Question: Why isn’t it stated clearly and categorically that our entire obligation as created beings is to attain complete connection through “Love your neighbor as yourself”?

Answer: All Kabbalistic books speak either about the unfolding of the worlds, Partzufim, and Sefirot from above downward, or about a person’s individual correction from below upward where one must come to hate one’s desire to receive for oneself, aspire for bestowal, realize that it is impossible to attain bestowal on one’s own, and then turn to the Creator so that He will help one rise above reception to achieve bestowal, and in doing so find one’s entire purpose, mission, and fulfillment in bestowing to Him.

This is described in great detail. What is not stated precisely, however, is that this correction is accomplished through connection within the group, through work in the group, bestowal upon one’s neighbor, and the feeling that one has support and mutual guarantee. There are only isolated hints about this in the Torah: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But how is this connected with love for the Creator? “Do not do to another what is hateful to you.” Why do we exist in such an enormous world instead of simply feeling ourselves directly connected with the Creator? Why do we need this entire world?

All of this is not clarified in the books; that is, the connection between a person’s work in relation to the Creator and a person’s work with the group is not clarified. It is written, “From love of the created beings to love of the Creator,” but this is not stated clearly and categorically enough for everyone, religious and secular alike, to understand that the problem lies precisely in “Love your neighbor.”

Today we stand before the need to solve precisely this problem toward which the global crisis is pushing us. This is a social crisis and not an economic one, a crisis resulting from the fact that we all exist within an egoistic society that is devouring itself. Its solution is possible only if we understand that we are obligated to come to unity. Yet, we will not be able to achieve unity unless we discover that there is only one force capable of helping us do so.

Here, we find ourselves between life and death. We will need the Creator in order to be saved from death. This is precisely how He becomes revealed. Therefore, our time is truly the time of the coming of the Messiah (Mashiach), that is, the revelation of the Creator to the created beings, so that, on one hand, we may be saved from death, but in truth, so that we may attain a world filled with goodness and benevolence, a world that exists entirely in bestowal from above, in the revelation of the Creator to the single created being into which everyone unites. Then the Creator is revealed to them.

Therefore, what is especially important is this connection between the present state of the world and the urgent necessity for the revelation of the Creator in the connection between us.

Although Kabbalah sources do not explicitly detail this (offering only scattered references), we must produce articles and explanatory materials and describe the process of transition from the “I” to the group, from the group to the world, and from the world to spirituality—to the Creator and the force of bestowal that will connect everything and fill the whole of reality, all created beings, and the entire vast desire.
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