“You Cannot Close Your Eyes to Your Own Life” p: 65

AyinBase with R' Paltiel Sunday 6 Tevet 5772 

Page 65 – at the 5^th line of the page (line starts, 'hu...')

See link (top right) for link to all pages of the text.

We have been looking at why the souls of Israel (that have essential connection) are requesting “kisses of his mouth” which are more external connection.

We saw that when there is something on the level of kisses – reflection of the essence – it brings a greater elevation/revelation of the essential connection.

In essence everything comes from atzmus/Him. But there is an enormous difference between what a soul can grasp vs what the animal can comprehend – they were made in different ways. The great favor of torah and mitzvahs is that we can connect to that which is beyond our understanding.

In Tanya the Rebbe explains that the soul is true to G-d at all times, even when sinning!! How so? The soul gives life to the body and is not affected by the sin the body commits.

Emunah is the expressing of the essence of the soul – when that is touched the soul rebels. You can close your eyes and not see. But you cannot close your eyes to your own life. Emunah is your life itself. In the future, everything will express the essence of G-dliness.

Up till now we have seen there is such a thing as reflection of a higher level that is superior to the essence of a lower level.

middot/emotions are our true personal experiences. mochin/mind is just an observation – a reflection. 'Middot/emotions' have an element of reality that is stronger than 'mind' in our lives. We say there is light of sechel/mind on the midot. What does that do for them? sechel/mind speaks of an objective truth. That is not just saying you have a higher perception, it means it is pointing out something that in our world does not exist. In our world all is relative. All is cause and effect. Objective truth is very hard for us to relate to. There is a First Being that is the source of everything – that is the basis of sechel/mind. 

So even though it (the light of objective truth) comes in only as a ha-arah the effect on middot/emotions is the realization that my emotion now has a G-dly element – that elevates the mehus of the neshamah. In contrast animals also have certain middot/emotions – the eagle shows compassion on his chicks... the cat is modest... but for the animal they don't have the same significance... for the animal it is instinctive for the human being there is the sense that this is the correct/truthful/G-dly way to do things...!

Real understanding is a soul expression. Even something as basic as 1 + 1 has a soul element. What is soul? It is life coming from Him. It is the truth element in the human being. From the perception of the body, everything is relative. The body has no grasp of the concept of truth. The way we perceive the truth as it trickles down from our soul... we need to put it into worldly vessels and find composite elements. After we go through this 'logical' process we see it is originating in chochmah/wisdom/direct reality. This is how chochmah is sight (or insight) – it is taught to us on the level of presentation -'see, this is how it is...'

Now, with chochmah you see things the way the soul looks at things.

Take an example of travel from one place to another. As long as it is on this earth, the body sees it as various steps in the trip – taxi, walk, plane, train etc... How is this at the essence level? The fact that a human being can conceive of moving across the entire world is because for the soul, all existence is one reality. Not only is all existence one reality, but it has one source – One G-d – so it makes no difference where I am! When the Rebbe came to America he said, “America is no different!”  

“America is no different!” says he Rebbe. He's saying something profound. The whole world comes from one source. It appears different. The same G-d is here in New York as in Lubavitch. I don't want to replicate what I had in Lubavitch. We will reveal here the same spirit we saw over there. This is the soul truth. This is the world in which the soul exists.

This trickles into our conscious awareness, by chochmah, binah and daas. How do I relate to the idea that it is all one place! Through the work of the sechel/insight. Yes you have to move step by step and places seem different, but really they are related. Chochmah is the perception that the truth is not based on deduction... it is the upper reaches of sechel/mind and bridges into soul and see it 'the way it is'. A mashal for this is being above and looking down on the streets of a town and you see clearly how to navigate. At the street level you can get lost. Chochmah sees the world the way the soul sees reality.

In mind/sechel there is a process. Chochmah is everything at a glance even if it contains many details. The experience of sight is 'how everything is united together'. You enter the room which has many details, but there is a unifying element. They are all part of one truth.

So you may think chochmah is sight and is thus one level. So how can there be levels? We will delve into this... and see how there can be different levels of chochmah/sight...

the purpose of delving into these things is to experience and recognize that the principle of G-dliness is not theoretical... it is theoretical if we look from a worldly perspective and don't have a soul view, but if we see how the truth is permeating our existence, we would see a completely different world. And thus the despondency of being locked into a physical world will be shown to be false and shattered... You has a soul ability to be above and rise above. We stand on the ground, but what carries us is our spirit... or head.