The Turning Point
“Why do we need recognition of evil, that we are submerged in the mud, unable to come out? This is the allegory. It is all because we must be very thankful. But there is a difference in how He helped him. To the extent of the favor that he received, so he comes to love Him and adhere to Him and can work for Him because He is great and ruling.
That is, the greatness of the Creator becomes evident to a person precisely if He made for him a great miracle. To the extent of the miracle, so the love awakens and His greatness is seen by His ability to help him out of the great trouble. Conversely, the spies said, “The Landlord cannot save His vessels.” This is the meaning of the verse, “From the narrow place I called on the Lord; answer me in the broad space, Lord,” meaning specifically when one is in a state of trouble.”
Rabash, Assorted Notes The Need for Recognition of Evil
The Long Journey in the Wrong Direction
There comes a moment on the spiritual path when everything we believed about ourselves begins to collapse.
Not because we have stopped searching. Not because we have abandoned the work. And not because our desire for spirituality has disappeared.
Quite the opposite.
We may have spent years searching with extraordinary determination. We have studied, participated, served the friends, attended gatherings, and invested our strength in what we believed was the most important purpose of our lives.
We have sacrificed time, comfort, and countless opportunities for ordinary pleasures.
And through it all, somewhere deep within, we have carried a quiet expectation.
Surely, after so much effort, something must come.
Surely, one day, the spiritual world will open before us.
Surely, we will finally receive what we have worked so hard to attain.
But years pass, and something disturbing begins to emerge.
Despite everything we have learned, despite all our efforts to connect, despite our beautiful words about love and bestowal, we remain the same.
We still think about ourselves.
We still measure everything according to what it brings us.
We still want to receive.
And slowly, painfully, we begin to suspect that perhaps we have been travelling in the wrong direction all along.
The Ego That Learned to Speak About Spirituality
Before the spiritual awakening, our desires were simple.
We wanted the pleasures of this world: comfort, security, recognition, knowledge, success, happiness.
Then a spark awakened within us.
Suddenly, this world was no longer enough. Something called us from beyond its familiar boundaries. We wanted eternity, perfection, the upper worlds, the revelation of the Creator.
We thought this new longing meant that we had become different.
But the ego had not disappeared.
It had simply discovered a greater treasure.
Now it wanted both worlds.
It wanted all the pleasures of ordinary life, and it wanted spirituality as well.
It wanted to possess the Creator, to contain eternity, to acquire the upper worlds, and to place everything inside the same enormous vessel of self-love.
Even the desire to bestow became another possible source of personal fulfilment.
We wanted to become spiritual because we imagined how wonderful we would feel.
We wanted to love because we hoped love would lift us above suffering.
We wanted to rise above the ego because we believed that somewhere beyond it waited a beautiful reward.
And without realising it, we began using everything sacred for the same old purpose.
The books became instruments of personal attainment.
The teacher became someone from whom we expected to receive.
The group became a means of advancing ourselves.
The friends became sources of encouragement, support, knowledge, and strength.
Even our prayers concealed the familiar demand:
Give me what I want.
We had changed the objects of our desire, but not its direction.
We were still standing at the centre of everything.
The ego had learned the language of bestowal without surrendering even a fraction of its desire to receive.
The Discovery That Breaks the Heart
And then, after years of effort, a different kind of understanding begins to appear.
It is not another explanation in a book.
It is not an intellectual conclusion that human beings are naturally selfish.
We have known that for years.
This time, we see it within ourselves.
We discover that even our most sincere spiritual efforts have been directed toward personal fulfilment.
We begin to recognise the calculation behind every aspiration.
Why do I want the Creator?
Why do I want spirituality?
Why do I want to connect with the friends?
Why do I want the quality of bestowal?
And when we look deeply enough, we encounter the same answer again and again.
Because I want something for myself.
The discovery is devastating.
We thought we were approaching the quality of bestowal, but our entire movement was toward reception.
We thought we were escaping our ego, but we had been nourishing it with increasingly refined spiritual desires.
We thought our efforts were transforming us, yet they had also been revealing the true depth of our self-love.
This is the revelation of evil.
Not the discovery that we have unpleasant qualities or ordinary human weaknesses.
