Reaching Your Essence - 002 Searching For Satisfaction

What Are We Searching For?

All of us have a soul within us, and of us have a soul that is searching for something.

If someone is immersed in materialism, he searches for honor, money, and desires. But we will not discuss this kind of person. Most people in this generation are searching for something that is deeper than those things.

Most people are searching for something very deep, and we often cannot identify what it is that we are searching for. But there is one common denominator with all people that search: a person feels empty somewhat, and he is trying to fill the emptiness.

When a person isn’t clear about what’s going on inside himself, he feels lacking somewhat in his situation, and he can’t put his finger it. He just knows that he’s trying to fill the emptiness, but he doesn’t know how. To say this in slightly different terms: he’s not trying to fill himself, and he just wants to relieve himself of all his inner emptiness.

If a person is a bit clearer to what’s going on inside himself, he knows how to fill what he’s lacking, and there are levels to this reaction. Some people will feel that what they are missing in life is calmness and inner serenity. Others feel that they need more quiet. Others feel that they are missing a lot of love and warmth in their life. Others feel that they are looking to see the “light”, because they feel like they are living in the dark; others feel like they are “trapped”, and they want “freedom”.

The deepest kind of search a person can have is to search for the ohr Ein Sof, the Infinite Light of Hashem.

Searching To Fill The Emptiness Vs. Seeking Relief From Pain

Most people are not aware of what they are searching for. They wander the earth trying to find themselves. When a person is searching and he doesn’t know what he’s searching for, he is actually in grave danger. There are many things he encounters that he uses to fill his emptiness which, if he would really know what these things are, he would never go near it.

I will try here to explain how one can realize why all the things that people seek are really imaginary forms of filling one’s emptiness, and why people come to make these erroneous searches.

When a person doesn’t seek to actually fill his emptiness, and he is merely trying to relieve himself of emptiness, he is in more danger than anyone else! We can see this, in extreme cases, from those we know who were going through emotional suffering and great stress, and they were suffering so much that they took drugs so they could alleviate themselves. These people can be feeling so much pain in their life that they wish they could die, so they engage in suicidal behavior. This person’s thinking is, “Death means that I stop existing, which means I will have no more pain.”

A person who contemplates suicide thinks that “When I die, there will be no more “I”, and he thinks that this will put an end to all his pain. He’s not trying to fill what he lacks - he just wants to stop existing, so that he won’t have to deal with the problems of life anymore.  The suicidal person thinks that death will be the answer to all the pain. He doesn’t seek to fill his emptiness - rather, he wishes to escape all the pain he feels.

How can we know that such a person is merely imagining his great escape? We know the answer. We know that a person has a body and a soul, and that death is not the end of our life. It merely puts an end to our body, while our soul still exists.

At death, there are writings of our Sages that describe what goes on. The body undergoes suffering, so that the soul can escape it easily. If the body doesn’t suffer and the mind of the person is still there when he dies, the soul suffers terribly in Hell, rachmana litzlan (may Hashem have mercy on him), because in order for the soul to totally pull away from physicality and fully enter the Next World, the physical mind has to have stopped beforehand as well. This is a necessary process in order for the soul to take leave of the body and be serene. Suicide merely takes away the body’s suffering, because the mind is still there, replacing it with far worse suffering - suffering of the soul, which takes place in Hell.

These are well-known matters to most of us. But if you think about, even if a person doesn’t commit a suicide, he might very well be adapting a suicidal person’s kind of thinking in his own life. A person might live his whole life and never seek to fill his emptiness, and all he does is seek to get rid of his pain! Such a person will seek to live a life of only comfort, in which there is no pain.

We all know that the world is full of suffering. People are lacking in their livelihood and have health problems, etc. How does a person fill what he lacks? One way, of course, is to seek a way to actually do something about it and fill it, whatever that way will entail. The other path that people employ is, instead of working hard to fill the pain from feeling lacking, they will instead teach themselves how to detach from pain. They train themselves to detach from pain and anxiety, to harden their emotions so much to the point that their feelings inside are totally deadened, and in this way, they won’t feel the pain of whatever it is that they are missing in their life.

