Parallel to the wars unfolding in the world today is a non-televised and inaudible conflict taking place inside the person.
We can understand this inner war when we understand the internal definitions of “the nations of the world” and “Israel” according to the wisdom of Kabbalah: the nations of the world as desires to receive for self-benefit, and Israel as the opposite desire to bestow, which seeks a higher power of giving above our inborn receptive desires.
Among this interplay of inner qualities, The Book of Zohar depicts certain nations that were offered the teaching to discover the oneness of the force of giving and love called “the Creator,” namely the children of Esau and Ishmael, and that they did not want to accept it, and thus the Creator turned to Israel with this very teaching. That teaching was the Torah, which itself comes from the word for “teaching” (“Hora’ah”).
“When the Creator wanted to give the Torah to Israel, He went and invited the children of Esau, and they did not accept it, as it is written, ‘The Lord came from Sinai, and dawned on them from Seir,’ meaning that they did not want to receive it. He went to the children of Ishmael, and they did not want to receive it, as it is written, ‘appeared from Mount Paran.’ Since they did not want, He returned to Israel. […] From this it shone for Israel and added to them much light and love. Likewise, He appeared and shone to Israel from Mount Paran, from what the dwellers of Paran said, that they did not want to receive, from this, extra love and illumination were added to Israel.” – The Zohar, Balak, 138, 140 from Kabbalist Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (Rabash), “What Is, ‘The Children of Esau and Ishmael Did Not Want to Receive the Torah,’ in the Work?”
Esau and Ishmael are the closest inner qualities to Israel compared to all other qualities, and they emerge specifically in order to purify Israel, i.e., to provide Israel with feelings and discernments of what it lacks in order to become a pure desire to bestow directly to the very force of giving and love that is the Creator (“Israel” from the words “Yashar-El” [“straight to the Creator”]).
The uniqueness of the receptive qualities of Esau and Ishmael is in their demands upon Israel, the bestowing quality. These desires to receive want the abundance that comes from attaining the desire to bestow, but without the attainment of the pure desire to bestow in and of itself. Therefore, the desires to receive that wish to receive what only the desire to bestow can acquire, and to gain all of that for themselves, awakens immense hatred in those desires called Esau and Ishmael, up to a point where they wish to eradicate Israel.
What is the solution to this situation of growing hatred on behalf of the desires to receive up to a point of total elimination of the desire to bestow? The solution rests solely in the desire to bestow, i.e., in the quality of Israel, that through its correction up to a point where it is a pure desire to bestow, as its name suggests—that it is aimed directly at the source force of love and bestowal—then its contact with the force of love and bestowal will let that force spread to all other desires. Moreover, this expansion of the force of love and bestowal upon all the desires to receive will completely satisfy them, as they will then feel a new profound quality of love and wholeness fill their empty places of hatred and division that they previous possessed.
Therefore, if those of us who have a tiny point of a desire to bestow—Israel—learn how to rise above the attraction to the desires to receive, we then grant these desires that are closest to Israel—Esau and Ishmael—the ability to bestow to the force of love and bestowal according to their own will. Their newfound ability to connect with life’s source will then completely satisfy them, and their hatred and wish to eradicate Israel will disappear.
We should thus prioritize our ever-increasing connection to each other and to the force of love and bestowal over everything else. If we relate to the war in this internal manner, as a war to establish the independence and the rule of the desire to bestow over all other desires, then we will reach a state where we will gather all of nature’s forces to us in order to aim them at life’s source, i.e., to align them with the Creator, the very laws of nature that operate in a manner of love and bestowal.
Our own success in this war will then become an ability that all people will acquire. Everyone will then discover a new source of fulfillment, satisfaction and happiness enter their lives with their ability to direct themselves in a manner of love and bestowal above the myriad desires to receive that surface on a moment-by-moment basis.
Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on December 28, 2023. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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