Question: What does it mean to fulfill the law or advice of the Kabbalists: “Love your neighbor as yourself”? How is its inner fulfillment expressed?
Answer: It means that I try to find the importance of the Creator, and I begin precisely with this.
We must always begin with the Creator and end with the Creator. And in between is the group as a means of achieving the goal. Thus, I must have such an awareness of His importance that I am ready to accept upon myself the condition of loving others as a means of drawing closer to Him, of connecting with Him.
Then, as Baal HaSulam writes in “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar,” I am ready to stop thinking about myself, to leave my desire, to pull myself out of my concern for myself and my thoughts about my own existence, and together with all the other similar desires, aspirations, and thoughts, to unite with the Creator.
What is the game? Why did I use this word? The game is that we as if love another and are ready to give up ourselves; we as if are ready for anything, and the Creator is as if important to us. Everything is “as if.”
Nevertheless, we are capable of attaining such a flash of feeling only for moments. Usually, we think about our lives: “Here is food, here is money, here are pleasures, here is rest, here is family; these are the things in which I exist. But what are the Creator, aspiration, and the group? They are something virtual. They exist somewhere, but they constantly disappear and remain unreal.”
Therefore, when I force myself, by faith above reason, nevertheless to enter such an inner state above all this tangible, seemingly existing reality, such a state is very unstable. It resembles a game; it is not solid. I have no sensory organs or evidence for it. It is unreal.
Therefore, it is as though we are playing this game. We have no other conditions, no other foundation on which to do this. The force that I receive in order to enter this as though it were a real world is called the surrounding light. It somehow acts upon me from the outside and gradually brings me there.
How it works, I do not know. Whether it works at all, I do not know. Suddenly, I receive some blows, and then I am told that this is the result of the influence of the surrounding light. Fine. But do people not receive all kinds of ascents and descents even without that?
Thus, we must be sensitive to all our states, meaning that we must give everything its proper weight and evaluation. Engaging in spirituality in our present state in this world is called engaging in something unreal, unclear, perhaps nonexistent. “Maybe it exists, but who knows?” Go and talk to people. For them, it is not even… .
Little by little, you acquire some feelings for it, some awareness of its importance. But when you enter something “imaginary” and see that only this truly exists, then it is precisely all reality below this level that appears to you to be an imaginary world. But everything depends on your realization. And when will this happen?
Therefore, we call all our preparation a game. Then we will see that this game remains and continues until the end of correction, about which it is said: “The Creator plays with Leviathan, which He created.”
All states before or below the highest state in which the creation and the Creator are united with one another are called unreal or games. Because the only state that was truly created and truly exists is the state in which the Creator and the creation are united and exist in one perfection. Everything besides this exists only in relation to the creation, as imagination, as a game.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson for the holiday of Sukkot, 10/5/26
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From “Love Your Neighbor” to “Love the Creator”
Artificial Actions
The Game Of Life
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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 268
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