Introduction to the Book of Zohar (PDF) - Kabbalah Media Archive

I N T RO D U C T I O N T O T H E B O O K O F Z O H A R
we do not feel any kind of eternity. That is how opposite it is to our
condition.
However, the difficulty still stands. We will understand what Baal
HaSulam is saying only when eternity begins to shine on us from Above.
It will happen slowly as we begin to attain the Surrounding Light that
creates the complete and perfect universe around us and creates this
picture in our mind’s eye. Only then will we begin to understand this
contradiction, how this flawless eternity and perfection, without even
a trace of limitation, contrast, or opposites, in which all the points are
perfect and eternal and continuous, can come from a source where states
and actions are passing, transient and low.
We see that we are indeed in a state worthy of His eternity, meaning
that even now we are eternal and perfect beings.
The only thing that obstructs us from feeling this eternity is the
shell that wraps us, this being our egoistical impure intention. We are
like a magnetic field that reflects everything we project outwardly. When
we stop turning inwardly and can turn the current from inside out, we
will instantly feel the eternity and perfection we are actually in. We must
only neutralize the shell.
And our eternity necessitates that the egoistical shell of the body will
have been given to us only for a transitory, wasteful work (in order
to turn it to altruism and increase it from being a point to
being a circle, meaning the level of the Creator), for if it had
remained eternal, we would have remained separated from the Life
of Lives for all eternity.
As we have said in item 13, this form of our body, which is the will
to receive for ourselves alone (with the intention for our own
sake), is not at all present in the thought of creation, for there we
are formed as state three (to begin with), but rather appears (to us)
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