RAISING A PRAYER – RETURN DELIGHT

The Creator made man at the farthest, completely opposite spiritual level to His: with only the egoistic will to enjoy. And since man has no other properties-desires but the egoistic will to receive pleasure, not only is he unable to change himself, he cannot even wish for the desire to change.

We can change only under the influence of the Creator’s Light, by receiving His properties from Him. Hence our only task is to cultivate a desire to change. As soon as this true desire appears within man, the Creator will immediately give him the strength needed for its realization. So the problem is not how to realize a prayer; it is, rather, how to attain it, how to formulate one’s request for the strength to become like the Creator!

By creating man a worthless egoist, i.e., by making a worthless creation that is seemingly so unbefitting Him, the Creator allowed man to create himself and elevate himself to an equal degree to that of the Creator Himself – to attain His level of perfection.

Thus, the Creator reveals the perfection of His creation: although He created man a worthless creature, He thereby enables him to make a “Creator” of himself (in his properties).

Man cannot claim that although he is created with only one desire, he is unable to induce the reception of an altruistic desire instead of his natural, egoistic one. The Torah, Kabbalah, teachers, and suffering are all prepared to accelerate his advancement toward the goal of creation by the path of the Torah, or otherwise, the path of suffering.

However, the path of suffering is not only undesirable for man, whose life on earth makes him feel as though he is caught between the millstones of a tirelessly revolving mill. Ruthlessly and methodically, it pulverizes him both mentally and physically, to the very last day of his life. But this painful path is equally undesirable in the eyes of the Creator. After all, His goal is to delight man, which is in accord with the path of the Torah – a quick and painless way to transform our desires from egoistic into altruistic.

Since only the Creator can accomplish this (and He will, either painfully or painlessly, in accord with our conscious request), the development of such a request toward Him is all that man must do in his life. It is hence written: “Let him pray all day long!” Yet, we now understand that this phrase does not speak of sitting over a prayer-book, but it refers to man’s inner work on himself.
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|-cited from kabbalah.info/