(a lecture I gave this weekend)

Those of us who have had the merit to connect to the writing of Rav Ashlag know that the teaching of the Centre, and the world, is to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

I think for most of us this statement lacks a tremendous amount of meaning. In talking about the verse in this week’s Parashah, he says you will sometimes find people who want to share. Those of us drawn to the teachings of Kabbalah have an innate desire to do good. Nachmanides (RaMBaN) writes that many people have a desire to share, but there is hardly anybody who would want another person to have exactly what you have. Most of us share with a limit. We would give a lot, but not to give to the point that absolutely everything I have you have. At that point, are we willing to have everybody have exactly like we have? Most of us are not there.

I think the core of it is the lack of ability to love that most of us have. This is going back 30 or 40 years when the Rav began teaching Kabbalah. Whenever he would talk about “love your neighbor,” they would say that’s not part of Kabbalah, that’s not part of Judaism, that’s Christianity. But as Rav Ashlag writes, it is the basis of everything we do.

It’s important to understand what blocks us from true love. As we begin the process, we understand it’s important to share. Sharing by and within itself is a means to achieving true love. It is not an end. The end is to awaken true love between us and everybody else.

On this Shabbat, the question every one of us has to ask is how much love do we truly feel for other people? Those of us who have kids, who have spouses (Michael added “and love them,” making everyone laugh) can appreciate what love means. For most people, there is pure love. The reality is that every one of us has to at least aspire that the love we feel for others is at least as much or even more than the love we feel for our children. The truth is that even the love we feel for our children is limited.

We will never solve a problem if we don’t understand it. We will read today the verse about “love your neighbor.” It’s not about understanding it. The heavens open up and we are given a gift. For those who are ready, willing, and asking for it, the Creator will shine down the assistance of truly loving. Most of us have a problem truly loving.

The ultimate of the spiritual work we do, of everything we do to connect to the Light, is to awaken that love within us.

The Kabbalists teach that when Abraham began his work, he opened up the channel of love. You find this in many stories in the Torah. When he was alive, the power of love overflowed. People he didn’t even know, even those on the other side of the world, all felt the awakening of love. What Abraham did was open up the channel of love. He opened the ability for everyone to feel love for another person.

What happened, even when he was alive, was that they used this love to love and desire things that they shouldn’t have. Love, of course, is a double-edged sword. Many of us can think of things we love to do that will not necessarily reveal Light.

It’s important to understand this. When we have a yearning or desire for something that will not reveal Light, or may reveal darkness, it shuts down the channel of love. Because it is necessary for us to have that channel closed. If we don’t use the love in the right way, if we use it in the Desire to Receive for the Self-Alone, to assist us the Creator has to shut down the channel of love. The negative side of that is we have a diminished ability to love even in the positive way.

We have to appreciate the gift that will be given to us today, the gift of the ability to love. But we have to open ourselves up to ask to have the ability to love. And we have to think about those things we are not going to love. It’s impossible for the channel of love to be opened if we are not going to use it in the right way.

You will often find when people are younger they are more prone to love. When they get older, the love is diminished. The simple reason is that as we grow up, we start loving the wrong things. The Creator does us a favor and closes the channel of love.

On this Shabbat there is a tremendous gift being given to us. First we need to understand how much we lack in love. How many of us truly feel love toward other people? As Rabbi Akiva said, and the story from Hillel, and as Rav Ashlag reminds us, the basis of our work is toward this goal.

We should ask ourselves, from last year to this, from last week to this, do we feel more love toward other people? For many of us the answer is “no” or the answer is “not enough.”

For us to awaken true love for those around us, and to those not so close to us, and that is the ultimate purpose of our spiritual work, to draw those blessings we want, we have to connect to love. The kernel of the Light of the Creator is love. If you don’t have that trait, that innate singular nature of the Creator, you cannot connect to Him. You cannot draw the blessings, the sustenance, the fulfillment we want in our life.

If we need to, look at this in a completely selfish way. We will not have the fulfillment we want in our life until we awaken love. On this Shabbat, we have a tremendous gift of the opening of the channel of love. For most of us, because of the way we have used that channel, it has been shut off.

First we have to desire the gift, then we have to not desire where we will diminish our love, where we realize the Desire to Receive for the Self-Alone, selfishness, is involved. If we go after those things, we diminish and close the channel of love.

About these two points, both to desire and to love another, there is a story of a person who, when he was walking in the street, he always wanted to be the first to say hello. People wanted to test him. A guy came up behind him, and before he could jump out he turned and said good morning first. What is the purpose of the story? It wasn’t that he had eyes in the back of his head. He was so overflowing with love that his soul realized there was someone there.

The desire we should want is to awaken an endless flow of love for everybody. Once you awaken it, the Creator will give us a thousand and one ways to share it.

On this Shabbat is the opening of the channel. It will come to us as we yearn and desire it. As we desire to use it in the right way, not only will it be open, it will be overflowing.