Kabbalah Explains the “will to Enjoy”

Did you ever wonder where you came from? And who are you really, beyond the body that you observe in the mirror?  

Kabbalah says that there exists an Upper Force that created a desire, called "the will to enjoy." That's who we are underneath it all—a will to enjoy. But “to enjoy” has a different meaning here from how we usually interpret it: “to enjoy” means to become fulfilled. Moreover, not only we, but all of nature is that will to become fulfilled, to enjoy and to receive whatever one lacks at any given moment. This is true on any level: the atomic and the molecular, as well as the cosmic. It's the same on the still, animate, vegetative, and speaking levels of nature. All of Creation is characterized in Kabbalah as “the will to enjoy” or "the will to receive pleasure."

Kabbalah calls the Upper Force that created us “the Creator,” because it created this desire. Alternatively, Kabbalah calls this force Light.” The Creator or the Light created us, the creation, endowed with the will to enjoy because the Creator desires to give enjoyment, to please and to fulfill.

But in Kabbalah, things are never what we think they are—and this too has a different meaning. However, the kind of pleasure that the Creator desires to give us is not exactly the same kind of pleasures we feel in our world. He wants to give us spiritual pleasures. What are they? The simplest way to describe them is to say that they never end—unlike the pleasures we feel in our world.

Here's a simple example: Let’s say that you're hungry and you're yearning for fulfillment by eating. So your desire is like a “minus” and the pleasure is like a “plus.” First you have a desire and afterwards you feel pleasure from eating. But with every pleasure in our world, the instant the "pleasure" enters the desire and starts filling it, the desire decreases, until it disappears completely. And once it's disappeared, we no longer feel any pleasure from eating. So no matter how hungry I am, when I begin to eat, with each bite I lose some of my desire for food, until eventually I stop feeling pleasure.

And as soon as this happens, we begin the search for pleasure all over again. We look around, thinking, "What can we delight from now?" In other words, we are continuously searching for a ways to fulfill our desires. But no matter what fulfillments we get, we are unable to find lasting fulfillment. Is there a solution to this dilemma?

Kabbalah says that there is—and that it lies in learning to receive the right way. The best example for the right kind of reception in our world is a mother and her child: The mother does not receive pleasure directly, but feels pleasure when her child feels good—someone outside her.

This creates a closed circle of uninterrupted energy, where the pleasure is present permanently because it circulates between these two objects. Kabbalah explains that if we could feel pleasure in the same way—indirectly, through others, then we would feel fully and absolutely fulfilled. We would never stop feeling pleasure because the pleasure will never cancel our desire.

In fact, by creating such a “cycle,” we would feel eternal existence. The wisdom of Kabbalah is the method that enables us to achieve this: to use our desires with the intention of giving, and thereby to experience endless joy and eternal existence.