Question: What does it mean that “by exerting yourself in the Torah, you are rewarded with the revelation of the Creator’s face?”

Answer: The Torah is the method for the correction of the evil inclination, as it says: “I have created the evil inclination, I have created the Torah as a spice,” I have also created the Torah as a means for its correction. I study in order to draw the Light that is concealed in the higher levels, the Light that Reforms that is in the Torah. After all, I hope that this Light will change me, that it will give me a new mind and a new heart, that everything will be so new that I won’t even recognize myself.

But the main thing about this new “me” is that the Creator will be revealed to me. This means that the force of love and bestowal will begin to control me. So in order to achieve this, I “exert myself in the Torah.” It isn’t in order to receive abstract knowledge but because I want to connect to the material that I study. To “know” means to arrange the connection.

Then the power of bestowal and love is revealed in me, meaning the Creator’s attribute through which I know Him, as it says, “from Your actions we shall know you.” We don’t know His actual essence, as we don’t know the essence of electricity, our own essence, or the essence of the air. We only know our impressions from these phenomena, which we call “electricity,” “air,” “the world around us.”

So the upper force is called the “Creator” (Boreh), which means “come and see,” a certain attribute that is revealed in me. I call this form that is revealed in my desire to enjoy “Creator,” since I “came and saw” it. My goal was to bring Him contentment by this revelation.

“To exert in the Torah” means to do everything in your power when you fulfill the Kabbalists’ advice: to study and to work in the group. The action itself is to gather the group and to organize the study in it. Everything else belongs to the intention. All this is called “exerting in the Torah,” according to the rules: “Don’t do unto your friend what is hateful to you,” and then “Love thy friend as thyself,” in order to reach the love of the Creator.

These principles not only describe the study of the Torah, but also the direction the whole creation is moving toward, all of the upper worlds and our world including everything in it: humanity, the still, vegetative, and the animate nature. It isn’t just the Torah that someone studies, but the trend in which all of creation is developing.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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