When the Heart Grows Cold, the Sun Has Not Gone Out
“…But in the work, we must remember that in the matter of making a covenant between the Creator and a person, it might be that the love will cool only between man and the Creator. But how can it be said that the love will grow cold in the Creator? That is, since the covenant applies to both, it means that there could be a descent between the two of them concerning the making of the covenant, but how can we speak of changes or a descent in the Creator?
Baal HaSulam said that in both man and the Creator there is the matter of “As in water, face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects man.” He interpreted about what is written (Exodus 33:13), “And now, if I have found favor in Your eyes, let me know Your way that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your eyes.” He asked, How did Moses know, when he said, “If I have found favor in Your eyes”? He replied that it is because beforehand, it is written, “You have said, ‘I have known you by name, and you have also found favor in My eyes.’” By this Moses knew that the Creator favored him, since Moses favored the Creator, following the rule, “As in water, face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects man” (Proverbs 27)…”
Rabash, What Is Making a Covenant in the Work?
The Silence That Feels Like Abandonment
There are moments when a person turns toward the Creator and feels nothing.
The same words that once opened the heart now seem to fall into an empty room. Prayer continues, but its warmth is gone. Yesterday, there was a sense of being heard. Today, even the hope of being heard feels difficult to hold.
And then a painful thought arises:
Perhaps He no longer loves me.
The Kabbalist brings us to this intimate wound. He does not dismiss the darkness or pretend that a person can simply decide to feel differently. He describes how a descent deepens: our love cools, we feel the Creator’s love cooling in return, and the apparent withdrawal of His love makes our own heart retreat still further.
We feel alone. We pray less confidently. We begin to doubt the connection that once sustained us.
Yet within this sorrow, there is a truth capable of changing the meaning of the entire experience: there are no changes in the Creator. The changes take place in the receiver.
The love has not disappeared. Our ability to feel it has changed.
The Face We See in the Water
“As in water, face reflects face.”
We lean over the water and see a face looking back at us. When our face tightens with sorrow, the reflection tightens too. When we soften, it softens.
In the spiritual work, something similarly profound happens. We perceive the Creator through the qualities of our own heart.
When the desire to receive for ourselves governs us, we approach the connection with an unspoken condition: Let me feel good. Let me understand. Let me receive an answer that satisfies me.
If that condition is unmet, we may experience the Creator as distant, withholding, even indifferent. Our own demand has become the measure through which we interpret His relation to us.
How heartbreaking this is: to stand before an unchanging source of love and experience rejection because the heart cannot yet receive that love in its true form.
This does not make the pain imaginary. The concealment is real in our experience. But its reality does not mean that the Creator has turned away.
The water is showing us the condition of the receiver.
To Know Love, We Must Become Like Love
The principle of equivalence of form gives this reflection its deeper meaning.
Spiritual closeness is measured by similarity of qualities. As a person acquires an intention to bestow — to love beyond personal benefit — the person becomes more capable of perceiving the Creator’s quality of bestowal.
We cannot fully recognize a quality while relating to it only through its opposite.
A heart occupied with what it can take encounters love and asks, What will this give me? A heart beginning to bestow encounters love and starts to understand its movement from within.
Correction therefore reaches deeper than an improved mood. It changes the intention with which we approach the connection.
Slowly, painfully, the prayer begins to change.
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Give me proof that You love me becomes:
Help me acquire the quality through which Your love can be felt.
Fill the emptiness I cannot bear becomes:
Help me remain connected even while this emptiness is revealed.
These words may first emerge through tears. They may feel far beyond what we can honestly desire. Even then, we can ask for the desire itself.
The Darkness Reveals Where We Need Help
There is a tenderness hidden in this understanding, provided we do not turn it into an accusation against ourselves.
A descent is not a reason to conclude that we are worthless or unworthy of love. The revelation of an uncorrected quality gives us something concrete to bring into the work.
We discover how dependent our love has been on receiving warmth. We discover how quickly we interpret an unanswered demand as abandonment. We discover that we have wanted connection, but have also wanted control over how connection must feel.
These discoveries hurt.
They expose the distance between the love we imagine ourselves capable of and the love we actually possess.
Yet this exposed distance can become a prayer. We no longer ask only for the unpleasant feeling to vanish. We ask for help correcting the quality that has been revealed — for a heart able to move toward bestowal even when self-interest finds no immediate reward.
A Covenant Made for the Hour of Darkness
A Kabbalistic covenant is made in an ascent, when the connection feels alive. But its deepest purpose belongs to the descent.
While the heart is warm, a person takes upon himself to remember the bond when warmth is absent.
He knows that a day may come when today’s certainty will be inaccessible. He may read the same words and find no consolation. He may stand in prayer and feel that he is standing nowhere.
For that future hour, he makes a covenant.
When I cannot feel the connection, I will remember that I accepted it.
When my perception tells me that You have changed, I will remember that the change is in the receiver.
When love gives me no sweetness, I will still ask for the strength to love.
Above reason, the person holds to this commitment while acknowledging what he actually feels. He does not need to call darkness light. He needs to remember the covenant within the darkness.
The First Warmth of a Corrected Heart
Perhaps the most moving moment in this work is almost invisible.
A person still feels empty, yet asks for connection. Still feels wounded, yet wishes to bestow. Still longs to receive reassurance, yet begins to care about the bond beyond the reassurance it provides.
Something in the heart has begun to change.
As its form changes, its perception can change with it. What seemed like the Creator’s withdrawal is understood as concealment experienced in the receiving desire. What seemed like a broken relationship becomes a place where correction is needed and can be requested.
The Creator has not become more loving. The receiver has become more able to perceive love.
And the covenant carries the person toward that possibility, sometimes with nothing more than a fragile remembrance:
I cannot feel Your love today. Help me become like it. Help me keep the bond until my heart can recognize what has never ceased to be.
