1- The maamar starts by quoting the verse where Hashem says: “There shall be no woman who miscarries or who is barren in your land, the number of your days I shall increase.”
2- Just as physical bread and other food grows from the physical ground of the land, so too, our spiritual sustenance, our love and fear of Hashem, comes from the “spiritual ground” of Malchus of Atzilus, the Land Above. This revelation from Malchus is called “Light is planted (in the “ground” of Malchus, the Land Above) for the Jewish People, who are all righteous.”
3- A person needs to know that his love and fear of Hashem are not only the direct result of his own hard work, but are also dependent upon the revelation from Hashem, through the level of Malchus, the “ground” of Atzilus that is the Land Above us.
4- What does it mean that we should serve Hashem, what service do we provide for Him that He does not already have?
5- The “service” is the task revealing Hashem through our own effort, until we will experience Him as our true source of Life and power. This process of discovery is something that Hashem wants, and He “cannot do it by Himself,” as it were, since He specifically wants us to discover Him, not merely be recipients of His revelation from Above.
6- However, at the same time, a person has to know that even his ability to discover Hashem is also only a gift from Hashem. If a person will attribute his newly discovered awareness of Hashem as only resulting from his own work and not as a gift from Hashem, then this love and fear of Hashem cannot last. Or, if a person’s ego is big enough, then he won’t be able to come to true love and fear of Hashem in the first place. The ego blocks out the ability to receive true love and fear of Hashem from Hashem. This is like a woman whose womb is either malfunctioning and thereby she miscarries the fetus (G-d forbid), or a woman whose womb is blocked and covered over and cannot conceive in the first place. Similarly, when our ego covers over our heart, or is stuck in our heart, it blocks out our ability to receive true love and fear of Hashem, or does not allow it to fully develop.
7- What should someone do if his heart is covered over?
8- He needs to break through his ego and unneeded material desires. This is like a wine goblet, that cannot be filled with wine until it is washed out thoroughly. A person needs to thoroughly wash out the coarseness of his ego and materialistic desires in order to become a “vessel” to receive this new awareness and feeling for Hashem.
9- This is the meaning of “There shall be no woman who miscarries or who is barren in your land,” for us to become one who is able to conceive and give birth to true and lasting love and fear of Hashem we need to realize that it is dependent on “your land,” on the revelation we receive from Malchus of Atzilus, the Land Above, which is called “your land” since its power of revelation is connected to our effort, but is, after all, a revelation from Hashem Above.
10- After a person has cleansed himself spiritually from coarse ego and material desires, he needs to awaken that great revelation from Hashem that it should come into this mind and heart. How does he do that?
11- He needs to cry out to Hashem from the depths of his heart, until he calls forth from the depth of Hashem’ Infinite Light that is beyond the order of spiritual levels of Hishtalshelus, to give himself over to Hashem beyond all calculations and to want Hashem to reveal His Light to him more than anything else in the world. This is similar to the prayer of Chana, who “prayed to Hashem as He is higher than His Name Havaya,” and “she cried exceedingly” to awaken Hashem’s boundless mercies.
12- This is the idea of “the number of your days I will fill”: “Days” refer to the garments of the soul, which are the thought, speech, and action of Torah and Mitzvos. They are called “days” because in the day is when the light of the sun is shining, and thus represents revelation of Hashem. Each Mitzvah enables the soul to receive a certain revelation of Hashem. Through all of the Mitzvos together, a person is able to receive Hashem’s revelation to the extant that he can conceive the true love and fear of Hashem, which is revealed through Malchus of Atzilus, the Land Above. The word “מספר-count” also can mean to “shine,” so we can read the verse to mean “the shine of your ‘days,’ i.e., mitzvos, I shall fill,” meaning that Hashem will fill our Mitzvos with so much Divine Light that we will be able to come to the true love and fear of Him.
13- The end of the previous verse, which discusses our “service” of Hashem that involves removing the concealment on His Light, end off by saying “and I will remove sickness from your midst.” This “sickness” is the unhealthy ego and being overly aware of our self that came as a result of Adam and Chava eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Through our effort to overcome our ego and devote ourselves to Hashem, He will assist us to “remove this sickness” from our midst, and grant us a pure heart to selflessly experience a love and fear of Hashem.
