Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 20
Correction With a Gentle Guiding Touch: The Inner, Middle, and Outer Desire
It is not our role to judge ourselves as strong or weak, brave or cowardly, wise or foolish. We need to exert ourselves to the best of our ability in the developmental process according to our inclinations and inner nature.
It is written, “The prayer of every mouth.” This means that the Creator hears every person’s prayer. In other words, it does not matter who we are or what we feel; we each, with our own feelings, and even deeper, in our heart, pray to the Creator. This deficiency influences our attitude to the Creator and the Creator’s attitude toward us.
In the heart, there is an upper and outer layer through which we feel our desires, and through which we can direct them to the Creator. For instance, we might want to appeal to the Creator with a specific desire that belongs to spiritual work, which is directed at the purpose of creation. Such a desire, albeit external and artificial since we have awakened it, is received above. However, to the extent that it is external for us, it is also external above.
If we delve deeper and examine our innermost desire, by assessing what our heart truly wants, we might discover that our heart does not long for the object of our prayer. We might find that we actually desire rest or some small pleasure instead of treading the path toward the purpose of creation and aiming at lofty matters. Such a feeling is also part of the prayer. The more we expose our innermost desire, the more it is received above.
In the heart, there is an even deeper inner desire that is beyond the level of our awareness and sensation. It is entirely hidden from us. But because it is the innermost, truest, and deepest desire, it is fully received above with its entire power and strength. When a response to this prayer, this hidden desire, comes from above, it is rarely understood.
Everyone exists at every moment in a state that results from the feeling in their heart, which stems from their prayer. However, we do not know how to connect the inner, middle, and outer prayers of the heart with the Creator’s response, as we are unaware of our heart’s deepest desire.
If we were aware of this desire and felt it, even from our current state, based on our present qualities and feelings, we would understand the extent to which we diverge from what we should feel in order to progress toward the purpose of creation. If we felt this deviation, we would know what specific correction needs to be made from above, and we would then understand the spiritual states the Creator sends us to receive through which we become corrected. However, for now, such states are concealed from us.
Nevertheless, at all times and in every state, we raise a prayer, MAN, and receive MAD in return. In other words, what rises from our heart is received above in the general system, which also contains the mechanism that operates on us personally. The response returns to us, which is essentially a correction of direction. It is our next spiritual state, which is aligned with our soul’s root and the purpose we need to reach.
Before we engage in spirituality, we lack the understanding and feeling that this mechanism operates in such a way. However, when we enter spirituality, we start seeing it clearly, and begin working closely with MAN and MAD. We form a reciprocal relationship with the Creator, which connects us to Him and which dictates our every action and our life’s course. This is called “half a shekel.” Half of the work is given by the person and half by the Creator.
Baal HaSulam provides an example of farmers in the Negev who are entirely unaware of the prayer they raise. Nonetheless, their request for rain is received above, and they receive the response below. Every layer of our heart—the inner, middle, and outer—rises upward, and it becomes felt and received by the mechanism responsible for bringing every created being to its correction and root. Accordingly, we correct the heart, which is our desire through various external conditions that continuously correct our direction toward the purpose of creation.
The more the inner desire is directed precisely at the purpose of creation, the more delicate the correction of the direction will be. That is, it will be a small and soft correction, felt as a gentle, guiding touch, like a mother tenderly supporting her child while it is learning to walk. The greater the deviation between the heart’s content and the feeling in our current state toward the purpose of creation, the more significant the correction will be and the more painful the effort to bridge the gap between the present and the desired state. We then feel the force that guides us to goodness in a more severe way, because the environmental conditions we are placed in become more challenging.
This mechanism of MAN and MAD from souls toward Malchut of Atzilut and the returning influence on the souls is a simple mechanism that we study in the book The Study of the Ten Sefirot.
Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 19
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 18
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 17
