Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 68

Chapter 7 Free Choice

There is a distinction between someone who lives an ordinary life and someone who, in addition, seeks to progress spiritually. The difference is that a person with a desire to spiritually progress has “spies,” doubts, and must turn to the Creator for help. Such a person feels a lack of contentment in their life because the point in the heart within them demands fulfillment, a fulfillment that can only come about through feeling the Creator and experiencing the light.

Turning to the Creator for help is a unique feeling that draws us to study the wisdom of Kabbalah. Then, we encounter “spies” that give us no rest. They constantly awaken doubts about the spiritual path and make us question why we are on this path with questions such as: “Why is what we already have in our lives not enough?” and “What are we looking for that is so special through this path?”

The spies are the reasons and the vessels through which we progress. They seem like negative forces acting on us, but they are actually messengers of the Creator with a purpose of calibrating us to enter the Land of Israel in a more precise manner.

Why did the Creator design this entire process for us? It is because observing the commandments alone is not enough to achieve what is contained in the Torah. We need to acquire an additional desire, the desire for adhesion with Him. That is the ultimate goal. Moreover, the desire to adhere with the Creator becomes necessary only after we see that there is no other way to find resolve or fulfillment.

Therefore, the myriad disappointments and challenges brought about by the spies repeatedly frustrate us and makes us despair of achieving our goal through our own efforts. Gradually, a feeling, a readiness, and an understanding grow in our heart that without the Creator’s help, we will never achieve our goal. It is like children who desperately want something, but eventually recognize their helplessness and understand that obtaining what they desire depends on their mother or father, that only their mother or father can help them get what they want. Similarly, we gradually come to recognize our need for turning to the Creator.

It is written about human desires and human nature being completely opposite to the Creator that “the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” Therefore, without a sincere need, we would never turn to the Creator. It is thus through disappointments that we acquire the desire to turn to the Creator and, in doing so, attain adhesion with Him. We then see that all the paths that the Creator paved for us—the spies, disappointments, previous fulfillments, and the many levels—were solely meant for bringing us to the point of needing the Creator.

Our “I,” the will to receive, was created ex nihilo, opposite the Creator’s nature. The more we transform our will to receive into a will to bestow through an intention to bestow, the closer we come to the Creator until we adhere to Him through equivalence of form.

Thus, the correction is not in the desire itself. Since it is our nature, we cannot change our desire. We can only correct the desire’s modus operandi and the purpose of its use. If the use of the desire is aimed at adhering to the Creator and attaining equivalence of form with Him, then we start gaining proximity with Him. The closer we draw to the Creator, the more we become filled with the upper light, and thereby reach eternity and perfection.

We can only prepare our vessels, and then the abundance in Yud-Hey (of the name HaVaYaH) in Hochma and Bina fills us. How does this happen? Keter, as the root level, is the thought of creation “to benefit His created beings,” from which the light descends. Hochma and Bina, referred to as Abba ve Ima, prepare the light. This is the upper system, the upper light, i.e., the source of the entire plan of creation.

Zeir Anpin and Malchut, or ZA and Nukva (ZON), are the lower levels, the “sons,” our good deeds. To the extent that the lower levels align with the upper ones, i.e., to the extent that Zeir Anpin and Malchut align with Hochma and Bina, they become filled with the unlimited abundance that exists there. Then they reach the purpose of creation.

This is what Baal HaSulam writes in his “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” that the answer to the sense of emptiness that urges us to start asking about the meaning of our lives is “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” This is the upper light, which must fill the vessels—the soul of the created being.

Ultimately, Zeir Anpin must resemble Hochma, and Malchut must resemble Bina, as it is written: “MA will become AB, and BON will become SAG.” This is the condition to reach the end of correction.

Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 67
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 66
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 65

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