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.
Showing posts with label mitzvot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mitzvot. Show all posts
Tanya: Chapter 5
Here we drive home the concept that performing the mitzwoth, whether through speech or action, enclothes us in HaShem's divine Will. This echoes the concept of being hugged by HaShem mentioned in the previous chapter. Later on towards the end of the sefer he describes more of the metaphysics involved. That each of the 613 Torah ordinances and the 7 Rabbinic ordinances make up one of the 620 (gematriah of Keter) columns of pure light radiated from Keter. (the highest of the Sefirot) Each one of these columns of light enclothes one aspect of the soul's 613 limbs and sinews. These columns of light are the clothes of our soul in the world to come.
Still, the focus of this chapter is a deeper even more unique relationship that can be had with HaShem. Through the speech of one's lips during Torah study these spiritual clothes are formed, yes. But, through the depth of our understanding of the Torah's system of thought, our mind is impregnated with HaShem's divine Will. Torah learning, in this way, creates a union otherwise impossible in this physical world: To be totally encompassed AND encompass something to be touched and be touching every part of something simultaneously. This experience is possible only through Torah study.
[Intellectually] Grasping HaShem's Torah fills us with HaShem's Will, and just like food, it becomes a part of us, and makes us a part of Him. (We learned elsewhere [see a waxing wellspring: if you cant join em beat em] that food has the power either to become more like you or make you more like it. In the case of God's Will as food, I have to conclude that the relationship always works to make you more like God and not vice versa.) This Torah, the Baal HaTanya explains, is the food of the world to come.
For this reason, Torah needs to be read aloud when learning. The reading aloud is the action and the action itself becomes the clothes of our soul in Gan Eden. The lesson we internalize, the thought becomes the food of our soul in Gan Eden. The Zohar/Arizal explains that this is the essence of learning Torah "l'shmah" for its own sake - learning Torah for the sake of the soul.
Still, the focus of this chapter is a deeper even more unique relationship that can be had with HaShem. Through the speech of one's lips during Torah study these spiritual clothes are formed, yes. But, through the depth of our understanding of the Torah's system of thought, our mind is impregnated with HaShem's divine Will. Torah learning, in this way, creates a union otherwise impossible in this physical world: To be totally encompassed AND encompass something to be touched and be touching every part of something simultaneously. This experience is possible only through Torah study.
[Intellectually] Grasping HaShem's Torah fills us with HaShem's Will, and just like food, it becomes a part of us, and makes us a part of Him. (We learned elsewhere [see a waxing wellspring: if you cant join em beat em] that food has the power either to become more like you or make you more like it. In the case of God's Will as food, I have to conclude that the relationship always works to make you more like God and not vice versa.) This Torah, the Baal HaTanya explains, is the food of the world to come.
For this reason, Torah needs to be read aloud when learning. The reading aloud is the action and the action itself becomes the clothes of our soul in Gan Eden. The lesson we internalize, the thought becomes the food of our soul in Gan Eden. The Zohar/Arizal explains that this is the essence of learning Torah "l'shmah" for its own sake - learning Torah for the sake of the soul.
Tanya: Chapter 4
What is the Torah? The Torah is HaShem's Will, tightened, focused, constricted until from Its humble presentation as ink on paper, we can bear witness to His true greatness.
HaShem is crouching impossibly low so that His first born son can reach up and grasp at Him with the tips of his stubby little newborn fingers. When we reach up, He picks us up, embraces us ever so gently and fills us with light.
Every time we open our mouths to say a berachah, open our hands to give tzedakah, open our minds to explore the Torah, we are reaching up. Thought, Speech, and Action. Three ways to bring the Torah into us, three ways to wrap the Torah around us. Each way appropriate and essential to a corresponding part of our soul.
Our souls are rooted (the Alter Rebbe explains towards the end of the sefer) in HaShem's Wisdom, two steps from th essence of creation. But the Torah is the first leap, it is God's Will. Our little Godly soul, rooted in the supernal Wisdom takes infinite pleasure being wrapped up in its source, the Divine Will.
This is an extravagant pleasure available to the soul only here in this world. In the world to come, our souls will enjoy without bound the flow of divine influx -- each soul in accordance with what their merits will bear. But in this world, this dark place of absolute opposites, a lofty soul of light in a body hewn of darkness, here God embraces us totally.
There isn't anything else like it. Not even in the world to come.
With every moment of mitzwah performance and Torah study we are experiencing spiritual ecstacy, performing what is patently impossible -- hugging the Creator, the Sustainer of all that is.
Note that the quality and depth of this experience is directly related to our mitzwah performance in thought and speech as well as in deed. The thought component of a mitzwah is learning the Torah, the halachoth that pertain to that mitzwah. The speech component is the Berachah, where relevant, or the speaking of the halachot aloud while you learn. The action component is the physical act of mitzwah performance, sometimes this is as little as the motion of one's lips while learning.
Again the highest level of this experience depends on the depth of one's study of the halachoth pertaining to each mitzwah, and the coincident performance and perfection of all the mitzwoth.One incomplete mitzwah holds us back from our true potential. The mitzwoth have a cumulative and amplifying affect, performing 612 is not even comparable to performing all 613. All the same, even just a single mitzwah effects the union we described here, and this union is inconceivable, incalculably precious.
HaShem is crouching impossibly low so that His first born son can reach up and grasp at Him with the tips of his stubby little newborn fingers. When we reach up, He picks us up, embraces us ever so gently and fills us with light.
Every time we open our mouths to say a berachah, open our hands to give tzedakah, open our minds to explore the Torah, we are reaching up. Thought, Speech, and Action. Three ways to bring the Torah into us, three ways to wrap the Torah around us. Each way appropriate and essential to a corresponding part of our soul.
Our souls are rooted (the Alter Rebbe explains towards the end of the sefer) in HaShem's Wisdom, two steps from th essence of creation. But the Torah is the first leap, it is God's Will. Our little Godly soul, rooted in the supernal Wisdom takes infinite pleasure being wrapped up in its source, the Divine Will.
This is an extravagant pleasure available to the soul only here in this world. In the world to come, our souls will enjoy without bound the flow of divine influx -- each soul in accordance with what their merits will bear. But in this world, this dark place of absolute opposites, a lofty soul of light in a body hewn of darkness, here God embraces us totally.
There isn't anything else like it. Not even in the world to come.
With every moment of mitzwah performance and Torah study we are experiencing spiritual ecstacy, performing what is patently impossible -- hugging the Creator, the Sustainer of all that is.
Note that the quality and depth of this experience is directly related to our mitzwah performance in thought and speech as well as in deed. The thought component of a mitzwah is learning the Torah, the halachoth that pertain to that mitzwah. The speech component is the Berachah, where relevant, or the speaking of the halachot aloud while you learn. The action component is the physical act of mitzwah performance, sometimes this is as little as the motion of one's lips while learning.
Again the highest level of this experience depends on the depth of one's study of the halachoth pertaining to each mitzwah, and the coincident performance and perfection of all the mitzwoth.One incomplete mitzwah holds us back from our true potential. The mitzwoth have a cumulative and amplifying affect, performing 612 is not even comparable to performing all 613. All the same, even just a single mitzwah effects the union we described here, and this union is inconceivable, incalculably precious.
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