Questions for today:
Kindness allows us to connect to things that don’t deserve, through a lack of concern for your actions. Strictness is severe, because I take your actions seriously. Is there a way to love you unconditionally, while being concerned for you in detail?
We have been discussing connecting to the Creator with the emotions of love and fear, or ‘bonding’ and ‘respect’. However, there is also a third way to connect.
We have three Forefathers. Abraham parallels love and Isaac parallels fear and respect. Then there's Jacob who represents mercy.
Mercy is not a blend, half love and half fear. Mercy is something that's higher than both of them that allows the two to coexist.
Let’s discuss the mercy that we should have for our G-dly soul.
In its original form, the soul is one with the Creator, and then it is forced to leave to come exist in this small, physical world. This thought elicits mercy. The Soul then must animate all of our foolishness and every sin that we do. This also elicits mercy.
We say, “Viyashav el Hashem,” we should return to G-d, “virachamehu.” We usually translate this as “G-d will have mercy on us.”
However, another way to translate “virachamehu” is that we should have mercy on our G-dly soul that is stuck here in this world. This mercy will encourage us to bond to the Creator.
137 Tanya Iyar 07 ~ m162 Iyar 3
Tanya book 1, ch 45, Pt 1
We've discussed connecting to the Creator with Love and fear/respect. Today we describe a third emotion: mercy.
When we realize that the soul leaves it's supernal source, descends into this world, and animates our foolishness and sins, a deep mercy and desire to connect to the Creator emerges.
Study today’s Tanya in full:
https://www.chabadmed.com/dailystudy/tanya.asp?tdate=5/4/2022
See today’s video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5R9GqDr0OQ&list=PLFZQPK6u-zSBls9Hwx3P5vKIBRnjBvHe&index=136