Fools we were. In the womb, all was warm, all was provided. In
the womb, we could just be. What were we missing that
we had to squeeze our way through the birth canal, to break out into this cold world? Because from that point on, there is no rest,
only movement, constant movement.
That is what life beyond the womb is all about: getting somewhere. And as soon as you are there, getting somewhere else. Scurrying down one corridor to arrive at a doorway to yet another corridor
where we must furiously seek out the next doorway. When are we ever in a place
for the sake of being in that place? What do we ever do for the sake of doing?
Even in the moment of pleasure we yearn for a greater pleasure, until “no one
leaves this world with half his desire in his hand.”1 When can we ever once
again just be?
If so for the materialist, how much more so for the seeker of
knowledge, of wisdom, of spiritual growth. “The students of the sages have no
rest,” the Talmud informs us. “They are continually moving from strength to
strength.”2
The Zohar describes Abraham, constantly traveling “southward”—meaning, towards
the light. And as close as you come, the light, an infinite light, becomes yet
more distant, more unattainable.3
Yet a mitzvah is just that: being There, having The Thing Itself—not the light, but the Source of Light. Not because you have come closer to that Source,
not because you are holding it in your hands, but because that Source and you
have become one.4
Why is this? Because the Essence of All Things speaks gently to you
and asks, “Please be My hands,
My feet, My mind. Be My presence within your material world. All that I have
made, I have made as a stage upon which My innermost desire may unfold, and
that most precious drama I have left for you.”
You follow the choreography for which you were formed within your
mother’s womb, this mitzvah that has come your way, in its particular way in
your particular world. And in that act, the two of you have become one—you, the
tiny creature, and He, the Infinite Creator. The same innermost desire breathes
within each of you.5
Why can’t you feel it? Because the physical body and the material
world—and even the soul as it is compressed into that body—cannot sustain such
a degree of ecstasy. When the people received the Torah at Mt. Sinai, with each
statement, their souls took flight from their bodies. Even to feel just a
glimmer of that energy, the soul must ascend back to its heavenly origin and
yet higher—and there it will need the special protection afforded it by its
mitzvot so as not to dissipate within the all-encompassing light.
“I was a boor and I had no knowledge,” sings the psalmist about
our predicament carrying out our mission in this world. “I was like a beast
with You. Yet I was constantly with You . . .”6
In a time to come, we will have bodies capable of sustaining the
ecstasy of conscious union with The Thing Itself. In the meantime, the closest
we can come to that ecstasy is the celebration of each mitzvah as we act it
through. In that joy of a mitzvah, taught the Baal Shem Tov, is an infinite
reward beyond anything the highest spiritual world can contain.7
In that joy, you have returned to the very womb of all being.
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