READING: BETWEEN AFTER MIDNINGHT AND DAWN SUNDAY

Baal HaSulam. Shamati, 7. What Is, “A Habit Becomes a Second Nature,” in the Work?

LESSON MATERIAL

7. What Is, “A Habit Becomes a Second Nature,” in the Work?

I heard in 1943

By accustoming oneself to something, that thing becomes a second nature for that person. Hence, there is nothing that one cannot feel its reality. This means that although one has no sensation of the thing, he still comes to feel it by becoming used to that thing.

We must know that there is a difference between the Creator and the creatures regarding sensations. In the creatures, there is the feeler and the felt, the attaining and the attained. This means that we have a feeler who is connected to some reality.

However, a reality without a feeler is only the Creator Himself. In Him, “there is no thought or perception whatsoever.” This is not so with a person; his whole existence is only through the sensation of reality. Even the validity of reality is evaluated as valid only with regard to the one who senses the reality.

In other words, what the feeler tastes is what he considers truth. If one tastes a bitter taste in reality, meaning he feels bad in the situation he is in, and suffers because of that state, that person is considered wicked in the work, since he condemns the Creator, as He is called “The Good Who Does Good,” for He only bestows goodness to the world. Yet, with respect to that person’s feeling, the person feels that he received the opposite from the Creator, meaning the situation he is in is bad.

We should therefore understand what our sages wrote (Berachot 61), “The world was created either for the complete wicked or for the complete righteous.” This means the following: Either one tastes and feels a good taste in the world and then he justifies the Creator and says that the Creator gives only good to the world. Or, if one feels and tastes a bitter taste in the world then one is wicked because he condemns the Creator.

It turns out that everything is measured according to one’s sensation. However, all these sensations have no relation to the Creator, as it is written in the “Poem of Unification,” “As she, so You will always be; shortage and surplus in You will not be.” Hence, all the worlds and all the changes are only with respect to the receivers, as one attains them.