The Bible says, “You should not move back your neighbor’s
boundary” marker, to commit territorial fraud, by encroaching and stealing from
his territory. In the broader sense this commandment includes invading into
someone else’s territory for your own benefit, from which he earns a
livelihood. This is a form of thievery.
Like all commandments in the bible that relate to this
physical world, there is a parallel and corresponding scenario in the spiritual
realm, in our service and worship of G-d.
In life the choice is only, between “See! I am giving to you
today a blessing and a curse ...I have
set before you (a choice of) life or death, blessing or curse, Choose life!” It
is either good or bad. Different degrees
of white or black with no gray at all in our personal and individual selection.
Yet, our world can be divided into three frontiers. There
are the boundaries of what is good, bad and neutral, neither good nor bad.
Good, is everything we are directed to do. This is the domain of G-dliness and
holiness, since G-d in His full glory is the source of all that is good. Bad,
darkness and evil belong to the area of everything that is forbidden to do
and/or be connected with.
In the middle of all this is the mundane which cannot be
classified as bad since they aren’t forbidden but can’t either be classified as
good since they aren’t in the territory
of what we are expected and commanded to partake in.
The choice and option is, to deliberately use this middle
ground for the good and holiness, as an accessory for G-dliness, or as a
support and grounds for evil, and things that are forbidden.
The healthy approach, is to have all boundaries marked and
identified clearly. We don’t want to mistake what can harm us for good, or deny
ourselves the positive and helpful possibilities by disregarding and
overlooking the good.
Even when the boundaries of good and bad are clear,
confusion and a lack of clarity can sometimes, for some people, set in
regarding this middle ground and then the problem of encroaching and moving the
boundaries incorrectly and wrongly, can set in!
The “good” life, real happiness in its fullest sense is the
result of receiving an uninhibited flow of G-dly energy. “G-d created the
person straightforward, but it is they that have pursued deviousness”. The
world created by G-d is extraordinarily beautiful, and within these boundaries
all is well.
The bad must also receive G-dly energy, otherwise it would
never come into being and certainly not survive. Evil contains a very small and
limited, intensely toned down form of G-dliness. Therefore in the domain of
what’s forbidden, things may appear exciting on the surface, however, they
barely exist in any meaningful way.
When a person enters the domain of the mundane and the
neutral with no specific intention to harness it for the good, or worse yet to
serve and fulfill self-indulgent impulses, thinking there is nothing really bad
in doing so, he has then blurred the boundaries of the holiness and good. He
has dragged into the domain of good what is otherwise mundane, and allowed for
the mundane to imbibe from a territory it is not entitled to.
The biggest problem with this, is that the next border over,
of bad and evil, comes closer into view. The bad and all that’s wrong begins to
appears as if it is in the boundary of the mundane and the neutral and doesn’t appear that far off in the
distance and in this new view, isn’t
really all that bad.
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