There’s a chassidishe torah that says, Everyone of us is from God and the soul He gave us is pure. The question is, what does it mean that my soul is pure? So, imagine I’m in New York and I want to go to London but by mistake I go all the way to San Francisco. I get to San Francisco and I think I’m in London. But they tell me, No, you’re crazy! You have to go east, not west. So I go all the way back to New York and start my journey again. But with the soul it’s different. If a person, God forbid, makes a wrong turn and he finds out he went the wrong way, his soul is so pure that he’s always right there. The moment I find out I went the wrong way, I’m already there. You see it’s really both; on the one hand we’re absolutely there and on the other hand, we have to get there. (Adapted from Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach)
But am I there already or do I still have somewhere to go?
Reb Nosson (Birkas Hashachar 5) parallels matzah and chometz respectively to Divine Providence and the natural order. Matzah symbolizes a bread that is made with almost no human intervention. It’s baked quickly and doesn’t have time to rise. There’s no preservatives or spices in it. It’s analogous to complete trust in the Creator’s ordinance, without relying on our own efforts. Chometz, on the other hand is an aspect of running nature’s course. Chometz is created by expending human effort into the creative process, with bake times recipes and seasoning. This is likened to putting in long days at work and feeling all the pressure of success on our own shoulders.
The events of our lives are dependent on our perspective. When one lives his life with trust, acting as a pipeline of Divine Providence, every sequence of his life is another scene of Hashem’s loving-kindness, the name יהוה. But when one lives the lonely life of random natural acts, he is subject to דינים, judgements, because nature, הטבע, has the same numerical value as the word אלהים, the Divine name of judgement.
But in the deepest most truest place, even the judgements are sweetened. Even the natural order is all part of the most exact Divine Providence. When the דינים are sweetened, then everything is compassion and loving-kindness. This is what Reb Shlomo meant, that the soul is always at its destination. Yes, it still has to go somewhere but it’s already there. When the light shines so bright from behind the curtain, like when Elijah the prophet embarrassed the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, then it’s crystal clear that יהוה הוא האלהים! We then see that everything is oneness. All judgments are really kindness and all effort is necessary to move to where we already are.