Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 279
Chapter 24. Against Nature
This is a very special article that explains why, when we finally arrive at Kabbalah in order to solve the problems of our nature, draw closer to the Creator, enter spirituality, and acquire the most important thing in this entire world and in all of reality, it is precisely then that we feel bad, difficulty, and weakness. However, this is a good sign, because when we advance on the right path, we are allowed to feel bad to the extent that we are ready to correct that evil and turn it into good, and then we feel hope and elation.
We have all become accustomed to this world and what is in it, to the way humanity organizes various educational systems and systems of life in society, mostly through suppression and coercion. We have already seen how useless this is. For instance, a criminal leaves prison as a more accomplished criminal, a child subjected to excessive pressure ends up with no success and fails, and one day the pressure erupts and brings severe consequences. Anything that grows under pressure will never yield good fruit.
Why is this so? It is because the person should not be the one doing the correcting, and every attempt at pressure or suppression runs against nature. Society pressures people, restricts them, and represses the evil within them, which is the creation in them and their uniqueness. After all, we are born in order to bring this evil to the surface and correct it, whereas society compels us, through pressure, to conceal this evil and repress it within, not to see it or touch it, and forces us to wear artificial external garments and behave as they dictate to us. Society’s pressure on a person indeed causes great harm.
Here, RABASH explains that proper education, which we become acquainted with when we begin studying the books of Kabbalah, contains no restriction whatsoever, but only the reforming light, which is the only force of correction in existence. In Kabbalah, we learn that only the light can bring about change, that just as it created the vessel, so can it also correct it. The Creator created nothing other than evil, and the good is the light in Him, which comes to us to the extent that we desire it.
Therefore, education does not come through coercion. The process of self-education in the study of Kabbalah needs to emerge solely from desire. It is impossible to change without an inner desire and decision to change. According to the measure of our desire to change, we see the evil within us, and we also correct it according to that measure of desire. It cannot be otherwise. This is why Kabbalah is called “the hidden wisdom,” because the phenomena it describes are invisible. Everything depends on our inner desire, and the corrections also emerge according to the desire, even though we ourselves do not see them.
Only when we advance toward the barrier (and certainly once we cross the barrier) do we gradually begin to see how wonderfully such phenomena are arranged, with good and evil appearing as a single unit and actually supporting one another, as RABASH says, “like fire and a wick.”
Therefore, in everything concerning our inner work, we must not be forced to make corrections. Corrections made from compulsion would not be corrections, but corruptions. We are not speaking here about an obligation to behave in a certain social manner, because if we want to live in society, we need to adopt external behaviors according to its limitations. However, when it comes to inner corrections, they must be left to our own desire and choice.
Similarly, it is impossible to artificially point out the evil within a person and tell them, “see how evil you are.” This will not help because we ourselves do not see the evil. We are not yet ready to see it. We will be able to see the evil within us according to the extent to which we study and according to the intensity of the surrounding light that shines upon us. Only according to this surrounding light will we discover that we are evil and want to correct it. Any other means is invalid, because it will not bring about correction.
Therefore, society must understand and accept, as RABASH writes, that regardless of whether it is good or bad, every state should be judged only according to the extent of our connection with the Creator through it. The Creator generally reminds us of His existence through the unpleasant states, because in the good states we are in wholeness, need nothing, and feel nothing. Our senses are not prepared to feel anything additional or foreign.
Therefore, we receive descents, blows, and unpleasant things through which we seemingly discover the Creator. Certainly, it is not we who discover Him. Instead, we have an inner demand to find justification for our state, and then we feel this surrounding light. From the unpleasant state, we need to understand that the connection with the Creator is of utmost importance, and we must develop a connection while disregarding how we feel. This should be done as much as possible, because we are always in a state and its opposite.
RABASH says about this, that accepting the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven means that we accept the states that “fall” upon us without relating to the feeling we experience in the meantime, whether good or bad. Our vessels of sensation are not corrected, and they feel according to what they are at present, but we want to evaluate our states according to how close or distant they are from the purpose of creation, and thus we must relate only to that.
If we relate to each and every state with the awareness that it brings us closer to the purpose of creation, and we do not care that we feel unpleasantly within it, this is called entering the Kingdom of Heaven, under the governance of the upper one. We want the upper one to govern us regardless of how we feel. If we annul ourselves accordingly before the upper one, our vessels begin to change, become corrected, and soon we will feel better.
Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 278
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 277
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 276
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Question: If there is no meaning in performing external actions, then what does the description of revelation mean when it says that when a person increases good deeds, their success increases, and when they decrease good deeds, their success decreases? What, essentially, are good deeds?