It is the recognition that our very relationship to spirituality is opposite to spirituality.
Bestowal is directed outward.
Our desire is directed inward.
Bestowal wishes to fulfil the other.
Our nature wishes to fulfil itself.
And now, for the first time, this opposition is no longer an abstract idea.
It becomes something we feel.
Something we cannot escape.
Something that follows us into every lesson, every gathering, every effort to connect.
We begin to see the broken human being within us.
And what hurts most is not that we have failed to receive spiritual fulfilment.
It is that we are beginning to understand how far we are from the quality we have spent our lives seeking.
When There Is Nowhere Left to Hide
At first, we may try to escape this discovery.
Perhaps we need another lesson.
Perhaps a different explanation.
Perhaps another group, another environment, another teacher, another method of working.
Perhaps the problem lies in the friends, who are not sufficiently devoted, loving, or united.
Perhaps we simply need more time.
But gradually, the excuses begin to lose their power.
The same ego follows us wherever we go.
It sits beside us when we study.
It accompanies us into every gathering.
It whispers its calculations even when we attempt to pray.
And the more sincerely we examine ourselves, the clearer it becomes that no external rearrangement can remove the fundamental problem.
The problem is the direction of our desire.
We begin to understand why the spiritual path demands such patience.
It may take years of serious effort before the person is capable of recognising the full extent of their dependence on self-love.
And those years were not wasted.
Every effort, every disappointment, every ascent followed by another descent has helped expose what was previously concealed.
We had to discover the power of our ego through our own attempts to rise above it.
We had to exhaust our confidence in ourselves.
We had to reach the point where our familiar solutions no longer offered hope.
And then the question changes.
We no longer ask:
When will I finally receive spirituality?
We begin to ask:
How can I possibly change what I am?
This is the beginning of the turning point.
The Moment the Friends Become Great
Something extraordinary begins to happen when the person truly recognises their condition.
The arrogance that once accompanied their spiritual efforts begins to weaken.
They no longer feel wiser than the friends.
They no longer believe they deserve more than others.
They no longer look at the environment primarily to discover what is missing from it.
Instead, they begin to see what is missing within themselves.
And suddenly, every friend becomes precious.
Not because the friends are perfect.
Not because they have no egoistic desires, weaknesses, or contradictions.
But because each one carries a spiritual spark, an aspiration toward bestowal that the individual cannot produce through their own powers.
What once seemed ordinary now becomes invaluable.
The quiet persistence of one friend.
The effort of another to remain connected despite inner resistance.
The longing hidden behind someone’s difficult personality.
The willingness of others to continue working toward a goal that none of them can attain alone.
Every friend begins to appear great.
The person who once wanted to rise above everyone now wishes to lower themselves before the common aspiration.
They no longer want to use the friends as instruments for personal achievement.
They want to be included in them.
To receive an impression of their desire for bestowal.
To serve them.
To strengthen them.
To become part of something greater than themselves.
And slowly, through repeated efforts, ascents, and descents, a new appreciation begins to grow.
The quality of bestowal becomes important.
Not merely because it promises happiness.
Not because it will bring freedom from suffering.
But because it is bestowal.
Because there is something infinitely precious in the possibility of loving without demanding anything in return.
When Bestowal Becomes More Important Than Life as We Know It
This is where the real struggle begins.
As long as bestowal is merely an attractive ideal, we can admire it from a distance.
We can speak beautifully about love, unity, and mutual responsibility while continuing to live comfortably within self-concern.
But when bestowal becomes truly important, our egoistic nature begins to feel unbearable.
We see how every encounter is coloured by personal calculation.
How every relationship is quietly measured by benefit.
How even our attempts to love contain the demand to be loved in return.
And now we no longer want to excuse it.
We may still fall into the desire to receive, but we cannot accept it as the final truth of our existence.
Sometimes, for a brief moment, we feel something different.
A genuine concern for the friends.
An inner movement toward connection without calculation.
A desire to give that seems more important than anything we might gain.
And then it disappears.
The ego returns.
The old thoughts rise again.
We fall back into ourselves.
The contrast becomes increasingly painful.
We have not yet acquired bestowal, but we have begun to understand its greatness.
