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We’re advised to pray all day, in all situations. The main thing is not to do anything (spiritual) on my own, but always with a request to the Upper Force to complete the action. Better results come from an aim that is closer to the goal.
An act of bestowal that one in this world has is that he helps a friend to perform an act of bestowal. An act of bestowal comes out of a person toward his friend, such that the friend understands how he needs to be: in bestowal. This is called an act of bestowal. And nothing else from one’s corporeal life is an act of bestowal, nor anywhere close to bestowal. I can flap my arms like a bird, but since there is no stage like that waiting for me in Creation, I will never fly, even flapping my arms for a thousand years; but a baby can wildly incorrectly exert in the direction of walking and eventually will begin to really walk because there is a form called walking that lies ahead of him in the plan of Creation, and it’s truly what’s next for him in his development. That’s why I need to be sure I’m making efforts that are toward a near next step in my development. That’s why Baal HaSulam advises in Letter 21 “not to correct your externality at all, but only your internality, for only your internality is destined to be corrected.”
You should see how to add Kabbalah to your life in a way that it can be an addition, on top of everything else. If I return to true beastly life, where I simply forget there’s a purpose to life – because the life of a cat is simple and worry-free – well, then I have bad news. Once awakened, I’ll find out that I won’t be allowed to be just a cat in the way I had it before. It’s too late for that. But the correct way is that Kabbaah constitutes the higher physics of everything else below it. I can maintain both corporeal and spiritual life if I give each its correct and adequate food. To have corporeal life only… that window is in fact closing for all of humanity.
That’s part of the art of this. Look, if I really want a job or to charm a romantic partner, and I’ve decided that succeeding is more important than my pride or anything else, then it turns out that the human is built with a capacity to gauge others and adapt to their whims. It’s just that usually I have multiple priorities, such as taking care of my pride or other things, and not just one priority. My priority should be just one thing – to consider that every day I’m auditioning for my place in the ten – because my spirituality depends on their approval of me. The same pride that stands in the way of this, stands between me and the Creator, as they write, “He who is proud – he and I cannot dwell in the same abode.” The friends are holding the key to my prison cell. If they’ll want me to enter spirituality, I’ll enter spirituality. It’s hard to accept, but until a person embraces it wholeheartedly, they’re in a holding pattern.
The Shattering of the Soul of Adam HaRishon made each of us come to a feeling of independence from the parts of one’s own soul, on which I’m nevertheless completely dependent on. So, an extraordinary amount of effort is spent just escaping any feeling of interdependence. Of course, we have to try to go against the Shattering, and, in the ten, try to come to the feeling of spiritual interdependence. Then we open up the truth, that we were always connected, in one system, as in one body.
That’s mostly correct. I can’t expect an external change if I don’t change. Usually, I want to remain as I am, but I want to see a change in the world, a set of circumstances that is more desirable in my eyes. But I’m in a world that is a projection of what I am most fundamentally, in aspects of myself that are so persistent, I don’t even know they’re there. The world is actually my mirror, all of it. So, how would it change if I don’t change? And that’s what people always demand: “I stay as-is, someone or something should change.” Such changes will be illusory. Kabbalah thus directs a person to stop hoping for the impossible, and to focus on the place where change is possible. If I want to change the world, I have to change myself.
