Let My People Know

"The constancy of a struggle to overcome the contradiction"

 
The essence of spirituality cannot be localized in either the wisdom of the intellect or the simplicity of the heart, being beyond all these.

It can, however, be reached by the constancy of a struggle to overcome the contradiction. 

Indeed, the contradiction itself offers a passage from one world to another. 

As one transfers attention from the inwardness of prayer and yearning for the Divine to the outwardness of reason, study, and correct action, one becomes aware of the divine order of things, that everything has its proper place, measure, and time. 

Indeed, the Jewish scriptures are full of this contradiction–as sharply emphasizing of the most minute detail as they are sublimely aware of the highest and most all-embracing truths; as ready to question everything as to accept without question. 

The Holy One is discovered to be beyond all this.

He is immanent and flows within life, in the passage from one world to another, from one way of doing things to another, from one right measure of existence to the whole world of forms. 

Thus the possibilities of relating and responding to God are countless in number. 

There is no above or below in approaching Him, no preference between mind or feeling. 

On the contrary, in moving up and back from one such realm of experience to the other, its apparent opposite in life, one reaches a rhythm of being which is the life of holiness. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz