"Kabbalah Revealed" Episode 13 -- Defining the Goal

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[1:33]Hello again and welcome to Kabbalah Revealed. I'm Tony Kosinec. Over the past 12 weeks, we have been looking at important concepts in Kabbalah. We haven't covered all of them, but it's time now to take what we have been looking at and to focus on what the goal really is, figure out what the target is. You see, in coming to study Kabbalah, the first part of the process is about defining the goal, uh, eliminating things that are of no use to us, defining those things that we can use and then how to use it. And really the whole process even after that is a refinement of keeping the aim on the target. Now, last week we talked about structurally about prayer. What prayer consists of. Now, let's look at what prayer is from a feeling state, the inner part, what a person experiences. Let's define the target now in the work of Kabbalah by taking a look at what it is that we're actually asked to do to change in our inner state in order to reach what we call equivalence of form with the Creator. And what does it mean to go above reason in the work? We've seen that in various articles. What does it mean to build a second nature above the nature that we were given by the creator, to go in the work by opposing the dictates of uh, of our lower nature that control everything that we do. We are going to investigate this by looking at the article Lishma by Balaslam. Now Lishma means for her sake, for her name's sake. And Lishma means the state that we need to reach uh in order to attain equivalence of form with the Creator. He begins.

[3:45]In order for a person to obtain Lishma, one needs an awakening from above, because that is an illumination from above, and it is not for the human mind to understand. But he that tastes knows, it is said about that, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." So, in the first place, this thing that we have to attain is not within our nature. And our nature is defined as the will to receive for myself alone, that is, no matter what action it is that we find ourselves taking. No matter how it appears in this world, no matter how altruistic its outward quality is as an action, we're still doing it based only on the parameters of our nature. And that the nature of Lishma requires awakening from above means that because it's not in our nature, it is something we have to obtain outside of it. Uh, and there's no way for us to truly understand what this is within our nature. That is, we can't really use our mind, what we call our reason, in order to proceed in this process. We don't disregard the the normal things that our mind tells us, but its purpose in spiritual ascent is completely different from its purpose in our day-to-day lives, getting the things that have to do with our survival and the happiness of our lower nature, which is our animal. So it won't be by means of our mind that we're going to proceed here. The only way that we can proceed is as he says, taste and see that the Lord is good. That it's going to have to be something not in the mind, but something yet tangible to us, how we experience things, what the overall feeling is, what the greater experience within us actually is. He continues, because of that, upon accepting the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven, one needs for it to be in utter completeness, meaning only to bestow and not at all to receive. Very, very important. When a person determines that they're going to begin this work of a direct contact with the Creator. A very clear line needs to be drawn as to what it is we're trying to achieve. This state of Lishma is not sometimes to give, uh, and sometimes to take. It has to be a complete grasp. But you must enter the state totally. So the desire for it also has to be complete. And when a person decides to do this, they aim at not fooling themselves. They aim at looking very carefully what their actual responses are to things. And he continues, if a person sees that his organs do not agree with that idea, he has no other counsel except for prayer, to pour his heart to the Lord to help him make his body consent to enslaving itself to the Creator. Now, don't get put off by the word enslaved. Ballaslam is writing all the time from how it feels within our experience. Uh, so from the will to receive, the idea that we would move to a state where our inner intentions, uh, would only be in order to receive in order to bestow. That is, not for myself. At the beginning of the path, this feels like, uh-uh. You know, this is enslavement or I will disappear or so on, but you must keep in mind that we're not talking ever about trying to control the normal desires of our animal level. These things we don't have to deal with, it'll confuse you to to start thinking that way. All of those things that you need for your survival, for your daily life, for your family, for the the simple pleasures of your of your existence. These things don't have to change. We're not speaking about taking a special diet or or making external actions or don't do this and do this. We cannot control what's placed before us that compels us to have to act, even our own desires. The question is not, what am I doing? The question is, why am I doing? So, if we can't depend either on the the circumstances or or and our own intelligence. It's clear that the whole purpose of these things happening for us is simply so that we should realize that we require light from above. That this awakening from above can only come as a result of the fact that we decided to make a whole attempt at something that in the end must be whole, that is Lishma is not it's not partial and neither is the desire to reach it partial. So, this way of progressing means that out of a person's own set of desires, his own longing to reach this, he must reach a place of wholeness within himself towards it. If the only thing that he wants is this, and if he realizes that the the capacity to do it is not within himself, but only above, he must rely on the upper force to change him. This is what we call drawing the light