Until we are already in Equivalence with the Creator to some degree, there is no Creator. First we do, even though He doesn’t exist. Then He is revealed. First, we behave, internally, as if there is none but Him, and then we get into enough Equivalence with that state that it turns out that there is none but Him. And that’s because He is revealed in properties that are opposite to our set point in each moment. We always have to go out of ourselves and enter the friends because in the connection between them is the Creator. If I’m not between, then it’s like if there was no gravity there’d be no reality as you know it. So, if there’s no connection between the friends, the Creator doesn’t exist except as a religious fantasy.
Then, you need to keep trying. This is a force of nature, a system of laws surrounding it, and when you feel yourself in this soup, with correct intentions that feed through your friends toward the Creator, then you’ll feel there’s a feedback system there by which you’ll know for sure if you’re giving the Creator contentment. At the same time we should be happy just to serve the Creator somehow, even in Lo Lishma of Lo Lishma. Anyway, on each degree there’s Ibur (impregnation), Katnut (smallness), Gadlut (greatness), and we need to be content to be in any state.
רַחֲמִים (rachamim), Mercy, is the form in which the Light can pass down to the Lower Ones. There are 13 channels by which they come. If a person wants to receive these Lights, they have to make the corresponding corrections. But there aren’t words in our world that we can say that “it’s like this” or “similar to when that happens.” But we come closer to this when we read about these states, even without understanding.