Friendship with the Light

The Creator drops by just to ask how you are

Michael Berg opens by speaking of how the portions of Beresheet are dense with Light and wisdom, and how, each year, we build one more layer of our spiritual foundation as we read the story of the patriarchs.

In Vayera, Avraham is advanced in age, on the third day after the circumcision, known as the hardest. The Light of the Creator is revealed to him. Why? Rashi cites an ancient kabalist, Rabi Chama bar Hanina: the Creator came only to ask how Avraham was.

Michael points out how strange this is. We almost always go to the Light for reasons that matter: healing, blessing, livelihood. Here there is no great reason. The Creator walks into Avraham's home like a friend. Avraham wants to stand up out of respect, and the answer is: shev ve'ani amod, you stay seated, I will stand.

The question he leaves us with: what is the secret of this friendship? And, for us, how do we develop one?

Servant and king, or friends

Michael recalls that the Ramban sees in this relationship the beginning of a friendship that passes from Avraham to Yitzchak and to Yaakov and, he hopes, reaches us. That is why the seed of this Shabbat's Light is friendship, more than connection.

Then he asks: what is your relationship with the Creator? For most of us, it is give and take. We go to Him when we need health, livelihood, a problem solved. The kabalists explain that, after Adam's sin, the Light of the Creator became transcendent: above, looking down, and we seek It the way a servant seeks his master.

There is a deeper level, which the kabalists call immanent: the Light of the Creator everywhere, all the time, with you, like a friend. It is not easy work, but it is where we want to arrive. Michael says this is the Shabbat to ask that question honestly.

Friendship is the effect of an exchange

Michael explains that this Shabbat feeds on the end of the previous portion: the brit, the covenant of circumcision. The secret of the covenant is also the secret of friendship with the Light.

He cites the Ohr HaChaim: when a person truly does spiritual work, he removes from himself the thoughts of the physical, of the Desire to Receive for the Self Alone, or of the ego. You cannot receive true Light without exchanging something for it.

With the circumcision, Avraham said: I will give something, an action that brings me pain and great discomfort, to draw in the Light of the Creator. Friendship, the constant presence of the Light, is only the effect of that exchange. And for it to be constant, the exchange has to be as well: there is always a part of me that I remove, hand over, and into that space the true relationship enters.

Blessed in moments of connection, or in every moment

The kabalists have an expression, bizman hi asikba: when you connect actively, you draw in a blessing. But what about the seconds when you are not connecting? And the moments when you are only walking, or only existing?

Michael does not condemn the lower-level connection when we need it. But for every moment of life to be blessed, friendship is needed. And the way is to ask one question, always: what am I exchanging so that the Light of the Creator can enter?

It does not have to be big. It can be saying: this person needs my help, and I put myself in an uncomfortable position to help them. Giving up something physical, emotional or spiritual. It is in that place that the Light enters, in a constant circle of friendship.

The choice, he says, is about the kind of life we want: one in which 60% or 70% is blessed, whenever we make our connections, or the constant friendship that Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov had.

With friendship, the Light arrives without the shell

Michael cites the Sefat Emet: everything around us has Light and a shell around it, the klipá, also called orlá. Every relationship, every situation. Having friendship with the Creator means that only the truth, not the falsehood that surrounds it, is revealed to you.

For most of us it is different. We have moments of connection and draw in Light, but the blessing arrives with the shell around it, and we first live through the shell. Michael tells of someone who, this week, received a very disturbing phone call and asked: why is this happening to me? The next day, an enormous blessing entered his life. He wrote: if I have to receive that call every day to have this blessing the next morning, I accept.

Why did he have to live through the blockage at night? Because every blessing that arrives has a shell. And without immanent friendship, the Light is not always there to show only the Light inside the situation. That is the choice we make: a life with 60% blessed and 30% or 40% not knowing why we go through it, or a life in which the Light is always revealed.

The greatest revelation: who am I

What is the greatest revelation we need? Michael answers: who am I? If you close your eyes and assess who you are, he promises that everything you assess does not come close to the Light that you are. Without a constant friendship with the Light of the Creator, you cannot see this. Sometimes there is a glimpse, but it is not constant.

This is what happened to Avraham on this Shabbat. The Light was revealed to him as immanent friendship, and then he was able to see who he was. Michael says that, by committing to the covenant, to a life of exchanging, removing parts of himself all the time, Avraham realized that his light is as immanent as that of the Creator. Umibsari echze Eloha: looking within, he now saw only the infinite Light of the Creator.

The small vessel and the soul that overflows

Michael brings one more idea from the Sefat Emet. Every morning, since we were created, the Creator breathes into our body the infinite Light of our soul, as we spoke of at Rosh Hashanah. But the body, the state of consciousness most of us are in, does not allow the whole soul to be felt when we wake up.

It is like having a small vessel and pouring water into it: you fill it to the brim and keep pouring some 400 liters. Everything overflows and forms a puddle around it, but not inside the vessel. That is what happened to you this morning. The true strength of your soul did not enter, because the vessel is too small. You have not exchanged enough.

Michael says that, on waking, you experience a tiny fraction of infinite Light. The purpose of spiritual work, and this is where the exchange must be constant, is to reach a state in which we can experience more and more. Most of us like ourselves, but the reality, he says, is that the part of us that we see is a fraction of who we truly are.

A soul that does not fit in the body, and the covenant that lets it in

Michael recommends a section of the Zohar, in the portion Miketz, from chapter 88, to be read again and again as a meditation for anyone who wants to become a friend to themselves. It speaks of a verse in the Book of Job: the Light of the Creator creates the spirit of a person within the body.

According to Rabi Shimon, this happens every day. The soul enters, finds no body in which it can expand, and stays held back, mainly in the head and the right arm. Michael imagines: if that is 20% or 30% of the body, then 70% of the power of your soul, probably much more, was not allowed in. We are all trapped souls.

How is the body corrected? As Avraham teaches: by giving up, the brit, the daily commitment to give up on myself so that I reveal myself to myself and to the world. Exchanging strength, desire, comfort. Whoever gives charity removes energy from themselves and opens a new space for the soul to expand. V'yayev becheila: and then the person receives strength, more strength, and more strength.

And he asks: ba'alei brit Avraham, do you accept the covenant of Avraham? It is a decision: I will always choose to give up, strength, comfort, money, whatever it is. A kabalist sums it up: whoever is always in the presence of the Light of the Creator will never lack anything. Michael says that this teaching, when truly understood, is the difference between a 20% life and a life above 100%.