or Or Makif, the surrounding light drawn by effort. But what's the effort? And do not say that if Lishma is a gift from above, then what good is one's surmounting and efforts and all the remedies and corrections that one performs in order to come to Lishma, if it depends on the Lord? Our sages said with that regard, "You are not free to rid yourself of it." Rather, one must offer the awakening from below, and that is the prayer. There cannot be a genuine prayer, if he does not know in advance that without prayer it cannot be attained. And everything that that comes to a person as a result of this uh is the latter. It is what needs to be surmounted. And unless there is this attempt to surmount it, regardless of the fact that everything is in the Creator's hands. There is no place for the creator to give the gift. So this desire for this is really prayer. So, what is, what does it feel like to have that desire? If a person attempts it, they try to uh look at their actual intention when they're doing something, when they're receiving a pleasure, when they think about another person and they they do some kind of act for it. If they're honest, they will look into that intention deeply and they'll begin to see where they are unlike it. And the feeling that there is more, that I'm unlike this quality of that I want to reach, feels both as a as an aspiration and as a disappointment. Remember, we can't proceed in this without a need. How do we sense needs? We feel that there's something lacking, right? You you may not even know what it is, but in the case of a Kabbalist and somebody on the path, no matter what it is that's occurring, we know what it is. The only thing that it can be is that I'm I lack the pleasure that I actually seek here, which is the the direct contact with the Creator. A prayer feels like a lack, a loss, a need, an emptiness. And it's not something that comes from within our reason. Well, if I do this, then I'll get this. I hope God didn't hear me say that. You know, it's either the feeling is there, either the need exists within us or it doesn't. And that is the awakening from below, and that's also the Kli, that is the preparation for the entry of the light. Therefore, the acts and the remedies that he performs in order to obtain Lishma, create the corrected vessels to want to receive the Lishma. Then, after all the deeds and the remedies, can he pray in earnest because he has seen that all his deeds brought him no benefit. Only then can he pray an honest prayer from the bottom of his heart, and the Creator hears his prayer and gives him the gift of Lishma. We should also know that by attaining Lishma, one puts the evil inclination to death, because the evil inclination is called receiving for himself, whereas by attaining the aim to bestow, one cancels the thought of his own good. And the death of the evil inclination means that one no longer uses ones vessels of reception for himself, and since they are no longer operative, they are considered dead. We must know first that we don't want to feel this at all. That's what he means by it is put to death. And the process is that slowly, as these comparisons are done between what we really feel and and a proper unchanging target, like a fixed goal that we have, that the sensation within the Kli actually does within the person's sensation actually changes. And the desire to to receive in order to fill some kind of personal satisfaction, it wanes, it it changes. Slowly, it goes through a transformation, as long as it is by a process of real prayer and real need. It is as the Magid or the sayer of Duvna says regarding the verse, "Thou hast not called upon me, oh Jacob, neither has thou worried thyself about me, oh Israel." Meaning that he who works for the creator has no effort. On the contrary, one is content and high spirited. But he who does not work for the Creator, but for other purposes, cannot complain to the Creator for not giving him livelihood in the work, since he worked for another cause. One can only complain to the one he works for, and demand of him to give him vitality and pleasure in the work. It is said about such people: "Anyone that trusts them, shall be like them that maketh them." and he's speaking here about idols. So the work that uh that has to be done, needs to be done only for this goal of Lishma, for the reaching of uh complete intention of bestowal. If the work is done for any other reason, then you can't complain to the upper force that it's not answering your prayer. That there, there should be some kind of fulfillment. Also, it's only work here in our lower nature for which we require some kind of payment or personal fulfillment. The work done for Lishma in reaching a sensation, imagine it, reaching a sensation of experiencing everything for the benefit of others without a thought for oneself. This is our intention. What possible payment could anybody ask except the fulfillment of reaching that desire? Because there, all boundaries disappear, all suffering ends, not just for me, that is not just for the person on the path, but for everybody around them. A 100% effort, external, internal, is being put into the well-being of all life. So the payment for on the path of Lishma, even though we find ourselves differing from this quality and and maybe feeling a kind of an emptiness or suffering at the moment that we realize, oh no, I'm still not at my goal, I still haven't reached that place. It's payment, it's it is excitement, it's uh, it's high spirits, as he says. Because you know you're on the adventure, you're on the path, you're on the hunt to hit that bullseye. Do not be surprised that when one takes upon himself the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven, meaning when he wants to work only to bestow to the Creator, that he still feels no vitality at all. This vitality should compel one to accept the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven, and one should accept it coercively, against his better judgment. Yeah, even if you're on the path, what should happen is that your sensation of of being fulfilled by anything other than that, it just wanes.

