Chapter 2
Now, it is written: “you should love Hashem with all ‘ַָּׁךְבָּבְל-parts of your heart,’” and the Sages explained this (Brachos 9:5) to mean “with both inclinations,” i.e., with the emotions of the Divine soul and the animal soul.
But how do we serve Hashem with the emotions of the animal soul? The Alter Rebbe will address this question through the following explanation:
Meaning, that our love of Hashem should be in the manner of a Baal Teshuva, one who does Teshuva.
Since Teshuva is not limited specifically to those who have committed sins G-d forbid, rather it applies to every person.
Since the idea of Teshuva is to return the soul to its source and root, to the level when it was included in its source in Hashem who brought it into being, and it was literally “bound up in the bond of Life with Hashem,” and only afterward it descended from its place of honor and became clothed in this physical world, that even the most spiritual level of understanding that it can perceive while in the physical body is all under the constraints of time and space, and we need to return it to its source through “crying out to Hashem from their restraints,” (see Tehillim 107), since their current place, i.e., situation, is too great of a restraint for him, since it is a spiritual restraint and limitation that does not allow the soul to be free to connect to Hashem as before.
Regarding this is says (Vayikra 25:38): “I am Hashem who took you out from the land of ‘מִצְר ַׁיִםַׁ-Mitzrayim,” meaning, from the aspect of ‘מ צ ר-restraint’ and limitations on the soul.
That through the bitterness that one feels from the opposite of Hashem’s revelation, i.e., His concealment and the restraints on the soul from perceiving Him, the love and yearning for Hashem to become included in His Infinite Light will be that much greater, like the advantage of Light that comes from a place of darkness.
Regarding this our Sages said (Brachos 34b): “In the place that a Baal Teshuva stands, even a completely perfect Tzadik cannot stand.”
And, as it is stated in the Zohar (I, 129b): “For they draw close to Him with greater intensity,” which causes that Hashem’s Infinite Light should be actually revealed in his soul, until even the life-force of the body, and the animal soul, and all their soul powers, will be transformed to return to reconnect to Hashem, so that “darkness will be transformed into Light.”
