The Most Beautiful Revelation
We wouldn't want to pour a thirty year-old Chateau de Rothschild Cabernet wine in a broken or dirty glass, for the wine would either spill...
When all is said and done, everything is for the very best! Concealment is a tikkun, or rectification, in and of itself, for it stimulates a person to build, yearn, and toil for new kelim, or spiritual vessels, which will enable us to absorb Divine illumination. Our ratzon – the will, efforts, and yearning to seek Hashem – is a prime vessel for the Divine illumination of emuna just as a crystal goblet is for a fine wine. We wouldn’t want to pour a thirty year-old Chateau de Rothschild Cabernet wine in a broken or dirty glass, for the wine would either spill on the floor or become ruined. A fine wine necessitates a whole and immaculately clean goblet. By the same token, without proper vessels, a person can’t receive Divine illumination. Hashem doesn’t want to spill His “fine wine” on the floor – we must be able to contain it.
Without challenges and times of difficulty in our lives, we’d never seek emuna. If someone had perfect health, plenty of money, career success, marital bliss, and wonderful children, he or she would most likely never seek Hashem. Hashem doesn’t want a person to stagnate spiritually. In that respect, concealment is a gift. The life difficulties that are manifestations of concealment stimulate prayer. Deficiency ignites effort and yearning to seek Hashem. Effort and yearning in turn build new and stronger vessels to hold the Divine illumination of emuna that brings us closer to Hashem.
Breslover tradition, handed down from teacher to pupil for the last two hundred years, teaches that in the future – after the sin of Adam is rectified – the world will be far more beautiful than it would have been had Adam never sinned.
With the aggregate of the entire world’s prayers and upheavals resulting from concealment throughout the generations, and all the world’s efforts to reveal the concealment since the dawn of mankind, imagine what beautiful new and wonderful vessels we now have, that were nonexistent before Adam sinned. These vessels will hold the illumination that reveals an exquisitely beautiful and rectified world that’s beyond our wildest dreams.
After Adam sinned, when good and evil became mixed, the world was in need of a tikkun; this tikkun requires prayer. Prayer has the power of converting extreme unholiness into a vessel of holiness.
I Cried Out from the Depths
A setback in life is really beneficial, as long as a person doesn’t lose heart from it. If a setback stimulates a new beginning and a better second effort, then it’s wonderful! Rebbe Nachman cites Jonah’s cry from deep inside the belly of the whale (see Rebbe Nachman’s Discourses, 302) as the type of prayer we should all strive for. Only the earnest cries of a broken heart can pierce all barriers, and uplift the world from the depths of impurity.
Rather than losing heart from the setback, one needs to arouse oneself and earnestly seek to reveal the concealed emuna, which makes the person – and the world – much more beautiful than if the emuna were never concealed at all. A setback and its subsequent yearning and renewed effort bring out the best in a person. Life’s extreme difficulties reveal such lofty traits as valor and dedication, which make a person and the world so much more beautiful.
In truth, nothing is more beautiful than the pure prayer of a poor person that flows forth from a broken heart. That’s why Rebbe Menachem Mendel of Kotsk would always say, “Nothing is more whole than a broken heart!”
The viceroy stood up, for he saw that the king was very troubled, and asked that he provide him with a servant, a horse, and money for the journey, and set out to search for her…
Seeing the king’s distress, the viceroy set out to search for the lost princess. This task – the search for emuna, to reveal the concealment of Divine illumination, to discover that Hashem is the King, that there’s a Creator who governs the world with a mind-boggling precision down to the tiniest detail, and that everything He does is for the very best – is the task of every one of us. Certainly, the great tzaddikim are more preoccupied with this task than the man on the street, and on a higher level than the average person, but that doesn’t prevent or exempt each of us from doing our part. Each of us must reveal his or her own private princess, his or her personal portion of emuna, and thereby contribute to the rectification of the entire world until everyone recognizes the Monarchy of Hashem.
To be continued.
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