R' Ashlag Ch. 29 (sect. 1)

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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29.

1.

"Now we can finally begin to resolve our second inquiry, about the role we play in the great course of events that we’re such minor players in, in the short span of our days (see 1:3)."

-- This inquiry is crucial for our purposes, for it sums up our raison d'être and offers us direct guidance in how we’re to draw close to G-d, which is the point of it all. We'll be occupied with it for the next few chapters.

"Know, that our lifelong Divine service is divided into four stages. The first centers on our acquiring the comprehensive ratzon l’kabel in full measure along with all the impurity (it garnered) from the four worlds of defiled-A.B.Y.A. (Why would we have to attain it, seeing how foul it is?) Because we couldn’t rectify this corrupt ratzon l’kabel if we didn’t have it, since 'no one can rectify something he doesn’t have'".

-- We're passive participants in the first of the four stages of our spiritual development, since all we do, ironically, is take in the ratzon l’kabel -- the willingness to only take in -- in detail.
-- And we'd have to accept it in order to ultimately reject it. After all, how could we reject it if we didn't first know it? The first point, then, is that our having and internalizing wrong and un-G-dliness is inevitable to our being, and to our growth.

"But (know,too, that) the degree of ratzon l’kabel that’s granted (us) at birth isn’t enough (for our purposes). (So) it has to serve as a vehicle for the impure husks for no less than thirteen years. That means to say that the husks must control our ratzon l’kabel and grant it the husks’ lights (for that length of time), since those lights augment it. For the satisfaction that the husks supply the ratzon l’kabel increase and broaden its demands."

-- Even though R' Ashlag had originally termed the native ratzon l’kabel "comprehensive" and "full measure(d)", and said that it had "all the impurity (it garnered) from the four worlds of defiled-A.B.Y.A.", that's not to say it's the consummate ratzon l’kabel. For this native ratzon l’kabel will prove to be an obscure hint of its full and ugly self. For it can only come to fruition after having come into this world; for it was only potentially full until then.
-- Indeed, we'd need to allow in a more lumbering heftier ratzon l’kabel with each and every ugly, self-indulgent, mean detail, if we're to rectify it. For we'd have to experience the ratzon l’kabel in its entirety, in all its hideousness, in order to know it to be detrimental and objectionable (or else we'd bear with it, or just be annoyed by it). For only after having had our fill of it can we utterly reject it. Since "no one can rectify something he doesn’t have" and want to spurn.
-- That's why the native ratzon l’kabel must serve as a "vehicle (i.e., an instrument) for the impure husks for no less than thirteen years", until we ourselves can become "vehicles" for mitzvot. And it's why the native ratzon l’kabel must be controlled and emboldened by the impure husks that engorge and fatten it so.

(c) 2005 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

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