The Arguments Against Your Spiritual Advancement

Spiritual work consists of striving to bring pleasure to the Creator.

All our work begins precisely when our body (desire to receive) opposes the work, which is without any self-benefit. This is because it (the body, egoism) does not understand the implications of altruistic work, and does not feel any reward in it.

Great efforts are required from us to withstand the justifiable (in principle) complaints of the body. For a long time, we torture ourselves in an effort to gain some understanding of the spiritual.

What do we receive in return? Do you know anyone who has excelled in this task? Is it possible that the Creator wants us to suffer in this manner? What have you achieved? In your present state of health, can you abuse yourself as you are doing? Think of yourself, your family, your growing children.

If the Creator so desires, He will continue to lead us further in the same manner that He has brought us to Kabbalah, since in everything only the Creator rules and leads! All these complaints and many other similar ones (often heard from relatives, who are also related to the concept of the body) are absolutely justified, but there are no answers to give them.

Your Successes and Failures Against Egoism

Indeed, answers are not needed, because if we desire to exit from the boundaries of our bodies, we simply must not accept these arguments, and not pay attention to them.

Instead, we should say to ourselves: “Our bodies are right, the arguments are logical, its complaints are true. However, I want to exit my body, or in other words, exit from its desires. Therefore, I will follow the path of faith, and not the path of common sense. Only in our world is my reasoning considered to be logical.

“However, in the spiritual world, even though I don’t understand this, since I don’t yet have spiritual vision or spiritual intellect, everything works according to a different law, which at the moment appears strange to me, since it is not founded on the basis of physical reality.

This work on ourselves is called “to bestow for the sake of bestowing;” that is, a purely altruistic act, represented by the right line. We give all, simply because we desire to give. The pleasure we receive from such work emanates from our resemblance to the Creator, since one only gives, like the Creator. This is called “the Light of faith or mercy,” or Ohr Hassadim.

If one attempts to behave in this manner, then the Creator opens to this person the feeling of His infinite grandeur and power. Faith gives way to knowledge; the body begins to feel the importance of the Creator and is ready to do everything for His sake, because it has now perceived the importance of the Great One and His acquiescence to receive anything from us.

This is accepted as the attainment of pleasure. But in this case, we once again feel that progress with the body is being made. It is not the greatness of the Creator, but the pleasure and the degree of personal confidence in the work done for the sake of the Greatest One that determines our actions. Thus, once again we have fallen to the bosom of egoism and personal gain.

You Must Create a Middle Line

Our complete inability to perceive the Creator allows us to insist that we have undertaken all actions for His sake, both altruistically and spiritually. The Revelation by the Creator that is represented by the left line is known as “the knowledge of the Light of Wisdom.”

Therefore, the Revelation of the Creator makes it necessary for us to apply strict restrictions on acquiring knowledge, management and perception of His grandeur. This balances the faith and the knowledge, the absence of perception and the delight in the Creator in a proportion that would ensure that we not fall prey to egoism again.

By adding a small portion of egoism to the original state, we can use that small portion and still proceed as if we had learned nothing, just as in the original state. By balancing the right line with a small amount of the left line, we create a middle line.

Your Work with the Middle Line

The part of the left line in the middle line determines the elevation of our spiritual level. The spiritual state itself is considered to be that of the “Greater One.” The following progression leads up to the final and highest level, our merging with the Creator in our qualities and desires.

This occurs by the gradual, alternating increase of the right and then the left lines. The balancing of both lines takes place at each level of the spiritual ladder. In the state of the right line, we must be happy without any reason, but only from the thought that the Creator exists in our world. We do not require any other conditions for happiness.

Such a state is known as “being happy with what one has.” If nothing can bring us out of this condition it is considered to be absolute. But if we begin to test our spiritual state, we will see that we do not in any way get closer to the Creator. Since we have also experienced the fact that we cannot correct ourselves, we ask the Creator for help. The Light of the Creator that helps us overcome the egoism of the body (desire to receive) is known as “the soul.”

Your Spirituality Put to the Test

The most assured way to determine if an act is altruistic or egoistic is to see if we feel that we are ready to disregard any outcome, be it pleasure of payment, regardless of the immense drive to gratify ourselves as a result of our own work.

Only in this case, having received pleasure, can we still insist that we did it for the sake of the Creator, and not for ourselves.

The entire path of spiritual ascension is a gradual refusal to receive greater and greater pleasures: first, the pleasures of our world, and then from the real spiritual pleasures, in particular the perception of the Creator.

The Creator concealed Himself in order to allow us to gradually adjust to this task. Therefore, the concealment of the Creator should be viewed as an aspect of our correction and we should ask Him to reveal Himself to us, since as soon as we are able to perceive Him without any harm to ourselves, He will immediately reveal Himself.

“You too Can Reveal the Creator” is based on the book, Attaining the Worlds Beyond by Dr. Michael Laitman.