What’s the Difference Between Doing Good Deeds and Bestowal?

Question from a student: Is looking after sick children in the hospital a way to implement what we're learning about doing for others?

First of all you're correct. Looking after a sick child is a blessed act - but it's still an egoistic act. Many people volunteer in hospitals. Why do they do this? What gives them the strength to get up in the morning and go look after a total stranger. First of all more power to them. Of course it's good to influence society in a positive way. But is there a change in my egoistic nature toward having an intention to bestow? Or am I simply receiving satisfaction from helping an elderly person who's in hospital. I did it on a voluntary basis and didn't get paid. But I got so much satisfaction from doing it. What is satisfaction if not pure ego? It's a completely egoistic act.

All the charities in the world, all the contributions and giving for all kinds of causes, are done for purely egoistic reasons. That doesn't mean that the things they do are not good for society. Of course it's all good for society. We bring food to people who need it. And at the end of the day we may sit and ask ourselves why we did it. The answer is that it makes us feel good, which gives us satisfaction. The millionaires and billionaires of the world donate a tiny percentage of their income to build wings in hospitals because it makes them feel great about themselves. So apart from exploiting everyone on the planet to make their fortune - once in a while they build all kinds of wings in hospitals to make up for it. This enables them to feel fine while they continue to take advantage of everyone. So let's not be naive - these are egoistic acts. And our ego allows us to continue doing them.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is talking about change. We need to understand what we're dealing with here. Bnei Baruch is not an organization that wants to do good for others for the sake of doing good. We want to correct our ego. We want to transition from a will to receive to having a will to bestow. This is something that cannot be achieved by helping sick children. So I can help dozens of kids, and do many wonderful things for others, but my ego will remain egoistic. It will just continue getting bigger by the way. Because now I'm patting myself on the back even more for all the good things I'm doing. But we're talking about switching from having a will to receive to a will to bestow. Meaning changing our nature. And this is very confusing at the beginning of the path.

Your question is really justified though and many people ask it. Because we're always talking about bestowal. So a person assumes that we're talking about going to help the elderly or small children. In our world there are many types of influence - when you go to fight a war you're doing something for your whole country. There's people like Elon Musk paying millions for research. Of course he probably thinks he's doing amazing things for humanity. We're not against this of course. And the wisdom of Kabbalah has nothing to do with these things. It's not about replacing one thing with another.

We're teaching the correct way to relate to the Creator. That's something else entirely. We're learning how to bestow to the Creator. Is there a connection between helping a young sick child to bestowal to the Creator? There may be a connection, but we don't claim to know what that is.

We only want to teach you how to bestow to the Creator, and what it means to bestow to the Creator. What it means to reach His attribute of bestowal. And when a person does actually attain that attribute of bestowal then you'll know the correct acts to carry out for humanity.

Because look at today's world. There's so much giving through charities everywhere these days. It didn't used to be like that. Over the last 50-80 years there are so many organizations doing good. They build incredible things, donate billions. But we don't see humanity living better. Today we have more armed conflicts in the world than we had over the last 100 years, since WWI. So on the one hand we're doing all this good but millions of people are starving in Africa. Again - it's not that one thing replaces another. There are many organizations doing all those things.

We're the only organization in the world teaching people how to turn to the Creator, and know who the Creator is. As it's written, "Know the Lord your God." And a person can do both these things at the same time.

A person can go volunteer in a hospital a few times a week and learn the wisdom of Kabbalah at the same time. Afterwards you'll see that these are two completely different things that don't interfere with one another. And you don't profit in one from doing the other. The fact that you volunteered in the hospital doesn't mean the Creator will give you some kind of reward. Who said this is what the Creator wants? Where is it written? The fact that we use the word bestowal - we have no idea what it means to bestow to the Creator. Does the Creator want us to go hand out food to everyone now? We have no idea. We're not saying yes or no. We're saying that we need to first of all learn all these things about the Creator. And then you'll understand.