Absolute Necessity
“We should be very happy that we have come to the most important work, the most important analysis that exists in all the worlds, even in the spiritual ones. Baal HaSulam writes that there is no happier moment in a person’s life than the moment when he discovers that he is unable to exit his ego and no effort of his own can help him. Then he comes to his first prayer, his first cry for the Creator.
This first cry is birth. An infant cries as soon as he is born into the world. And this means that a person was born.
Let us hope that we will attain this cry and become Human. This is why the effort we make towards it is called birth pangs. And we must be happy that we have come to this. After all, who do these birth pangs reach? We have to be happy and serious at the same time. But joy has to come from the status, the mission. This is where spiritual life begins.
When an infant is born, adults are happy even though he is crying and screaming. Likewise, the Man within us (the one who did all the work and all the analyses) rejoices, and the infant, now being born, is still suffering from the pressure, sadness, and the perception of disturbances. They both must be together.”
From Rav Dr. Michael Laitman from Lesson 1, The Arava Convention 2/23/2012
There are many things we say we want.
We want peace. We want love. We want understanding. We want to feel the Creator, to know why we are alive, to touch something eternal. We speak about bestowal, adhesion, prayer, and spiritual attainment.
But beneath these beautiful words, countless other desires continue to speak.
We want comfort. Recognition. Security. Control. We want to feel special. We want spirituality to make our ordinary life more successful, more interesting, more certain. We may even want the greatness of the Creator — but so that His greatness will fill us.
Beneath all, there is something uncompromising:
A person turns to the Creator only when he feels that, without Him, he cannot attain what he wants one hundred percent.
Not ninety percent.
Not something we would prefer if circumstances allowed.
One hundred percent.
This is where prayer begins.
When everything else becomes zero
The spiritual vessel is a complete desire.
A complete desire does not mean that every other human desire disappears. A person still needs food, rest, family, work, and countless ordinary things. Other longings continue to arise in the heart.
But compared with one essential desire, they become zero.
There is one thing without which life is no longer life.
The heart reaches a conclusion that cannot be negotiated away:
I want only this.
I have examined myself. I have searched through my motives. I have watched desires rise and fall. I have pursued substitutes and accepted consolations. But now I see, know, and feel that nothing can replace this.
I must reach the purpose for which I was created.
I must acquire the quality of bestowal.
I must become similar to the Creator.
Everything else may remain, but it can no longer answer the central question of my existence.
This is the first condition of a complete desire.
The collapse of every other means
The second condition is even more painful.
I have searched through all the means of reaching what I want — and I am incapable.
I tried to understand the path intellectually. I tried to become stronger and more disciplined. I tried to overcome myself through determination. I gathered knowledge, made promises, judged my failures, and began again.
Perhaps I secretly hoped that enough effort would make me spiritually powerful. Perhaps I believed that one final insight would unlock the door. Perhaps I wanted to preserve the comforting thought that, in the end, everything depended on me.
But the door remained closed.
Then, suddenly, the truth appeared:
It depends on the Creator.
Not as an inspiring idea, but as a devastating fact.
I cannot replace my nature. I cannot manufacture a desire to bestow inside a heart built to receive. I cannot pull myself into a degree whose qualities I do not possess. I cannot create the Creator’s power within myself.
I have reached the boundary of everything I can do.
There is no one else to turn to.
Before that, it is a lie
The warning of the Kabbalists is severe:
“If I turn to Him before that, it is simply a lie. It is not an appeal. It is not an appeal.”
We may say the right words long before a real prayer exists. We may ask because we were taught to ask, because we are frightened, or because prayer seems like the proper spiritual action.
But part of us may still be waiting for another solution.
As long as I believe that I can eventually save myself, my appeal is divided. My mouth asks the Creator, but my heart continues to trust its own power. I reach upward with one hand while holding tightly to the old world with the other.
A true appeal begins when the alternatives have fallen away.
It is not eloquence. It does not depend on sacred vocabulary. It may have no words at all.
It is the naked condition of a person who has nowhere else to go.
Life or death
“I must turn with a complete vessel,” Kabbalists warn, “That I am going either to live or to die.”
Not the life and death of the body.
This is not a desperate demand for physical survival, comfort, or escape from ordinary pain. It is life or death “in a higher, stronger sense.”
