Head to toe

We are what we are. Composed of a head (intelligence), heart (emotions), hands and feet (action), and everything in between.

And a soul, which keeps us alive.

When we stand, the head is highest. Intellect (thinking, imagining) is a lofty, ethereal faculty. It’s where we try to understand ourselves and the world around us.

Emotions. We feel love, hate, fear etc. Emotions motivate our thoughts and actions. But our intellect has the ability to control and guide our emotions.

Action may be the lowest faculty, but often it’s the main thing. A hand that helps a neighbour, or a hand that steals. A kind word or a cruel word. Feet that walk to do a good deed, or feet that rush to inflict pain. Action, the lowest level, can do the most good or the opposite.

Our faculties and abilities interconnect wondrously. And thus we function as human beings.

When G-d created heaven and earth, he created levels. Lofty spiritual worlds where angels and souls reside (as they understand and enjoy spiritual revelations of G-dliness), down to lower worlds where G-d’s light is more hidden, until our physical world, where we generally don’t see G-dliness unless we are open to it and look for it.

This world is the lowest of all. Yet it is this world which G-d had in mind from the beginning. Everything was created so that man, with his entire being, especially with his lowest faculty, action, does good things, obeys G-d’s commands, and thus reveals G-dliness in this, the lowest of worlds.

Chassidus teaches that the highest descends to the lowest. Because try as we might, we cannot possibly comprehend G-d. But when we obey His commandments, when we love and help another, then we bring peace not only between people, but also between people and G-d, as we connect with Him.

And then we create a G-dly world. By revealing how G-d is One with everything, we hasten the complete Redemption with Moshiach, when the entire world will be at peace, because everyone will become aware of G-d, as the prophet said, “And the world will be filled with awareness of G-d, just as the waters cover the sea.”

May we see it very soon.