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What Is Our Addition?
Our addition is “the self.”
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What Is the True Picture of the Creator?
We never speak about how things appear from the Creator’s side, what He feels, or what He is. We speak about what the created being feels from Him, or about how the created being imagines the Creator’s state, but not about His state outside the created being. At times we think all sorts of things about a friend that do not truly reflect who he is. We speculate about his thoughts, feelings, and troubles, and when we come a little closer to him, we discover that none of it was true. It was all merely a picture we had drawn in our imagination.
There is the matter of knowing something from within ourselves, from imagining that something is one way or another, and there is the true picture. We never see or know the true picture of the Creator. We can only know the Creator through ourselves, what we think about the Creator, how we understand the Creator, and so on. The truest picture that we are capable of attaining, without our vessels distorting what the Creator wishes us to feel from Him, is the state of final correction. The Host wishes to serve a five-course meal, each course perfect in every respect. We receive it and feel the Host’s attitude toward us through it. Beyond that is beyond our ability.
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What Is the Difference Between Before and After the Barrier?
Before the barrier, a person passes through two principal and very important stages:
1) Double concealment
2) Single concealment
These two stages provide us with all the vessels and discernments, which we later enlarge in spirituality and upon which we dress additional discernments. The transgressions and mistakes that we make on our spiritual path toward the barrier are the actual vessels that we will use later.
The difference between before and after the barrier is not only in these vessels. The point is that before the barrier, when we are in concealment and the Creator is not revealed, we might sometimes feel something in relation to the Creator. Our sensation of the Creator is that of the surrounding light (Ohr Makif) and not of the inner light (Ohr Pnimi), because we still lack a screen (Masach).
After the barrier, we acquire a screen. The acquisition of the first screen is called crossing the barrier, and afterward additional screens are added. Then, according to the strength of our screen, we can receive inner light, which is a clear and tangible sensation of Godliness.
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Does the Creator Bestow Upon Us the State of Final Correction?
The Creator bestows upon us as though we were already in the state of final correction, and indeed we are in the state of final correction. It only seems to us that we are not. In other words, the “as though we were” applies to our perception, not to the state of final correction itself. Final correction is the only state that actually exists, and we deceive ourselves into thinking that we are outside of final correction. This illusion stems from the numbness of our senses. Therefore, we need to correct our senses in order to feel the place in which we already exist.
RABASH compares this to an unconscious person who gradually rises and regains consciousness. This “return to consciousness” consists of the 125 degrees, through which the states gradually become clarified to him, until he reaches the state in which he truly exists. It continues until his awareness and the state in which he exists become one and the same.
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What Does It Mean That the Creator Relates to Us as Though We Are Already in the State of Final Correction?
We are indeed with the Creator in the best and most perfect state possible, but that state is concealed from us behind 125 coverings. There, somewhere in the state of final correction, the Creator relates to us through 125 coverings. We experience the Creator’s attitude through those 125 coverings, which weaken that attitude to such an extent that we even reverse it. Thus, from the Creator’s perspective, we are perfect, while only from our own perspective are we corrupted.
This means that self-correction is for our own benefit. By correcting ourselves, we are not doing the Creator any favor whatsoever.
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How Can We Bestow If There Is No Connection to the Creator? To Whom Is This Desire Attributed?
The desire to bestow is not attributed to the person. Suppose we could perform some action like making ourselves a sandwich, enjoying it, and attributing that pleasure to the Creator: “You, the Host, created this entire world for me and brought me to enjoy this sandwich. I would like to feel You so that I could show You how much I enjoy the sandwich. But in truth, it is not the sandwich itself that I enjoy. Rather, I enjoy the feeling that You prepared this for me.” In other words, we reach a state where we lack something, where we need to feel the Creator so that we have someone to thank.
We can begin with this and see that the Creator will reveal Himself. Even if we merely think about thanking the Creator, He will reveal Himself. The Creator is ready for this, because it is truly for the sake of bestowal, regardless of the fact that it concerns nothing more than a simple sandwich.
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On Which Desire, Among All Our Desires, Do We First Work So That It Will Be in Order to Bestow?
We have many desires, and we do not work with all of them at once. We work on them one by one. Kabbalists say, work with the smallest desire first, so that we can be sure we will not fail. Once we have completed work on it, choose a greater desire.
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What Is the Difference Between a Person Being Close to the Creator and the Creator Being Close to a Person?
A person who advances and draws closer to the Creator discovers that, from the Creator’s perspective, there is no concept of being “close” or “far,” either from him or from other people. A person is within the Creator all the time, and from the Creator’s perspective he is already in the state of final correction (Gmar Tikkun), from which the Creator relates to him. However, the person feels the Creator’s attitude toward him in a negative way according to the extent that he himself is not corrected.
This is exactly how we behave in this life. How much pressure and how many blows does a demanding mother give when she wants her son to become a doctor? Until he is immersed in it one hundred percent. Until he studies and receives the highest possible grade. Nothing less than that. The more he resists, the more she pressures him.
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How Do We Make a Movement in Spirituality?
A movement is made through a change of form. If we become somewhat more similar to the Creator than we were before, it is a sign that we made a movement. In other words, movement takes place through the effort we make upon ourselves. To the extent that our qualities change in relation to the Creator’s qualities, to that same extent we have advanced toward Him. The distance from the barrier to the Creator is measured in 125 degrees. According to the extent to which we can achieve equivalence of form with the Creator, this is the place where we stand on this ladder of degrees between ourselves and the Creator, moving ever upward upon it.
In this work, we are never in a worse state than the current one. We can only advance. At times it seems to us that we retreat, as though we “fall away,” but this is only how it appears to us. It happens in order to awaken us, to seemingly trip us up, to give us various opportunities to feel new discernments. Usually, disturbances come so that we will delve precisely into them and view ourselves more clearly, because it is specifically through disturbances that we will later feel a special attitude from the Creator. The place where we are given blows is the very place where a special relationship develops, both now and in the future. Evil becomes replaced by good.
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How Can We Act in Order to Bestow Before the Barrier?
Before the barrier (Machsom), it is impossible to act in order to bestow. We cannot think in order to bestow and then fail to carry out an action in order to bestow. That is why it is called “before the barrier.” In spirituality, there is no possibility that we can be in one place while already fitting another place, because the moment we match a certain place, we are already there.
In spirituality, we have a kind of “engine” that moves us to the place that corresponds to us according to the changes in our qualities. It is like an electric charge in an electric field or a piece of iron in a magnetic field. It is the equivalence of form between something and its potential field. The Creator is the center of spiritual force, and from Him emanate the waves of the spiritual field. We exist within this field, within this space, as a soul. According to the soul’s potential, the more we resemble the Creator, the closer we come to Him, and the more our qualities differ from those of the Creator, the farther away we become. Thus, we ourselves determine our spiritual movement.
If we, throughout our entire corporeal life in this world, made absolutely no change in our relationship to the Creator, if we made no movement whatsoever, then we are called “one who was dead and remained dead.” If we made some movement, or at least wanted to make a movement, then we already have some relationship to the Creator, and it is possible that we truly made a movement. Our goal is to adhere to Him, to reach the center of that field and space where the Creator is. We need to increasingly progress to Him through equivalence of form, until we are actually included in Him. We do not become nullified. On the contrary, we become like Him. The qualities of the person become like the qualities of the Creator. Then there are two at the center of that field, not one.
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