Man's Wife

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

MAN’S WIFE

“And the Lord God said: ‘It is not good that the man should
be alone; I will make him a help made against him.’”
Indeed, it is not good for man, who was created in God’s
image and likeness, to have only the Creator’s power and
nothing of man himself (meaning his egoistic nature). “It is
not good that the man should be alone.” That is, it is not
good that he is stifled by the Light, and has no free will.
Bit by bit, his nature must be awakened, his ego revealed to
the extent that he can control it. Thus, his ego would stand
“behind him.” That is to say, the ego could be utilized, but
would remain under his control.
The “woman in us” is the embodiment of this controlled
ego.


“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon
the man (Adam), and he slept; and He took one of his
ribs, and closed up the place with flesh instead thereof.
And from the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the
man, He made a woman and brought her unto the man.
And the man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and
flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she
was taken out of Man.’”
“Sleep” is a spiritual state, as if man dies, when all the
types of Light leave him. In this uncontrolled state, a force
awakens in him that he didn’t want to use before. Man
didn’t want to activate his ego.
Why is that? He resides in the Creator’s Garden of Eden
and is completely under the authority of the Light. Man
exists in a kind of narcotic state, but he must ultimately
become free, for the Creator’s objective was to make a
creature equal to Him, rather than a slave to the Light. It
follows that sooner or later, man must begin to activate his
ego and correct it.
When the Light “exits him,” when the “Adam” in him
falls asleep, an “operation” can be performed: “He took one
of his ribs, and closed up the place with flesh instead thereof.
And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man,
He made a woman, and brought her unto the man.”
Naturally, this did not refer to a Adam’s physical body. I
hope that you, the reader, have gotten used to the fact that
we’re looking beyond the material images of these words for
their true spiritual meaning. We’re always speaking about
desires, and nothing else!
A rib is a “place” in the chest where the altruistic desire
in us connects to the egoistic desire.


In each of our desires is a vulnerable, but absolutely
essential “place.” It is the moment of doubt and struggle,
when the temptation arises to take for yourself, even though
you’ve already decided to “start a new life” and be exclusively
in bestowal. This is the material from which “your inner
woman” is made, and it exists in every one of us.
This material is that very common quality that exists
between the desire to bestow and the desire to receive.
You may ask, “What could they possibly have in
common?” The male desire within you strives to receive
spiritual pleasure by bestowing upon others, upon the
Creator. It waits for the moment when man declares, “I will
take only the bare essentials for myself, and gladly bestow
everything else to the Creator.”
The female desire within you strives to receive spiritual
pleasure, but for its own delight, realizing that this pleasure
is the greatest in existence.
This common point is called “receiving pleasure,” and
the only difference is who you are fulfilling with this action:
yourself or others.
If the desire to receive spiritual pleasure for self (female
desire) is not controlled by the male desire to bestow, it
becomes man’s demise (in the spiritual sense).
Try to understand that what you see and feel is
imaginary. In fact, besides you, there is only the Creator.
“For the Creator’s sake” and “for one’s own sake” are the
exact same thing. Until you reach the state of the end of
correction, this illusion that others exist will persist. But
then you will see that there are no “others”; there are only
“me and the Creator.”


But if the desire to bestow (male desire) submits to or
follows the desire to receive for oneself (female desire), that
will spell demise for man, as well.
Advancement can be infinite, as your soul has no
limitation with respect to capacity, for through the soul you
connect to others. The soul is the communicator with other
souls. One can connect all of humanity to himself—to feel,
think and understand in their stead. You need only “exit”
yourself and “enter” them.
This is the essence of the Biblical principle, “Love your
neighbor as yourself.” What is our true egoism? It is when
you love yourself egoistically, willing to disregard the whole
world just to grab something for yourself. If you can exit
yourself and give up all your possessions, you will begin to
feel other people and become eternal. Therefore, there is no
limit to your spiritual growth; we simply aren’t taught this
practice. Everyone can actualize himself and become equal
to the Creator. Moreover, it is everyone’s responsibility and
duty to do so.
We will expound on this junction of the male and female
beginnings in our desires later and clarify the necessary
proportions. In the meantime, let us understand that their
true coalescence lies in submission to the Light, in aspiring
to it no matter what.
To summarize, the manifestation of an egoistic quality
in Adam, which he had never felt before, is the birth of a
“woman,” the additional, external form called “Eve.” Adam
and Eve are the same flesh, in that they create between them
a combination that has a right to exist independently. They
support one another, whereas before they (the desire to
bestow and the desire to receive) were estranged from one
another.


“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.”
Until that moment, all our desires depended on a single
need: to remain in the Garden of Eden, to always be in
the Creator’s Light. This is how we feel when in the state
of ascent, when we think only of spiritual pleasures, while
everything else seems empty and worthless. This means that
we are “in the Garden of Eden,” connected to “our father
and mother.”
We do not lower our eyes to the “sinful earth,” thinking
that we’ve “departed” it and are now aspiring only upward.
But earth cannot be escaped. Our nature is egoistic and
must be corrected. The connection to the earth (desire to
receive) is the “woman” to which “man” attaches, becoming
one flesh with her, meaning drawing to himself egoistic
desires, but not yet exposing them. Neither the man nor the
woman have yet discovered themselves: “And they were both
naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”
The term “naked” alludes to the absence of “clothes”—
that is, egoistic desires that coat man, clothes-like, concealing
his true, primordial yearning for the spiritual world.
By donning these “clothes”—newer and newer egoistic
desires—man distances himself from the Creator, although
the spiritual basis always remains in him. He simply needs
to begin to remove these layers and always strive for the
root—the Creator who created us all. This is exactly what we
are now doing.
If you’re thinking of one thing and one thing only—how
to equalize yourself with the Creator—you thus evoke a highly
intense influence of the purifying Light. You are “bathing”
yourself in true thoughts, with a true book, reading it the
way Kabbalists do at supernal spiritual degrees. It is as if

you’ve caught a lifeline that they threw to you. Now the
important thing is to hold on!
“Naked” means a complete absence of egoistic intentions.
This is why the Kabbalists weren’t ashamed of their desires.
Likewise, animals don’t need to conceal their actions;
they are driven by instincts, not by egoistic desires. Man is
the only creature that can blush with shame or needs to
“cover” his intentions, for they are egoistic through and
through.
But at this time, at the beginning of the path, the separated
Adam and Eve (our desires) are naked and uncovered. They
have nothing to be ashamed of because they lead a “beastly”
existence, run by instincts. This is what living by instincts is
called in our world.
They are naked and unashamed, for shame is the
discovery of one’s opposition to the Creator, which Adam
and Eve have yet to realize.