they were bad, that I was ashamed of them and I hated them. All of those relations to the bad in me which I gradually determined more and more correctly what is bad, they help me and then opposite that I get closer to the concept of the Creator, to knowing the good, what good is.
S. If I hate something I'm already not in the good that does good?
R. No incorrect, you who love the Lord hate evil. You cannot be in love for the Creator and accordingly and at the same time without hatred for my ego. To the extent I hate the ego I love the Creator.
S. Should we focus on the hate of the will to receive or the love that I want to reveal the quality of bestowal?
R. It depends on the situation that one is in sometimes this or sometimes that, ideally the bad should always remain at the end of the Partzuf and you stand on it to control it, that you kind of hold it in that you'll put it in a box and you stand on it and not letting it open and above it I try to turn this back into good. Afterwards we will learn what happens to this bad in general, does it disappear, the intention of course disappears or what happens to it? The bad itself is the evil inclination and it remains to the end of correction and after there are more wars with it at the end of all the corrections, Gog V Magog war. Mainly we have to hate the evil and that guards us from using it.
9. S. (28:18) It says that the Creator hates to be a receiver and my essence is the will to receive that I got without my choice, how do I overcome my nature and start hating the reception?
R. We have to think about it and talk about it, we have to read what the Kabbalists write about it as the best is to speak about it in the group, about how we have to reveal the bad in our nature as it is clear to us that it is there. It is not enough to hate it, to move away from it is that hatred means I'm moving away and how far am I moving away, to the extent of my hatred, that I hate it. On what does my hatred for the will to receive depend, on how much I am aware that it is my will to receive that causes me and brings me all of the troubles. I hate it and I suffer from it and I feel it as my enemy, my personal enemy and then to that extent we will advance.
10. S. (29:53) What is the meaning of when they come to a constant connection as a foundation that will never die?
R. Hatred is because if a person wants to be rewarded with adhesion to the Creator, then there is a conduct among friends, meaning of two people realize that each of them hate what his friend hates and loves what and who his friend loves they come into perpetual bonding like a state that will never fall so this is what we have to scrutinize in the 10 through our speaking. That we love bestowal, we love connection and we love the qualities of the Creator. How do we know the qualities of the Creator? Initially in priority they are opposite from our own qualities, opposite. It turns out that what can I do, I just need to take myself like a glove and turn myself inside out, invert it, invert the inside out and the outside in and then I will see who I am, what was concealed in me and I will run away from it, flee from my real inner form and nothing else is needed, only to know the bad. Then I will hate it and correspondingly I will love the Creator.
11. S. (32:01) How can someone hate that even if he did it himself?
R. I discover how much this bad interferes with my coming to the good as much as I speak with the friends and we talked about being able to reveal the Creator and achieve the connection with the Creator that it brings us eternity and wholeness knowing the real world. The feeling of existence on a completely new level of bestowing even though we don't understand what it is, yet the more we talked about it the more I'm incorporated in these possibilities and I see what interferes with me is my ego and I begin to hate it. Just for example, each one can imagine that there is a person who is facing something good but there is someone who interferes with you, who doesn't want to give it to you, who doesn't want to let you there. That is as soon as you get to the good, there's someone there that is stopping you, think how much you hate this person. This is how we need to understand in our ego that it is standing in our way and that is what we have to hate. If we hate it to the extent of our hatred, we move it aside.
12. S. (34:25) How do I invert the hatred to the others into hatred for myself?
R. We have to think about it as hatred of the others is the Creator besides man and the Creator there is nothing, what seems do you like others, humanity, especially the group because the group is given to us so that we will acquire the quality of connection on top of it, that is the quality of the Creator. Here there are no concessions as anyone who interferes with me, is me interfering with myself in that quality that interferes with the quality of my friends, this is what I have to hate and without it I am not advancing.
S. How do I make that inversion?
R. Think, it is through the thought as everything is clarified through the thought, I think that only your ego separates you from the complete state, from the connection with the Creator, from everything that you can imagine as good in spirituality. Otherwise, you will die without wisdom.
13. S. (35:53) Does the moment come, we're so separated from the ego that we feel that there's something more that we feel we are really separated from it?
R. Yes, we can and we must feel those states when we are separated from our ego and become incorporated in the desire to bestow. You can't be neutral either in this or in that, you shift from the will to receive to the intention to bestow and this is what we have to try to do every moment. We started talking an hour and 40 minutes ago about Article 24 and then I said that because there is only the Creator and the created being. We say that the Creator, that we are told that he is good and does good, so a person always feels so Creator and always receives from the Creator what is good. If he feels bad it is because he, with his own internal qualities, is spoiling what he gets from the Creator. This is why he turns to the Creator to help him change his inner qualities from bad to the Creator too good to the Creator. By asking of the Creator to change him, a person will begin to feel the Creator as the good who does good. Think about this sentence and we will continue the Preface.