Why Is It So Hard?

The Tanya likens the soul to a flame.  

How does a flame survive? By performing the ultimate act of self-nullification.  

Take a stick and light the top on fire. You have yourself a nice little flame.  

But how long with that flame last? A few minutes? An hour? 

Throw the stick into a big campfire and you have a huge flame. It will last a lot longer. It’s brighter. It’s hotter. It’s stronger.  

The flame survived by surrendering its exclusive existence into a greater whole. That small flame is no longer. It’s part of a bigger flame.  

This is the story of our soul.  

Our life goal is to connect our soul to Hashem like a flame to a fire. The goal of our being is to realize that despite the illusion of the independent stick, each one of us is a flame, and that flame’s destiny is to merge into the Infinite Source of light.  

Hear, O Israel, Hashem, our God, Hashem is One.  

The Schema is the eternal statement that everything physical and everything spiritual is already part of that great flame.  

Burning Desire 

Is it our mission to nullify our bodies for the sake of the fire? 

No.  

The flame feeds off the material to grow. The more material, the greater the fire. But you need the right material. You can’t light a fire using a computer keyboard. A Smartphone won’t stoke the flames.  

You need simple material like wood. You need things not weighed down by too much water, like dry wood.  

By refining your physical actions, you transform yourself into a burnable substance. The fire within you is able to grow beyond yourself. It reaches physical and spiritual heights.  

Then, it disappears.  

This is the hard part. The greatest personal achievement in this world is to become nothing.  

Like Moshe.  

He was the humblest man on earth. He had to be in order to fulfill the mission.  

It’s easy to mistake Moshe as the main focus of our Exodus from Mitzrayim. God is the main focus. He brought down the United States in order to let its most helpless people walk through the Atlantic Ocean that He split to settle the Holy Land.  

It was Hashem Who overthrew the entire earth. Egypt was the most powerful empire at the time.  

For the sake of His Torah, God erased the greatest empire. He reduced the richest, strongest, most impenetrable empire to ashes for the sake of His mitzvot.  

The Challenge  

Everything we do in this world that bolsters the self, negates our mission. We have to understand that we are players on His stage. We are sojourners in His world.  

The more we use our material self and the resources we have to serve God, the greater our fire rages in relation to our bodies and all they possess.  

This is the true challenge of life. It’s more than humility, it’s nullification.  

The end goal of life is to merge with God, to become One with Him. The more we see in ourselves, the more distinct we become, and the harder it is to reintegrate into His fire.  

That’s why every physical act we do must include Hashem.  

We wake up to serve God. We eat to have the strength to serve God. We learn to connect to God. We earn livelihood to perform His mitzvot and raise our children to serve God.  

The more we recognize God in everything that we do, the more Godliness we see in everything. The more Godliness we see in everything, the clearer we understand that God is One and His Name is One.  

It’s not easy.  

Facebook is all about how great you are. LinkedIn is about what wonderful things you are doing. Smartphones exist to constantly alert you to this, that, and the other reason why you are so important.  

This has to be one of the hardest tests of all time.  

Antisemitism Unearthed 

We, the Jewish People, are the one nation on earth with these instructions Divinely burned into our DNA. The nations of the world don’t have this. They are programmed to their own greatness. They are guided to their own pleasures.  

The concept of any type of self-nullification is abominable to the people of Egypt, Canaan, Greece, Rome, Europe, and America.  

We are different.  

We represent the truth – regardless of whether or not we are living it.  

Our existence reminds us all that God is the King of the earth. We are all bound by His laws and subject to His will.  

To the Jewish People, this is wonderful news. To the other nations, this is a national tragedy.  

That’s why they hate us.  

They stand for the greatness of the physical being. We stand for the greatness of God. They champion the greatness of what one has is what one is. First and foremost, we acknowledge that regardless of anything we do or don’t do, we are nothing but a spark of his Great Light.  

Throughout the generations, they have attempted to triumph with their man-made strength. Greece lost. Rome lost. Europe lost. Canaan lost. Egypt lost. America will ultimately lose.  

We are commanded to remember the day we left Egypt to remember Hashem’s eternal command to His children: 

Light will always triumph over might – so subdue your might to stoke your light.   

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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his family, a high-tech center, millions of sunflowers, and Matilda, the local camel. David’s Israeli startup, Center Stage Content, makes your business the star of the show by creating SEO optimized, ROI driven, easy to understand content.