3. THE BREAD OF SHAME

We now arrive at an important Kabbalah topic.

God gives to man but what can Man give to God, for God is complete and has everything? The only thing that man can give is to be the perfect receiver. Where does the Shame come in? Man feels unable to be worthy of what he has received.

He wants the light from God, but the metaphysical energy generated brings about restriction that is personal (tsimtsum).

This resulted, we are told, in the giving birth to the infinite desire to receive of the physical world in which we try to eliminate the bread of shame by sharing with others who are also lacking and in this way fulfill our desire to give.

This reeks of Identity arousal and a social guilt that implicitly advocates social giving. But this does not appear to coincide with the "bread of Shame" with respect to God.

Are we then talking about the Shame of man's personal inferiority considered against his potential, as an intermediate stage? certainly the concept of inferiority may be implied in the Eden story and the wish to know more.

But perhaps we can go further here and suggest that the reason for the fall from the path was indeed a result of the Desire to Give which generated a pride of giving and perhaps a competitive sense of worthiness, which is consistent with Identity laced with natural animal competitiveness.

The question is then why God in his legendary infinite wisdom did not remedy this in his original design. The Kabbalah tells us the answer.. God's only attribute was to do good.  The fourth stage was a voluntary emptying by man alone.

While this emptying then has an aura of good in the conceptualization of benevolence, it really holds the stains of Samsara in the conceptualization of greater or lower spiritual benevolence. It is a small step from here to the giving and receiving of physical phenomena and from there the emergence of Samsaric greed, which is to receive for one's own gratification.

So we can certainly agree that Identity arose here, perhaps in the desire to feel worthy. The Kabbalah suggests that our existence on this physical level is dominated by the desire to receive, which has become more real than the spiritual Light, which is the desire to impart.

It is important from the Kabbalah's standpoint not to degrade the concept of receiving, in and of itself, which is itself the act of creation.

Perhaps then we can suggest that the world in which Man arose was filled with the natural benevolence of the Life Force of survival and that the "creation" from a Dharma viewpoint may arbitrarily be considered as the moment when he became aware through word-concepts of receiving the bounty of nature.

Do you see here the natural illusion of the "I"  which with the change from the spiritual receiving to the physical receiving generated "Mine" and then converted the illusory self into the delusion of a real and substantial Identity, "Me"?

This may seem like a tame remark, but if you dwell upon that for a while you may begin to experience the awe of man at that concept of receiving the bounty of nature, the Life Force (in the Kabbalah from God) and sense the tragedy of what we have lost. Perhaps you will generate the serenity, patience, determination and perseverance to recover that original state of "the uncarved wood".

The Kabbalah, however, without a concept of psychological Identity and a reluctance to enter a Satan figure, proposes that the Bread of Shame placed man in an incomplete state because he could not give to God. There was an imbalance then between his receiving and his giving and so he eliminated that Shame by sharing with others satiating his desire to give with subsequent earthly consequences.

The ideal basically then is that because we cannot give to God we balance what we receive from God with a giving to others.

The Dharma presents a different picture in which Benevolence, with its psychological concomitant Benevolent Affect, is a natural Survival function that has fallen under the onslaught of Identity acquisitiveness.