Taking this “easy way out of life” then becomes the way of life for the person. A person can live a life in which his emotions are completely hardened, and he becomes like a stone, which cannot feel anything. He does this so that he won’t feel any stress or pain at all in anything in his life.

People actually think that is the most perfect kind of existence a person can live on this world, and this is what many people are taught when they want to learn how to have a successful life: “Don’t let pain get in the way of your life. The only way to get what you want in life is by avoiding pain, so train yourself not to let anything bother you.” In this way, people kill off all their feelings, so that they will be able to be dull to emotions and thus avoid all pain and survive life. People even think that this is the ideal way for a person to live life.

We will address this point later, because there is some truth to it. At this point, we are only addressing the root reason of why people think this way. It is basically a subconscious decision that a person makes so that he can avoid pain in life. He teaches himself, subconsciously, to deaden his emotions, so that he won’t feel like he’s missing anything in his life, and that is how he solves the problem of feeling lacking in life.

Is it really possible for a person to never be lacking anything? If a person has a good job, a happy marriage, and good children, does that mean his life is perfect? We all know that there is no such thing. Every person is lacking things.

Even if a person would have everything he needs, the very fact that we are human beings makes us limited. So we are always missing something. Even if a person is a millionaire, he’s missing another million dollars. It is written, “He who loves money is never satisfied with money.” Humans are limited, thus, we are always lacking. It won’t help to get more money and own more real estate, because we are always lacking something.

The Desire to Escape Limits

So a person thinks about this, and he might conclude, “Fine, I agree. Humans are limited, by essence. But maybe there a way for me to transcend all those limits…”

The Snake was the first being in Creation to wish to transcend limits. It told Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge with the argument that if she eats from it, she will become like a G-d.  The Snake was telling her to leave her limits, to become unlimited. If so, the desire in a person to escape his human limits is, deep down, a desire to become a God!

There are even people who wish they could be Hashem! Just like a person can be jealous of another person, so can a person be jealous that he’s not Hashem, and he might wish he could be a G-d. When a person realizes that he can’t get what he’s jealous of, he feels lacking, so he might convince himself that he is a G-d, in order to avoid the real conclusion, which is painful to him.

The Snake was jealous of Hashem, and therefore it thought it was Hashem, and it told Chavah that she could do the same and become like Hashem.

Understandably, for all evil that exists, there is always a way to use it for good, therefore, it is possible for a person to use the desire to escape limits for a good purpose. This is the holy way to use the Snake’s argument. But right now, are not discussing how it can be channeled in a holy direction, and we are analyzing how evil it can be when it is misused.

The desire to become unlimited is evil when a person wishes that he could be G-d and not be limited to anything on this world. The person doesn’t want to have any limits, and therefore he comes to the conclusion that he is like a G-d, and that he can do anything.

It is the greatest error one can make. A person doesn’t like to deal with the facts, and he might feel so bothered from the limits that life places on him, that he convinces himself that he is above human limits, that his like a G-d whom nothing can stop, and in doing so, he totally fools himself, in the most erroneous way possible.

People Who Live In Their Imagination

To illustrate, there are people who are living totally in their imagination; they are totally deluded. They can have many wonderful ideas, because they have a powerful and creative imagination, but they do not have the tools or the means to carry out their ideas.

I met someone once who wanted reconstruct Rechov Yaffo, and he was serious about carrying out his ideas, when all of his plans were totally unrealistic, because he did not have the means or the money for it to even start his plans. Yet, he continued to imagine what the new plans for Rechov Yaffa will look like, constantly shaping the image in his mind, without ever doing a thing to actualize his grand ideas. Not only that, but from speaking with him, I realized that in his mind, his new Rechov Yaffa was already built, and he lived constantly in that place he imagined; he was already imagining that people were coming over to him each day and complimenting him over it….