And this creates a new kind of suffering.
Not suffering because we have failed to receive what we wanted.
But suffering because we cannot become what we now recognise as precious.
We are no longer simply disappointed with the results of our spiritual work.
We are unable to reconcile ourselves with the domination of the ego.
The greatest pain is no longer that spirituality has not been given to us, but that we cannot yet love.
The Cry for a Second Nature
There is a vast difference between wanting to improve oneself and needing an entirely new nature.
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For years, we may have believed that spiritual advancement meant becoming a better version of the person we already were.
More patient.
More generous.
More understanding.
More devoted.
But now we begin to recognise that the problem cannot be solved through improvements to the same egoistic foundation.
We do not merely need to behave differently.
We need to desire differently.
We need a second nature.
A nature that does not instinctively ask what it can receive.
A nature that finds fulfilment in the fulfilment of others.
A nature in which another person’s desire can become as important to us as our own.
A nature capable of bestowal without hidden calculation.
And the most terrible discovery is that we cannot create this nature ourselves.
We can study it.
We can admire it.
We can try to imitate its actions.
We can force ourselves to behave as though we possess it.
But we cannot command our hearts to love.
We cannot simply decide to stop wanting for ourselves.
The desire to receive cannot transform itself into the desire to bestow by an act of will.
We have reached the limit of our own strength.
And here, at precisely the point where self-confidence is exhausted, something entirely new becomes possible.
A real need is born.
Not a preference.
Not a beautiful wish.
Not an aspiration that can be postponed until tomorrow.
A necessity.
Something we cannot continue without.
Like a person who has discovered that the air is disappearing from the room, we begin to feel that without the quality of bestowal, our spiritual life cannot begin.
The question is no longer whether we would enjoy possessing a second nature.
The question becomes whether we can bear to remain imprisoned within the first.
The need for bestowal must become a matter of spiritual life and death.
Not because our physical existence is threatened, but because a life governed entirely by self-love has become spiritually insufficient.
We have discovered another possible form of existence, and we can no longer be satisfied with merely imagining it.
We need to live it.
The Helplessness That Becomes a Prayer
Until this moment, we may have spoken about the Creator countless times.
We may have asked for help, guidance, understanding, and revelation.
But beneath our words, we still believed that somehow we could accomplish the work ourselves.
We thought that greater determination, stronger discipline, deeper knowledge, or more intense effort would eventually bring us to bestowal.
Only now do we begin to understand why we truly need the Upper Force.
We need what does not exist within our nature.
We need the force that can create within us a desire that our ego cannot produce.
And suddenly, the Creator is no longer a distant concept or a hoped-for reward.
He becomes a necessity.
As necessary as air to someone who cannot breathe.
As necessary as water to someone consumed by thirst.
We do not have to remind ourselves to ask.
The deficiency itself cries out.
I cannot remain as I am.
I cannot free myself from self-love.
I cannot create genuine bestowal within my heart.
I have tried with everything I possess, and I have discovered that everything I possess belongs to the very nature from which I wish to escape.
Give me another nature.
Give me the ability to love.
Give me the strength to live beyond myself.
This is no longer the prayer of someone seeking an additional spiritual pleasure.
It is the prayer of someone who has recognised that their present nature cannot bring them to the spiritual goal.
And yet, even here, the clarification continues.
At first, we may want the Creator to change us because we hope to feel better.
We want to escape the painful struggle with our ego.
We want the peace and freedom we imagine bestowal will bring.
The old calculation has not completely disappeared.
But through continued work with the friends, the request gradually becomes purer.
We begin to want bestowal not because of what it will give us, but because of what it will allow us to give.
We want the quality of love itself.
And beyond even that, we begin to understand why this quality is needed.
The Second Nature Can Only Be Born Between Us
The new nature is not meant to become another private possession.
We cannot acquire bestowal in order to admire our own spiritual perfection.
The entire purpose of the transformation is to create a different relationship with others.
We begin to understand that the friends are not merely helping us reach the goal.
Our corrected connection is the place where the goal becomes real.
The individual who began the journey longing to acquire the spiritual world now wants to build a shared vessel of bestowal.
We want the force of connection to live between us.
