The Role of Bestowal in the Process of Creation

Everything that was created is the will to receive. The purpose of creation is to create a place in which the Creator can reveal itself, and so all that exists is, at its root, a receptive vessel. Yet within the Four Phases of Direct Light, Binah discerns that if creation remains only a vessel of reception, it will continue to drift away from the Creator's presence, from the knowing, feeling, understanding, and awareness that it belongs to the Creator's will. While the vessel's nature pulls it toward pure reception, something within it refuses total disconnection from the source and purpose of its creation.

The path of bestowal is not part of creation itself; it is the presence of the Creator's will supporting the purpose of creation. This is what Binah does: even as there is extension and drifting, Binah provides a memory, a reminder of the meaning of it all and of the need for connection. The vessel is therefore placed with two opposing forces within itself: its own nature as a receiving vessel, and the pull not to be severed from the purpose of its creation. Creation provides the space in which living beings can express the many facets, names, actions, and appellations of the Creator. The work is thus to harness the vessel of reception so that it can borrow from the Creator the quality called bestowal.

The completion of correction is the creation of a vessel in which these two opposites exist in harmony: it can receive, but its purpose is to bestow. Through this harmony it reconnects with the original thought of creation. We do not become bestowers by our own power; we harness the vessel of reception with the help of the higher, learning to use the light and the qualities of the Creator correctly. The vessel of reception recruits itself to express not its own nature but the nature of the Creator, and in doing so fulfills the true purpose of the thought of creation.