Walking Through The Dark Cellar With The Light Of A Candle

newworld.jpg The Zohar: All the ways of the Creator are right, and His ways are true. Hence, “the just do walk in them,” since they know the ways of the Creator and engage in Torah, and anyone who engages in the corrections of the Torah knows the ways of the Torah and walks in them, and does not stray right or left. But transgressors do stumble therein.

This is not speaking about the material world, but only about a person’s soul if he uses all the possible means and his entire strength to try to attract the Light of Correction in order to merge with the Creator. A person wants to walk the right path, but along the way he sometimes experiences night and sometimes day.

That is why all of the “transgressors” described in the Torah (Esau, Bilam, Balak, Ahasuerus, the primal Serpent, the Pharaoh), as well as the “righteous” (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David) emerge in a person. He falls into a state of darkness, fear, war, troubles, and then he awakens, succeeds and advances forward. Then he goes through the same cycle again and again. He “sins” numerous times on the spiritual path because he has to reveal his entire uncorrected desire and feel how opposite it is to the spiritual goal. Only after that can he learn what kind of Light he needs in order to correct his desire and turn it into a bestowing one.

We don’t have any other matter through which to study what the Creator made and how He is acting inside us; we can only do so through the desire to enjoy, through empty, evil shells that are revealed in us. We can then convert the evil to goodness with the help of the Light to the degree that we gain knowledge about how to do this. A person has to sin first in order to understand that he uses his desire to enjoy for the sake of evil – against everyone and against the Creator. He then sees that he is full of egoism and it rules over him. While going though these states he is called a “transgressor,” and by correcting them he becomes “righteous.” So let us hope that we will become the transgressors about which the Torah is telling us, since these are elevated spiritual states.

These states come to a person who is ready to see his evil, provided that he does not submit to it but rather feels and discerns it. A special Light shines upon him, allowing him to discern the darkness inside himself. Similar to how we check Chometz with a candle light before the holiday of Pesach, a person should descend into the dark cellar within and, aided by the light of a candle, begin checking where is Chometz and where is food that is fit for Pesach.

Only the bestowing Kelim are good for Pesach, while all the rest is forbidden. We need at least a tiny candle light in order to go down to the cellar and begin checking it. That is how we prepare ourselves to exit from our inner Egypt. By revealing and checking the evil within, a person takes a step forward and comes out of the exile from the Upper World.

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