We want our separate aspirations to unite into one common desire.
We want to rise above the calculations that divide us, until the importance of giving becomes greater than the importance of receiving.
And within this common vessel, we long for the revelation of the Creator.
This changes the nature of our prayer once again.
We no longer ask only:
Change me.
We begin to ask:
Change the relationship between us.
Let us feel one another’s desires.
Let us acquire the strength to rise above our separation.
Let our common longing become a vessel for Your revelation.
The need for a second nature becomes inseparable from the need for connection.
We discover that we cannot truly leave ourselves without entering the common desire.
And we cannot build that desire without the correcting power of the Upper Force.
Everything that once appeared separate becomes part of one necessity:
The friends.
The environment.
The recognition of evil.
The longing for bestowal.
The prayer.
The Creator.
All are revealed as parts of one path leading from the domination of self-love toward the possibility of a completely different existence.
The Turning Point
The turning point does not necessarily arrive with a great spiritual revelation.
There may be no extraordinary feeling, no sudden illumination, no overwhelming sensation of love.
It may come quietly.
After another disappointment.
After another failed attempt to rise above the ego.
After another gathering in which we discovered that our thoughts were still occupied with ourselves.
And yet, something decisive has changed.
We no longer want to return to the comfortable illusion that more knowledge or more personal effort will eventually fulfil our egoistic desire for spirituality.
We have begun to recognise what is truly missing.
We do not lack another explanation.
We do not lack another promise of reward.
We lack the nature of bestowal.
And we cannot give it to ourselves.
This recognition is not the end of the journey.
It is the beginning of a genuine spiritual request.
For the first time, the person who spent years demanding spiritual fulfilment begins to ask for transformation instead.
Not for more.
But for something entirely different.
Not for the satisfaction of the old heart.
But for the birth of a new one.
The great reversal is that we stop trying to fill the vessel of self-love and begin longing for a vessel capable of loving beyond itself.
Our recognition of evil becomes the foundation of our prayer.
Our helplessness becomes the source of our need.
Our dependence on the friends becomes the beginning of our freedom.
And the quality of bestowal, which once seemed merely beautiful and desirable, becomes something without which we can no longer imagine true spiritual life.
The Birth of a Different Heart
Perhaps we must travel a very long way before we can utter one genuine prayer.
Perhaps years of study, struggle, disappointment, and effort are necessary to bring us to the simple recognition that we cannot change ourselves.
But none of those efforts are lost.
Every attempt has helped reveal another layer of our nature.
Every descent has shown us something we could not previously see.
Every disappointment has weakened the illusion that the ego can somehow lead itself into bestowal.
And every encounter with the friends has given us another opportunity to recognise the existence of a quality beyond our own self-love.
Until, eventually, all these experiences gather into a single, burning necessity.
I need another heart.
Not tomorrow.
Not when I have learned enough.
Not when the friends become easier to love.
Not when the conditions are more favourable.
I need the possibility of bestowal because I have discovered that everything else leaves me imprisoned within myself.
And so the person who once proudly set out to conquer the spiritual worlds arrives at the most humble place imaginable.
Empty-handed.
Unable to offer anything but a genuine deficiency.
Unable to boast of attainment or achievement.
Unable even to claim that they possess the love they seek.
But finally capable of asking for it.
And perhaps this is the greatest change of all.
The ego wanted to stand before the Creator with its accomplishments and demand what it deserved.
The heart that has recognised its evil comes with nothing to demand for itself.
It comes only with the truth.
I cannot love.
And I cannot bear to remain unable to love.
I cannot create bestowal.
And I no longer want a life governed only by reception.
I cannot unite with the friends through my own powers.
And I need our connection to become the place of Your revelation.
Give us what our nature cannot give.
Create within us the desire to bestow.
Make our hearts capable of becoming one.
This is the turning point: when the revelation of evil becomes so complete, and the importance of bestowal becomes so great, that the need for a second nature is no longer a spiritual aspiration but an absolute necessity.
The person who began by wanting to receive everything finally discovers the one thing they cannot receive into the old egoistic vessel.
A heart that lives to give.
And from the depths of that discovery, the first truly necessary prayer begins to rise.