A person might live totally with his imagination, and he has great ideas, but he is unrealistic about them at the same time. Yet, he continues to fool himself. These people live their imagination as reality, and they are really emotionally ill. Whenever this kind of person feels lacking, he will imagine that he already has whatever he is missing - and this is how he feels better about his situation! Imagination is reality to such people.

There are also people who feel that they are literally “everything”, that they are unstoppable – it’s like they think are a God. They live all the time in their imagination, and they live so much with their imagination that they believe that they cannot even be mistaken at all. They truly believe that they are unlimited and that it impossible for them to ever be mistaken about anything.

As we know, imagination is not always a bad thing. It can help a person achieve things through his creative aspirations. Imagination is a very tangible sense, as the Ramban writes. But such people not only feel the tangibility of their imagination – their imagination is their reality! They don’t just imagine - they live in the land of imagination in their heads.

People do this so they shouldn’t feel like they are missing anything; they imagine that they have everything, that they are the entire world. A person imagines that he is missing nothing, because deep down, he thinks he is like a G-d! Pharoah also imagined that he was a G-d; he honestly believed that he created the Nile River.

It is not only the Snake and Pharoah who made this mistake of thinking “I am a G-d.” Many people make this mistake, and feel that they are “everything”; they feel like they are unlimited and that they don’t lack a thing. If they ever feel lacking, they immediately imagine very strongly that they have already what they are missing.

Knowing Your Limits

We have examined the deep root of why people don’t seek to really fill their emptiness: it is because such a person, deep down, wishes he could escape all human limits, and in doing so, he resembles the Snake’s argument of trying to become Hashem.

Let us see how his thinking can be refuted, first from a logical perspective, and then we will see the matter through a deeper perspective, through the lens of our soul.

If we would ask such people if they think they’re trying to be G-d, they would answer, “Of course not.” They don’t even realize that they are trying to be like G-d! That’s how fooled they are by their imagination.

According to his line of thinking, there are no problems in life, because he just imagines that there is no problem. If you ask him if he is aware that he is imagining things, he will say, “True, I am imagining that I am unlimited, but it is still true.” He honestly believes that his imagination is reality, and therefore, he continues to think that he is God-like kind of being that is unlimited by this world. So he can very well aware be of his imagination, but he thinks that it’s real.

If you ask him, “So you admit to me that you’re imagining that you’re unstoppable. But how are you able to imagine in the first place? Who created your ability to imagine…?”

Here is where he will be stumped. He’s refuted from his own logic. But if you try this on him, he will probably answer something like, “Hashem wants me to be like this.” But we can all recognize that he has warped his own logic and fooled himself. 

We won’t go further into this point and how the conversation will continue. We already understand that this person is fooling himself more and more, thus, we see that imagination cannot solve what a person lacks, because such a person doesn’t make any sense.

Let us rather focus on a different problem with his thinking, the emotional problem that is really going over here inside this person.

Leaving the Narrow-Minded Perspective About the Soul

People naturally see things as “black or white”, and this is a big mistake that people make. All that goes on in Creation is really multi-colored, and nothing is “black or white”. This is often the problem of those who want to be unlimited; they are being too narrow-minded, and they see things as “either or.”

For example, there are five levels in the soul – Nefesh, Ruach, Neshamah, Chayah and Yechidah. Yet, many people hear this concept and think that they are either just a “Nefesh”, or just a “Ruach.” They only see one part of themselves – and think that this is all there is to who they are. A person hears about what the “Neshamah” is and he might think, “I am a Neshamah”, because he identifies more with the Neshamah than with the other parts of his soul, for whatever personal reason he has.

When people think like this, they are really feeling something truthful, but they are mistaken in thinking that this is all there is to their existence.

