The Darkness That Points to the Light

Opening There are moments when you stand and look around you, and your heart feels heavy. Darkness lies over the street and over the home. Sometimes it lies over your own inner self. And a question rises up on its own, almost without asking permission: What can I possibly do? I am only one person, and the darkness is so big. That feeling is real. Do not push it away. But listen to one point. It may turn the whole picture around for you. The Darkness That Testifies King Solomon wrote: “I saw that there is an advantage to light from darkness.” At first this sounds simple. But stop and look closely. What does “advantage” mean here? It does not just mean that light is better than darkness. Everyone knows that. It means that light has an advantage that comes from darkness, from inside it. The advantage of light comes out of the darkness itself. The Zohar, the classic book of Jewish mysticism, opens this idea up wide. Darkness is not a thing of its own, an empty, fixed reality. It is a covering. It is not simply “no light.” It is something that covers a light that is already inside, just like a sealed box that hides a light within it. The thicker the covering, the more it testifies that the light inside is greater. This is not a comforting thought. It is a law. A Parable from the Laws of Nature If you need a parable to help this settle in your mind, here is one. Isaac Newton stated his famous law of motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Put a stone on a table, and the table pushes back with the same force. That is a law of nature. But even before Newton, and on a deeper level, this is a spiritual law. Against every measure of hiddenness there is an equal measure of revealing. Against every layer of darkness, an equal amount of light is hidden inside. No less and no more. This is what Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi wrote in the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought. He taught that a surge of light flows out of the very forces of harshness and holding back, from their high source. The descent is there for the sake of the ascent. The deeper the descent, the higher the ascent. So the parable is not just a nice picture. It rests on an inner truth: darkness holds light inside it. The New Point: If You See It, You Were Sent But here is the point where everything turns over. If there is darkness in the world, and there is a light that matches that darkness, then the question is: Who will reveal this light? And one more question: Why are you the one who sees this darkness? Why did it fall to you, and not to your friend? The answer is a joyful one: because you are the one who was sent to it. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, taught at length that Hashem guides every detail of our lives. Nothing happens by chance. If your eye has caught a certain darkness, whether in your home, your neighborhood or your own inner self, it is not because a cruel fate dropped you there. It is because a certain light is hidden there, and you, you in particular, are able to bring it out. The very fact that you see it is your mission. Someone who does not have the light that is needed does not see the darkness. A candle does not feel the dark. But whoever sees it, whoever feels the pain of what is missing, is himself carrying in his pocket the very thing that is missing there. As King David wrote: “For You light my lamp; Hashem lights up my darkness.” “My lamp,” the lamp inside me, is what gives light. And what does it come to light up? “My darkness,” the darkness I have met. The Soul’s Descent and Its Mission This is what the soul’s coming down into this world is all about. Likkutei Torah, a classic book of Hasidic teaching, explains that the soul comes down below not as a punishment and not by accident, but as a mission. It came down to meet the body, the world and the darkness inside them, and to light them up. The soul is the light. The body and the world are the place the light was sent to. So when you stand there and feel that everything is dark, do not sink into heavy sadness. Heavy sadness is the one thing that keeps you from seeing what you are holding in your own hands. Instead, ask yourself simply: What is the light inside me? And which corner am I being invited to light up?