What’s More Important: The Creator, or His Gifts?

In the course of our lives, we are forced to alter the external clothing of pleasure because of our increasing age or because of our community. There is no word in our vocabulary to define pleasure. Instead, there are words describing the form, the garb, and the objects from which we receive pleasure: from food, from nature, from a toy. We describe our striving for pleasure according to its type, as in “I like fish.”

The preferred pleasure of those who study Kabbalah can be determined by the question: is it Kabbalah that is important to the person, or is it the One who Gives the Kabbalah? Is Kabbalah important because it emanates from the Creator? Is it the Creator who is important, or is the observance of the spiritual laws and the reward ensuing from that observance, the most important thing?

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Shortening the Path for Self-Correction

There are two opposite forces acting upon us: the altruistic force, which professes that living the Will of the Creator should be the ultimate purpose in this world, and that all should be for His sake; and the egoistic force, which maintains that everything in this world is created for human beings and because of them.

Although, in all cases, the higher altruistic force prevails, there exists the long path of suffering. However, there is also a short path, known as the path of Kabbalah.

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More Happiness from Not Wanting Pleasure?

An “effort” is defined as anything that the individual does against the desires of the body, irrespective of what action it is. For example, if an individual sleeps in spite of the desires of the body, this is an effort. But the main problem lies in the fact that an individual always anticipates a reward for efforts made. To overcome egoism, one must strive to make an effort without being compensated for it.

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Corporeal Distractions Conceal the Spiritual Reality

Our entire reality has been especially created in order to distract us from perceiving the spiritual worlds. A thousand thoughts constantly distract us from our aim, and the more we try to concentrate, the greater the obstacles we experience.

The only remedy against all these obstacles is the Creator. This is His purpose in creating them—so we will turn to the Creator in search of the path for personal salvation.

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The Spiritual Process: Contractions and Expansions

The program of creation descends into our world from above downward; the highest level begets the lower one, all the way to our world, where it is born in an individual of our world at a particular moment during one of the individual’s lives. From that moment the process reverses and forces one to grow spiritually, until one reaches the highest level.

Our task is merely to study the levels of spiritual descent from above to below, and to gain the understanding of how to conduct ourselves in our own ascent from below to above. The seemingly unnatural feeling of love towards others like us that the Creator demands of us (not those “close” to us, but those like us, because those close to us are already dearly loved), makes us feel an internal contraction of the “self,” just like any other altruistic feeling or any other denial of egoism will do.

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