Lessons in the Service of Hashem from the Maamar

1. A person should not get discouraged from davening just because in the past he may have transgressed against some of the commandments. Hashem gives every Jew the ability to awaken in themselves a love for Him so powerful that it can permeate all of his/her ten soul powers. It is specifically through the inspiration we receive from davening that is how we will have the power to correct our past mistakes and serve Hashem properly in the Torah and Mitzvos.
2. We wish that Hashem would just appear to us and we would experience a “Great Love” for Hashem that will transform our animal soul. The truth is that this is the reward, not the service. The service is that even though we don’t see Hashem so well and we don’t have a “Great Love” for Hashem, nonetheless we work on ourselves to contemplate His Oneness and awaken a love for Him. This is really a deeper connection than experiencing Divine Revelation, since it comes from our own effort and is our own accomplishment.
3. To awaken a love for Hashem we need to contemplate His Oneness, like it says, אֶׁחָּד – וְאָּהַבְתָּּ by thinking about how He is the One and only true existence, that is how we come to love Him. We should try to think this over before davening.

This a summary of the contemplation described in the maamar:

1. Just like before the world was created, Hashem was the only existence, so too now, He is the only True Existence.
2. This is because the world is being created constantly from Hashem’s words.
3. However, it is only from our perspective that we see His creative power as though it were creating something outside of Himself, like a person’s speech that becomes separate from the person.
4. But, from Hashem's perspective, the creative power invested in us is really like His thoughts that He is thinking to Himself. Just like a person's thoughts are still totally unified with the person, so too Hashem's creative power (which is the underlying reality of our existence) is still totally unified with Him and has no separate existence or identity other than Him.
5. Then why don’t we feel that we exist as His thoughts inside of Himself? Because Hashem created a filter on His creative power to block out our awareness of that reality. Hashem made a filter around the sun to block out the intensity of its heat so that we wouldn’t burn up. So too, He created a filter on His creative power so that we shouldn’t feel how we are part of His Oneness. Thus, we can have free choice to serve Him. If the truth of Hashem’s Oneness would be openly felt then it would be impossible to sin. Therefore, He created a filter to block out that awareness so that our service of Him will be our free choice.
6. To help us understand how we are included in Hashem's true existence, we should understand that our physical world is an expression of a higher spiritual world.

Whatever is expressed in speech exists in the person's thought in a higher level, a higher state of being. So too, whatever we see and experience in this world is just a limited expression of how we exist in the higher spiritual world, where Hashem's Presence is more revealed. And that higher spiritual world is also a limited expression of how it exists in an even higher spiritual world where Hashem is more revealed. This process continues hundreds and thousands of times over, where each world is only a limited expression of how reality exists in a higher spiritual world.

1. After going through hundreds and thousands (millions and billions etc.) of such levels, we then say that all of that is just a mere expression of Hashem, but Hashem Himself cannot be grasped by any spiritual level, even a level that is billions and trillions of times more real than our physical world. This is because Hashem is the infinite Creator of the whole idea of spiritual levels, and all of these are merely His thoughts inside Himself.