DESIRE! - By Michael Berg

In this month of Virgo you can awaken desire for what you really need on both the physical and the spiritual levels. Both Rav Isaac Luria, who lived more than 400 years ago, and Rav Yehuda Brandwein, the Rav’s teacher and one of the twentieth century’s greatest kabbalists, taught the importance of awakening true desire for the Light before the New Year begins next month in Libra.

Now is your chance to awaken your deepest desires.  There is a fundamental lesson here, one that is often forgotten. The only way to draw Light is to have a Vessel, and the only Vessel is desire. To the degree that you awaken true desire, Light will be revealed.

Desire is the Vessel for the Light you need to draw for the entire year to come.

If you don’t do the work of awakening desire in this month of Virgo, it will be very difficult to manifest the desired Light on Rosh Hashanah and in the month of Libra as well as during the year to come. So what you can do now is the first and most significant step towards ensuring blessings in both the physical sense and the spiritual sense.

There is a story in the book of 2 Kings 4:1-6 that begins with a woman, the wife of a prophet, calling out to Elisha, one of the greatest of all the prophets. She says, “My husband, one of the prophets, has passed away. And because we are left with so many debts, one of the creditors wants to take away my children to be servants.”

So Elisha says to this woman, “Tell me what you have in your house.”

She replies, “I have nothing left in my house except a small jar of oil.”

Then the prophet Elisha tells her, “Go to all of your neighbors and gather all the cups and bowls and pans that you can find in their houses. Once you’ve gathered all these vessels, bring them into your house, close the door behind yourself and your children, and you’ll be able to fill up all those vessels. Just pour the oil from your small jar into all of those vessels.”

She does as he told her. She collected the vessels from her neighbors’ homes, and then returned to her house and closed the door behind herself and her children. She took her one small jar and began to pour out the oil and just kept pouring.

Then she said to her son, “Bring some more vessels.” But when her son replied that there were no more vessels, the oil stopped flowing.

You can draw a clear understanding from this story. As long as there were more vessels to be filled, the flow was endless. Once there were no more vessels, the flow stopped. So when I talk about the importance of awakening a desire in this month, I want to be very clear about what this means.

You have to be full of desire during the month of Virgo. In fact, the degree to which you may think you have desire is not even close to the true desire that you can have. Because of this, you may limit the amount of Light you receive.  And this is something to which all of us are susceptible.

When I speak about desire, I wish to differentiate between two different forms. There is the Desire to Receive for the Self Alone: “I want more of this or more of that to make my ego more fulfilled.” This, obviously, is not the desire you need to awaken during Virgo; on the contrary, you want to diminish those desires.

Instead, you can kindle the desire that is based on the Desire to Receive for the Sake of Sharing. This means you can ask for everything in this month, but be very clear about why you desire it. If you desire something to fulfill your ego needs, that will not draw and reveal Light for the coming year.

But if your Desire is to Receive for the Sake of Sharing, that is a true Vessel into which the Light of the Creator can flow. Yes, you can want more money. Yes, you can want more power. But why do you want it?

Let this be clear in your mind. If you want something because you want to share more of what you receive, then the flow will be endless.

The kabbalists teach us that in order to awaken a true Vessel, in order to awaken a true desire, you have to quiet the ego. As long as your selfish desire is making noise, you will be without a true Vessel. To truly build the Vessel that achieves the purpose of this month—a limitless, endless Vessel for the coming year—you need to quiet the Desire to Receive for the Self Alone and to awaken a true Desire to Receive for the Sake of Sharing.

And in the month of Virgo, you can awaken your desire for everything right now. When you do this, whatever blessings you might hope for on Rosh Hashanah will manifest even more fully than anything you might ever hope for or imagine.