When a person strongly identifies with a part of his soul and connects with it – whether he’s identifying with his Nefesh, or with his Ruach, or with his Neshamah, Chayah or Yechidah - this is certainly stemming from a truthful feeling, but what is wrong with what he is feeling? He is wrong in taking that feeling and thinking that “This is all there is to my existence. I am a Nefesh, or I am a Ruach, or I am a Neshamah, etc.”

Falsity Within A Truth, and Truth Within A Falsity

The Sages state the purpose of exile is so we can gain converts, and the holy sefarim explain that this is because we are supposed to gain the good from all the places of the world, so that we can pick up truthful points from all of these places. There are truthful points that we can pick up from any place in the world. So we can find truth in all countries of the world, in America, in Iceland, in Egypt, in India, in Japan. We can find truth anywhere.

But what is truth? Truth is emes, which has three letters in it – a top letter, a bottom letter, and a middle letter, to show that emes is only emes when all of the truthful points are connected. Otherwise, even if it contains truthful points, it is ultimately falsity, sheker. When we take points that are emes and we split them apart, it becomes sheker, because the truthful points aren’t being connected. Just because there are truthful points in what we come across doesn’t mean that it is total emes. It can have emes in it and still be sheker, because if we don’t know how to unify the truthful points together, in the sum total of things it is sheker.

To illustrate the idea, a person borrows a dollar and then returns it the next day to the lender. The lender comes back to him the next day and says, “You borrowed a dollar from me.” The borrower responds, “You are right, but I paid you back yesterday!” It is true that he borrowed the money, but it is sheker for the lender to demand the money again. He’s saying something true, that money was borrowed from him by this person, but it’s sheker for him to claim it today, when it was paid back yesterday.

Emes is really the power to unify all the “pieces of the puzzle” that make up the world. The Jewish nation had 70 souls who went to Egypt, and there are 70 corresponding nations of the world. What is the difference? The 70 nations of the world are 70 scattered pieces, which are not unified. Only Yaakov Avinu, who personifies the trait of emes, can be the father of 70 unified descendants. Since all the 70 souls who went down to Egypt all came from Yaakov Avinu, they were all unified by him, for his emes made him into a connecting point of all of them. The nature of emes, when it is total, is that it unifies.

So if we examine any sheker\falsity, we can find sparks of truth there, but that doesn’t make it emes\truth.

When You Heart Is Feeling A Pull Towards Something

Often, a person can feel a pull towards something, a force of meshichah (pulling) that’s pulling him after something and drawing him towards it. It can be a desire to visit a certain country, or a desire to befriend a certain person, and he feels the desire very powerfully. People feel all kinds of pulls towards certain things or various people that are tugging at their heart. And they can feel a very strong pull in their heart towards whatever it is that they feel a pull towards.

There is some truth to what they are feeling, but it is still dangerous for a person to following his heart’s feelings. There is emes in that he feels a connection to something; he is truly feeling a connection here. But the sheker here is that it will involve other connections along the way with it that are evil.

For example, a Jew might feel a strong connection in his heart with a non-Jew, and he might feel a powerful love towards him. How should he view this?

The Sages state that in the future, the non-Jews will be our servants. So it’s possible that a Jew is already feeling that connection now; so there is some emes to what he is feeling. But if he connects to the non-Jew and goes overboard in his relationship with him, he is acting improperly, so there is sheker to what he is feeling.

The Desire To Explore The World In The Name of “Kiruv”

The inner mission behind our avodah is that we need to gather together all the truthful points that are spread out over the entire world. For this reason, there are Jews everywhere in the world.

You won’t find a place in which there is no Jewish soul, because there is a truthful spark in any place in the world. There are Jews all over the world who do not even know they are Jews. However, just because this is true, that does not mean that we are the ones to engage in it. We need to know how to return them in the proper way.

