God is to the world as our unconscious is to our everyday lives--quietly, invisibly, secretly guiding our steps; feeding us our lines; moving us into position; unifying everything we do. We are chastened to realize that what we thought was an accident was, in truth, the hand of God. Most of the time we are simply unaware.
Awareness takes too much effort, and besides, it's more fun to pretend we are running the show.
If all the people in the world were to do [what they could do], our world would truly be a Garden of Eden, the way God meant it to be. If everything broken could be repaired, then everyone and everything would fit together like the pieces of one gigantic jigsaw puzzle. But, for people to begin the great task of repairing creation, they first must take responsibility.
When you see something that is broken, fix it. When you find something that is lost, return it. When you see something that needs to be done, do it. In that way, you will take care of your world and repair creation.
If God is everywhere, God is also in the perverse things we plan and even carry out. To be sure, God is less evident and less accessible than in acts of kindness, for example, but in them nevertheless.... Rejecting our sins only postpones the ultimate task of healing and self-unification. Accepting ourselves is another way of finding God.
The wilderness is not just a desert through which we wandered for forty years. It is a way of being. A place that demands being open to the flow of life around you. A place that demands being honest with yourself without regard to the cost in personal anxiety. A place that demands being present with all of yourself.
In the wilderness your possessions cannot surround you. Your preconceptions cannot protect you. Your logic cannot promise you the future. Your guilt can no longer place you safely in the past. You are left alone each day with an immediacy that astonishes, chastens and exults. You see the world as if for the first time.
Each human being is at the same time both riddled with divine sparks and in desperate need of repair. Each person is the whole world. And every human action therefore plays a role in the final restitution. Whatever we do is related to this ultimate task: to return all things to their original place in God. Everything a person does affects the process.
You want to be reborn, you want that a new and better you should emerge from the frozen hulk winter has made you, you want to be free again? Then you have to let go of the old you. You must be willing to walk into the midst of the sea on dry ground and risk it all.
We don't want to just read about what God wants. We don't want someone else telling us what God wants either.... We want our eyes to be God's eyes so that we can see the world the way God sees it. We want our hands to do God's work. We want our prayers to be God's prayers. We want what God wants. If you become a servant of God, then your action is God's action. By repairing things here, we repair them above. We are primarily concerned with reuniting the soul with its roots.
The Baal Shem tells of a king who was a master at creating illusions. "The Glory of God is to conceal a thing (Proverbs 25:2). And while he wanted very much to be close to his people, he wanted even more for his people to want to be close to him. So he devised a plan.
He built around himself a great castle-illusion. There were illusory walls and doorways and towers. There were chambers and courtyards and passageways. And in front of each one the king placed illusory treasures of every kind. Bags of money, trips to Florida, and having a beautiful body. Then he proclaimed throughout the land that he wished to be found. And all the people came to the illusory castle, but one by one they gave up searching for the king and settled instead for some illusory treasure. Until, at last, the king's son came. He saw that it was all an illusion and that his father was there in plain view, sitting on a folding chair in the middle of a great, open field.
My daughter once told me that the way to know I was dancing was to dance with so much of me that I stopped worrying about what I looked like on the dance floor. I told her that if she looked the way I did when I danced, she'd worry too. But she only said that in order to really dance, you must give yourself to the music. Let it tell you what to do; quit being so self-conscious. The only way you will ever know you have danced is if, once the music has stopped, you realize you didn't know you were dancing. When we are dancing, the inner conversation ceases. The goal is to be fully present in whatever you do, just like God is in the world.