Blinding Yourself in Order to See

A single request in 120 years

Va'etchanan literally means to beg, to plead, to pray. And the one pleading is Moshe. Michael Berg is careful to establish the weight of that before anything else: Moshe's entire life was given to the Israelites, in the times they loved him and in the times they hated him. In 120 years, he never asked for anything for himself.

Now, at the end of his life, he makes one request. Only one. Let me cross over and see that land. The word וָאֶתְחַנַּן has the numerical value of 515, and the kabbalists teach that he prayed for this 515 times.

And the answer that comes is רַב־לָךְ, which in literal translation sounds like: stop. Stop asking, stop pleading, stop praying.

The paradox of Sinai

Later in the portion, Moshe retells the revelation at Sinai, the moment meant to be the map back to the world as it should be, without the chaos, pain, suffering and death that prevail today.

And he says the mountain burned with fire to the heart of the heavens. It was not physical fire alone, it was a Light so strong it rose from this world to the highest place. Two or three words later, he says the exact opposite: darkness, cloud and thick fog.

Michael Berg presses on the incompatibility, because the whole teaching is born from it. In the physical world there is either great revelation or great darkness. Both happen in anyone's life, but not in the same instant. Here, they do.

Which of the two was it, Moshe? The answer is: both. And what decides which one you live is not the moment. It is your eyes.

The eyes that opened to the illusion

To answer, Michael Berg turns to the Zohar of the week, Section 33. Rav Elazar and Rav Chiya are walking (the sages of the Zohar almost never study sitting down, it is while walking that the revelations reach them) and they speak of Adam and Chava, the first two consciousnesses that awakened to connect to the Light of the Creator.

After the fall, the text says: and the eyes of both were opened. Michael Berg stops on that sentence. When someone today says "finally my eyes are open," they mean they had been seeing something false and now see what is true. Opening the eyes is always good.

The Zohar completes the sentence: their eyes opened to see this illusory physical world. It is not that they began to see better. It is that they began to see the illusion, and the illusion became their experience.

Before the fall, they saw only the supernal

The Zohar says that before this, Adam and Chava's eyes did not see the illusion of this world. They did not see the darkness or the pain that we see. They saw only the Light. They lived in the physical world, but they did not experience the physical world with the consciousness we have. Their true perception was that of the Upper Worlds.

Here is the axis of everything, and it is worth reading slowly: consciousness is the way we experience life. The fall did not change the world. It changed the eyes. And because the eyes changed, life changed with them.

This is why the Zohar says a person cannot reach real connection with the Light of the Creator until they exchange physical eyes for spiritual eyes. It is not a lovely metaphor. It is the condition.

"I will lead the blind in a way"

The Zohar then brings verses from Yeshayahu, chapter 42, and this is where the entire logic inverts. The Creator describes the final state of spiritual development like this: I will lead the blind by a way they did not know.

And who is that blind one? The verse answers: no one is as blind as My servant, the one who is close to Me, the one I send to do My work in this world.

Only those who have blinded themselves to the illusion of this world find paths of Light they could not previously imagine. What they once experienced as darkness becomes an experience of great Light. The obstacles they saw in the way are made level. Those who go deaf to this world, hear. Those who go blind to this world, see.

Rav Ashlag: there is no insignificant moment

Michael Berg closes with what he calls one of his favorite revelations, and one of the strangest. Rav Ashlag teaches that everything, from the smallest creation and the smallest action to the most magnificent experience, is connected to everything, connected to the infinite Light of the Creator, connected to the path that carries us to the Gemar haTikkun, the End of Correction.

And he takes it to the uncomfortable extreme, quoting the question the ancient philosophers posed: how can a camel urinating on an anthill, and the ants drowning, be connected to the Light of the Creator? Rav Ashlag answers without softening it: whoever asks that question has no understanding of the Light of the Creator, because they find it incongruous that greatness would be involved with the insignificant.

Michael Berg admitted his own embarrassment at bringing this into the connection room, on a Shabbat, minutes before the reading of the Torah. And that is precisely the point. The terrible fallacy is believing that insignificant moments exist, moments not completely filled with infinite Light.

The tool is a mantra repeated a thousand times

Here the class stops being teaching and becomes instruction, and Michael Berg was blunt about the cost: this will be hard work.

Something is going to happen this week. You will want something to happen, you will direct energy toward it, you may even pray for it, because you are a person who does spiritual work. And it will not happen. In that instant you have a choice. Either you look with the eyes of after the fall and say "what a dark moment, what a clouded moment." Or you remember.

"But I cannot see it." That is fine, you are not there yet. Michael Berg is clear: you will have to tell yourself that story first, a hundred times, a thousand times, even while your physical eyes disagree. It is the repetition that exchanges the eyes.

He gave the most domestic example possible. His son David said, on one day of that week, "I am not feeling inspired today." And the answer was this same one. That very moment, the one of complete uninspiration, is a moment of unbelievable revelation. If you still cannot see it, it is because you are not training your eyes.

"Moshe, I will give you far more"

And now the portion resolves. The kabbalists teach that Moshe did not want a piece of physical ground. His desire was pure: he believed that by entering the land of Israel he would rise to a higher spiritual level. And he would have risen. A little more Light, a little more blessing.

The answer רַב־לָךְ was not a no. Michael Berg reads it with one of the great kabbalists: Moshe, you are asking for too little. I will not give you little. I will give you far more, far beyond your desire, even beyond your conscious desire. And I will give it to you now.

Anyone watching from outside, with the eyes of this world, would see the saddest scene in the Torah: the most selfless man who ever lived makes one request and hears no. That is the false sight. Moshe received infinitely more than he asked for. And Moshe was able to see it.

And this is why the Gemar haTikkun, the End of Correction, is not an external event. It is not someone arriving, nor something happening to the world. Our eyes will change, and the eyes of the world will change, and we will finally see what was always happening.