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LETTING THE BLESSINGS FLOW
B.S.D.
Rabbi David Aaron
Excerpt from "Seeing G-d"
 The second of the ten sefirot that is life-more accurately, the synergy of life, the spiritual wealth and wholeness. In Hebrew it is called yesod, which means "foundation" or "basis." Yesod reveals the awesome secret of how Hashem contracts His infinite spiritual qualities in order to enter into our finite consciousness. People think that in order to see and meet Hashem, they will have to leave or nullify this finite world; they think that they must transcend time and space. But this is not true. The power of yesod pulls together and synthesizes all the other sefirot whereby Hashem meets us in our world. And now all we have to do is open the door of consciousness-open the eyes of soul.
To fully understand yesod, we will have to wait until we examine the other eight sefirot-will, wisdom, understanding, kindness, justice, truth, beauty, power-because this one quality is the synergy of them all. The other sefirot are like the many colors of an artist's palette. Yesod is like the finished painting. Consider the difference between an artist's palette and her painting. The very same colors appear in both places, but who would want to hang a palette full of individual blobs of paint on the wall. In the painting the colors come together and the end result becomes
greater than the sum of its parts. The life force channeled by this painting comes through the synergy of the colors uniting together within it.
Yesod is life, zest, vitality, goodness, wholeness, abundance and blessing. And we know it when we see it. We can see life or the absence of it. We see people all around us who are just not alive. They're breathing, they're walking, but they're not embodying the full spirit of life. They don't have zest or vitality, the spiritual qualities of yesod. They are not acting, speaking, or thinking in a way that nurtures the community's consciousness of life so they can become a vehicle for it in the world. Similarly, we can see goodness, which a human being achieves by fulfilling his or her intended purpose. When the Torah relates the story of creation, it ends the recitation of events of each day with: "And Hashem saw that it was good." What did Hashem see about each creation that made it good? Hashem saw that it was complete-it fulfilled its intended purpose. But, after the creation of Adam, the Torah keeps mum. This is because the first human being had yet to actualize his potential. He had not yet fulfilled his intended purpose. He was not yet whole and complete. And why were the other elements complete at creation, but the human being was created incomplete? Human beings, unlike the rest of creation, have free will. Only after we make the right choices do we fulfill our purpose, achieve wholeness and embody divine goodness. Again, we know it when we see it. And we can also see abundance and blessing, just as we can see their absence.
I once came across a billboard that said, MANY POOR SOULS LIVE IN MILLION DOLLAR HOUSES. From personal experience I know this is true. I've walked into mansions of multimillionaires, and in certain such places, I have felt a lack of spiritual wealth and blessing. These places were filled with expensive furniture and rugs and a million dollars worth of art, but the emptiness was palpable. Although each house was an outstanding and elegant piece of architecture and interior design, it wasn't a home. It missed its purpose. It was without blessing. It lacked yesod. Although people lived there, it was lifeless.
Feeling Connected
Through the colored lens of yesod, I am able to see Hashem as the whole living reality, the nurturing source of all blessing and goodness. Yesod completes malhus. Life completes consciousness. Consciousness, in and of itself, is nothing. It is merely a vessel; what gives it value is the content. Life, the synergy of all the Divine qualities, is that content.
The Torah quotes the Patriarch Jacob as saying "I have everything." Jacob is referring, of course, to his relationship with Hashem. Thus we learn that when we have a consciousness of Hashem, the ultimate living reality and source of all blessing and goodness, then we really do have it all. What more could we ask for?
We need to unite yesod and malhus so as to combine life, vitality and abundance with consciousness, order, and structure. It's all about embodying life in thought, speech, and action within a community context and thereby putting life in order. What happens if you don't unify the two? Then you have consciousness without divine content, which is rather like having a wire without electricity. There is no spark, no connection, no energy. A self-serving community has no purpose beyond itself. It is a corporation without a mission statement. It is an organization without a cause. It is a computer without a program. It is useless. Imagine a person who meditates all day and does nothing to actively change and improve this world. Such meditation is only self-absorption and lacks the blessing acquired only through service. Consciousness in and of itself is nothing. Consciousness without divine content is a body without a soul. It is death.
Of course, you can also have the opposite situation. You can have electricity without a wire or a soul without a body. Electricity needs wires to flow through in order for it to be productive. The soul needs a body in order to accomplish its purpose in this world. You can't access life or channel blessing without participating in a community consciousness with law, order, and higher purpose. Successful productive living requires both the wires and the electricity to flow through them: malhus and yesod. So, what happens when you connect yesod and malhus? You experience feeling connected and "plugged in." And then you know what it means to feel disconnected. Sometimes there's order in your life, but for what? You feel a lack of aliveness to get you moving. You've got the car but no gas. Or sometimes, you feel full of zest, but your life is a mess, without order or direction, so the energy dissipates without accomplishing anything. It's as if someone hung a big sign on your life: OUT OF ORDER!
When life functions at its optimum, when life flows into consciousness, yesod into malhus, we have a state which is embodied by a tzaddik, a person who is the epitome of goodness, who is holy. Who is a tzaddik? When I was growing up, there was a picture in our living room of several old sages with pale faces, long white beards, and thick glasses, studying Torah around a table piled high with thick tomes. The room looked gloomy and dark and they presented a sad sight, all hunched over from years of sitting there, never getting any exercise. That was my concept of a tzaddik, a person who has attained the ultimate goals of life. And I sure didn't want to end up being one of them. Therefore, I was shocked to learn that the Torah's prototype of the tzaddik was none other than Joseph, the youthful, dynamic, charismatic lad who became the viceroy of Egypt. The oral tradition says that Joseph was so handsome that the girls would climb the walls to try and get a look at him. When he was sold into slavery, his master's wife, the sexy Mrs. Potiphar, was irresistibly attracted to him. In Egypt, he became a symbol for fertility. That's really what a tzaddik is-a live wire. And that live wire transmits zest for life, goodness and blessing. When you are in the presence of a tzaddik, you sense that flow of energy and you feel high just being in the same room.
I remember once meeting Rabbi Raphael Levin, the son of Rabbi Aryeh Levine, whose life was portrayed in a wonderful book called, A Tzaddik in Our Times. Rabbi Raphael is, like his father, considered a true tzaddik. He shook my hand, taking his time about it, not letting go right away, and suddenly I felt like I was becoming spiritually charged. The feeling didn't leave me for the whole day. A tzaddik charges everyone around him. A tzaddik brings energy into order. In fact, he is more than a live wire; he is like the switch that completes the circuit so that the electricity
flows. That's why we are told that even when a tzaddik passes away, he or she is still alive. The opposite of a tzaddik is a rasha, or an evil person, who is dead even when he is alive. An evil person disconnects yesod from malhus. He becomes a circuit-breaker. Life flows into the circuit of consciousness, but a rasha breaks the circuit. He causes a separation between community and life.
How? First of all, an evil person doesn't even acknowledge that he is living in a community. He proclaims: "I'm self-defined, self-sufficient, independent, and I don't belong to any higher order. I don't have to abide by anybody's rules. I am my own man. I am my own boss." A rasha doesn't acknowledge Hashem, therefore Hashem is not in his life. And he cannot be a channel for Hashem. Instead of feeling charged when you are with this person, you feel drained, as if all of your energy is being sucked out of you.
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