A Game That Becomes Our Life

Question: Why does a child play so naturally and truthfully while for a grownup a game is a lie?

Answer: It is because we adults have gotten used to living in a lie: our life is a lie and the game is a lie. It isn’t a crime but simply our nature. A game is always a lie and never the truth because after all, I don’t play myself but someone I would like to be.

We wouldn’t be able to advance without games. Children perceive a game as the absolute truth and therefore develop and grow. If we wholeheartedly joined in a game, like kids, we wouldn’t be able to leave it and would stay in it.

This is actually the tool that the wisdom of Kabbalah uses. I am told: “You need to love others, and in this love you will begin to feel the Creator! Here, you have a group that is made of ten people; start establishing such relations between you by pretending that each one loves the others. You have to create such an atmosphere between you so that each one will disappear in it and will melt in his love for others.”

I act out this love over and over again by returning to it a thousand times each day until I am incorporated in it to such an extent that I melt in this love and connection. Then I can attain the revelation of the Creator.

By being incorporated in love, I am incorporated in the Creator. This ceases to be a game and becomes the game of my life. But first I play it artificially: I pretend that I love thefriends and annul myself before them without any desire to do so. I force myself and convince myself that I have to act this love, although I don’t feel it at all.

But I suddenly feel a warm feeling. The others influence me by setting an example for me by their alleged loving attitude; I see that they are loyal to this love and I feel ashamed that I cannot return the same love to them. I criticize and reprimand myself over and over again and once more force myself to love the others.

But when I annul myself this way, I suddenly begin to see how all the corporeal objects around me begin to disappear: the table, the chairs, and the walls. They all disappear from my perception and only one thing remains—the love that I feel. I also disappear. I become enslaved to this feeling of love, and there is nothing left but that feeling that is external to me since my “self” disappears.

My “self” is my ego, which disappears, and then I begin to feel how the upper force, the Creator, fills everything. It is because I have annulled myself and now I can feel Him. I have annulled my egoism and have received the attribute of the upper force, the attribute of bestowal, and this is the real game.
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From KabTV’s “The Torah Chapters with Shmuel Vilozni” 2/2/15