A Bright Mind Is Not A Guarantee Of Light
My task is to transform my nature. It means that I have to change all my inclinations completely.
I won’t take anything of what I have now with me into spirituality: neither reason nor feelings, nor views, criteria, or calculations. This poses huge, almost insurmountable obstacles in front of intelligent people, and they often fail. One needs to be truly wise in order to abandon one’s own mind.
A smart person believes in his or her logic that works perfectly well in our world, and it’s difficult for him to imagine that it’s powerless on the spiritual path. “Mind, energy, and perseverance are my strong suit. Isn’t that enough?”
Actually, such a person has nothing more than keen intelligence and sensitivity, but here’s the catch: That’s not the currency that buys you a ticket into the spiritual world. There, you need faith. What is it?
Faith is a power that you receive from Above, from the Light. You don’t have it inside you; it’s above your mind and feelings, above who you currently are. An upper influence comes, and you feel like something penetrates inside, awakens in you a consideration which is opposite to everything that you are.
Then, you begin to relate to reality in an inverted way. You used to look at everything through the prism of personal profit. Now, however, you take into account not yourself, but the unity. It’s so strange that it’s indescribable, but, nevertheless, a new consideration forms in you, and you now can’t return to the old one.
Certainly, there are intermediate states, but after a person “exits Egypt,” he comes to a higher consideration, completely abandoning his previous priorities. After all, his intelligence and wealth of feelings, experiences, and reflections just cease to work.
That’s why it is said, “It’s not a wise one who learns.” Typically, success does not favor the brightest minds. Actually, they in particular need a great deal of perseverance and luck to break through into the upper world.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “What is the Extent of Repentance”
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Perhaps the analogy is that when an individual computer transforms into a node on the Internet — it would be wisest for it not to try to use its own computing power and memory any longer.