If we continue to focus on the Creator, and not on our own desires, we will eventually discover Him, by becoming like Him. When we become like Him, we discover that the whole of Nature is already like Him, existing in constant giving. Each level gives to the next, and the whole world lives in a harmonious pyramid.
Spirituality: a Uniquely Human Desire
As we explained in Chapter 14, it’s the law of nature that the highest degree rules over the lower degrees. Plants are higher than rocks, for instance, and you could make a case that plants help break down rocks over time for their own nourishment.
Animals rule over the plant world, and, in turn, humans rule over animals. In a sense, animals live at the expense of the inanimate and the vegetative, just as the vegetative lives at the expense of the inanimate. Each feeds on its lower degrees, but for a higher need than itself.
The higher orders have greater desires and, therefore, power over the lower degrees. Why?
A creature with a less-developed desire is like a baby. When the baby grows, it wants more things because its desire has evolved and can now detect more objects that are desirable. When it becomes an adult, the child becomes a man or a woman, goes to school, attends college, works and makes money, and has a career and family. One rises according to one’s desire.
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Kabbalearn
An animal feels life much more than a plant. It is alive, it breathes, it moves, and it has all kinds of sensitivities. It recognizes its habitat, its offspring, and its family, its pack. So the greater a creature is, the more it senses its existence, its selfness. That makes it greater and unique.
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When desires push us, we become restless and progress. We don’t have a choice. So desire is the motivating force for progress, for achievements.
Yet the egoistic desire drives us only to a certain point, until we despair of ever being satisfied and fulfilled this way. This is the journey we described at the beginning, in Chapters 1 and 2. This unsatisfied state forces us to change the method because we all ultimately want fulfillment. In that state, we begin to want spirituality, a uniquely human desire.
The will to receive grows even more. Gradually, as we learn about spirituality, we understand that fulfillment doesn’t come only from benefitting ourselves directly, but from benefitting others. And that gives us the real fulfillment, just as a mother is happiest when her child is happy.
In short, the only way to have great pleasures is to have great desires. Great (unfulfilled) desires lead to emptiness. This, in turn, leads to the recognition of evil—that our desires are bad for us. Recognition of evil can lead to a desire for something entirely different, on a higher level. That something more is people’s unique ability to desire and know the Creator.
The Point of This World
How does this desire to be similar to the Creator influence the rest of nature? We never influence anything at the level of this world. In this world, we can come to some decisions only according to what is in us and what we see. There are no actions in our world. Everything we do in our world is only to finally ask, “What is the point of all that?”
There is an animal level in us that wants a home, a family, and everything the body needs. There is a human level in us that wants money, honor, and knowledge. And there is Adam in us, the point in the heart that has a drive to be like the Creator. And this is the point of all that.
Precisely when one has a drive to be like the Creator, one changes. All other degrees can’t change themselves in any way. They can’t do anything. They simply exist the way they do. Only beings with a point in the heart have free choice. The free choice appears in the point in the heart. When the free choice appears, if we use it correctly, we become similar to the Creator.
This is really the only choice we have: to be or not to be similar to the Creator. Because only humans have points in the heart, only humans can have free choice, and only humans can change.
Correction begins when a person realizes that his or her egoistic nature is both a source of evil and the engine of change. It is a very personal and powerful experience, but it invariably brings one to want to change, to move toward altruism and away from egoism.