People want to go to other countries of the world and learn from what they see there.  They are not totally wrong for feeling that way; Our Sages did reveal that there is a “spark of truth” in every place in the world. But the truth is only the truth when it is the complete truth. Seeing only one side of the coin, even if it contains truth, is not yet the total truth. A Jew has to know how to put together all the “puzzle pieces”, and if not, even the emes he is feeling is not emes, and it becomes sheker.

Truth Is Not Always The Total Truth

This is the really the depth of the concept of achdus [which we described in the previous chapter] – it is to take all the truthful points from all over the world and then unify them together.

One of the Sages, Rebbi Yehuda HaNassi, would honor the wealthy. His house was always set with the finest of foods, whether it was summer or winter. There are people who hear about this and feel, “If so, I will also honor wealthy people.” But just because Rebbi Yehuda HaNassi did this doesn’t mean that we know how to do this properly. He knew how to see the good in wealth, how it can be emes, but for those of us who are not on this level, it connects to the sheker involved in amassing wealth.

There are righteous Jews, chassidei umos ha’olam. And Chazal say we could have learned derech eretz (manners) from a cat. Does that mean we should connect with cats to learn derech eretz from them? Of course not. Just because there is truth that can be learned from a non-Jew or from an animal, that doesn’t mean that we should go observe them, because we do not know how to see those truths.

Thus, when the Snake told Chavah that she will become like Hashem if she eats from the Eitz HaDaas, it wasn’t totally lying to her. There was some truth to what it was saying; there is some valid need in a person to wish to escape his limits, and this needs to be channeled in the right direction, but the point is, it was not totally lying to her in its argument. If it was a total lie, then there would be nothing at all to discuss about its argument, because a lie that is baseless has no claim to it whatsoever. As the Sages state, “When sheker has no feet, it cannot stand [exist].”

So what was the sheker in its argument? The sheker was that it was saying that man can become so unlimited that he can become like G-d, which is a total sheker. So whatever truthful point that the Snake’s argument contained ended up being a total sheker.

Understanding Ourselves

Let’s go back to the example we brought earlier of a person that is too narrow-minded when it comes to understanding his soul.

If a person, for example, claims that he only has a Yechidah and he has no Chayah or Nefesh or Ruach, he is mistaken – why? If a person says that he has a Yechidah, that part of his statement is true. He is saying a truth, because the Yechidah is part of the five layers of his soul. However, when a person focuses on any one part of his soul and thinks that this is who he is, he becomes delusional.

Instead, he should see each part of his soul and realize that there is more to himself. Each part of the self needs to put into its proper place, and then a person can build himself properly.

Thus, the soul is not “black on white”; it has layer within layer, and it is very deep. We describe it generally as having five parts, but there are many, many layers to it to the dimensions in it that we can cover.  When people focus only on one part of the soul, they are only seeing one side of the coin, and this isn’t the complete picture.

Complete on the Inside, Lacking on the Outside

To give an example of this idea, the holy Zohar states that “Israel, the Torah and G-d are one”. If a person only looks at one side of the coin, he will think that the nation of Israel is God Himself (Heaven forbid)! Just because a Jew is “one” with Hashem doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have to keep mitzvos. There is a deep part in us that is connected with Hashem, but there is also a part in us which needs to serve Him and do the mitzvos.

When a person only focuses on one side of the coin, such as if he thinks that he is unlimited, his emotions become deadened. He convinces himself that he no problems, lost in his imagination.

When a person understands that he is made up of many layers, he realizes that there is a deep part in his soul which is one with Hashem, but there is an outer layer of the soul which requires observance to the mitzvos. The lower part in us lives with disparity and therefore it needs the mitzvos to unify it, while the deeper part in us is connected to the Ein Sof and lacks for nothing. But that doesn’t negate the outer parts of our soul, which require the observance of the mitzvos.

The Soul Is Complicated To “Feed”

Knowing the soul means to recognize the many layers of the soul, its many colors, because it’s not “black or white”. Every person has many layers to his existence. A person can familiarize himself with his soul layers and then know how to balance himself, and then he will know how to feed his soul properly.

I once knew a person who fed his parrot from the food in his house. He didn’t feel that he needs to give it birdfeed, and he believed that it could be fed by human food. The parrot died, of course. A person has to know to feed something properly; the same sustenance cannot be used for everything.

So too, with regards to our soul, each part of our is “fed” in a different way. The Nefesh has a certain kind of sustenance, the Ruach is fed in a certain way, and the Neshamah has certain sustenance. We all understand that just because we have a soul, that doesn’t mean we don’t need to feed our physical body. In the same vein, you can’t feed the entire soul just by developing a particular emotion that you focus on.

You can’t eat more than you need, or else it damages the body. So too, if a person engages in spiritual knowledge that is way above his current level, he damages his soul. Many people don’t know about this, and what happens? They seek to fill what they are lacking, and they find something to connect to and they attempt to let it solve all problems in their life.

To illustrate, just because a person knows about the body, that doesn’t mean he knows how to be a doctor. If he has learned one kind of medicine, that doesn’t mean his knowledge about this medicine can be used to solve all problems in life. In the same way, just because a person knows one way how to deal with the soul, because he has learned about different aspects about the soul, that doesn’t mean that he can apply his knowledge to treat all of the problems that develop in his soul. Each part of the soul is a different field of knowledge.

Even very spiritual people make this mistake. Many people focus on one point in spirituality and decide that this is their entire service to G-d. There is a lack of balance here. We cannot build up the soul based on putting emphasis just on one part of the soul.

For example, some people think that the best way to build up a healthy human soul is by taking care of the body, that it should be very healthy, and by keeping the body healthy one will keep his soul healthy. Others have the opposite view – that only through building the soul alone one builds the soul. Both of these views are incorrect. They are not totally wrong, because as we know, the body and the soul are interconnected and they can affect each other. But in the sum total of things, they are each wrong views, because each of these views is attempting to solve all problems based on one side of the coin alone.

It is senseless for a person who studies the body, who might know all about health, to think that the body’s health can solve all emotional problems of the soul. Just because a person knows all about the body doesn’t mean that all problems in life can be solved with this knowledge. You can’t use one field of knowledge to solve problems that have to do with a different field of knowledge.

The Torah incorporates both the body and the soul. There are mitzvos we do with our physical body, and there are mitzvos we do with our heart or mind. There are mitzvos we do with our speech. The Torah is the only framework of knowledge in the world which combines both body and soul and truly integrates them. There are other views in the world which deal with both body and soul and integrate them, but not quite. They only address the outer layers of the soul. Only the Torah shows us how to take care of the body as well as the soul, because only the Torah deals with the inner layers of the soul.

The other views of the world, which certainly contain truthful points to their ideologies, can only be truthful if they consider their knowledge to be parts of a puzzle. But they do not perceive their views in this way, and they instead have the attitude that their knowledge is everything, and that it can be used to solve any problem. They don’t view their tidbits of information as merely being pieces of a larger puzzle. They don’t see the bigger picture of things, and they instead focus on various “parts” of the puzzle.

Thus, there is no single “vitamin” that heals the entire soul or the entire body at once. In order to solve our problems, we need to study the entire spectrum of the soul, the whole picture of it, and then we can see where to put out knowledge into, which part of the soul’s puzzle that it fits into.

Analyzing Wealth and Opulence

We will give an example of how to apply this concept. Let’s take the great abundance we see in the world, such as wealth. How should one view wealth? Is wealth a bad thing? Is there is anything wrong with having everything?

Most of us would say yes, it is wrong to be rich, quoting the Mishnah in Avos, “Live a life of suffering.” That’s what it would seem. Others would say that it is the way of non-Jews to indulge in the world, therefore, it’s wrong to be fabulously wealthy and to live in opulence.

Yet, we find many tzaddikim (righteous people) who were wealthy, such as Shlomo HaMelech, who wrote in sefer Koheles that wealth is all “futility of futilities”, but before he came to this conclusion, he acquired much wealth. Jewish kings were required to be wealthy, and if they didn’t have wealth, the nation was obligated to make them wealthy. The kings of the Jewish people lived with opulence. Why? Isn’t it wrong to indulge?

Rabbeinu Hakadosh was also very wealthy; his table was always set with the finest of food. Why did he set his table like this every day? Why didn’t he instead just give his money to tzedakah?

It must be that there is something to it. Although we know that indulging in wealth can be evil, there is some way for it to be used for holiness, as the tzaddikim were able to do.

The point of this example is that everything is complicating, with layers upon layers of understanding. I am not suggesting that everyone here set his table with riches every day. Wealth is used for evil by people who don’t know how to use it. If the average person uses it, it becomes sheker for him, because he will misuse wealth and become indulged in it. Although nothing is wrong with wealth in essence, that doesn’t tell us that it is a way for us to live.

But we can definitely see that there is nothing wrong with wealth in essence, and we just need to know how to use it. So there is some emes to it, and we just need to know how to use it, or else it becomes sheker.

Our Avodah Preceding Moshiach: Seeing Truth and Taking It Apart

On a superficial level, we have to see how everything contains truth because we should have an ayin tovah, “good eye” on everything, and be positive-minded.

But there is a deeper reason to see good in everything. The deeper reason is because we have to reveal the truth in everything, because our people have the ability of achdus, to unify with everything.

Our avodah to achieve achdus on this world is not simply to gather in all the exiles, all the Jews in Japan and in other countries who don’t know their Jews, and to get them to realize they are Jews and bring them all to Eretz Yisrael. Our avodah of achdus is rather to gather together all the “pieces of the puzzle” on this world and see the truthful points in everything.

This is really known as the spiritual light of Moshiach, which is beginning to radiate, now that are closer to Moshiach’s arrival. The light of Moshiach, when it is revealed fully with Moshiach’s arrival, will “remove all the impurity of the world”, as the prophets state. We tend to think that Moshiach will simply remove all the evil in the world in the sense that he will come and destroy all the churches and temples of idol worship. This is true, but there is more to it. Moshiach will see the truth in everything and reveal how everything can be unified. And only Moshiach knows how to do this fully.

 As for us, we have an avodah to see the truth in everything, and then take it apart, seeing how something can be truthful and how it isn’t.

Two Conditions In Order To Continue

These words are not just for the sake of listening. In order to be inspired from what we have said here, we need to hear them in a way that will cause our soul to really grow from these concepts.

But there is a condition we need, before we continue: We need to understand ourselves, [our inner workings], before we try to see truth in whatever we see in the world. This will include knowing about all our soul’s layers.

Also, we need to see how any truthful point we have picked up from anywhere in the world is really in the Torah; we need to be able to see it all in the Torah.

From this point on, we will try to examine various points and see how they can be truthful and how they are not.

Understanding Our Unlimited Aspect

Let’s examine one example of something that contains truth to it, but it in the sum total of things, it is false.

When a person is taught in other places in the world that he can be “everything” and that he is unlimited, that he is perfect and he doesn’t have to change, we cannot say that there is no kernel of truth to this. It is true only when a person believes that deep in our soul we are one with Hashem, but at the same time, we still have to do mitzvos, because the outer layer of our soul requires the mitzvos. Without this understanding, a person’s feelings will become deadened.

In our deeper self [the Yechidah] we indeed lack nothing, for we are connected to the Creator in our essence. The deepest part of our self contains the Infinite Light of the Creator revealed in our soul, which is complete and lacks nothing, for it is unified with the Creator. This is true, but it is only correct when we also do the mitzvos.

Man is like Jacob’s ladder, which “is footed on this earth, and its head reaches the heavens”. Our head is in Heaven - but our feet are on this world, which is a world of disparity, a world that requires us to do all of the mitzvos in order to unify our being together.