Great, Small And Equal To A Friend And The Creator

A question I received: Can I look at my friend in different ways: sometimes as a student, sometimes as a teacher, and sometimes as an equal?

My Answer: You can find all three relationships in any state.

1. If I want to unite with my friend, then I have to see him as a very important person, because only then will I have a desire to unite with him. That is why I have to see him as one of the greatest and most important people in the world, who will enable me to connect to the Creator. He has to be as important to me as the Creator. If the group gives me the strength and opportunity to attain the Upper Goal, then I will view its members as great people, on whom my fate depends. I would be willing to pay anything for them to accept me. I will be ready to lower myself in order to connect to them.
2. However, when I think about making the group stronger, then I look at them from above and think about how I can help them and inspire them. Then I see them as smaller than me. I want to influence them and give them more energy.
3. If we are talking about unity in the group, then everyone is equal. After I valued them as being higher than me, and after I was higher than them, we become equal and unite with each other. This is why we are called friends.

These are also the same relationships that I have with the Creator: He is greater than me, smaller than me, and equal to me.

1. He is great because He gives me the strength and determines all my thoughts and desires.
2. He is smaller than me because He depends on me. I can give to Him, I can make Him feel good, and in this regard He depends on me. So it turns out that He is smaller than me. This dependence is similar to how parents depend on their child.
3. He is equal to me because only equals can attain adhesion - unite with each other I order to receive from each other and bestow to each other.

Therefore, the states don't change in one's attitude to the group and to the Creator. The only thing that changes is the way one sees them: one can be big, small or equal, both with regard to a friend and with regard to the Creator. A person must always check how he can supplement each of these three attitudes, in order to advance even more - towards greater unity with friends and the Creator.

Determining The Correct Relation Between Corporeality And Spirituality

We must see before us two states, and look at them practically-I treat the friend as a partner in our work in this world, or alternatively as a partner in our spiritual work in the next world. These are two different levels.

In the corporeal level, we are animals, we are egoists, and we have nothing to correct, we have only to take care of the necessity of every friend and that each person demands from his friend strengthening in dissemination. This is the correct and good approach with regards to the work. The laws of the spiritual world do not apply in our world, but rather "the world behaves according to unchangeable laws" and "the doctor has permission to cure" etc.. And whoever confuses between the two world loses in both of them.

On the other hand, in the spiritual world the approach is different-I consider the person's soul  with which I must be equal and treat him as the greatest of the generation, or alternatively as less than me, in order for me to always be able to help him and give him strength. But this already belongs to the connection between the souls.

In this world, I must take care of two goals that are one-the necessity of the friend and dissemination. Whereas, in the spiritual world, my concern for the others is to connect with them "as one man in one heart," in Arvut (mutual guarantee), in order to reveal the Creator inside of us.

Those two levels must be divided, isolated, distant from one another. In the spiritual level I must love them, become joined with them in warm connection, and to surrender to them -to everything that is necessary in order connect with them as cells in a single body, in which I reveal the life, the Creator. Whereas in the corporeal level, we must be practical, and check everything according to a set of rules in which all the things belonging to this world need to be included as well, including the necessity and the dissemination. This is in fact our life.

One succeeds only if he teaches himself to treat both those levels in a clear, practical way, without confusing between the two. Otherwise, he will always look at the others, judge them from one level toward another, and it will confuse him.