Achishena (“hastening time”) means self-directed advancement. Each of us knows how we came to the wisdom of Kabbalah. At a certain point in time, a person suddenly receives a kind of awakening from an unknown source and begins to search.
He feels a lack of meaning in life, finds no taste in anything, and is driven somewhere without knowing what exactly he is looking for until he eventually finds it.
The sources say that it is the Creator who brings him to a special place, to a special society that is also engaged in searching for the meaning of life and tries to answer the question: “What is the essence of our existence? What is the meaning of the existence of the whole world, of all of nature, and even of what lies beyond it?”
Ultimately, these questions brought us to the point where we found our group, our organization, our society, in which the most important goal is to attain the meaning of life and the meaning of existence itself.
When we came to the group, we were ready to invest ourselves and do whatever was needed. We wanted to be accepted into the group, to integrate into it quickly, become one of them, and move forward as fast as possible. We were driven by our desire.
In this way, the Creator awakens a person, brings him to the right place, gives him the desire, the aspiration, the inner pressure, and as a result, the person does everything. He becomes involved in the group, studies, and applies all possible efforts just to realize this desire.
But then this desire suddenly fades away and disappears. Where does it go? We do not know. The Creator takes back the yearning that He previously aroused in the person so that the person can begin to create it within himself on his own.
But how can a person do this when he knows nothing? While he studies, reads, and absorbs the material, many years may pass. In Kabbalah, this latent developmental period may last 10 to 15 years, and this is considered normal. However, today we see an acceleration of this process, and now it takes much less time.
A person begins to realize that everything within him is just a desire, and that it is entirely governed by the Creator. The Creator holds him from above “by the scruff of the neck.” In Kabbalah, this is expressed very simply: “The heart of man is in the hands of the Creator.” “Heart” refers to our desires.
Therefore, whether the desire is greater or lesser, what it is directed toward, what we want in life—none of this is ours! Absolutely none of it! Our only role is to reach the awareness that all of this comes from the Creator, and that we are dealing only with Him.
Then we begin to feel that we are in a state of concealment. In fact, even the word “world” (Olam) comes from the word “Helem,” which means concealment. The world is the concealment of the Creator, and our task is to reveal Him.
For this, the Creator has only two systems of governance. One is called “Beito” (in its time), and the other is “Achishena” (hastening time).
If we want to work correctly, we must form a group. A person cannot have his own desire since his heart is in the hands of the Creator. But the group can create certain conditions that are above each individual friend, and they can operate in place of the Creator, seemingly even against the Creator.
That is, the group can awaken the Creator as the source of the upper force, the source of light, so that He arbitrarily changes our desires, if the group decides this together. The Creator will always listen to what happens within the group. For this reason the Kabbalists instruct us how to act.
But under all circumstances, we must not break away from the thought, and if possible, from the feeling that we are in total connection with the Creator, and that everything that happens within us comes solely from Him through absolute goodness. “There is none else besides Him.”
As soon as we tune ourselves to such a perception of the world, of ourselves, and of all circumstances, they begin to appear differently.
Just as at the beginning of our path when a person comes to the group because a desire was awakened in him to reveal the Creator—although he did not yet know that the desire was for the Creator, for that singular force of nature that governs everything—and then that desire disappears, this repeats over and over again.
The Creator arouses an impulse in each of us, and we rejoice in it. We think it comes from us, or that we received it from Him. But when the desire fades, we do not think it came from Him; we do not recognize His “flirtation” with us, we do not feel that He simply withdrew a bit from us, as we do from a small child when we want to teach him to walk. We forget this; we do not feel it.
Here, great help is needed from the group to remember it. This is where the path of Achishena begins, when we—on our own initiative and with clear intention—do not let go of the Creator. He distances Himself from us, and we, as a group, like little children, take a step toward Him. Despite His retreat, we take another step. He steps back; we take another step. This is how we learn to walk.
But one person alone cannot do this. He must be within a group to receive support from it, to avoid forgetting that everything is happening for a reason, that nothing is accidental. It is not fate, events in the world, the family, or at work that affect him to the point where he forgets everything and loses all motivation.
None of that exists! There is only one upper governance; the Creator withdraws the excitement that came from Him and wants us to awaken ourselves with a yearning for Him. This is the path of Achishena, the method of self-directed advancement.
We cannot implement it alone, but only through the group. Through the group, we can awaken upon ourselves the influence of the Creator’s force and begin to communicate with Him. Because within the group, with the correct relationship and connection between the friends, we detect this force, we reveal it, and then we begin to move on our own.
What does it mean to move on our own? The Creator distances Himself more and more, and we try each time not to fall into concealment of the Creator, and continue to affirm that He did this to us, that “there is none else besides Him,” and that everything is only from the perspective of absolute good.
This is how we advance.
[191278]
From the Convention in St. Petersburg 7/29/2016, Lesson 1
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Question: It is known that people who sought spiritual development strove to be alone, to distance themselves from their familiar surroundings in order to be alone with their thoughts and inner search. History presents a long list of such examples of solitude in search for the meaning of life and truth: the Baal Shem Tov, the Prophet Elijah, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Buddha, and so on. Why is solitude associated with spiritual development?
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