Grasping a Thought In Your Hand

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Trying to understand the Creator with a human mind is like trying to grasp a thought with a hand.

(Tanya II 9)
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Early on in my Kabbalah classes, I usually teach my students that Kabbalah does not teach us about our Creator. Rather, Kabbalah only teaches us about our Creator's revelations. Sometimes students react to this teaching with a puzzled look.
 
I remember the first time I myself encountered this teaching. It was a real let down! I engaged a Rabbi to teach me about my Creator and all he can offer me were teachings about something else.
 
To help my students rapidly get passed a moment where they might be experiencing an unsettled state of mind, I immediately do an exercise with them. The purpose of the exercise is to help them appreciate the limits of the human mind when it comes to grasping certain very elevated realities.
 
I’d select a popular student and ask him to try to grab a thought in his hand.
 
Typically, the student will shoot me this man, are you from out of space look.

Then in feigned seriousness I’d ask the student, “Why can’t you catch the thought? Come on ... maybe you just didn’t try hard enough. Please try again.”

To which the student wanting to duck out of an impossible task will respond, “Hands are not designed to grasp thoughts.”

Then I’d quip, “Neither are minds tools designed to grasp the Creator!”

With this exercise the student has come to appreciate on his own why he cannot grasp the Creator and comfortably self-adjusts his own learning expectations.

The Universe Needs a Creator

The universe needs a Creator because nothing can create itself. Why?

This is because there are only two choices of when something can create itself, either before it exists or after it already exists. Before it exists, it’s not there to make itself. After it already exists, there’s no need to make itself.

(“Duties of the Heart”, Gate of Unity)

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Today, reviewing this concept was the highlight of my daily Torah study session. In the course of today's study, I have learned so many deeper concepts. I was baffled about why this teaching really stood out in my heart and imagination. Why wasn't it one of the deeper teachings that lingered on in my heart when I closed my books?

At first I thought maybe because this teaching comes as representative of a special time and place - the medieval Golden Age of Spain. This period was really the renaissance before the renaissance. It was a special time and place of high achievement, education, discovery and the arts. After musing a while, I felt that this could be a reason, however, I felt deep inside that there was something more ...

Finally it dawned on me that I was being subtly tickled by the underlying humor of the logic. I found it funny to imagine something that does not yet exist working to the point of exhaustion to create itself. I imagined the non-existent's gyrations and struggles as it engaged in the futile effort to exert and sweat itself into existence - like zero engaging in the impossible struggle to become one.

I also found it funny imagining something already existing struggling very hard at the redundant act of creating itself. The unstated silliness had silently reached me.

Humor makes a great teacher, even in disguise.