The Creator is revealed as the one force that operates in all of our reality inside a person and on the outside. This leaves us—those in whom the point in the heart has awakened—a point of freewill from which we can study and understand the Creator who operates on us and who surrounds us on all sides. All the other people who think that they are independent simply don’t notice that they are operated by nature or the Creator (which are the same thing) in every step they make, every thought, every word, and every action.
When we think about the meaning of life, about the cause, the source; our questions stem from our dissatisfaction with life. This is how the Creator awakens us and pushes us to search. Therefore, in the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” item 42, Baal HaSulam says that the reason for all the suffering in this world is our lack of understanding of the upper Providence. “…And I tell you that that preliminary reason is none other than the ‘lack of our understanding in His Providence over His creations,’ that we do not understand Him properly.”
We don’t understand the Creator, and the blows come in order to awaken us to search for Him, discover Him, and see that He is the only one who operates on us. Thus, we rise to the same level where He is revealed to us, where he controls all of reality.
From this perspective, we begin to understand what He does. Our entire history opens up before us, the entire “map,” the entire process that each of us goes through for many reincarnations. We see where we come from, where we are headed, and why everything is arranged the way it is. Everything opens up before us, and although we can point at the past, the future, and the present, we feel that it is the same thing. It is as if we look at the picture of reality that is spread before us in order to raise us and bring us to the full feeling of the Creator.
If a person feels this way toward everything that happens to him—if he understands that everything comes from the only force so that he will discover, understand, and feel Him so that he will be able to see all of reality like Him—then he relates to all the events in his life practically and doesn’t confuse anything personal with what he feels. Something else is important to him: to correctly understand why the Creator sends him the states he goes through and what the benefit in them is.
In the article “There is None Else Besides Him” in the book Shamati, Baal HaSulam says that there is no other force but the Creator. However, in the meantime, a person sees different opposite forces. There are forces that threaten him and forces that support him. The former are friendly and the latter are enemies.
On the whole, I perceive everything that happens as good or bad. It is as if I am between the good force and the evil force since that’s how they are depicted in my imagination.
However, I must know that everything comes from one force that intentionally shows me two sides and wants to bestow upon us by two opposite forms: the rejecting force and the attracting force. If I rise above it and understand that the rejecting force also can spur me to connection, it isn’t felt as good or bad anymore. After all, I ask myself why I feel rejection and I gather my powers to overcome it. The good force, however, can confuse and weaken me, and repulse me from the desire to connect, to advance, and to keep the inner intention.
Thus, I can measure the Creator’s bestowal according to my good and bad feelings or according to my understanding of the role He plays in rejecting me and bringing me closer. These two parameters can be opposite from one another.
The Creator bestows upon us by these four forces in order to confuse us so that we will not understand where we are and what is happening to us, like a child who is lost and confused. Then, like children, we need a grownup, the upper. We need His help and we need to hold his hand to discover Him and to force Him to take care of us since otherwise we feel that we are lost. This is actually the best state we can be in.
Here, we need a good supportive environment so that we will not escape and go off-track because of our confusion and so that we won’t begin looking for other methods that allow us to find peace and security. We don’t need such means since we reach the Creator differently: A person remains confused, helpless, and doesn’t understand what is going on, and still doesn’t leave. Only by this path does he reach the right outcry when he demands that the Creator be revealed to him and that He should take care of him. Then, he finally discovers that there is none else besides Him. That one force has created all these states for him. This is exactly what we do with our kids so that they will feel that they need us.
This one force controls all of the reality that He has created. He has created us so that we will become entangled in the complexities of this world and through that come close to Him and need Him. He bestows upon us by revelation and concealment through which all of creation advances back to this force: first man and then the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature. They all are incorporated in man and they all reach the same one root from which they came.
Whoever is rewarded with this revelation immediately sees the future of all of reality. You haven’t reached it yet, but you will be able to see everything from the root. When I drive, I don’t see what is hundreds of kilometers ahead, but I can clearly see the entire road network from a satellite. We must only rise and then everything appears before us.
My connection with the future depends on the height of this ascent so that if I am totally adhered to the Creator, the future and the present become the same for me. I feel the states I must go through and the final state, and so I advance.
Then, I discover that all the concealments were meant only to reveal the Creator. He conceals Himself on purpose in different states, behind evil actions and scary states, behind great confusion, so that I will hold onto Him and won’t let go, like a child for whom the father’s hand is the protection from all the troubles. This is how we also must imagine our relationship with the Creator.
When we unite with Him, we reach Ibur (gestation). We want to be in Him first because of fear, because we want to hide. Later, when we grow in Him a little, He begins to teach us His wisdom, His knowledge, and how He actually operates.
Thus, we grow during the nine months of the spiritual Ibur, until we are born into the world. Then, we go through the states of Yenika (suckling), smallness, and greatness when we already understand all of creation from the beginning to the end. We have not discovered it yet, but we are going to.
This revelation comes only out of helplessness. Otherwise, we never will want to come close to the Creator in our egoistic desire. On the contrary, we create such conditions for ourselves that will help us hide from the upper force. Everything that we do in life is meant to protect us from the Creator: a home, money, insurance, a pension fund, a health care system. Thus, we create the protective shield so that we will not need anyone. We do need social services, a state, and humanity, but not the upper force. Thanks to such systems, we have abandoned the different religions since we don’t feel that we need them anymore. A person doesn’t feel so weak anymore that he must pray to someone and depend on someone.
What does the Creator do? He sends us troubles. After we build such a strong, comfortable and safe world, hoping for eternal prosperity, we suddenly see that everything falls apart and nothing is safe, and that not only tomorrow but even the next moment is doubtful. The Creator evokes these negative forces in the form of terror, plagues, natural disasters, the breakup of the family, of society, of economy, and so on.
All this is so that we will rely less on our own powers and will feel how weak we are to a greater extent. It turns out that we have no control over our lives. If we begin to discover the upper force, we fill all our deficiencies by Him. Then, our corporal life also works out since we don’t need the negative external stimuli anymore if we see the importance of the good force and yearn for it.
So, the wisdom of Kabbalah turns to all of humanity, either in its original form or as the method of integral education, and explains that we should come closer to the force of nature that operates in all of reality. The word “Creator” equals the word “Nature” inGematria. In the future, we will suffer even more, and no technological, scientific, or economic progress or in any other area for that matter will help us. We are very weak.
It turns out that the Creator is the only force that operates in reality. It is like a huge field that covers all of reality on all sides. Our main work is to discover this network that manages everything.
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From the Convention in New Jersey 5/11/13, Lesson 3
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From the Convention in New Jersey 5/11/13, Lesson 3
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