Part 4 · Chapter 17

General Desire and Its Composite Elements 0:03

שגם שכלול הרצון הזה מ-י׳, that even though the רצון includes ten (ספירות, in other words), חכמה ומדות, it has intellect and emotions. אבל, you know, as the חכמה is the thing, the real inner goal of what he wants, and the emotions are the things that that will you'll get that based on that, once you figure out what you want, so therefore you should act like this, and this is good, and this is bad.

אבל תחילתו בא רק בהסכם אחד, it starts off just as one thing. בלי התחלקות ניכר בו, you don't see any divisions in it yet.

והוא נקרא עיגול כללי, רצון כללי, this is called a general, the circle of a general רצון, מקיף כל מה שבא בתוכו, which which encompasses everything that's inside of it, מכוחו דווקא, and which comes specifically from its force, because of it.

אך בריחוק מקום, but it comes in a far-off way, כמו הטעם ושכל לרצון הזה, like the reason and the intellect for the רצון הזה, שנקרא עלול שלו, which is called its effect.

אי אפשר שיהיה קרוב בערך אל עילתו, it's impossible for it to be close to its source, its cause, שהוא הרצון, which is the

desire. כי הרי אין טעם לרצון כלל, כידוע, as is known. What are, so what are we talking about? Like a משל of a person that wants something. What does he want? He wants a bike.

The Bike Analogy: Want vs Reason 1:33

Now, let's say a kid wants a bike. That is it, נקודה, like they say in Hebrew. He wants a bike, that's the point, that's it.

There's no reason, there's no nothing at this level. You know, if you want to start getting into finding reasons, but, you know, we're not, within this level we're saying there's no reason. He just wants it, right? He wants it because he wants it, and that's it.

Then once he decides that he wants it, that causes that he should make up all kinds of reasons why he should want it, to have excuses to tell his parents, you know, and things like that. You know what I mean?

He says, "Oh, I can get to school faster, and it's healthy," you know, and whatever, all kinds of reasons why he should want it.

Those reasons are being invented because of his רצון. They are not making his רצון. So that means that his רצון is the cause, and they are the effect, right?

They are being, they are a derivative of his רצון.

Not only that, not only they are a derivative of his רצון, but they don't quite, they don't quite capture the רצון. So therefore, that that's not the real reason that he wants it.

It's not because of those reasons, and therefore if you'll tell him, "Oh, well, you don't need the bike to get to school, you know, you can walk." He says, "Wait, but I need to be there on time." "Also you can run. That way you get the exercise, and you get there on time."

Right? "We'll jog there every day." You know? And like, you see this a lot of times that people say they want something, but they don't want to say what they want directly, some for, you know, for whatever reason. And so they say some side reason, because they want to make it, they want to make it look like it's a rule. You know, like you were saying, that's really, you know what I mean, that there really is no rules, just what they want.

They don't want to put the burden on themselves and say like, say, "Oh, can you help me, you know, שלעפ my couch?" You know, and they say, "Oh, I really would love to, but I I," you know, some reason why they can't. Really, at the end of the day, they just don't want to, so they're looking for an excuse, right?

Excuses as Burdens and Their Pitfalls 3:53

Say, "Oh, I have to do this, I have to do that." But the problem is as soon as you, so the reason, the advantage of of saying a reason is that you're taking it off of yourself. You're saying, "It's not that I don't want to, it's that there's something else that's making me not be able to." But as soon as you're doing that, you're making yourself susceptible to being put in a corner where you have to do it, because they can disprove your reason.

And then, but you're, it's not really going to make you happy, but if they if they find a way out around, "Oh, it's so perfect, I'll have somebody take care of whatever the thing you had to do for you, and you can help me," right? And then you go, "Oh, no, now look what I got myself into," right? You have to say, right? So because the reason doesn't really ever capture the רצון.

That's not really why. So even if you take that away, and the same thing with a debate, you know, somebody says like, you know, they believe like with a belief, like they believe the רבי is משיח, you know? And then somebody say, "Well, why do you believe?" They say, "Oh, this שיחה, this רמב״ם, this whatever," you know? And then it doesn't mean that it's not true, but the fact is that they just believe it because they believe it, and these are not Not, they don't believe it because of these reasons, of these proofs.