[16:52]And, uh, you a person proceeds against their better judgment. Now, this is what is meant by above reason in the work. If you listen to the ground rules of your will to receive, your body basically, it will say, what are you doing this for? Uh, this, uh, this doesn't make any sense. You're just screwing everything up here for me. This is always the argument, and a person will always see and hear everything around them working against it. But this is in order for us to be able to, he says, accept the work coercively. He means, do not listen to to what the will to receive says, but understand that this doubt that comes before us from the will to receive, actually enables us to make this choice by free will. I'm not being controlled either by my lower nature, nor is the upper force saying, I'm going to make this easy for you and just pull you like this and you're going to feel wonderful in a payment. No. Now you're in a place where free will really exists. You are neither controlled by your lower nature, nor by the Creator. You are working in in what is called a middle line. That is, it's up to you and your your own intention, an individual uncoerced intention to become like the Creator. And this is the only way, when this exists as a matter of free will within the person to choose that path where there's no payment either way. This is the real achievement. This is the trick, and this is why all of this is hidden from us because it's so completely opposite to our normal way of functioning through the control of our will to receive.

[18:44]Meaning that the body should not agree to this enslavement, for why does the Creator not shower him with vitality and delight? In fact, this is a great correction. If it were not for that, the will to receive would have agreed to this work and he would never have been able to attain Lishma. Rather, he would always work for his own good, to satisfy his own desires. It is as people say, that the thief himself cries, "Catch the thief," and then you cannot tell which is the real thief in order to catch him and reclaim the theft.

[19:40]But when the thief, meaning the will to receive, does not find the work of accepting the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven tasteful, because the body accustoms itself to work against its own desire, it can begin to work with the single purpose of bringing contentment to the Maker. To work against our nature, and to it means to get a sensation of what is required for us on our next level. When we feel a difficulty, uh in the form of, usually in the form of a doubt or a temptation not of not of doing a certain kind of action. Kabbalist don't deal with the physical level of actions, but when the temptation is to believe that my life would be better if I simply pursued this for myself. Uh, that I I see the people around me successful who who who pursue this, when the doubt comes to say, uh, it should be this other way. Working against nature means not to use that level of reason. Recognize it, it's the only thing that the the animate level within the person can say. What do you expect it to be? It it can't be anything other than that. The speaking level, the higher level, the one that that a person is attempting to give birth to from this point in the heart that that you felt at the beginning of this path, that is like a spiritual embryo. Now is going to become a person. If that's going to happen, then the reason, the thinking, the logic behind how you will proceed has to be the logic of the Creator. It's an opposite logic. So we can immediately sense what the next thing is that has to occur for us by the doubt that comes up. It's like a radar system that immediately shows us precisely the thing that has to be worked on. And then it is impossible to proceed except by faith here. And this is what's meant by faith, not a belief, not like, well, some wise guy told me that this is the way that it should be, so what the heck I'll do it and everything will be okay. No. It must be that the desire to feel the upper mind means that I will not allow myself to be guided by my desire to receive for myself, either spiritually or or corporally. That I will make the effort anyway. I'll do it as an experiment and I will see what the results are. I will put that effort in. What will the effort give me? The effort will give me a need. Big reward. It's a huge reward, actually. The need will be a need specifically for what it is that I couldn't achieve it. It will it will raise the person above the doubt. It will create not a physical vessel, but now a spiritual vessel that exists above the will to receive. A second nature begins to be built there, that is desires not for this physical level, which are already perfected, done. We don't have to deal with that. Creator did that. But here we begin to build and grow a man, a spiritual creature, that is made up of a desire because that's what the creature is, it's just a desire, but it's a specific desire only for the Creator's mind. Towards everything else, towards what now begins to be below the person. These are real sensations. This is something that a person actually feels an an attainment, an enlightenment, a a spiritual ascent in which reality appears very differently to that person. One's intention should be only for the Lord, as it says, "Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord." Thus, when first he served the Lord he did not sense any pleasure in the work. Rather it was done by coercion. Now that one has accustomed oneself to work in order to bestow, one merits delighting in the Lord. The work itself renders one with pleasure and vitality, and this is considered that the pleasure is aimed at the Creator. Join us again.