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The Screen (and the Unlikely Example)

The Creator did not instill in us the wish to be like Him,
however. In Phase 4, you decide that you will receive only if you
understand why the Creator wants to give—until you understand
what’s in it for Him.
For example, imagine that you offer to take your children
to the mall to buy them whatever they want. Unlikely, granted.
Now imagine that they say to you, “Why are you suggesting
that? What does that do for you? If we don’t understand why
you are giving, we’re not interested in the gifts.” Far more
unlikely. This conditioning of not receiving for yourself is called
Tzimtzum (restriction). It is the first thing we do to become nonegoistic,
and the mechanism that enables the Tzimtzum is called
a Masach (screen).
Once we have acquired a Masach we can begin to calculate
if and how much we can receive while focusing on our parents’
pleasure instead of our own. When we acquire this ability, it is
considered that we have a complete Partzuf (face). 

The five phases of spiritual development correspond to five
spiritual worlds, and each spiritual world contains five Partzufim
(faces). To continue the ladder metaphor, the worlds begin at the
top of the ladder, closest to the Creator, and continue on down.
The worlds, from to bottom, are Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria,
Yetzira, and Assiya. The world closest to the Light and the Creator, Adam Kadmon, is also the most spiritual. The other worlds move downward, becoming more “material”
and less “spiritual” as they descend. Our task is to attain the highest degree in our
advancement toward the
Creator. There are 125 degrees
in the spiritual ladder that move you up through these five
worlds. Why the number 125? Because there are 5 worlds, and
5 Partzufim in each world, and 5 Sefirot (Keter–Malchut) in each
Partzuf. Therefore, 5×5×5 equals 125. (You may have noticed
that Kabbalists have a thing with numbers.)
Note that our world does not count as a spiritual degree.
The degrees begin Above our world and move up.
Assiya is the closest spiritual world to our own and the
starting point of spiritual attainment. 

The advancement from one degree to the next happens only
when a person has experienced the full measure of desire in the 

Turning back to our topic, to move from degree x to degree
x+1, we need to want degree x+1 more than our present x
degree.
In The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Baal HaSulam says that
even though Malchut, the Sefira that represents the future
us, wanted to receive the Creator’s Light very much, she
couldn’t. Malchut didn’t know how to receive the Light with
the intention to give (remember the mall example from earlier
in this chapter). Without the intention to give, she would
become different from the Creator and, therefore, separated
from Him. Because she did not want to become separated
from the Creator, she restricted her desire to receive so she
could stay close to the Creator.
This is why the first thing you must learn when entering the
spiritual world is how to restrict your egoistic desires. If you can’t
do that, the doors to spirituality remain closed, which brings us
to the Barrier.