Hassidic Sparks

Sparks Hassidic 1. God alone has real existence and all else is illusion. The Divine is everywhere, There is none beside the Divine means that there is nothing beside the Divine. 2. How can the human mind with individual selfconsciousness exist in a world where all is God? 3. Zimzum is that gift of illusion by which we are permitted to view ourselves as individuals. 4. It is only from our human point of view that there has been a zimzum. From God's point of view there has been no zimzum. 5. The person's fundamental problem is separation, estrangement and alienation. 6. What is recognized as "evil" is the impulse toward separation and isolation. 7. Human fulfillment depends on the overcoming of separations and balancing disharmonious relation-ships on every level of experience. 8. The religious task is one of cultivating a mystical awareness of the ultimate identity of being. 9. Religious awareness is seen as an added or deepened perception of the world, complementing rather than contradicting ordinary perception. 10. Religious awareness calls for an openness to a more profound rung of human consciousness, not a "leap of faith." 11. The theology suggested by Hasidism may be characterized as belonging to "religious naturalism" in that it entails no beleif in a deity that is wilful or active in human affairs. 12. This naturalism is deeply tempered by a sense of the supernatural, an openness to the profundities of human experience and a humility about the limits of human knowledge. 13. Such mystical abstraction can coexist with the more ancient religious language of Judaism. God as king takes its place as one metaphor among many. 14. Yerida l'Tzorekh Aliyah (descent for the sake of ascent) provides a Hasidic vision of the spiritual life in the diaspora. 15. The Lurianic myth of the breaking of the vessels, states that the intensity of divine light given in creation was too great for the lower worlds to bear and were smashed in transit. 16. The human task is to descend in search of these scattered bits of light and to ascend with them, restoring them to their source. 17. Every individual should be regarded as potentially and essentially good as each has a "holy spark." The spark of goodness within the other should be encouraged. No one is ultimately entirely evil. 18. Hasidism emphasized the notion of particular sparks that belong to each individual person. 19. Each individual has a unique potential and can work for unification in one's own way and from one's own place. 20. One never knows what one's full resources are until one attempts the deed asked. Only then does one discover the limits of one's capacities. 21. The tools that come into a person's hands, the food one eats, the places one travels are all assigned by the grace of heaven. Each contains some special spark that the individual soul alone can redeem. 22. In the healing relationship, the Rebbe must not try to take over the other's task. hut should try to help others recognize their own work and utilize their own potential in its performance. 23. The conflicts, anxiety, doubts, and suffering of life are neither illusory or final, and can be surmounted. 24. Activities like prayer, song, and dance, in which one opens one's self directly and wholeheartedly are powerful means to personal unification. 25. Hasidism straddles the late-medieval and modern periods in the history of Judaism. It reads a medieval-mythic motif as idea of the unique religious task of each individual. 26. When only specific ritual acts, accompanied by prescribed formulas for meditation, effect redemption, we are in the quasi-magical world of medieval esotericism. 27. Hasidism declares that wholeness of heart rather than esoteric knowledge allows the sparks to be redeemed. Personal piety has taken the place of occultism. We read this claim as expressing the transforming power of concentrated divine /human energy to effect healing in a damaged cosmos. 28. A loving, mutually supportive community can assist each of its members in the quest for personal wholeness and fulfillment. 29. Despair is the greatest evil. 30. Even death itself should not be viewed as a negation of life, but seen rather as a continuation of the total process which affirms life.