EE & R, 2_17: Knowing Hashem: Walking the Path: A Guide to Spiritual Perfection

(For the previous installment of "Exodus, Exile and Redemption," click here. For ToC, click here.)

Our exploration of the Path approaches its end. We have recovered and illuminated the core teaching of the prophets, those spiritually elevated guides who developed and taught to mankind a method for ascending to knowledge of Hashem, the pinnacle of human perfection. Their four-step course encompasses:

• Baring one’s soul before Hashem

• Cultivating good character

• Nurturing faith

• Achieving knowledge

Let us retrace this sacred pathway once again and appreciate the prophets’ course as a cohesive whole. We will explore how each step naturally progresses to the next, like a ladder ascending heavenward, leading ever closer to Hashem.

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Baring the Soul:

The first step to perfection is to bare your soul before Hashem, ensuring it is worthy of divine consideration. Cultivate an awareness that your innermost thoughts and feelings are public, known and scrutinized. Submit every thought you would have for Hashem’s examination, such that you actually think only thoughts Hashem would think. Don’t allow your mind a thought that doesn’t qualify as a divine thought, universal and cosmic, worthy of being broadcasted across all of space and time and emulated by all beings. Any thought that doesn’t pass that test, reject; any thought that does – embrace!¹

The man who imagines his mind read by God will have godly thoughts.

Cultivating Good Character:

Through baring your soul, your character will become refined. Thoughts and feelings that withstand Hashem’s examination reflect the values of kindness, justice and righteousness. For your character to be refined, you don’t require a precise and sophisticated philosophy of morality; simply bare your soul before Hashem, and your character will automatically be perfected, your heart made upright, healthy and whole, as your emotions and desires align with the universal goodness that gives rise to all value.²

Godly thoughts mold the character in the image of goodness.

Nurturing Faith:

From the fertile ground of good character, faith begins to flourish. Within the soul purified through self-revelation and the character molded by the virtues of kindness, justice and righteousness there grows faith – a robust confidence in the universe’s inherent goodness, reflective of the divine. Your good soul becomes confident in the omnipresence of a goodness pervading existence akin to the goodness residing within itself. This faith will be the lens through which you view every encounter and every challenge, seeking the goodness you are certain is there.³

Good people are confident that all existence is good.

Achieving Knowledge:

Faith leads to intimate understanding, the pinnacle of this spiritual ascent. Seek the goodness of which you are now confident, and you shall find it. You will attain a living relationship with the Divine, where every facet of existence, every thought, action and emotion, becomes a dialogue with Hashem. The goodness uncovered through the search of the faithful is man’s highest knowledge: an acquaintance with the nature of existence as suffused with Hashem’s presence. In this state, every moment is imbued with divine significance, as you sense Hashem’s ways in the unfolding patterns of your life and the universe.⁴

Those who seek goodness with confidence shall surely find it.

Conclusion:

The prophets’ Path has the capacity to transform us. It beckons us to transcend our individual selves and become one with the divine notion permeating all of existence. Those who tread the Path are guided from the personal to the universal, expanding their selves until they are one with Hashem’s vision for the world. Starting from the realization that Hashem has knowledge of us, we can reach the point where our knowledge is aligned with His, our desires, thoughts, emotions and feelings united (so to speak) with Hashem.⁵

Achieving Knowledge marks not an end but a beginning – the commencement of a life lived in harmony with the Divine will. With this knowledge, you become a participant in the divine symphony of creation, tasked with spreading kindness, justice and righteousness in alignment with the blueprint for the world. By walking this path, we do more than learn about the Divine; we become conduits for His will, actively co-creating a world reflective of His goodness.

(For the next installment of "Exodus, Exile and Redemption," click here.)

1. This step has been discussed here.

2. This step has been discussed here.

3. This step has been discussed here.

4. This step has been discussed here.

5. For more on this notion, see here.