We Wear Clothes To Cover The Shame Of Being Egoists

From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 2/10/20

Over the generations, clothes have been a definitive mark of a person’s economic and social status. However, recent times show a striking change. All around the world, wealthy and publicly respected people no longer follow the old standard dress code.

Today, a plain t-shirt, jeans and sports shoes can be the attire of the rich and poor alike. Society has undergone emancipation from noticeable expressions of wealth and rank in dress with a recent move toward a “simpler is better” approach.

In the first decades of the 20th century, men still flaunted well-tailored suits, dress shirts with cufflinks, and elegant hats on their heads. Women, already exempt from corsets, wore colorful long dresses with matching accessories head to toe. Designers still offer new fashions four times a year, but our search for personal expression has turned elsewhere.

Time passed and desires changed.

Although largely unaware of where our loss of interest in clothing comes from, today’s younger generation emphasizes personal character and their inner world over the rags that cover it.

This is the call of the time: We have reached the point where the person must precede the clothing.

There is an old saying, “Don’t let your clothes wear you,” i.e., the outer covering should never be more important than the inner person. The time has come to uncover exactly what we have been hiding underneath the stylish outer wrappings.

What have we been trying to cover up? What are we longing to find? Could it be that we have been covering some kind of shame?

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, which explains phenomena in our reality as branches of spiritual roots, there is a connection between physical clothing and shame.

We instinctively wear clothes in order to cover the shame of our egoistic nature.

We hide the fact that we host a human nature that wants only to enjoy itself at the expense of everyone and everything else. Essentially, we use clothing in order to conceal our selfishness.

As the Torah teaches, after the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, the Creator told Adam that he needed to be clothed. This means that the person’s egoistic desire undergoes a correction, becoming covered with an opposite intention of love and bestowal.

When we put on this “spiritual apparel” of a common intention to love, bestow and positively connect with each other above the naked and divisive ego, and create a supportive social environment that promotes altruistic spiritual values to us, we then attain the spiritual state called “love will cover all transgressions.”

Then, we dress up in the image of the Creator.