Why Do We Not Understand Ourselves?
Who am I? What kind of world do I live in? Where is life taking me? Once, only philosophers thought about such questions. Today, they concern almost everyone. The market is flooded with self-awareness workshops promising improvement overnight. Why, from the outset, do we lack sufficient understanding of ourselves and the world?
Animals exist in a completely different state from us. Shortly after an animal is born, all the instincts necessary for its survival awaken within it. It may still lack the strength to protect itself and function properly in its environment, but by and large, it already understands what it needs to do. A human baby, by contrast, is a rather helpless creature. It knows nothing and is familiar with neither itself nor its surroundings. For many years, or more precisely, throughout its entire life, it will have to discover who it is and what the world is.
Those who succeeded in deciphering the secret of existence and attained the highest level of awareness discovered that it is impossible to investigate something while remaining on the same level as the thing being investigated. In order to truly understand ourselves and the world, we must first rise somewhat above human nature and the nature of the world. We must acquire new, additional qualities, opposite to those we currently possess, and from them observe everything around us.
What does this mean? The still, vegetative, animate, and human levels, i.e., every element that exists in the world, are driven by a fundamental force: the desire to receive pleasure and enjoyment, the desire to enjoy and to exist in a state that feels good. This desire is expressed in the aspiration to absorb what is beneficial, distance what is harmful, and keep ourselves at every moment in the state that is optimal for us. Since everyone operates this way, there are constant collisions, struggles, and wars. The desire to receive is also defined as the quality of reception, and this is the basic nature of both the human being and the world. At the human level, the quality of reception is also called the “ego.”
In order to investigate the quality of reception and become aware of its characteristics, we need an opposite quality, which is defined as the quality of bestowal. In other words, we need to rise to a desire to bestow everything good from ourselves, a desire to give and bring good to the world. This does not refer to the kind of giving we know in our world, i.e., giving that, consciously or unconsciously, makes the giver feel good and therefore still remains within the quality of reception. Instead, it refers to something entirely beyond this world, something supernatural, above the ego, and unfamiliar to us.
Where can we obtain a pure force and quality of bestowal? Such a force exists at the foundation of life, at the basis of all reality, as the source that provides the energy for the formation of the universe. We exist in an opposite nature and are therefore unable to see the force of bestowal openly. But if we learn how to bring it into our lives, our awareness will develop to an entirely new level.
We will then be able to investigate our inner nature and the nature of the world around us in a way that is independent of the quality of reception, i.e., above it. Incidentally, all the instruments with which we investigate the world and advance step by step reveal only a tiny fraction of the phenomena that exist in the universe. There is still infinitely more to discover, but first we need to equip ourselves with the quality of bestowal.
The wisdom of Kabbalah, which is a method of connection, teaches us how to attract the force of bestowal. Broadly speaking, it is based on studying human nature and the direction of the world’s development, alongside practicing special forms of connection in a small group setting.
In the first stage of the process, participants develop an awareness that egoistic nature is a kind of double-edged sword. It destroys us from within and from without. It places us in all kinds of endless struggles and ultimately causes us to shrink inward, withdraw, and despair. From this recognition, we advance to the second stage, in which we define a common goal for ourselves: to attain the force of mutual bestowal, mutual guarantee, and mutual support. Through connection exercises, each person rises somewhat above their ego, approaches an integral connection with others, and they become mutually incorporated in each other.
We draw nourishment from the connection between us and become filled with a feeling of warmth and confidence. In such a way, a kind of bubble of an atmosphere of bestowal is created, somewhat resembling that general force of bestowal. Gradually, we begin to recognize how it operates upon us and gives us a higher point of view, a point of bestowal. From there, we see ourselves and the world differently. We measure the nature of egoistic reception and the phenomena it portrays before our eyes at every level of the human ego. We examine how everything appears from the desire to bestow and from the opposing desire to receive.
As this develops, a person becomes aware of themselves and of the forces operating within and around them. They acquire the ability to exist between these two forces, and in the middle line, their awareness and understanding is built.
From a broader perspective, in today’s interconnected world, with increasing mutual dependence alongside intensifying egoistic struggles, we have no choice but to learn how to connect with one another through the force of bestowal. Otherwise, the boat in which we all sit will simply sink.
The future world can only be connected, and the person of tomorrow must already feel liberated, free, happy, afraid of no one, ashamed of nothing, no longer withdrawn, surrounded by everyone’s love and wishing, in return, to do good to them.
This is the next level of awareness toward which the wheels of evolution are advancing humanity and each of us within it. May we all succeed!
Based on "New Life 236 – Happiness and Self-Awareness" with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.