Baal HaSulam, “Thou Hast Hemmed Me in Behind and Before:” Thou hast hemmed me in behind and before, meaning the revelation and concealment of the face of the Creator. This is because indeed, “His kingdom ruleth over all,” and everything will return to its root because there is no place vacant of Him.
A person has an opportunity to be in connection with the upper force, with the Light that advances us, either directly according to the likeness to Him, or in the opposite form according to the discrepancy, and, of course, both these approaches can be combined in some way. It is not necessarily one direction or the opposite to it, that is, either zero or 180 degrees, but we are always under the influence of the Light, and we have no freedom of choice in this. The Light always affects us. What depends on us is only to choose whether His face is turned toward us or the opposite side is.

Kabbalists tell us about this because we are able to influence this. After all, there are plenty of very important systems operating in the spiritual worlds about which they do not say a word to us because we cannot establish any communication with them. These systems affect us only from one side, and that is why nothing is told about them.

Of all the great systems, Kabbalists reveal to us a small fragment through which we can change our destiny. They do not tell us anything about the part where we can do nothing with ourselves.

That is why, if Baal HaSulam writes that the Creator embraces us behind and before, this means that we do have the opportunity to feel the Creator, not on the opposite side, but to reveal His face, and it will change our destiny the entire 180 degrees. To do this, all the time we need to seek the revelation of Shechina—the power of love and bestowal that we are trying to reveal according to the similarity of our properties to It.

However, the opposite side is disclosed when we act according to our own conditions, our egoistic properties. If, in all these situations, we are not trying to achieve congruence with upper management, to reveal His face, then His opposite side is revealed to us.

This determines how we will feel upper management. If the opposite side is turned to us, then in the dark, we think that we are able to do something ourselves. We believe that we operate and manage ourselves, but, for some reason, we do not succeed.

When upper management is turned toward us, we reveal the other side: that the Creator acts in everything. We discover this if we are not going to change anything except ourselves. We want to turn ourselves toward the Creator.

However, finding that He acts in everything, we also reveal that He is kind and does good and that is why we are pleased to see that all our actions come from Him. This is the essence of open management that is always good. Hidden control is always felt as pain and suffering.
[84761]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/30/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
To Tango With The Creator
The Goal Of The Group
The Whole World Is The Creator’s Face

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator | Add Comment →