As our desires grow, and we demand new and more intricate fulfillments than our previous generations, we are becoming more and more dissatisfied with the world's existing frameworks of how we should behave.
One of the most common results of this is today's most popular framework, called "We should just enjoy our life while we have it!" The "Let's Just Enjoy!" framework is based on two tenets:
1. We should just enjoy our life
We don't have a choice. Our nature is a will to receive pleasure, enjoyment. Every desire that appears in me is based on the calculation that "by doing whatever I'm about to do, I will achieve more enjoyment than if I were to just stay still and do nothing."
2. Let's just enjoy ourselves
Everybody is going in the same direction: Moving toward whatever I think will give me more enjoyment than just staying where I am. The form of the enjoyment is different for each person. But no matter how creative one's enjoyment is, it cannot escape the framework of our desires:
Framework of our Desires
Least evolved desires--
- Food
- Shelter
- Sleep
- Sex
- Money
- Pride
- Honor
- Power
- Control
- Knowledge
- Spirituality
--Most evolved desires
Now since you have a more evolved desire and you've reached dissatisfaction with the existing frameworks of what we should do with our desires, you want to try something new, under human nature's demand:
"Let's just enjoy!"
Try it! Try to keep enjoying. When you stop enjoying one thing, go to the next, and then when you stop enjoying that thing, go to the next - and keep doing this, one thing after the other. This is your mission.
If you find you can keep enjoying under this system, then great! Enjoy!
If you find that you just keep putting in more and more efforts into enjoying yourself, and you find that after every enjoyment you are empty again, and need to organize yourself somehow to go for the next enjoyment - whatever it is that you think will give you enjoyment - and that the amount of time you're enjoying life compared to the amount of time you're exerting to enjoy it is weighed more and more toward the exertion - then that's a problem.
To that, there are the words of a wise man:
This world is created with a want and emptiness of the good abundance, and in order to acquire possessions we need movement.
However, it is known that that profusion of movement hurts humans.... However, it is also impossible to remain devoid of possessions and good.... Consequently, we choose the torment of movement in order to acquire the possessions.
However, because all their possessions are for themselves alone, and "he who has a single portion wants a double portion," one finally dies with only "half one's desire in one's hand." In the end they suffer from both sides; from the increase of pain due to the multiplicity of movement, and from the regret at not having the possessions they need to fill their empty half. Baal HaSulam, in Talmud Eser Sefirot-Part One: Histaklut Pnimit.
Human nature places us in an impossible situation.
- Our desires force us to want to enjoy ourselves.
- Our desires continually grow.
- Their growth forces us to make changes in our environment - whether it be art, TV, fashion ... in everything - this environment we organize to fulfill our desires also generates new desires in us.
- Throughout this process, we need to exert more and more into enjoying ourselves, and at some point we reach the realization that all of our enjoyments are short-lived; that we spend more time in our exertions than in the enjoyments themselves.
So what should we do?
Just enjoy? We see that ultimately, it will be impossible to "just enjoy." Outside our "let's just enjoy" bubble are growing global-scale crises testifying to our impossibility to keep enjoying ourselves in the same manner we currently enjoy ourselves. Sooner or later, something will crack through our "let's just enjoy" bubble, which will make it very hard to do so ... if at all.
The question is: Can we achieve an enjoyment that doesn't fade away? Can we enjoy differently to the way we currently enjoy?
In other words, can we acquire a new nature in which to feel enjoyment?
What is our nature now?
Egoism
Our nature is a will to receive pleasure, called "egoism." It is evident that in this nature, an enjoyment cannot last - all of our enjoyments fade away.
So what nature should we have? Since our egoistic nature leads us into an empty space after every pleasure, then an opposite, altruistic nature should bring us increasing pleasure at the moment we achieve it, shouldn't it?
But all of our seemingly "altruistic" acts, all the "good deeds" we do in this world (giving money to poor people, supplying food to hungry people, helping an old lady across the street, etc.) stem from our nature. Meaning, they emerge out of the calculation that they will bring us more enjoyment-egoistically-by doing them. If we wouldn't receive enjoyment from doing seemingly "altruistic" acts, then why would we do them?
So what does it mean to enjoy altruistically? Is it possible? If it is, then how is it done? What does it mean to acquire a new nature?
Related Material:
- Kabbalah.info - all concepts presented in this article were learned from the free materials and resources available at the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education and Research Institute - www.kabbalah.info
