#ohr ein sof

It means briefly that the existence of the universe is made possible by a process of shrinkage in God. Luria begins by putting a question which gives the appearance of being naturalistic and, if you like, somewhat crude. How can there be a world if God is everywhere? If God is ‘all in all,’ how can there be things which are not God? How can God create the world out of nothing if there is no nothing? This is the question. The solution became, in spite of the crude form which he gave it, of the highest importance in the history of later Kabbalistic thought. According to Luria, God was compelled to make room for the world by, as it were, abandoning a region within [Themself], a kind of mystical primordial space from which [They] withdrew in order to return to it in the act of creation and revelation. The first act of En-Sof, the Infinite Being, is therefore not a step outside but a step inside, a movement of recoil, of falling back upon oneself, of withdrawing into oneself. Instead of emanation we have the opposite, contraction. The God who revealed [Themself] in firm contours was superseded by one who descended deeper into the recesses of [Their] own Being, who concentrated [Themself] into [Themself], and had done so from the very beginning of creation.

The English word sin derives from the Latin sine, meaning “without.” Kabbalistically, our sin is what we are without, that is, our sin is our lack, the particular spot—or spots—where we are without Light. When we come to Malchut it is in order that we may correct our lack, allow it to become Light-filled.

i’ve been tracking the tag “lux nova” and/or “something about a great light” forever on my main blog, and recently came across something i reblogged awhile ago: “lucidity: the wound closest to the sun”