Reality Reconstruction

Famed literary works are filled with beautiful metaphors which take readers to the height of imagination by comparing or contrasting notable images. American poet, Robert Frost, for example, used a metaphor of “the road less traveled,” likening one’s life to two roads in the classic poem The Road Not Taken. The metaphor, “all the world is a stage” from the classical Shakespearean play As You Like It, portrays many details about the world through the relative use of a stage and other histrionic expressions.

Hence, the metaphor is a muscular tool writers use to add and convey their thoughts to us—so much so that we are a bit disenchanted when the story eventually ends, caring that we could just stay in it, dwelling out all the extraordinary metaphors. Of course, in the next moment we retrieve that it’s only a story and there is no much thing. Or is there?

With the literature of Kabbalah, there is indeed an entire world concealed behind the words one reads. In fact, what may appear like a metaphor in Kabbalah actually conveys a real-life phenomenon—a spiritual phenomenon. This means that the text describes only things that we experience and dwell out with our afloat, autonomous participation, and not just in our imagination

For example, in a book called Pri Hacham (Fruit of the Sage), Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (a.k.a. Baal HaSulam), clarifies a past Kabbalistic verse that says: “Thou hast hemmed me in behind and before” (Psalms 139)

This Kabbalistic “metaphor” describes an experience that is utterly real: Concealment (“behind”) or revelation (“before”) of the Upper Force to a person. “Revelation” means that one feels the Upper Force’s absolute influence—one feels the Upper Force the way it actually is: kind and acceptable. “Concealment” means that one feels the Upper Force’s allusive influence; that is to state, one feels the Upper Force as a minus force.

A question arises: Why does the Upper Force express itself this way to a person? One who reads between the lines of the text will uncover the answer: It’s because otherwise, we could never feel the Upper Force in any way. In fact, everything that we finger is established on a comparison or a contrast between two opposites. We can key out the feeling of pain for instance, only in that we cognize what pleasure feels like. Similarly, the feelings of blistering from stale, or of hunger from satiation, are cognized through their other sensations. In the same way, we feel the Upper Force only based on two opposite sensations: concealment and revelation of this force

Hence, the above quote, which may sound like a literary metaphor, is describing a person’s sensations of the Upper Force—something completely tangible. In this way, a Kabbalistic metaphor is intended to be experienced, acquired and accomplished—not conceived of as an average literate metaphor

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