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There is a parable about a sage who used to carry water in two pots, one of which was cracked. Every day he brought the cracked pot home filled only halfway with water. One day, the pot itself said: “I’m sorry for failing to fulfill my task completely.” The sage replied: “But you do fulfill it completely. Thanks to you, I water the flowers that grow along the path.”
On one hand, we are cracked in our egoistic quality, where we wish for self-benefit at the expense of others. That is, whenever we receive a fulfillment egoistically, the fulfillment seeps through our egoistic cracks, and we can thus never sustain any fulfillment we receive. On the other hand, it turns out that these cracks are necessary for “watering” something.
What does our egoism water? It can water our egoistic desires. If they were nonexistent, then we would be unable to correct them, i.e., to ask for an altruistic intention to come and dwell upon them. We were born with egoistic desires and live with them, and we do not know when we will be able to get rid of them, but they are necessary.
At the end of the parable, the pot itself mentioned to the sage that it failed to fulfill its task because of its crack. What does the pot’s own understanding of its crack mean? What does our realization of us being faulty egoists give us? It depends on the stage of our development, but in principle, it causes bitterness and regret that we cannot escape from such a realization.
But does it mean that our realization of our being cracked is bad? No, it is a good realization, according to the principle that the correct diagnosis of a disease is half of its cure. Where, then, do we head after such a realization? We should then ask for and invite the force that created our egoism—the altruistic force of nature—into our lives, that it would correct our egoism and grant us the ability to give and to bestow similar to it. In other words, after we discover our “cracks,” we should use what we can use correctly—by not receiving it into ourselves but giving it outwardly to others and nature—and we need to ask for the correction of what we cannot use correctly.
Based on KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on August 12, 2024. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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