As I think about life it occurs to me that it’s all so simple it’s perhaps even ironic
By zevi770 · March 9, 2012
Life is basically based on three principles, the fear / desire principle (we fear pain, desire pleasure,) the pride / shame principle (we want to be proud of ourselves and we abhor shame) and the good i.e. right vs. wrong i.e. bad, principle, i.e. our soul knows and we instinctively sense good and bad and we instinctively on A SOUL LEVEL WANT TO DO GOOD AND NOT BAD!
Theses three principles are in conflict with one another.
But there is one principle that if we embrace it, all of the conflict falls away, we lack pain and we have pleasure, we lack shame and we have pride in ourselves and of course it is good and not bad.
What can possibly encompass all of this?!
Sometimes people sacrifice pleasure for God or their religious interpretation of God, sometimes people sacrifice goodness, a meaningful productive giving life, for pleasure, and almost all people sacrifice both, for not to feel ashamed and to feel proud of themselves, in other words to fit in.
Only by not giving a … what people think, as the Baal Shem Tov’s father told him – the foundation of Chassidus, Jewish mystical wisdom, the wisdom of truth, that gets to the heart of truth – “fear no one but God” and furthermore if one follows the next piece of advice as ones spiritual destiny which the Baal Shem Tov certainly fulfilled, teaching, one should contemplate that which brings one to love their fellow Jew and this is the fulfillment of the all important commandment, the principle upon which all of Judaism rests, to love your fellow Jew as yourself, as his father told him, “love every Jew with all the fire of your heart and soul!”
As the Rebbe states, there are three loves a Jew is engendered to contemplate hence create (for contemplating the greatness of another creates a love / respect towards them) the love of God, the love of Torah study / wisdom, and the love of a fellow Jew, if one begins in God or Torah study one may not reach the love of a fellow Jew, however if one begins in loving one’s fellow Jew one is guaranteed to arrive at the other two.