m023b 020 Teves 8 ~ Teves 11 pt2
Questions for today:
How do my actions, impact my Soul?
Today's Tanya talks about the afterlife. - Not the good one, the opposite, where our soul gets cleaned up to once again be one with the Creator.
There are different types of cleansing; One is called a “slingshot” where the soul goes back and forth from very a holy perspective, to a secular perspective, kind of like an esoteric exercise. This removes the spiritual stains we spoke about earlier where a person had pleasures that were permitted, but the person did them for selfish reasons.
Then there's the famous “heat”. This is to clean where person ate something that is completely not allowed in the Torah.
There is also a cleansing through “ice” to clean where the person was speaking things without any purpose, or any intent for the creator.
Of course, as we learned yesterday, this is all out of love, to allow a full homecoming of the Soul.
Today we learn a new perspective of something that we've learned before. We had learned that by using intellect a person could have a very deep connection with the Creator. The same is true with the opposite; through intellect we can sow deep negative roots.
Therefor the Tanya tells us today that we should be very careful when we pursue advanced education. We should make sure we use it; either directly to be able to help more people, or to be able to earn more so we can use that to help more people, or we can use that education to actually understand the laws of the Torah better.
Study today’s Tanya in full pt2:
https://www.chabadmed.com/dailystudy/tanya.asp?tdate=12/15/2020
See Today’s video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V75YcYO4ANY&list=PLFZQPK6u-zSBls9Hwx3P5vKI_BRnjBvHe&index=20
Additional thoughts:
One lesson that stands out from the Tanya these few days is how powerful food is, both in the positive and for the opposite. Obviously, every thought speech or action that we do involves a relationship between the physical world and our Soul.
Food is unique in the sense that the moment we eat it the food becomes us. If the food is the type whose G-dly material is available for spiritual energy, then that will be part of who we are. And if it is not, then that will also become a part of us as well.
Today’s Tanya touches on how careful we need to be with education and our general intellectual pursuits.
This is expressing one pain that the prophet Yirmiyahu laments (Jer. 2:13) how not only the Jews “left the living waters”, but they also sought out “broken cisterns”.
Imagine many artists, each adding a flourish to a goblet – and one attempts to add a hole at the bottom. If an artist paints something ugly, it can be overshadowed by the beauty around it, much like if a person does something wrong, it can be overshadowed by extensive good.
If you make a hole in the glass, no matter how much you try to fill it, it will always be missing. This is similar to the harm within a person from intellectual misdirection. It can empty any positive effort.