| Kabbalah
and Education A Kabbalistic Approach to Spiritual Growth |
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| Kabbalah and Jewish Meditation |
Part
28 Beyond our immediate goal of waiting for the Messiah, what, ultimately, are we waiting for? According to Isaiah, we wait for "that promise of the future which God has prepared for us"--the realization of the essence of God and the perfection of our souls, both individually and collectively--a reality which already exists in a spiritual dimension above time. Yet, if this is so, it would seem that we are waiting for something that is impossible. The essence of God negates revelation. His ways can be known, but His essence cannot. The entire history of creation is based on this principle. According to Kabbalah, there is a level where God exists in a state of Endless Light (Or Ein Sof), where all is uniformly and absolutely saturated with His radiance. Relative existence--form and physicality--cannot exist there, being overwhelmed and annihilated by this power of illumination, in the same way that the individual lights of the stars are washed out by the more potent radiance of the sun. In order to create the physical universe, God needed first, from our perspective, to withdraw His Infinite Light from a particular area and to create a dark, womb-like vacuum. Into this "empty space" he radiated a thin ray of light--the unfolding and dissipation of which is the history and evolution of creation as we know it. For
us, to long for the essence of God, for His Infinite Light, is to desire
that which cannot be contained or apprehended by a created being, to seek
that which will consume our very existence. Nevertheless, nothing else will
satisfy this passion. By exertion of faith and effort below, we hope to
arouse the gift of light and insight from above, to draw that which is
prepared yet concealed into revelation in the here and now. Inspiration
awakens this taste or passion to reveal and experience God, initiating us
into the discipline of "waiting,"
while proper
integration develops our selflessness. When
we are first inspired, we feel the exhilaration of experiencing an
impression of God beyond what we have known before. At this point we are
susceptible to delusions of grandeur as we reflect upon the wonder of what
we have felt and learned. Kabbalah cautions us to counter this conceit by
remembering the vanity of human effort and the insignificance of our
accomplishments. After all this, "What (mah) do we really know? What
(mah) has our quest unearthed?" This is the way of selflessness--to
double and redouble the effort of purging the ego. In so doing, we actually
become part of the Messianic consciousness for which we wait. For what (mah)
are we if not our collective perfection that will
become a living reality in the Messianic end of days? The
Messiah's delay is only the appearance from without, for the reality within
is one of steady progress. So it is with us. Often change manifests itself
in fits and starts. Efforts and struggles may seem to have no lasting effect
for long periods of time and yet, invisibly, their impact is accumulating on
subconscious levels. It looks like we have made no progress, yet at some
critical point the balance tips and a major, quantum leap of growth and
consciousness becomes apparent. This initiation into a still deeper level of
knowing God must again be deflected from feeding the ego's sense of
self-importance, and the spiral continues. The
initial task of the educator to inspire his students is an external,
circumstantial one of exposing the students to a new taste in such a way as
to arouse their interest. The educator baits the hook, sometimes with candy
and sometimes with more sophisticated and subtle inducements--whatever will
work to excite his students' curiosity. Then the educator pulls back,
drawing the students into a more responsible role of actively pursuing their
interest. This is the delicate balance of pushing and pulling that is the
theme of education. The students learn that they must wait for each new
layer of understanding by internalizing their already acquired knowledge of
Torah and by contemplating more deeply those things that are already
revealed. Through
these efforts, the students' longing becomes more poignant, more precise,
and more potent. Finally, the educator reveals that the limiting factor
pacing this process is not age or intelligence level, but rather the
students' degree of selflessness and surrender to God. With
time, the students learn that each progressive revelation of truth is a gift
of grace to those who find favor in the eyes of God through deep, sincere,
submission of soul. When the ego is evicted, that "space" becomes
immediately filled with the sweetness and light of God. In the midst of
struggle, the task of dismantling the ego seems to demand excruciating
self-sacrifice, yet when they finally taste the sweetness of success, the
deepened sense of union with God more than compensates.
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