Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 117

How Can We Gain Strength for the Work from a State of Helplessness?

How can we who realize that we lack true knowledge, who feel powerless and incapable of acquiring anything from what we read, who see that the door to spirituality is closed before us, how can we find strength to move forward if this work is placed upon us alone and not upon someone else? Where can we draw the strength for the work?

There are two completely different states that we tend to connect as one. The first is a state in which we are completely insignificant and beastly, with no spiritual strength at all. We do not understand anything about the spiritual world nor even about this world. We have no idea what will happen to us or to the world in the next moment. We have no concept of how everything is structured and operates. The more we open our eyes, the more we feel like a small child playing with pebbles on the shore of a vast ocean, just as Newton described his scientific work.

And this is a correct feeling. To some extent, this is what it means to sense the immense forces of nature. This is our reality. We cannot grasp this concept through our own strength.

This state described above is actually a springboard to an active state. Active in what way? In that we can demand strength and we can ask for corrections to be made within us. The previous state is meant to show us that, at our current level, this is truly our reality.

How can we ascend from this? We forget that we truly lack these forces. Why did the Creator make it so that at every step we get stuck and realize that we are nothing? It is so that from this helplessness, we will remember that the Creator exists. We then turn to the Creator, and He arranges everything for us in a way that lets us move forward, to understand, to act, and so on.

Why did the Creator make it this way? It is because this entire process is a means for us to connect to the Creator. It is intended so that we will surrender, so that we will feel a need for the Creator, and through this need, we will acquire the Creator’s attributes.

Ultimately the Creator wants us to become eternal and perfect like Him.

Each time, the Creator shows us weakness, helplessness, despair, ignorance, and a lack of grasp on reality—the exact opposite of His state—so that we will desire to turn to Him and receive the opposite of what we feel. “The opposite of what we feel” means receiving something from the Creator, His qualities and level.

Thus, through contrast, we arrive at a more complete state each time. The deeper we sink into feeling what is bad, the greater the good we can attain in contrast.
This is how all the spiritual levels are built.

Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 116
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 115
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 114

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