Thursday, April 10, 2008

Wisdom and Understanding

Yesterday a friend of mine mentioned that he had God in his heart, and that his goal was to be constantly aware of God's presence. Today I found an explanation of this in the Sefer Yetsirah. My friend was talking about Wisdom.

Wisdom is an undifferentiated power of the mind. At this level there is no plurality and everything is one. That is what the Talmud means by saying "Who is wise? He who learns from every man." At the level of Wisdom all people are one. Baal Shem Tov says that one can even learn from evil, because on the level of Wisdom there is no distinction between good and evil.

However, one should not stop here. The Sefer Yetsirah talks about the 32 paths of Wisdom. To reach Wisdom one needs to travel through the paths, which are mysterious and hidden and wonderful, but one has to discover them on his own.

Today marks close to one year since I started this blog. The initial impetus came from the days of Sefirah and the wonderful things I was reading about each of the 49 day. Only then I started with day 33, Lag B'Omer. I will see if I can say something about each day this time around.

Question of the day, what does this picture represent? Answer in comments!

2 comments:

Helena Kerzner said...

Толстый жонглёр на работе?

Mark Kerzner said...

The Juggler and the King. Where is the King?