Lawlessness knocks down the man-made boundaries we set to outline the pursuits of happiness and pleasure in time and space |
Without an understanding of the potential we have to experience pleasure based on gluing imagination to emulating the 13 Attributes of Mercy, the pleasure inherent in the soul becomes captured by the native intellect and associates with matters of time and space, mistaking temporary relief, moments of elation, comfort, fulfillment of appetite and other creature comforts as pleasure. What choice the soul has is zero without Torah. With Torah, we have an opening to the intellect we need to experience the pleasure mankind can achieve -not a hedonistic pleasure, but a transcendant pleasure of the soul that the body can also delight in. Without Torah, the moments of being right and subjugating others to our goals is what comes from the side of the native intellect. Yet in the end, if we could get absolutely everyone to subjugate to us, a week later, where would we derive our happiness from? Inherently the matter must be seen and the intellect wise enough to realize the deception and seek to upgrade the intellect that forms our emotions, speech and deeds. |
Blame and shame are tools of humiliation, threatening abandonment or annihilation or both, triggering a hollow feeling within us. The more we come to see this at the root of every downward pull, the more we are able to unmask the deceiver and reach upwards to reconnect the part of us that has been deceived to truth and to the potential experience of pleasure in folding our rescued soul into speech and deeds that actually reveal the 13 attributes of mercy, flowing transcendant pleasure through us. There are no shortcuts. But we can begin to use the prayers to help us. We have the Torah that tells us to hunt for this pleasure and not to let go of emulating the 13 attribures of mercy with our imagination always clinging to that as what we aspire to. We can find the root of our downward pulls in fear of abandoment or fear of annihilation and then rescue our souls from its clutches with prayer and free willed choice!! |