We discover our true self from within what Kabbalah calls the “point in the heart,” a tiny desire within us that attracts us upward to another realm beyond this world.
Today, we live in an era where people despair more and more from living in this world. Rising depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress and drug abuse signal that more and more people wish to separate from our current sensation of life. However, at the same time, a new desire surfaces within us with a spark hope, fulfillment and vitality. This desire’s fulfillment exists in a different place to where we understand and feel our desires’ fulfillment up until today.
If we pursue the fulfillment of the point in the heart, not suppressing it but interesting ourselves in how we can exit our present state and progress upward to discover life’s source—what we live for, why we were put here to begin with, and what is the meaning of life—then such a point guides us to the revelation of our true self.
The more we seek according to the demands of the point in the heart, the more we will be led to discover the source of our existence in the upper force of nature, the force of love and bestowal, which created and sustains all life.
In other words, our true self and the upper force are one and the same. We arrived here in our world by way of descent and stemming down from that upper force, and we can ascend back to that root point of our existence via a path of ascent. The point in the heart, also called “the desire for spirituality,” is what attracts us to that exalted spiritual state.
We were all initially created in what the wisdom of Kabbalah calls “the world of Ein Sof (Infinity).” We descended into our world from the world of Ein Sof through various levels, from a lofty state of love and bestowal down into its opposite egoistic state that characterizes our world.
We exist in the world of Ein Sof in our perfect and eternal state—our soul. We were initially created in such a state, and from there, our soul—the root of each and everyone’s soul—began shrinking, gradually minimizing until we ended up in this world where only a tiny fragmented point of a desire remains in our consciousness of the great big soul we all share.
Our descent from a eternal and perfect state as a single soul into our world was intentional. From our current form of existence, we need to start developing back up to the state we were created in, and to do so by seemingly creating it by ourselves, not just by receiving it with no free choice. We will then attain a much fuller and richer sense of our state as a single soul.
In our original state, we had no real sense of that soul, no sense of life. It is because we lacked feeling the complexity and the purpose for our development. Our soul underwent shrinkage to a tiny point that exists as a small spiritual desire within us, and from the feeling of this tiny point, we can develop this desire up to a sensation of our full soul, and on our own accord.
In other words, by attaining the root of our soul—our true self—through developing and nurturing our point in the heart, we develop, sense, examine and increasingly understand that desire, all the way until becoming fulfilled through it. When we return to the world of Ein Sof, we then live to our fullest extent: in eternity and perfection.
That is our true self, and it is what we have to attain.
In the wisdom of Kabbalah, this state is called “the attainment of adhesion with the Creator,” and it is considered the purpose of our lives, the reason for our creation in the first place. The Creator is the force of love and bestowal that becomes revealed within us, and which fulfills us completely, in such a state. In Hebrew, the word for Creator (“Boreh”) comes from two words “come” and “see” (“Bo” and “Reh”), i.e., “come and see” that you receive every goodness and delight there is to receive in existence.