I would like to clarify some matters that are seemingly simple, matters that everyone fumbles with, and for which much ink has been spilled, attempting to clarify, yet we have not reached a concrete and sufficient knowledge of them.
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What is our essence?
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What is our role in the long chain of reality, of which we are but small links?
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When we examine ourselves, we find that we are as corrupted and as low as can be. And when we examine the Operator who has made us, we are compelled to be at the highest degree, as there is none so praiseworthy as Him, for it is necessary that only perfect operations will stem from a perfect operator.
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Commonsense dictates that He is utterly benevolent, beyond compare. How, then, did He create so many creatures that suffer and agonize throughout their lives? Is it not the way of the good to do good, or at least not to harm so?
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How is it possible that the Infinite, who has neither beginning nor end, will produce finite, mortal, and flawed creatures?
Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” Item 1
The whole of the wisdom of Kabbalah is only to know the guidance of the Higher Will, why It has created all these creatures, what It wants with them, and what the end of all the cycles of the world will be.
Ramchal, Pitchei Hochma (Doors of Wisdom), Section 30
What is the wisdom of Kabbalah? As a whole, the wisdom of Kabbalah concerns the revelation of Godliness, arranged on its path in all its aspects—those that have emerged in the worlds and those that are destined to be revealed, and in all the manners that can ever appear in the worlds, to the end of time.
Baal HaSulam, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence”
What does the wisdom revolve around? This question comes to the mind of every right-minded person. To properly address it, I will provide a reliable and lasting definition: this wisdom is no more and no less than a sequence of roots, which hang down by way of cause and consequence, by fixed, determined rules, interweaving to a single, exalted goal described as “the revelation of His Godliness to His creatures in this world.”
Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
The wisdom one should know is to know and to regard his Master, to know himself, who he is, how he was created, where he came from and where he is going, how the body is corrected, and how he is destined to come to be judged before the King of everything.
To know and to regard the soul. What is this soul within him? Where it came from and why did it come into this body, which is a foul drop that is here today and in the grave tomorrow. To examine this world and to know the world he is in, and for what will the world be corrected. And then he will observe the high secrets of the Upper World, to know his Master. And man will see all that through the secrets of Torah.
The New Zohar with the Sulam Commentary,
Song of Songs, Items 482-483
The wisdom of the truth teaches us the global unity, the side of equality to be found in the whole of existence through the very top, at the parity of the form with this Maker, and how to walk without obstacles by the path of this light.
Rav Raiah Kook, Orot HaKodesh (Lights of Sanctity), 2, p 393