FALLING IN ORDER TO RISE

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

FALLING IN ORDER TO RISE
The first thing you experience is descent. “Day” becomes
“night,” and a feeling overtakes you that the egoistic force
of the new degree is winning. Everything you’ve already
attained seems forgotten: it’s as if you’ve never “survived the
flood,” as though “Noah and his sons” have never existed.
Your desire to bestow is powerless before the power of
“Nimrod.”
(Historically, at this time Babylon undergoes a powerful
leap of egoism, which transforms the whole world.)
You may ask, “Is the descent really necessary?” Yes, it is!
Moreover, it should be celebrated because it is now that the
next rung on the spiritual ladder is born. A new degree is
revealed within you.
Actually, it’s exactly what happens in life. Imagine
that you’re the manager of a small company branch. You
know everything about your staff. Everyone is friendly
and close-knit, celebrating the holidays together, gossiping
together about each other, when suddenly you are offered a
promotion you cannot resist: you have been transferred to
corporate headquarters.
Here come the sleepless nights and nagging thoughts:
“Why did I agree to this, sacrificing the peace and happiness
I had before?”


It’s a new degree. And with a new degree you need to get
accustomed to new conditions and new egoistic desires: a
higher salary, the wish to be liked by your new superiors and
subordinates, and the hope that more promotions lie ahead,
provided you succeed. There’s no escaping this, since you’re
dealing with another, higher degree.
That is an example taken from our egoistic world.
In the spiritual world, a new degree is always preceded
by a descent. For those who understand that a descent
essentially marks the beginning of another ascent, it is a
joyous occasion. You already know that after processing a
certain portion of the ego, another portion will be added,
signaling a new ascent and thus a greater revelation of the
Creator. And this inspires you.
The great Kabbalist, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai (RASHBI),
author of The Book of Zohar, enjoyed spiritual heights we
cannot even imagine. But prior to each ascent to a new
degree, he experienced a descent. And before he ascended
to the final, 125th degree, his descent was so deep that the
author of the single most celebrated work of Kabbalah
felt like an illiterate market hawker, without any spiritual
attainment whatsoever. He even forgot the alphabet!
The difference between him and other people that
experience descents is that he knew for certain that this
state would soon pass, for it preceded his transition on to an
even higher degree. You need only to hold on, since before
every ascent you are given an additional portion of the ego
that must be corrected.
One can never know what lies ahead in the spiritual world.
Every new degree is a journey into the unknown. The lower
one cannot attain the Upper One until the latter raises him


to His level. As was mentioned earlier, you attain the name
of a degree, which is one of the Creator’s names, only once
you’ve attained the degree itself.
From the aforementioned, it follows that in the spiritual
worlds there are only ascents. And even the sensation of a
descent constitutes yet another ascent on the path to the goal.