Measuring Our Love

We cannot directly measure our attitude to each other. We can only measure how much we love or hate each other with respect to some foreign object. Let’s say that you love something and I hate it, or you love it more than I do; even this love is relative. But only in this way it can be measured.

The technique of inner, spiritual, precise measurement of people’s connection with each other is based on this because through it they also connect with the Creator. This examination should be very personal because we all have completely different desires. We should examine how much we can discern this connection at all. But you cannot doubt that if I love what you hate, then we cannot connect.

This is how we can examine our attitude to each other. There are billions of different discernments in the world, and if we want to love each other, then our attitude to each of them must coincide. Then, this is called adhesion.

How else can I check you and can you check me? It is only possible with respect to the standard that is outside of you and me with which we can compare ourselves and determine whether we coincide or not. The standard by which we examine our attitude to the Creator is the group because it is the place where we are together with Him.

If I relate to the group correctly, then I discover that the Creator is already there in adhesion with the friends. As it is written: “I dwell among my own people.” He is already in the group; the only problem is that I am not there. Therefore, all my work is to cleave to the nine friends and to complete them to a full ten.

To the extent I cleave to the group, I adhere with the Creator. There is no other frame of reference. The group is the benchmark, the standard, the tuning fork through which I calibrate myself. At that, there is no need for friends to agree. If I become included in them without any conditions, annulling myself in everything, I will discover that they accept me with all their heart and soul and the Creator is between them. The group is in the state of final correction.

The Group Is My Spiritual Tuning Fork

It is impossible to measure our attitude to each other or our attitude to the Creator directly,  but only through an external standard that is neither in Him, nor in us, but in the middle. In this standard that is between us, we can find what connects and separates us.

This standard is the group. If I cleave to the friends in the group, then to the same extent I find myself in adhesion with the Creator. The group gives me an opportunity to measure specific parameters: “height” and “weight” of my love and hatred through which I reach the adhesion with the Creator.

According to the extent of my adhesion with the ten, I can determine the extent of my fulfillment with the Light. After all, I have no way to measure the Light itself but only indirectly, through the group. Through the common desires in the group, I begin to feel the Light that is filling it.

I can only feel pleasure in my desires, and this is not enough. I need to check how, through the fulfillment of these desires, I connect with the one who fills them and whom I fill. Therefore, there is the condition: “And from love of friends one can reach love of the Creator.” We cannot scrutinize the Light itself but only the desires fulfilled by it. Just as we do not speak about electricity itself but only about electrical phenomena. It is significant that electricity does not pass through the wire, but around it. Therefore, the group is a perfect measure of my adhesion with the Creator, like a tuning fork by which we evaluate the sound of the string in a musical instrument. It is impossible to say anything about the string before I touch it and it makes a sound. Only by the desires (Kelim) is it possible to scrutinize the Light.

An example for this are the notes by which we evaluate a melody. Notes indicate which strings to touch or which keys to press. This is the score of desires with which we work to hear the sounds of music within ourselves. The note symbolizes not the sound itself, but an instrument which makes it. Therefore, by attaining the instruments of connection with the group, we reach adhesion with the Creator.¹
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/27/18, Lesson on the Topic: “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”