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A person cannot trust the feelings and desires that arise within an egoistic world and an egoistic body. There is no truth in our desires. All thoughts and feelings are fundamentally selfish by nature. Therefore, there is no point in trying to analyze them internally and decide which are “right” or “wrong,” because they are all distorted from the outset.
The only real work a person can do is to attract what Kabbalah calls “the upper light.” It is a force or an influence that we can attract to ourselves from a higher level of reality, one which operates by fundamentally opposite altruistic laws of love, bestowal, and harmonious connection. By drawing this force to ourselves, it proceeds to gradually reveal our true nature to us, which is a completely self-aimed, egoistic, and corrupted thought and feeling that we possess. The extent of this revelation lets us correct our egoistic nature accordingly. We cannot hold onto what is clearly harmful to us, even egoistically, as the moment we reveal what harms us, we naturally seek to avoid it. However, such recognition does not come from within the ego; it rather comes from the influence of the upper light.
The foundation of our nature is desire, which in Kabbalah we call “the heart.” Thought, or the mind, exists only to serve desire. Its role is to sort, calculate, and direct how a desire can be fulfilled. That is why a person consists of a heart and a mind.
First there is a desire to enjoy. Then comes the thought of how to realize this desire. Desire is primary; thought is secondary. Reason does not rule over desire, but serves it. Intelligence is merely a tool given to us in order to manage desires more effectively.
Based on the Virtual Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on May 13, 2018. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.