M028 024 Tanya Teves 13 ~ 17
Questions for today:
If love is about “loving you”, then If I am so concerned with “my” love your you, is it truly love?
Yesterday we discussed the distinction between a ‘righteous person’ and a ‘fully righteous person’.
If those descriptions seemed above our pay grade, don't worry – Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai says that in all of history there are only a few such people.
Today we're going to go a little farther in the distinction between a ‘righteous person’, and a ‘fully righteous person’.
A righteous person is not tempted at all by bad, because they feel deeply close to the creator. Nevertheless, somewhere in the subconscious there's a little bit of a hidden appreciation of selfish pursuit.
There are thousands of levels in that category, varying based on the amount that that appreciation is diluted, and exactly what it is that they appreciate.
By contrast, a fully righteous person has so gotten rid of any personal pursuit that anything that's not directly enthused by the creator is actually considered revolting to them.
As an extension of this complete loss of self-centeredness, we see another distinction: A righteous person is pursuing a relationship with the Creator partially because ‘they’ want to be close to the Creator. A fully righteous person wants to be close to the Creator because ‘the Creator’ will appreciate it.
Study today’s Tanya in full: https://www.chabadmed.com/dailystudy/tanya.asp?tdate=12/21/2021
See today’s video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjvoOoL25AE&list=PLFZQPK6u-zSBls9Hwx3P5vKI_BRnjBvHe&index=24
Additional thoughts:
Two titles.
When describing the levels of righteous or wicked people we use two descriptions; “’fully’ righteous/wicked” vs “’incomplete’ righteous/wicked” and, “righteous ‘and good/bad’” vs “wicked ‘and bad/good’”.
These two titles are parallel to the two barometers for how deep/full the love is;
“Righteous ‘and good/bad’” is a title based on how well they removed any connection to bad, measured by the revulsion to negativity.
“’fully/incomplete’ righteous” is a title based on whether they are motivated by their personal goal of connecting to the Creator, vs being motivated by the joy the Creator has from their service.
One of the qualities of a fully righteous person is that they elevate everything physical both in the world around them, as well as of their own persona, up to G-dliness.
This ties directly in to the fact that a fully righteous person is someone that removed any connection to or respect for self-serving physicality.
No matter how inspired we might be to elevate physical things to a spiritual realm, if we still are personally attached to it, that attachment will hold us back from being able to elevate it properly.