How Obstructions on the Path to Spirituality Work in Your Favor
When we are attracted to someone, we are immediately filled with joy, even before we make actual contact with that person. As in corporeal love, so is the case with love for the Creator. But to prevent us from being satisfied with mere attraction, the Creator makes us feel that our situation is a low one, lacking in unity. If the Creator hadn’t done that, we would be satisfied with the pleasures of desiring, without actually attaining anything. The feeling of lowness added to the desire for the Creator forces us to rise to the level of spiritual coupling and enjoy unification with the Creator.
God shakes us up with unpleasant incidents and situations, until there is enough torment to spark a desire for the loved one, a need to create a spiritual coupling.
That is why the soul descends from the upper world to this world and dresses in a body to incarnate in this world, so as to return to the root from which it came and cling to it again. To correct the body, we need to recognize that obstructions are not what they seem, but rather necessary catalysts to help us connect with the Creator.
It is precisely because we feel the obstructions and try to struggle with them in a heroic battle that we increase our desire for the Creator, so that we can once again be united as we were before the soul was clothed in a body, with the same power and intensity. The adhesion between us and the Creator is strengthened by the very struggles we endure in seeking out that connection.
Giving the Desire for Spirituality Importance Over Your Other Desires
There is always contact between us and the Creator, but for us to be able to feel His love, the Creator places an obstruction before us called the body—the desire for every pleasure possible apart from the Creator. To truly understand the Creator’s love for us, we must gradually uproot the obstructions of the body, thought by thought.
The Creator takes into account everything that is done to us, and when we have experienced the right amount of situations, when we earnestly desire for adhesion with the Creator with all our strength, nonstop, only then comes the moment of adhesion.
Only when we have reached the state of adhesion can we justify what the Creator sends us, from the lowest situations to the highest spiritual acts. Then we realize that everything that happens in life happens because of the Creator’s love and desire to unite with us. That, in turn, creates in us a neveending and unlimited love for the Creator.
Why it Is Essential to Form a Correct Relationship Towards Everything That Happens in Your Life
But as long as the soul is not filled with light, the sensation of sadness increases, because the desire is not yet satisfied. Because of that the person feels torments and tortures to the same extent that he or she yearns for adhesion. In the beginning of each stage of life, we must situate ourselves correctly toward everything that happens to us. First, we must obtain the feeling that there is “me” and there is everything around “me.” Then we must realize that the pressure we feel from our environment has a purpose and that the environment is an upper force that acts wisely and intentionally, with a predefined purpose and plan.
The Creator and the creature strain to renew their connection. We try to see that every situation comes from the Creator; hence the Creator keeps sending new thoughts, usually in the form of obstacles. We must realize that every new thought that enters our minds is received from the Creator with the goal of attaining adhesion. We must look for the good, the eternal and perfect nature of adhesion with the Creator, from whence our souls came. Only when the soul is reunited with the Creator can it be fulfilled.
How a Correct Relationship Towards Your Life Leads to Incremental Contact With Spirituality
We should detect that in everything that happens there is I, the Creator, and the incident between us. In the end, we will find that the entire body, meaning all the desires, the thoughts, the entire spiritual and corporeal systems, and all the worlds will no longer be concealed. They will no longer be screens and obstacles between humanity and the Creator. You will feel that the obstructions, concealments, and the entire system of the body will become an inner system for you and will intensify your connection with the Creator. After all, the purpose of the body is unification, not separation. Know that all the worlds are inside you, though at the moment you only feel them externally, as a result of the corruption of our vessels.
The most important thing is to maintain contact with the Creator at all times and in all places, even in the lowest degree. Baal HaSulam also writes that the greatest punishment for a person is the detachment from the thought of the Creator, even for a moment, because that disconnects one from the source of life.
Obstructions Along the Spiritual Path Eventually Bring You from Egoism to Altruism
The connection with the Creator can only be strengthened through obstructions, because when a person feels good he or she becomes addicted to that feeling and forgets to think about the origin of the feeling. But when one feels bad, one immediately begins to search for the source of the bad to abolish it.
At first, the Creator purposely sends us sensations of fear, insecurity, shortage, and lack. But this is just the first part of the process—the coercion. We approach the Creator only to over- come those negative feelings. But after some time we begin to want the Creator independently until we cannot sleep for the lovesickness. This is a state of corporeal-egoistic love, and is precisely the situation we should come to; the state is called Lo Lishma (not for Her name).
We advance in such a way that this entire stage of Lo Lishma (time of preparation), below the barrier and right before we attain spirituality, is essential to increase the desires, the vessels of selfish desire for the Creator. Only then comes the opposite operation, the passage from Lo Lishma to Lishma (for Her name), from egoism to altruism, from the will to receive to the will to give.
“The Hidden Purpose behind Spiritual Concealment Revealed” is based on the book, Awakening to Kabbalah: The Guiding Light of Spiritual Fulfillment by Dr. Michael Laitman.
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