The Uncompromising Upper Kindness

Question: Why is the Creator so uncompromising with the created being by setting tough, immutable laws for him? Why can’t He be more merciful, like a father with his son?

Answer: A child can never justify his father’s toughness. He cannot understand the father with his childish mind and see the future results and the benefit that his father’s education will bring him. The child wants to play from morning to night, to eat only sweets, and to watch TV. He cannot justify the parents’ constant demands and so he listens to them reluctantly since he feels his dependence on them and not because he justifies them.

In spirituality everything is much more complicated since we don’t feel to what extent the upper Providence treats us gently. In a child’s world, his oppositeness is not an indication of what he is about to become; if a child is obedient and does his homework and cleans up the messes he makes, the parents cannot come complaining to him since there is nothing more they can demand from him.

In the spiritual world, however, it is different: There you are always a criminal, since you arrive there with shattered vessels to begin with. You are treated kindly and are taught the method of correction; a group is organized for you, just like a kindergarten with a caretaker and with different toys. This is mercy and huge help from Above and mercy; all your sins are forgiven and you are given support in every way, just so that you will be able to reach correction and understanding to some extent.

In our world, we understand “education” as coercion directed at the child. But in the spiritual world, coercion is impossible. I can see that a student doesn’t change for years, repeating the same mistakes, falling into the same pits, and I cannot say a thing. I was the same way and it lasts throughout the entire path.

This is our path and there is nothing we can do. Unless a person determines the lesson, the method, his Torah by himself, he will not be able to advance. There cannot be coercion here, only recognition.

Therefore, we cannot complain that we under the dominance of a cruel father despite all the terrible events of our history. We cannot justify them but later we will see that all the actions of the upper Providence stemmed from love. Although we cannot justify this in our current state, since we are too far from that, when we discover the truth, we will see what great correction it brought about.

“He has given a law that cannot be broken,” means that there is one law. There is a Light and a vessel which are opposite from each other, and this is the law. Later, when they are incorporated in one another, the law of evolution appears by this incorporation, called the law of equivalence of form. It all stems from one thought as one law.

Eventually I have to reach a state in which I want to keep this law by my own will, by myself, as if there is no one else, as if there is no Creator. When I become like the same creator looking at his creation determining the law according to which it should exist, it will mean that I have reached an equivalence of from with the Creator.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/6/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam