9 blogs in one – seprated by * – my stuff from Friday and Today
By zevi770 · January 8, 2012
What is both beyond and within, both unlimited and limited, both spiritual and physical, both love and might, both power and unity, God
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It all boils down to the right thing at the right time
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The best description for God is Unknowable Goodness
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Life is a balance between stupidities, the body’s desire and productivity, the soul’s desire
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The goal isn’t for people to be religious, the goal is for people to choose to be religious
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We Jews have had four thousand years of experiencing the interaction of God and man.
We discovered God, we lived God, we died God and felt the wrath of the jealous people who envious of the happiness God brought to us, needed to rape, pillage, plunder and try to annihilate us.
But more importantly, looking back, as they hindsight is twenty/twenty, what have we learned that can benefit humanity living a Divine existence?
Number one, that loving God is a two-way street!
The ancients believed in idols, all you had to do is simply sacrifice, appease, and then the sun, rain, etc. was on your side; very much like a relationship between a subject and a king.
God is much more like a father and mother than a subject and king.
We are given opportunities to succeed – you get given the privilege of food, shelter, education etc. etc. but if you so choose to use this to better humanity or not, that is your choice!
Obviously God will be most pleased with a positive choice!
My grandfather once brought a group of wealthy Brazilian Jews to the Rebbe, and upon requesting that they tell him what the Rebbe said, they replied, “the Rebbe said, ‘a father loves even a handicapped child, but receives nachas, immense pride, from one who succeeds.”
In other words: God will always love us, but if we beat the demons within and without, to improve the world! this is what will make him very proud of us!!!
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The Rebbe teaches us that there is a level higher then the highest level Atzmus, the essence of God (I believe in Toildois Nun Beis)
Just as the soul has five names that it is called by, which must mean that soul itself is not any of its names, rather they are levels of the soul; but the essence of the soul transcends its names, as the name is referring to something existing already and not the quintessential existence; hence, so to, all names we give to God are merely insufficient relative to who he really is, which there is no name in which we call him.
This secret, in fact was given to Moses when he requested to know God and was told Ehyeh Asher Eyeh, meaning my names refer to what I am doing, so the name El refers to God being compassionate etc. but of course this means there is a hand behind the glove, so different actions all come from the same hand, though to us it may seem at times a bit schizophrenic as we cannot see the unifying thread that links all things.
So what is the essence of God?
Now for one to have the chutzpah to attempt such a course of explanation one must either be truly brazen or truly stupid or both – I will let you take your pick!
My humble assumption is that the essence of God is sensitivity.
Now the ability of God is infinite, hence the creation of everything we see and the infinity we don’t see; but ultimately, as I read in a Mammer the Rebbe teaches that the essential kernel behind all the various reasons given why God created the world is Daas, a intimate love, understanding, compassion, perhaps best described in the word sensitivity for you.
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People basically need unity with other people which makes you and I, everyone’s other half
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Studies into all forms of therapy and all the hundreds of different techniques used by different schools of therapy boil down to this, whatever therapy is used is of no consequence except one namely does the therapist care, so each and everyone of us who shows genuine compassion, identification, warmth, love (like the Rebbe) to another is the great therapist in the world
The Kabbalah teaches us – somewhat reworded for modern terms that there are three operating systems that can govern our lives, there is Dos, Windows and Apple.
Dos is the infantile need for being big (as Freud says, this is the infant’s greatest wish, helpless as he is, being small and relating to the human drive for independence) called ego.
There is Windows the plethora of loves and fears we have to do, or to not get harmed by, which if run unchecked the person is no different from the animal (besides that animals don’t have egos as they don’t spend countless years in a state of helplessness) called emotions.
Then there is the Apple operating system which is the rational mind which can decipher between good and bad, right and wrong and if we download God, using his wisdom, especially through going to a Mashpia (spiritual mentor schooled in Judaism and Jewish mysticism to make up for the viruses that the Dos and Windows system give us) well then we have a perfect Macintosh.
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The dance of evil
What causes someone to go to the opera – to talk British – to be condescending?
There is a feminist who writes a bunch of books the titles of which begin “the dance of…”
Coming from America where the culture is convivial and opera is mocked and arrogance despised and going to live in England and other countries I have come to the following conclusion:
Within man there is both an inborn tendency towards good and evil respectively.
When society is good that tendency is dominant.
However if society is evil – for the sake of simplicity, not good, we shall refer to as evil, for the person growing up in a not good society sees selfishness, rape, conning, pillaging etc. and hence begins to emulate his society as the Rambam states, that all people are victims of their society (but possibly positive victims in a good society) hence the evil of man is awakened.
In this stage a person loves the opera namely some idiot scorching their lungs out, loves the bullfight namely stabbing some poor bull to death, loves the coliseum watching some Jew etc. getting eaten by a lion.
The dance of evil is the dance the Arabs literally dance when a Jew or American is killed.
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A person is only as mentally healthy as they think they are
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We should never believe that when we look negatively at someone, even ourselves it is correct, for negativity is the result of having a negative worldview which colors all perceptions as the Previous Rebbe states all Jews are good (which includes yourself) so if you look negatively it is only because you have picked up negativity
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To see how blessed you are remember the darkness
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