Constant Scrutiny: The Path to Spiritual Balance and Responsibility
The journey of spiritual growth demands unceasing self-examination and constant realignment toward the desired state of Arvut (mutual responsibility) and Lishma (altruistic intention). In every moment, we must assess how distant we are from this perfect state and immediately take action to restructure our inner world, ensuring a greater revelation of the Creator within the mutual connection between us.
This process is not intellectual but deeply emotional, a felt revelation within the heart. The goal is to refine and intensify our sense of mutual responsibility (Arvut) so that the Creator’s presence can be revealed within it. Each new state should magnify the contrast between hate and love, disconnection and connection, allowing us to perceive their mutual interdependence and complementary nature.
Recognizing the Creator’s Work in Us
We must develop expertise in discerning how the Creator operates through our inherent nature, allowing us to recognize both negative forces (our egoistic tendencies) and their complementary, corrective forces (the Creator’s attributes).
This demands a deep understanding of the duality between Lo Lishma (self-serving intention) and Lishma (pure bestowal). Without experiencing Lo Lishma ”self-interest and ego” we would have no ability to recognize, measure, or appreciate the state of Lishma. The constant alternation between these states ”the roller coaster of spiritual ascent and descent” is an essential tool for growth.
Our development relies on an ever-intensifying experience of opposing forces, experiencing, tasting, and integrating their dynamic interplay. Through this, we refine our perception of the Creator’s presence, revealed in our efforts to restore balance between these opposing forces.
Embracing the Disquiet of Spiritual Work
True spiritual growth requires a constant state of inner unrest, a sensitivity that allows us to perceive the smallest imbalances in the system. As negative forces inevitably strengthen, they should awaken an active and urgent demand for their complementary positive forces to enter and restore harmony.
We must not settle for indifference or a false sense of peace, which are illusions of the ego. Instead, we must willingly enter ever-deeper states of imbalance, embracing the discomfort and suffering that arise from recognizing how the ego overpowers altruistic forces. This suffering should not be passive but should activate and sustain a continuous prayer, a desperate demand for higher altruistic forces to descend, neutralize the ego, and restore balance.
Recognizing Our Role as the Core of the Problem and the Solution
We must come to feel the entire natural system as a single living organism, perfectly interconnected. At the same time, we must also sharply recognize the human element within this system as a cancer, disrupting and corrupting the system’s inherent harmony.
However, this recognition must go even further: we must locate the very core of this cancer within ourselves, each individual must take total, all-encompassing responsibility for the correction of the system. The realization that the healing of the whole system begins and depends solely on me should create an unwavering urgency for constant prayer and relentless efforts toward transformation.
The Environment as the Cure for the Ego
This entire process of scrutiny and correction unfolds only within a uniquely structured human environment, one in which each person fully commits and devotes themselves to exchanging a 100% selfish, exploitative existence for a selfless, unconditionally serving existence.
In this environment, each individual lives solely for the sake of others, thereby creating a focused center of healing for the entire system. This human connection, carefully constructed and nurtured, acts as the only antidote to the inherent cancer of human egoism.
Within such a setting, every person undergoes deepening examinations and revelations, witnessing the contrast between the ego’s inherently destructive nature and the higher, divine qualities that can be intentionally acquired and harnessed. These “godly qualities of ”pure love and bestowal” are the essential corrective forces that neutralize the cancerous effects of egoism, transforming it from a force of destruction into a force that nurtures and sustains life.
Conclusion
Spiritual progress demands unceasing scrutiny, constant imbalance, and continuous correction. True peace is not found in passivity or complacency, but in the active and conscious pursuit of harmony between opposing forces. By recognizing our role as both the source of the problem and the key to its resolution, we awaken an urgent demand for transformation.
Through a methodically constructed mutual environment of bestowal, we can turn egoism from a cancerous force into a life-giving one, creating the perfect conditions for the Creator’s presence to be fully revealed.