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From the Zohar

From the Chapter, “The Mother Lends Her Clothes to Her Daughter,” p. 81-82

One can imagine one’s path from the lows of our world up to the ultimate spiritual peak—the Creator—as a passage through a suite of rooms. In all, between our state and the Creator there are 125 connected, walkthrough rooms. Each room has its own properties, and only those who possess the same properties can enter it. If, regardless of what his reason tells him, man changes his properties, he is automatically moved as though by an invisible current to a room that corresponds to his new properties.

This is how we can move between these rooms: an infinitesimal inner change in our properties evokes the influence of a spiritual force field upon us, and we immediately move to a new place of equilibrium, where our inner properties completely coincide with the external properties of the spiritual field. Hence, there are no guards at the rooms’ entrances/exits; as soon as we change ourselves so as to match the properties of the next, higher room, we are automatically transferred there by the spiritual current or field.

What properties must we change in order to move from one room to another within this spiritual field? We only need to alter the type of pleasure to which we aspire. We cannot help receiving pleasure, for such is the entire material of Creation—it is all that was created. However, we can change the object of our aspirations, what it is that we wish to enjoy: either coarse reception, reception of mere necessities, or the Creator being pleased with us that we bestow to Him, that we receive because such is His wish.

Our “I,” the entity that feels pleasure, is present in all of our desires, which change ceaselessly in both magnitude and the desired object. This “I” never disappears. The only thing of which we must rid ourselves is the sensation that we do something to please this “I.” Instead, we should aspire to sense the desires of the Creator, how He is pleased with us (just as a mother is pleased with her child’s achievements).