by Stayaway from Bnei Baruch

Created on: December 06, 2009   Last Updated: December 16, 2009

This is essentially a question of freedom of will. Do we have any, and if not, where do all of our thoughts and actions originate? We would like to believe that all of our choices come from within. However, we are completely operated by several factors that determine everything that we think, feel, and are capable of.

What makes us who we are?

We are born to parents that we do not choose. They contribute to us their genetic codes that equip us with all of our basic characteristics and abilities. Once we are born, we live in a family which instills the foundation of the psychological system we will operate with for the rest of our lives. Outside of the family, there is the greater society. The society places its values, judgments, and expectations on us, which are inescapable. Even if we reject the society, it is merely a reaction to it and not freedom from it.

It is like a seed that is planted in the ground. Our genetics are the seed; if it is a wheat seed, it will never grow to be a rose. The family is the soil. The relative fertility of the soil determines the health of the seed as it grows. The society is like the environment the soil is found in and this also affects the quality of the resulting stalk of wheat.

Not only do the seed, soil, and environment control us, we are also controlled by our ever present survival instinct-our egoism. This egoism is the basic operating system of every human being. We cannot make a single move, a single choice, a single breath, without adhering to this operating system. Not only can we not function outside of it, we don't even realize it exists.

Do we have any control?

Unlike the wheat seed, a human being can get up and move. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the one free choice we have is to put ourselves into an environment that enables us to see how little control we really have, an environment that addresses the egoism inherent in all of us and constantly encourages us to move outside of it. Only outside the ego, through the help of the correct environment can we see what is true and real.

What is outside the Ego?

Outside the ego inherent in man, is the boundlessness of eternity-the quality of bestowal and love. Here, in equivalence with the Operator and Originator of all of nature, we can sense and feel who Operates. In equivalence with the Operator, we gain the quality of freedom.

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