ETHICS
Torah and Good Deeds
Torah and good deeds
Purify your character.
But you cannot rely on this alone.
You must work on your character.
In particular,
You must perfect your ethical being.
Orot Hakodesh III, p. 233
From the Depths of Chaos
The call to purify your character never ceases.
You may have already purified it when you were on an intermediate spiritual level.
But when you grow, you bring hidden treasures of life out of the depths of chaos. These portions come to you as a spiritual revelation. Because they have never been refined, they require constantly new purifying.
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There are holy people who never cease growing. They go from strength to strength, always engaged in actualized repentance.
Purifying and refining character is a vital ingredient of that repentance.
Orot Hakodesh III, p. 233
When You Want to Improve Someone
Take a second look when you want to improve someone and remove him from his habitual path. Perhaps that path is actually good. Although it has its failings, they may be protecting that person from even greater failings.
May God guide us to be fair. Sometimes our inner drive entices us to enter a mode of improving everyone. This is actually a negative impulse.
We can be compassionate. And when we are, God, Who is compassionate, will remove all flaws.
Midot Harayah, p. 92
The Aesthetic Sense
The general time of spiritual favor in the world and a spiritual time of favor in the individual are inter-dependent in a number of ways.
Every pleasing harmony of life-every preparation that strengthens our aesthetic sense-prepares paths for the appearance of supernal lights from the supernal spiritual treasure house, which streams without cease and seeks to spread and thus fulfill its function in whatever place it finds prepared for it.
More than all this, good character traits prepare a place for supernal holiness; more than they, this-worldly mitzvot; more than they, the Torah; and more than all of them, the inner quality within the Torah.
There are also supernal unifications [of meditation] in their purity that come after one has completed all the previous preparations of action and of spirit, together with all the acquisitions of temperament coming from a healthy body and soul that are related to [these unifications]. These unifications are the highest of all. They are a wondrous preparation for the revelation of spiritual light in the wealth of its flow, giving life to the spirit of every individual and giving a soul to the entire nation.
Arpelei Tohar, p. 9
Natural Ethics
"Ethical behavior must precede the Torah."
Such a period of time is necessary, in [all] generations. An ingrained ethics in all the depth of its majesty and its mighty strength must be established in our spirit and become a receptacle for the great influences that come from the power of the Torah.
Just as awe is the level of the root [force] that precedes wisdom, so are natural ethics the level of the root [force] that precedes awe and all its ramifications.
This principle holds for the individual, and entirety of the [Jewish] people and all humanity.
If there is a need, upon occasion, to bring to bear the influence of Torah without first connecting to the root of natural ethics in its purity, that is the path of a temporary decree. But life must bring matters about so that the process will return to its mighty order: the preceding of natural ethics in all its fullness, in order to build upon its base the first stage of the Torah and supernal awe.
Orot Hatorah 12:2
A Hidden Recognition Of God
The ideal life, our fundamental thought tells us, finds a place in existence only when it is twinned with divine thought at its height, where it is pellucid and purified, a thought that can be reached only by the highest state of clinging to the divine.
The morality of heresy is nothing, since heresy itself is the opposite of justice and basic ethics. As for those heretics who are moralists, the morality comes not from their heresy, but from a recognition of God hidden in the depth of their spirit, which they themselves do not recognize.
Orot Hakodesh III, p. 24
Man Affects All of Existence
How elevated it is, how much concealed truth and song it is-the mystical thought that man affects all of existence from the aspect of his spiritual power.
The light of life within free will, which can rise when a person chooses good (with strength, might and wisdom), rises to an extremely elevated realm, whose worth no space [is large enough] to contain.
How wondrous is the moral perspective that emerges from such a form of great responsibility, a responsibility for all existence, for all worlds. [This responsibility comes] because a person has the power to increase within [those worlds] grace and light, life, joy and glory, when he walks upon a straight path, when he strengthens and girds himself with a pure might to master the ways of a good and mighty life, and rises from strength to strength.
But [on the other hand] it is within his power to cause pain in [life's] every good portion if he lowers his spirit, if he corrupts his ways, if he darkens his spiritual light, if he ceases his moral purity.
The high moral peak [that a person] builds when he takes into account the [entire] world, so great and splendid-with its appearance, [that moral awareness] refines his spirit to the point that it can no longer be degraded. [His spirit then] rises upon over the walls and towers of all existence, of all being, of all the eternity and loveliness of all the worlds-so that, with their assistance, it is protected from all evil.
How could the quality of evil [possibly] rise up to take a portion of the life of [this] man and his deeds, when such an exalted and elevated awareness as this is spread out before him?
It is true that [this person's] previous moral corruption can close his eye so that will not be able to gather the strength to see the clear light of that universal awareness, that his ear might be uncircumcised, dulled by sins, until it can by no means heed the voice of God calling powerfully from the midst of the elevated moral wealth, which encompasses the entirety of eternal worlds.
But if only a good thought of once more being sanctified and purified from all sin rises upon his heart, then his eye is opened and his ear grows keen. And the voice of God powerfully calls to him from the entire totality of worlds to transcend the dwelling places of darkness and to rise with that great spiritual elevation that is fitting for his great responsibility over all being, which is spread out before him.
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The knowledge that man is the central meaning of all reality expands his moral responsibility and arouses his desire to do great things.
After the form of the physical world has been made great by means of many revelations, then [our] knowledge presents us with free rule in the form of man. And this revelation [within man] is the most elevated concentrated essence of being. This is because life is certainly the concentrated essence of insensible reality. And the concentrated essence of life is free rule, which comes to the height of its strength when it unifies with the absolute good, and as it appearance in actuality in the most possible form.
Orot Hakodesh, pp. 63-64
Those Concepts That Are Possible
Those concepts that are possible within the realms of holiness are the most exalted songs. Within them and through them, the most supernal truth is revealed.
The glory of morality, and its eternal being, is drawn down corresponding to the basic revelation of the visions of greatness of all the possibilities of the happy state of holiness within all existence.
Arpelei Tohar
Natural Civility
Everything in Torah must be preceded by a natural civility.
If it is something upon which intellect and natural conscience agree, it must pass on a straight path with the inclination of the heart and the approval of the will deep within us. Just as we [can learn about] thievery, adultery and modesty from the ant, the dove and the cat, how much more [can we learn from] our inner recognition and spiritual sense.
If it is something that transcends intellect and heart-felt inclination, it too must pass through the path of the conduit of natural civility, in regard to the connection between every detail and total inclusiveness, so that [it is an integrated unity, like] "a good deed that draws another after it."
Also, the fact that a sense of justice based on sensory factors is connected to Torah with the supernal, divine will as it is revealed within the light of Torah; and the fact that we are bound to the totality of the [Jewish] people throughout its generations (as it is connected in the paths of its life with the holy conception): all these are paths of natural civility.
And these paths prepare us for illuminations that are more inward than the paths themselves, which will shine with a glowing, radiating clarity.
Orot Hatorah 12:3
