Thursday, March 20, 2014

Faith & the small horse inside!!



The mind is our edge we human beings have over anything else in creation. When the Bible says we were formed in G-ds image, it is essentially talking about our G-d given ability to think independently of our bodies, and our lives. Our mind is what defines us, and how we think, ultimately become what we are.

It is no wonder we are always seeking to make sense and “wrap our minds” around everything. It is very difficult, “irrational” to accept, and further more to be expected to do something, we are not able to comprehend. It almost goes against our very essential nature and uniqueness.

And yet, one of the fundamental principles of becoming G-dly, and serving G-d, is accepting His authority, in complete and pure faith. Our connection with G-d, is reflected in the strength of our faith.

Truth be said, a thinking individual will not have much of a problem with drawing and leaning on faith, because even as a rational thinking person, we can come to this conclusion with our very own reasoning.

Just like it is impossible for a 50 year old professor, to explain to a two year old his 50 years of knowledge, experience and maturity, even though it is all relative. How much more so, we can appreciate and accept, that if G-d is able to create this vast precise universe with 7 billion people, it is impossible ever, to understand His wisdom and His mind.

However to this above made conclusion, Chassidim of old had a parable.

Once, when trains first made their appearance, a bunch of simple naïve uneducated farm people, familiar only with the  horse and buggy were sitting in their shacks trying  to figure out the secret to the horseless buggy. They made the trip to the big city, examined one of the new horseless buggies, and looked all around for even a hint of the horse hidden inside, even if just his tail.

They finally established, there has got to be this new kind of  very powerful small horse they had never seen before,  tucked away  neatly  behind the wheels, and that, is where the power must come from.

If the extent of a person’s faith is based solely on his own experiences,  no matter how far one’s mind takes the person, there will always be a “little horse” hidden some place in his mind. His faith will go only slightly further than where his own mind can take this individual. This makes his faith, not very pure or real.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk once said, “I do not want to have faith in a G-d that is  understood.”

This declaration is telling us, the distance between our minds and experiencing  real faith in G-d, is completely and totally without any relativity at all to the faculty of wisdom and intellectuality.   G-d and his ways are not just beyond the ability of a person to understand, but additionally, G-d and his existence, thinking and modus operandi is totally beyond, and not even within the realm, of wisdom. It is impossible to imagine in any way, the energy, the source and life of everything, because He is an existence beyond the characteristics of mind and wisdom.

Faith as an inference of intellect,  is really not faith at all. It is intellect, and entirely limited by ones thinking.  Faith on the level of a pure, unexplainable, simple faith in G-ds existence is infinitely powerful. What we do understand after that, is a gift from G-d, that allows us the satisfaction of wrapping ones little mind, around one small aspect of that truth and reality.

In the first kind of faith, intellect is the foundation and faith is small and flimsy. In the second type, faith is the foundation, it is truly infinite and All powerful, channeling itself through the conduit and window of an ever expanding intellect.




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