Our Teacher, the Elder (the Alter Rebbe) – during the years that he would speak short teachings – said: “‘Know what is above you.’ (Avot 2:1) Meaning, you should know that all which is l’mala –‘above’ – in the transcendent s’firot and partzufim (Divine qualities and personas), all of it is mimkha – ‘from you’ – dependent on human avodah (spiritual practice).”
This radical Hasidic teaching takes a well-known mishna from Pirkei Avot and turns it on its head through a clever word play. The original aphorism says, “Know what is above you” – meaning simply that we should keep God in mind. But the Hebrew idiom for “what is above you,” mah l’mala mimkha – literally means, “what is above, is from you.” So instead of reading it according to the plain meaning of the idiom, “know what is above you,” he’s reading it very literally: “know that what is above you is actually from you” – meaning that God somehow comes from us – arising from, or created by, or dependent upon – us. What could this possibly mean? It sounds like it’s saying that we create God! How could this be? To understand, it is helpful to remember that there are two different modes of talking about the Divine: Ontological and Relational. The ontological mode refers to God’s existence, or being-ness. Normally, the religious person believes that God exists, and the atheist doesn’t believe that God exists. However, the esoteric understanding of God breaks down this duality, because in Kabbalah and Hasidut, God doesn’t exist, God is Existence; God is Being Itself – as the Torah says, Ayn Od – “There is nothing else” – meaning not that there are no other gods besides God, but rather that there is nothing else except God. And also Hashem Ekhad – “God is One” – meaning not that there is only one god, but that there is One God Only – God is All That Is. In this understanding, “God” is synonymous with Existence, Being, or Reality in the ontological sense. But if God is really just Existence, Being, or Reality, then why don’t we just call It Existence, Being, or Reality? Why bring the word “God” into it at all? Because “God” is also a relational word – “God” describes not merely something that exists, but the way in which we relate to that which exists. “God” is, we might say, the deification of Reality. What does that mean? To “deify” means to have reverence for, to surrender to, to hold up as supremely sacred. In this relational sense, Reality becomes God when we step into sacred relationship with It. So what does it mean to step into relationship with Reality as God? It means that this moment becomes the arena in which we meet the One; it means that the fullness of all that arises in our field of awareness, all experience as it appears now, consists of God’s words to us. It means that the movement of our breathing Now is received as a Divine gift. In this way, our words and actions become imbued with a new depth of intention to do our part in the relationship, to make our response beautiful and bring harmony to the dance of the ever-changing moment. This beautifying quality of Presence-In-Action is represented by the s’firah of Tiferet.
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