Mon 3/8/10 Malul Call

This week, know that in the spiritual process
of growing and transforming ourselves in
every aspect and moment of our lives, we are being tested. We're always
being tested. What does it mean "being tested"? Everything in our life is a test to see if our consciousness is in the right place. At work, with family, in our relationships, even with strangers.

Rav Ashlag takes this to the extreme level - which is not too extreme when
we think about it - by saying that in the moment that a person starts
his spiritual work, he starts the process of cleansing. Cleansing of
his desire to receive for the self alone. Rav Ashlag explains that there are four levels of desire as we all learn in
Kabbalah. These levels correspond to the four worlds: the world of Minerals, the world of
Vegetation, the world of Animals and the world of Human Beings.
Ultimately, the human desire to receive should be desire to receive
for the sake of sharing - a transformed desire to receive. Rav Ashlag
explains that the Animal has the desire to receive and only to receive. Vegetation has huge desire to share and very little
desire to receive. Minerals have a very small desire - no real desire, and Human Beings are considered to be the most elevated.

We need to be in a place that our desire to receive is being cleansed for the sake of
sharing. We know this week especially, we have the opportunity to
remove Erev Rav - the mixed multitude, the negativity from within.
What does this mean? It means that any time my desire to receive is
involved an action I am taking, I will need to go through
cleansing.
Cleansing occurs when we don’t pass the test of shifting our consciousness from the desire to receive for the self alone into the desire to share with others.

Rav Ashlag says that if you give the desire to
receive for the self alone energy, it is like scratching a rash on
your skin - it initially gives pleasure but if you continue scratching
it, it will become a wound and be painful. So once we give our desire
to receive energy, we get pleasure but eventually, it becomes a
sickness and painful.

This week, we have the opportunity to start cleansing our desire to
receive. Every time this selfish desire is involved in our actions and thoughts, and we don’t shift it, we will need to start all over again. Even if it seems or looks right, if my consciousness somehow was for my personal benefit, then I have to re-do it or the results will be limited. If the results don’t last or were not as we expected (in a negative way) somewhere in the process we had a selfish desire.

This week is like
building the second tabernacle (the first one was with people who had
desire to receive for the self alone so God told Moses to
build a new one) so we have the opportunity to re-build ourselves with
a new consciousness – for the sake of others.


We all have that rash that we want to
scratch but if we do, it might become something we do not like. This
week, we want to be able to start taking responsibility for our consciousness. If we cannot cleanse it and transform it in that moment, sometimes we just need to fall into in, fail the test – but learn from it.

If I cannot cleanse, then I fall but then I need to fix it.

This week, take responsibility for at least one action you can do
without selfish involvement. To what degree can you do it just for the
sake of sharing?