Reflect: Share something from the lesson that blew your mind, or even just gave you a new perspective.

That we will always have egoism and that is an unchangeable fact. My reality is filtered through the 5 senses which is also an unchangeable fact.

Understanding that each movement up through the worlds in an increase in ratio of the will to bestow vs will to receive make it much easier to conceptualize that path ahead.

Perhaps this is answered in future lessons, but  its unclear to me if we are trying to replace our willingness to receive with a will to bestow, or if we are trying to convert our will to receive into a will to bestow.  In the book Kabbalah Revealed, I gathered that we use our will to receive as a way to also bestow, as the only thing the Creator wants is to give and for his Creatures to receive that giving.  So the Creators fulfillment comes from the reception of the Creature and his/her gratitude.  So our will to receive endless amounts is actually a way for us to endlessly give to the Creator.

For instance, let’s say I find $100 on the ground.  My gratitude towards the creator for giving that is a way for me to  give to the creator.  I can do this for anything – my loving girlfriend, my hammock i enjoy reading on, my small challenges throughout the day that are opportunities to rise above a fear, etc.  I can be thankful  to the creator providing all those gifts and opportunities.  But what about factoring in other people?  When I found the  $100, what about the excitement and gratitude I get after the thought of how I can use that $100 to give to another person/creature?  Sometimes I think about accumulating a lot of money and all the good I can do with it.  Is that also considered  the will to give?  Or sense there is only the Creator and creature, should the will to give be directed only to the creator?

I learned that  if I have the desire to receive and I have the desire to bestow , that would be not enough…The desire needs to appear from itself, but in order to bestow, I need intention to connect them through connection to the others .

The fact that all our 5 senses have a self-serving filter/barrier seems obvious and feels true once you know it, but I hadn’t thought about it this way before.

In Kabbalah, aligning oneself with the Creator through “equivalence of form” (hishtavut ha-tzurah) signifies a profound inner transformation. This process involves reshaping one’s inherent desire to receive into a desire to bestow, thereby mirroring the Creator’s fundamental attribute of selfless giving.

🌟 Understanding Equivalence of Form
The Creator, or Ein Sof (the Infinite), is characterized by pure bestowal—giving without any expectation of return. In contrast, humans are naturally inclined toward receiving for personal gratification. This disparity creates a spiritual distance between humanity and the Creator. Achieving equivalence of form entails transforming our intentions and actions to align with the Creator’s attribute of bestowal, thereby bridging this gap.

As Rav Ashlag elucidates, spiritual proximity is determined not by physical location but by similarity in attributes. When two entities share the same form or qualities, they are spiritually united; when their forms differ, they are spiritually distant.

Well, what amazes me the most, are the points of connection that this path has with the path of Self Realisation. In Self Realisation we learn that how we perceive reality, is depending on our reactif proces, on our likes and dislikes, which are coming from the ego. It perceives everything in relation to itself, which is a “false” identity (we think we have a separate identity but that’s an illusion), the ego is the result of the Jiva (soul) who is identifying itself with a limited form, the body and its 5 senses.

This is also what Kabbalah teaches: the ego is the limited closed box, with the 5 senses who are “deforming” reality. So for me both teachings are telling exactly the same, but they are using different words and images.

The challenge is to transform our litte i, the “false” identity, into the Self (“Self” Realisation). (In Kabbalah the Self is named “the Creator”).  The way that we do that in Self Realisation, is by “neutralizing” our selfish desires. Kabbalah speaks about “correcting” our desires.

The fact that the eastern teaching of Self Realisation is telling the same as Kabbalah, is just so fantastic to discover. Truth is the Same everywhere!

• This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by ilse.