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“Now, too, we are giving and are not receiving, both because we are not taking the surplus we produce to the grave, and 2) because if a day’s exertion awards half a day’s pleasure, it is bestowal. And since by and large there is very little pleasure from the exertions people make, we are all only bestowing and not receiving. This is a mathematical calculation. […] “
At the end of the day, we bestow upon society, and only society gains from our lives, since every person, great or small, adds and enriches the treasury of society. But the individual, when weighing the sorrow and pain that he receives, he is in great deficit. Hence, you are giving to your fellow person, but painfully and with great and bitter suffering. So why do you mind the good intention?” – Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), “The Writings of the Last Generation.”
Baal HaSulam mentions how we all naturally bestow to each other. From the moment people started connecting with each other, even if life’s circumstances forced them together, which we can see across the board from people connecting in the face of climate challenges to people connecting in groups against each other as enemies, people understood that certain phenomena necessarily connect them out of necessity.
Connection is a key aspect of human behavior. For example, if we wish to understand the climate for agricultural purposes, then we need the knowledge that comes from contact with all parts of the planet. Life itself makes us connect.
Nature thus ultimately forces us to support and take care of each other. If we were to perceive the world through more advanced lenses, then we would see that we are in a state of mutual bestowal. In other words, we are connected even without our conscious decision to connect.
How, then, does such connection turn into bestowal? It is because nature granted us various desires to make us think that we might want to earn more gold in the bank or some other materialistic goal, but those are mere illusions. We think that we act out of a desire for self-concern, but underneath the surface of our self-aimed intentions, we actually bestow to each other.
The laws of nature function by way of mutual bestowal, and taking from others for personal gain is an addition to nature. We have a certain perception that we interpret as our ego—the desire to enjoy at others’ expense—which we need to fight against.
While we unconsciously bestow to each other, our heart is egoistic. It is called “the evil inclination,” because it gives us an inclination solely to receive for self-benefit alone, not wanting or caring about giving to others. The entire point Baal HaSulam makes in the above excerpt is that we are interconnected and interdependent, and we live in a state of mutual bestowal, influence and giving to each other, but we do so undesirably and unconsciously.
How, then, can we shift from undesirably and unconsciously bestowing to each other to a state where we willingly and consciously intend to bestow to each other? After all, Baal HaSulam also mentions that it is a simple psychological shift, and it is indeed possible to make such a shift through educating and habituating ourselves in mutual bestowal consciously and willingly. We as humanity still need to learn that if we overcome our ego—our desire to enjoy for personal benefit at others’ expense—everybody will ultimately benefit from doing so with more harmonious, peaceful and successful lives.
We would thus be wise to invest in explaining how much good we add to the world, to society and to our respective countries, by acting out of a good intention and by adding good intentions to society—the desire to connect and to participate positively with others.
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