Baal HaSulam, Pri Hacham, Letters, Letter 1: As for the answer he firmly demands, I shall reply that everyone believes in private Providence, but do not adhere to it at all.

The reason is that an alien and foul thought … cannot be attributed to the Creator, who is the epitome of the “good who does good.”

Everyone believes that we are in some kind of nature, conforming to some upper force, but how we connect to it, no one clearly understands.

The Creator created us and fills us with all kinds of thoughts, desires, and different impulses, and pushes us toward something. Moreover, as a rule, our impulses are not so good, and we cannot have any others.

If so, how can we relate to the commands of the Creator and what will happen to us with His goodness, with His absolute existence? After all, everything that is revealed in us is the result of His influence.

But only true servants of the Creator, who really want to understand His Providence, who yearn to be in a dialogue with the Creator, to reach the level of mutual understanding, to reveal how He influences them and how they can possibly influence Him— “… only to the true servants of the Creator does the knowledge of private Providence open, that He caused all the reasons that preceded it, both good and bad.”

Everything that has happened to me up till now has happened because the Creator planned everything in advance and fulfilled it in me and in those around me. So everything I have been through in my life did not happen without His knowledge, beyond His powers, beyond His plan. This is actually the very first thing a person attains before he enters the upper world.

Before a new level of attainment appears in a person, he first feels that everything that has happened to him was because the Creator and only the Creator prepared it for him.

Although he has experienced great sufferings, confusions, and problems, did not know what to do, and felt that it would be better if he had died instead of living such a life, he begins to understand how happy he is that the Creator has related to him this way, because everything he feels now is the result of the terrible states he has been through when he felt lost, when he felt angry, disappointed, and fearful.

“Then they are adhered to private Providence, for all who are connected to the pure are pure.” Man begins to understand and feel that all this comes from the Creator, that all this relates to the Creator, and that it is therefore absolutely true, pure, and holy.

“Since the Guardian is united with His guarded,” which means the Creator and His actions, “there is no apparent division between bad and good. They are all loved and are all clear, for they are all carriers of the vessels of the Creator, ready to glorify the revelation of His uniqueness.”

It makes no difference how people appeared in the uncorrected state that I was in when I saw that this one was a thief, that one a thug, another one a liar, and another envious.

Now that I understand that the Creator has arranged all that for me so that I would perceive them this way, I feel absolute love for them, I feel they are same as me, devoted participants in one great endeavor, the progression of the soul. And we have all received the influence of the Creator only in order to reveal His uniqueness.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/17/19

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