Roadmap To The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can I relate to the Creator if He is the property of bestowal?

Answer: Really, what is “the property” anyway? Is it a physical force? Can I really love or hate gravity? For example, I can like it on the condition that it does something good to me. But that doesn’t mean that I love or hate it. I realize that it’s something inanimate and therefore I relate to it according to my feeling, according to the benefits I get from it.

I enjoy the sun. But, do I really “love” it? How can we love the sun compared to loving a plant, an animal or a person?

So, how do I relate to the Creator? First of all, it is said about Him: “I HaVaYaH change not.” The upper Light is in absolute rest; it is “Good that does good to both the good and the bad”; the Creator treats us with absolute love.

On the other hand, the Creator is called the Great, the Terrible, and so on and so forth. All evil comes from Him; all the good originates from Him. Everything is so contradictory that I get confused.

If something is unchanging, it’s bad. Why do they tell us that the Creator doesn’t change?

Baal HaSulam explains in his letter number two, that if a father relates to his son with absolute love, it makes the son hate him instead of love. After all, if there is no reaction whatsoever on the father’s behalf, the son sees that it doesn’t matter how he treats his father; in any case, his father responds to him with absolute love. It prevents the son from developing love, and it does not allow him to change, see the connection and stay in contact. It’s as if he is facing an inanimate object. Plants have a certain level of reaction, animals respond even more strongly, not to mention the human being. Then, positive and negative reactions penetrate in each other and create a new liaison, a mutual inclusion.

But if the Creator doesn’t change, and at the same time He is so kind and loving, then what can I feel for Him? There is no way I can take Him into consideration. And yet, if I cannot consider Him, then I leave Him out of the picture, as if He doesn’t exist at all. Why would I consider someone who never changes?

It’s a very deep notion that was explored not only by Kabbalists. However, Kabbalists strove to demonstrate that at all times the Creator is “Come and See”; so I reveal Him. I cannot reveal Him Himself, His essence, but only His form that is dressed into matter. That’s why when we attain Him in His full entirety, we reveal His ultimate and perfect shape and really see Him as the Absolute, the Perfect, the Eternal, the Good that does good.

In all other states, we regard evil or good that come from Him depending on the level of our own corruptness, as it is said: “Everybody judges according to his own flaws,” and then, we have the opportunity to relate to Him to the degree of our own deficiencies and corrections, and thus see Him as good or bad.

And yet, we have to believe what the great Kabbalists who revealed Him in His true form, say, that He is absolutely good and bestowing.

So we have to relate it to our desires (Kelim): At this moment, we see the Creator to the extent of the correctness or corruptness of our desires, but when we attain Him at the end of the ladder we will reveal Him as the Good that does good.

Then all contradictions will be gone; we will get a “roadmap of advancement” which is scaled to our attitude to the Creator. It allows us to see how we change and accordingly how the Creator changes in our eyes.

We express gratitude to the Creator for giving us the ladder of concealment; with its help we can attain connection with Him. Otherwise, we won’t be able to connect with perfection.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/9/12, “The Book of Zohar”

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