"Steady Faith” p: 49

AyinBase with R' Paltiel p: 49 4/24/2011 Sunday Nissan 5771

Page 49 – at the top the page (line starts: hamakif...) 

We can identify in our own experience the difference between tree of life and tree of knowledge. chaim/life is an essential thing – there is no interruption.

Chochmah is the epitome of sechel and though it is so wholesome and complete, yet there is the element that it is coming into being and is thus part of a process – you get to know it by it's effect. Life on the other hand is not experience – it is the reality itself. So chaim/life is the essence. This is seen in emunah in contrast to sechel (even to chochmah). Emunah is a plain reality – it is like the essence of the neshamah itself. That has no capacity to be misconstrued – it cannot go to tree of knowledge and there is no garment for it. We sense it in the brain, but not because the mind grasps it. It is pure neshamah. 

Ha-arah / reflection means illumination of an area where it is not... we see things, though the world remains dark. Light in essence is not functional for the sake of enabling us to see.

Work of the righteous is light – it is founded on the awareness of the presence of the King himself. It is based on unity with Him. He is light. Meaning that if you are in the dark, and you bump into something then this is a discovery and the object is coming into being for you – a discovery. In light and for Him all exists due to an inherent truth. There is not bumping discovery since all exists based on a fundamental reality.

This is the difference between light and dark. Light both reveals an item that was hidden, but it also has the element of truth that it exposes..

sechel comes from chochmah which has a sense of emunah, but it is a ha-arah of that. It becomes further formatted till it can lose its light and go off track.

On the one hand emunah/faith is something steady, that isn't 'discovered'. It can be concealed and not experienced. A person can lose all sense except that of the physical world. Faith is the steadiness – the reality of life, but on the other hand we are aware of it. It is not something beyond our awareness.

We say, 'constant pleasure, is not a pleasure'. That is because everything in the world needs to be rejuvenated. Emunah is constant, yet there is a sense of awareness to it. It is like a mashal for the world of ein sof. It is something that is absolutely real, yet provides for awareness.

Before the tzimzum there is not sense of revelation. After tzimzum there is the sense of things coming through an opening. It may seem to be limited – where is the infinity? There is an element of 'there's more where this come from'. So the sense is not the limit of what you get, but where it came from.

The essence of anything is not what it is, but what makes it be, where it came from.

Light gives us not just the sense of the object, but of the reality of the object. The object may be a simple box, but it finds a place in space. The space preceded the object. We are aware of the space even with closed eyes. The object has this sense of reality, by virtue of being part of space. The reality we sense is not the object, but the reality/space that allows for it. The kav too provides a sense of the real reality, of where it comes from...

In atzilus, there shines just the reflection of the kav, not the essence. This means the kav/line itself. This is phenomenal. In sechel you have the logic and the structure, but the light is the source/secret that it points to.