I always find it inspiring when one of the great souls - in this case Maimonides, the Rambam- shares with us a divine inspiration he received. He writes, “There has been revealed to me a tremendous secret. If you understand the secret, all doubts will be removed. If you understand the secret, the supernal secrets of God will be revealed to you.”
And what he says isn't new to any of us, but I think the degree of it and the importance of it will hopefully allow us to gain a new level on the Shabbat of Shemot: The degree of an individual's conscious connection and attachment to the Light of the Creator is to the degree in which the Light of the Creator shines to him, protects him, and sends him Light and abundance.
How many of us during the day, or maybe sometimes even during our spiritual connections, are actually consciously thinking of the Light of the Creator, consciously attaching our mind in thought to the Light of the Creator? It should be at least while we're making our connection, while we're in prayer, and while we are reading the Zohar, but how many of us truly are consciously attaching our consciousness to the Light of the Creator? It is actually that simple, and that powerful.
We're not there yet, and we're not meant to be there yet, but, as Maimonides says, an individual who gets to a state where 24 hours a day his mind is an attachment to the Light of the Creator, which simply means he is thinking of the Light of the Creator that exists, whether he is working, praying, studying, or eating, and whose mind is constantly attached to the Creator, will therefore always be protected and have the Light and blessings that come with the connection to the Light of the Creator. Because of that, Maimonides says, “It has been revealed to me that any person who ever experienced darkness or pain, even the prophets and greatest souls that ever lived, the darkness and pain only came to them in the time when their consciousness was separated from the Light of the Creator.”
So, let's say someone takes ten minutes or an hour to attach his mind and consciousness to the Light of the Creator in the morning. Then, unfortunately, even though it should not be like this, he goes to work and for the next ten hours his mind is completely detached. His mind is only in the work, not even thinking of the Light of the Creator that's surrounding him, the Light of the Creator that's blessing him, the Light of the Creator that's with him. Then, he has ten hours of complete separation of mind and consciousness from the Light of the Creator. And the amount of time of separation, Maimonides writes, is also the amount of opening that is available for the negativity to come in.
He says not only is the time the negativity comes to the individual dependent on the time that consciousness is separated from the Light of the Creator, but also the amount of darkness and the amount of pain is dependent on the size of opening that a person left for the darkness to come in. Therefore, depending on the amount of time will be the size of the opening for darkness. But if an individual, again, is able to fight that and constantly be connecting his mind to the Light of the Creator, that person, he says, will never experience pain or darkness. And this is not reserved for the elevated souls; anybody, he says, who is able to maintain less distance between the times of conscious connection limits the amount of darkness that can enter their lives. This he says is also the secret of the words, Ehyeh asher ehyeh, “As you are with me, so I am with you.”
Unfortunately, I think there are times even in our morning connections when our consciousness isn't always directly, “I am thinking of the Light of the Creator and connecting my mind to the Light of the Creator,” but it is in the morning, so we cannot then allow for a whole day to go by without a constant reconnection of our consciousness to the Light of the Creator. And again, it can be during work and it can be while we are eating. It doesn't have to be that our mind is always there, but every half hour, or when we take a break and have a snack, for example, we can remind ourselves that we are enjoying our snack because of the Light of the Creator. Then we just reattached with that five second thought, and instead of letting ten hours go by with our mind being disconnected from the Light of the Creator, now it's only been two hours, and then only an hour, and so forth.
When an individual is able to constantly connect his mind like that, no harm can come to him. Now, of course, from where we are now to that state doesn't happen in a day, but at least we should be striving towards that. We should understand that any darkness we experience is because of the detachment of our mind from the Light of the Creator. A constant attachment of our mind to the Light of the Creator means constant protection and constant blessings. The degree and time of disconnect is the exact indicator of how much darkness and pain can enter into an individual's life.
So, let's make sure that in any given day three hours don't go by without us reattaching our mind to Light of the Creator. Because to the degree of our mind's attachment to the Light of the Creator is to the degree of Light we receive and protection that can constantly be brought into our lives. As we know, it's all about consciousness; but how many of us are living it?
I think sometimes it takes having a new understanding such as this one to be able to at least start striving towards it. No harm can come to an individual who's able to constantly maintain a consciousness of connection to the Light of the Creator; only blessings can come to him. So we have to assess this for ourselves in any given day: do we even have that half hour in the morning or night when our mind is completely connected? Let's assume at least that. But then what about those 12, 14, 16 hours in between? We can't leave that big of an opening. We need to make sure that we’re constantly stopping to reattach our consciousness to the Light of the Creator. Because if we do that - and to the degree that we do that – then we’re closing the window for the possibility of darkness, pain, and suffering entering into our life. It's a tremendously important secret and revelation that I hope we all merit to begin living.
