051 Tanya Shvat 10 ~ m056b Shvat 17b
Questions for today:
How can an Idol exist in a created world? Or, more poignantly – why don’t I humbly appreciate G-d’s hand in every part of my life?
We've learned about G-d's power of concealment, and of how it creates on the one hand a very real, on the other hand an illusion, of a divided physical world.
Today we're going to learn about the most powerful component of it: How in the world, created of and by G-d, an idol can exist.
It works as a two-way street.
We've learned how G-d creates idolatry in a ‘backhanded’ way. We know that when we do something that we don't love, our heart isn't in it - You can’t see our ‘life’ in the project.
On the flip side, imagine if a child is riding a bicycle and they don't feel the ‘life’ – the care and the hovering of the parent so that they don't fall - They feel they have nobody to thank.
This is the root and the core of idolatry.
Who were Stalin and Chairman Mao's ‘divine’ inspiration giving them a mandate to kill millions of people?
It was ‘Me’
(Not me, G-d forbid), it was their unmitigated, un-differing ‘me’ that gave them the ideology and the belief that there is no one above them, that they themselves, were God.
Tanya book 1, ch22 pt 2
Where G-d doesn't love, Gd's presence is not felt.
When we don't feel Gd's presence we can believe that I am God
Study today’s Tanya in full: https://www.chabadmed.com/dailystudy/tanya.asp?tdate=1/19/2022
See today’s video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxo4s2HXsQA&list=PLFZQPK6u-zSBls9Hwx3P5vKI_BRnjBvHe&index=51