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Human giving is a form of reception for oneself, disguised as giving.
The Creator’s giving is actual bestowal, which we call Light.
Hi Emily,
We are built like Pavlov’s Dogs, where every time we get pleasure from some source it reinforces our propensity to return to that source. Each time the pleasure enters us and departs, our desire for it increases with the feeling of missing it. But this is only up until a certain threshold beyond which the returns start diminishing, our pleasure decreases, and does so all the way down to zero pleasure, and even negative pleasure, until our life is wrapped in a veil of darkness, and the source of pleasure is no more, but I need that source now just to alleviate the darkness. Now begins a process whereby the darkness reduction starts diminishing. Say the pleasure has all but disappeared and in place of pleasure I have 100 grams of darkness. Now, instead of getting pleasure from the drug (or whatever) each time, I get only a reduction of this darkness. At first, it’s reduced 100%, then 90%, 80%, and so on until it can no longer affect the darkness – let alone provide any pleasure. All this is not even considering the effects on my body. This is how it is with every pleasure.
There is no solution in this world because that’s how we are built: we are meant to reach despair from reception in the above form, to see that it’s not just this way with this particular pleasure, but with all pleasures, and that the true pleasure is in another direction: bestowal outside myself, toward the Creator.
But on a simpler level, using the same principle, one needs to exchange the pleasure that controls him for another. For example, to engage in sport, exercise. This contradicts and cancels, to some extent, desires in the opposite direction. One has to fill one’s time, and the airways of one’s thought, with something else. There’s no other way. Unfortunately, we are built in an all-or-nothing kind of way. We either receive or bestow, are healthy or sick. It’s only possible to be in the middle after establishing a strong this-is-forever-and-all-there-is singularity on on the positive side.
Hi Hope,
It is written, holy are the words that lead to action. For the words to lead to action, I need to know that they refer to me – and to understand their instructions. It’s true that the Torah is the highest book. That’s referring to its quality in isolation. What about when I enter the picture? When I read it, do I know that it is all about me and contains nothing but direct instructions? Or do I feel like I’m reading a history, a story, etc. If so, it doesn’t lead to a holy action, that is, a spiritual correction. It’s like a physics book is far more important than some kindergarten science book but for he kindergartener, it’s of no use – and one who wants not just to be religious but correct their soul needs something for someone who is in kindergarten relative to the spiritual world so that he will be able to make a move, based on the instructions he’s given. And not be given instructions that he does not even recognize as instructions.
No, they’re simple but good questions.Â
is Ner Dakik also called sparks, a very small portion of the light? I thought after the 2nd restriction, there is absolutely no light in our world, the creator is completely concealed?
It’s a portion, but it never enters the Kli(vessel). Instead, it surrounds us, and it’s AS IF we can get it, but we never do. It’s as if our world is sustained on hope alone. False hope that in another moment, I’ll receive.Â
the soul I am yet to attain, is there a piece specific for me? or we are all attaining the same soul?
Specific for you, a root in the common soul.
how does reincarnation work, in relation to Ner Dakik and soul?
If I haven’t attained my soul, a moment later, I’m reborn. Nowhere else for me to stand, except in this perfect-for-my-correction reality.
Hi Helen,
What’s sustaining us is called Ner Dakik (slim candle/flame). It’s just enough that taking into account that no one really knows what happens when I die, I’m willing to go ahead and keep living, as long as I’m already alive. I flee suffering, chase pleasure, but ‘one who has 200 wants 400, and one dies with half his desires in his hands.’ Within these boundaries, I’m sustained, rather adequately we must say, since for most it’s enough to not ask about the meaning of life.
It’s not a soul. It’s the phenomena upon and around a biological entity which soon will turn into millions of dust particles, and that’s that. A soul is something I have to attain from beyond my skin outward, on degrees of Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, Yechida – the degrees of my soul. The body will still die, but the degrees of the soul are eternal. I can only attain my soul while in this world – not after.