And therefore, if you'll disprove those things, they're not going to be, "All right, you're right. Never mind," you know.

They'll just find another proof, you know. Because the intellect is coming from the רצון. It's not the other way around. Really that really that is going from חכמה to בינה, that the belief is going to is making up a proof. So the עיגול of the חכמה forces the עיגול of the בינה to justify it, to prove it. But the proofs do not really capture the חכמה. And that's going from חכמה to בינה.

From Wisdom (חכמה) to Understanding (בינה) 5:20

And the inner רצון is for the רבי, that they want the רבי, you know, to be משיח. Okay.

שאי אפשר שיהיה קרוב בערך לעילתו, so it's impossible for it to be close to its cause, which is the רצון, כי הרי אין טעם לרצון כלל, there's no reason for רצון whatsoever, לעולם לא ישיגנו, and it will never reach it. The שכל will never really capture the רצון.

אבל מכל מקום, nevertheless, מכח הרצון נעשה עיגול החכמה, nevertheless the חכמה is coming from the רצון. גם כן בלי התחלקות ניכר לי׳ כולי, but the עיגול החכמה is also just a נקודה. It's also without a recognizable division into ten, because it's just like a bias. It's not a particular, in other words the fact that your רצון makes the חכמה be in a certain way, it's not that you have a particular חכמה.

It's the essence of the חכמה. It's just that your שכל is biased to lean in a certain direction, and so therefore whenever you come to particular שכל, it will find something that will fit.

Desire Bias Toward חסד and Its Effects 6:48

So let's say like you have a רצון towards חסד, that will make your intellect lean towards חסד. So that means that you'll be liberal-minded.

Whether just like let's say it's just for your son, you always look at him good, or let's say in general you're liberal, or you know, conservative, whatever it is, you know politically or anything, you know what I mean? So that bias, that's just a bias. It's just like a intellectual leaning, but it's not a particular שכל yet. In each case, you'll look for what you think will fit with your view that you want, that you want things to turn out in a way of חסד, so you'll look for a שכל that will, and a worldview that will fit with that.

So that's just means your שכל just leans that way. But yet the שכל will never really capture the רצון. It's just a way to express the רצון and to get it come out. כמו משל השוחד, this is like a bribe, שימצא טעם לרצון, that the bribe makes you find the reason for the רצון, that because the person bribed you to you know make the court case a certain way, it just makes you biased to look at things in a certain way.

But you don't yet have a particular שכל to figure out why he should be innocent, but now you're going to always look at things with that bias. וגם שבטעם זה כלול גם כן מי׳, and even though this reason also includes ten ספירות, רצון ושכל ומידות, it includes really the whole it's a whole world of you know coming up with a reason and proving it and everything, so it has like a whole thing to itself, אבל נעשה בבחינת כללי כולי, but right now you didn't develop and reveal all those פרטים, right now it's just the point, the bias.

ועל דרך זה לא ישיגנו העיגול דבינה שנעשה מכחו, and so too the בינה doesn't reach the חכמה. So the proofs that you bring to substantiate your claim and your view, which is the חכמה, the proofs are the בינה and the claim or the view is the חכמה, or the belief or whatever, that they don't meet up. They don't really prove it, and also it won't really be able to change it.

And you see this more בגלוי when it comes to like kind of alternative stuff, like pseudo sciences, and like, you know, like new age spirituality things and cultish-type things.

Yeah, there's very little שכל. They bring this little proof, and like they pile everything on. ועל דרך זה המידות זו תחת זו, and so too with each emotion one after the other.

Then it comes out that a certain thing is good and that and you should like it. And then it comes, you know, whatever goes through all the מדות, until it comes to סוף מעשה. The סוף מעשה שהוא עיגול האחרון, which is the last thing, that in a way is like the most fake, and it's the most flimsy. I mean first of all, it's just it's not it's It's not an actual thing even, it's just like a total like daydream that you're dreaming about things being a certain way, but it's like very fake and you're, it's, you know, it's not really going to happen, and you know, it's never really going to give you what you want because it's like, you know, what you want to express is like, you know, you're not like by the time you get down to מעשה it's like you're not going to be able to get, you know, like your inner desire like to be rich, or like to have a house even, a home, you know, to express your taste, it's like it's such it's such little things, in a way it's like it totally, in a way, doesn't

Final Action (סוף מעשה) – The Flimsy Circle 9:45

capture what you want. It's just like such a limited self-expression of it, and that's why people like you see like kids go into like a bakery and they have trouble deciding what they want to buy, or like they go in a store, you know, cuz like you have in your imagination you have so many things you want, and so many things you can imagine, and all you have is like two bucks, you know?

