Love Is a Two Way Street

Question: How can we explain to people why love is necessary?

Dr. Laitman's Answer: You can love to eat fish for lunch, you can love your little son, or you can love your neighbor or the Creator. The same words designate completely different notions.

Is it worthwhile to praise love for the neighbor to a person who loves fish? How can you describe to him the pleasure from bestowal? What will he understand? That he has to give his fish to someone else? Is this love?

What does it mean to love the neighbor? It has a completely different meaning. Loving the neighbor means attaching his desire to yourself and working with your desire in order to fulfill his desire. Then we both meld together into one whole, where I fulfill him and he becomes fulfilled. In what does he become fulfilled? In his desire. His desire in relation to mine is like Malchut in relation to Zeir Anpin. I am like the Creator, and he-the creation. That is what my work is.

Thus, "love" is the relationship between the Creator and creation. Only this is love-the creation's attitude to the Creator. If I can build this kind of attitude to others, or in other words, if I acquire the quality of the Creator, the quality of bestowal, and by means of it I relate to the neighbor's desire just like the Creator does, it turns out that the Creator is inside of me, and I make the necessary action in relation to the neighbor. This means that I love the neighbor.

We don't have the right to use the word "love" in any other sense, context, or case. Otherwise we will confuse it with our "love of fish."

We are talking about the extent to which the Creator, the quality of bestowal, dresses into me. First of all we have to carry out the principle, "Do not do to another what you yourself hate." That is how I become neutral. After that, I have to acquire his desire instead of my own. Another person's desire becomes more important for me and therefore he becomes higher than me. I am ready to do everything for him, just like I would for my sick child in our world. I am entirely "short-circuited" on his desire; it is what makes me act.

That is exactly why I am similar to the Creator, like Zeir Anpin who receives a request from Malchut. The more another person's desire is able to activate me to bestow, the higher I am than him. This is love. Do you see how different this is from our current notions?

The more I can bestow to another person, the more I provide him with the Light of correction. After all, there is mutual guarantee between us. I do not fill his egoistic desire, but I reveal inside of him the desire to be in one system with me so the Shechina would reign between us. So what should I provide for him? I give him my support of the mutual guarantee, which he also provides for me by revealing it in his desire. This is love.

No one is indulging the other's egoism. I don't reveal the egoistic desire in the other person, but the desire for mutual support in order to reveal the Creator in the relationship between us. The Creator cannot be revealed in any individual or just in my attitude to another person, unless it's fortified by the same attitude from him. Love does not work in one direction. It is a two way street. It requires a connecting net through which impulses of bestowal are flowing, a net permeated by feelings of love, relationships of mutual guarantee and mutuality by which we strengthen one another.

In the meantime, egoism remains below, without making any calculations to fulfill it. After all, we rise above it, connected by our mutual intention for the sake of bestowal. And when it reaches a specific level of unity, creating a net above us, then we reveal the Creator, the mutual quality of bestowal and love between us.

From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 06/20/11, "Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)"

Don’t Let Yourself Be Bribed When Searching for the Truth

Question: How can we not retreat from demanding the truth so we would finally reveal that we are lying to ourselves?

Dr. Laitman's Answer: If a person is able to hold on to the truth, then he is very lucky. We see that there are many people in the world who don't need the truth and who don't ask what they are living for.

In others this question already arises, but from the point of view of, "What am I suffering for?" That is, this is not a question about the meaning of life, but about how to find the taste in life now that you feel a bitter taste instead of sweet.

And there are other people who don't ask about a good life, but about finding the truth in it. And there are people who don't ask about the truth in life, but about who gave us this life, about the Creator. And this question is no longer about myself, because I no longer care who I am and what will happen with my life, one way or another. I want to come to know Him, to attain the Creator, and exist in Him-in the very source, the root.

There are many levels in this attitude depending on a person's demand, his sensation and attainment. Here everything depends on the root of one's soul and the current life cycle, meaning, at what stage of development he is on.

But even if in our current state we are still not granted the chance to ask about the truth, then we can develop these desires inside of us by means of the environment, the "teacher, group, and books," and advance that way. However, this is not easy and it requires you to reveal what lies at the very depth of yourself, inside of your informational genes, Reshimot.

From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 06/20/11, Writings of Rabash