Tanya: Chapter 16

When we awaken our souls to love and awe of HaShem, then it fills our hearts with firey love and awe as well. This excitement of the heart is already a physical phenomenon which in turn can raise up our entirely physical actions and make them spiritual.

Even more amazing is that when we only think and understand enough about HaShem to know that we should be excited, but not enough to awaken any real excitement in our hearts, then these thoughts are still too ephemeral and spirtual to affect any elevation of our physical actions.

Where HaShem's kindness truly shines is when he binds even those thoughts and ideas to our physical actions and allows them to alight as if we had actually awakened our hearts to awe and love.

The Baal Shem Tov already taught that we barely have anything to do with our mitzwoth, such that we really can't take any credit for doing them. This revellation of the Baal HaTanya takes it one step further: Even when the meager action of the mitzwah that we do is imperfect, HaShem still steps in and completes even more of the mitzwah just so that He can still give us the credit He wants us to receive.

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