A person can breathe, work, speak, eat, and smile — and still feel that something essential has never come alive.
To remain separated from the purpose of creation becomes spiritual death. To continue existing only inside the will to receive, endlessly calculating what can be gained or lost, feels like being buried while still conscious.
Life means connection with the source of life.
Life means acquiring the power to love and bestow.
Life means becoming capable of rising above the prison of the self.
Life means that the Creator’s quality begins to live within the created being.
When this becomes an absolute necessity, the heart no longer says, “It would be wonderful to attain spirituality.”
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It cries:
Without this, I cannot live.
Not because corporeal life will end, but because its continuation without the purpose has become more painful than death.
The whole inner being stands before the Creator and says:
It depends on You, and I have nothing I can do.
The breaking in the heart
Kabbalists call it “an inner breaking in the heart.”
Something that has held us together for our entire lives finally breaks: the belief that we belong to ourselves and can complete ourselves.
It is painful because the ego experiences dependence as annihilation. It would rather suffer under its own control than receive life from another authority. It is willing to speak about the Creator, study the Creator, and even admire the Creator — as long as it does not have to surrender.
But now surrender is no longer a religious gesture. It is reality.
I cannot do this.
You can.
I need what only You can give.
This breaking is not the destruction of the person. It is the breaking of the wall that prevented a true request from emerging.
“Then,” as Kabbalists say, “it is truly a request.”
Prayer is born from the broken place because only there does the heart stop performing. It no longer asks to appear spiritual. It asks because it cannot continue otherwise.
What am I truly asking for?
Even an absolute desire can be directed toward the wrong object.
A person may desperately ask to win the lottery, escape suffering, receive knowledge, see the future, enter spiritual worlds, or possess extraordinary power. The need may be intense and the tears sincere, yet the request may still seek fulfillment for the ego.
We may want the higher degree so that we can rule.
We may ask for the Creator’s greatness so that it will fill us.
If such power were given to the uncorrected desire, it would not bring us closer to the Creator. It would turn spirituality into a servant of self-love.
Therefore, the answer often does not resemble what we requested.
We ask for control and receive helplessness. We ask for certainty and receive confusion. We ask to feel spiritually elevated and are shown the depth of our egoism.
It can seem as though the Creator is refusing us.
But He is answering the deeper request we do not yet know how to make.
The higher degree corrects the direction of our desire. Through pressure, disappointment, and repeated inner adjustments, it gradually teaches us what to ask for.
Not: Give me the higher degree so that I may possess it.
But: Give me the quality of the higher degree so that I may resemble You.
Not: Reveal Your greatness so that I may be fulfilled.
But: Reveal Your greatness so that I may annul before bestowal.
Not: Give me power.
But: Give me the power to give.
The straight line
A true prayer appears when three things come into alignment:
Who I am.
What I am asking for.
To whom I am turning.
I begin to feel myself as the one who needs correction. I recognize that the request must be for the desire to bestow. And I sense the Creator — not as a force that distributes pleasures, but as the source of bestowal who wants me to become bestowing.
The person, the request, and the Creator connect along one line.
At that moment, the prayer becomes precise.
The Creator answers by giving not merely what the ego wanted, but what the soul required: a new desire, a new intention, a new capacity to bestow.
The person becomes, to that extent, similar to the Creator.
This is spiritual life.
The mercy hidden in necessity
We spend years trying to avoid absolute necessity. We prefer inspiration without desperation, prayer without surrender, and spirituality without losing control.
Yet perhaps absolute necessity is one of the greatest forms of mercy.
Only a need this deep can gather the scattered pieces of the heart into one vessel. Only a need this complete can raise a prayer that is no longer mixed with calculation. Only when all other doors close do we finally turn toward the door that was always open.
The Creator does not bring us to helplessness in order to abandon us there.
He brings us there so that we will discover Him as the only power capable of giving spiritual life.
The breaking of the heart is therefore not the end. It is the first honest contact between the created being and the Creator.
At last, there is no performance and no escape.
Only one desire remains.
Only one address remains.
Only one request remains:
Give me the desire to bestow.
Give me the power to become like You.
Without this, I am not alive.
And from the depth of that absolute necessity, a new life begins.
