Day Seven

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

DAY SEVEN
“And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the
host of them. And on the seventh day God finished His
work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day
from all His work which He had made. And God blessed
the seventh day, and hallowed it; because in it He rested
from all His work which God has created to do.”
Chapter 1:In the Beginning (Genesis, Beresheet)
53
All of man’s work, the reason for his existence, amounts
to acquiring the qualities of the Creator, which are the
qualities of bestowal. Man corrects himself through these
qualities, and in the process of the correction he ascends
along the spiritual ladder toward infinity and perfection,
growing closer and closer to the Creator.
What were we doing over the course of the previous six
days, the six degrees of correction? We were looking at our
egoistic desires through the prism of the quality of bestowal.
At every degree we compared ourselves to the Creator and
saw that we still had a lot of work to do. In so doing, we
seemingly delved into our “I.” During the six “days” we
progressed from the “easy” desires (from the standpoint of
correction) to the more “difficult” ones.
In the language of Kabbalah, these six degrees of
advancement are called Sephirot, from the word Sappir
(sapphire), which means “illumination.” The names of
the Sephirot are as follows: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah,
Hod, Yesod.
Every degree has its own illumination.
A Kabbalist is someone who is connected to the spiritual
world, who feels this connection very clearly.
By working with the “easier” egoistic desires, he places
himself on the degree of Hesed. His objective is to build
himself similar to the Creator. He thinks of only one thing:
“What can I do to make our communication pleasurable
for Him, how do I change my egoistic desire into a desire to
bestow? On this degree He is so pure and bestowing. I want
to be like Him, and I know that He wants this, too. I cannot
achieve this directly because in His Light I am exposed as
The Secrets of the Eternal Book
54
a true egoist. I understand that this is my nature, so can I
circumvent it?”
Following these thoughts, a person seemingly tells the
Creator: “You were the One who created me this way, to
receive pleasure, so what can I do to receive yet bestow at
the same time? For in this lies the true, eternal pleasure for
which You have created me, and not for the fleeting egoistic
one. What can I do to delight You, like a son who wishes his
father to be happy?”
The answer lies in the question itself: To receive so as
to give joy. How? By changing the intention. Instead of the
typical self-serving intention, I need to form an intention
whereby my actions delight the Creator. This is possible
only if, at a particular degree (Hesed, for instance), you “see”
Him. That is, you clearly feel the magnificence of the quality
of bestowal, and the utter baseness and barrenness of the
ego. If the Creator heeds your pleas and grants you this
revelation, you will be able to change your intention. You
will desire to be in bestowal, realizing that there is no greater
joy for the Creator than this. If that happens, it means that
you have built a “screen.”