So even even if you have you can buy one thing even if you have enough money to buy any one thing, if you have, you know, more than two bucks, but you can only walk away with one thing, and there's so many things there, you know?

So the same thing like in life, you can only do one thing, and that has to express all of your emotions, and all of your like taste, and your choices based and and to reflect your whole world view, and your whole inner desire, and you know, it's like nothing. והכל ברצונו לעצמו כל

הכל, and all this is all in the desire for himself, which includes everything at סוף מעשה, till the final action, that in other words, even the last עיגול is just it's it's not all the פרטים are that that he's going to like of how he's going to do it, it's just the the bias that he wants to do things, like a the the נקודה that he wants to do things in a certain way, that he wants to do this.

That's just like, "Oh, I decide, I'm doing this." But he didn't figure out the, you know, even that, with the פרטים, how he's going to do it and whatever, שהוא פנימי כולם וכולי, which is the innermost thing of everything. וכך הוא ברצון הנעלם,

because it's surrounded by all the other עיגולים. That means that the the biggest contact the biggest thing is that you want is the inner רצון, whatever it is that you want, let's say you want the house, right? You want the home. So that then makes a חכמה that you have a certain picture, and then you make a בינה to justify and to explain, you know, to know when how to make distinctions of what parts, what type of things will are will make it closer to what you want, what kind of things will make it farther from what you want, and once you divide into parts then you can have מדות.

You can't have מדות from a חכמה. Why not? Because it's all or nothing in the חכמה, so you don't know how to like react to something cuz it's either it is or it's not, so how can you like like it and like it more and like it less? You know what I mean?

Once you have מדות בינה, so then you recognize that there's a bunch of parts and so you can be excited that it's getting closer, and that you this, and you have to, you know, you know what I mean? And like you like this a little more, a little bit less, you have to, you know, you have to work on it, and then you can slowly work on building it to the way you want, and that's that you have the מדות is like the way that you react and the way that you change things and measure things out, you know,

which in like let's say you're making a house that means that you have to decide like how big to make your kitchen and how big to make your, you know, like the מדות, the physical dimensions even, are coming from a understanding in בינה of the picture in חכמה of what you want in כתר. That you want a certain to express your taste and once you make a picture of, you know, what kind of a a thing expresses your taste, then you can then figure out like what all the parts of that are, so then you can start drawing out plans for it and you can start figuring out the details, you know?

And those details come out in the מדות. And then the מדות come out in the סוף מעשה where you actually do something about it. You actually get, you know, buy a house, or whatever. And the fact that you could design more than one house that would be in your מדות, and you pick a certain one, that final one that you said, "No, that's it, I want this one."

You say, "Why do you want this one?" "You know, I want that one." It's also like a נקודה because you just make up your mind.

And now that one is the one that's going to express your everything, your inner רצון. So it's the it's the innermost thing. It's built on everything else. It's It's only within the context of everything else. The reason that you want this סוף מעשה, this house, is because it follows these מדות and you only care about those מדות מדות because it's within this בינה, within this חכמה.

Designing a House: From Vision to Details 14:44

You know what I mean? Like let's say a person wants to like dress in style, so they want their clothes to have certain shapes and colors, which are like מדות, and so they buy a certain thing. Why do they buy that thing? Because it has certain characteristics, which are מדות.

Why do they care about those characteristics? Because they associate those in בינה with being like in style. And the חכמה is that they have this picture, they want to be in style. You know, that what it means to be in style is to like follow, you know, the like the on whatever, whatever picture they have of being in style, you know, different groups and different things. And then the inner רצון is the desire to be whatever, you know, either in style or express themselves, or whatever it is, you know, depends how much you want to go in.

So this is like the most this thing is only exists within the context of all these other things around it. So that's what called it's called the the פנימי, because everything else is is surrounding it.