Korach: The Separatist Agenda of Ego's Fantasies and Illusions

The whole idea of living in the material world is to make it a place where the Divine Presence may dwell with us. We do this when we first create that space in our own consciousness. What would be the point of living if we don't do it with the One who created us and all that exists?

There is a major void in our consciousness when we are not aware of who we truly are, and we become fully aware of our identity once we realize that we emanate from the Creator and His love. We have said this many times to emphasize that all that exist came from God's love, therefore His love is our true Essence and identity. The unawareness of this universal and transcendental truth is what we call “living in ego's fantasies and illusions”.

In the split consciousness we have, in which we are “divided” into the duality of good and evil, true and false, right and wrong, positive and negative, etc., the Creator endowed us with free will to enable us to choose what is the most convenient for us to do. He gave us His Torah to instruct us that “convenient” means the best for us as long as it is also good for others and our immediate surroundings.

In this primordial principle we assimilate God's Presence in our consciousness, hence in our lives. Good, right, true and all that is positive are the essentials to live in the unity and oneness that love is, because love unites us through its ways and attributes.

As long as we live in, with and for them we are never separated, neither from each other or from God because love is our common bond with each other and also with Him. Not living in this awareness is the clearest indication that we are separated from love and living in ego's separatist agenda.

Ego defines our sense of individuality because we perceive each other as individuals, and this does not mean to pursue individualistic agendas by separating ourselves from others. Separation is the worst of all illusions, simply because we can't live separated or isolated from each other.

We learn this since we were born in this world. We can't live alone because we were created by God to be united by love as our common Essence and identity, and also united to Him because we are here by His love for all His Creation.

Within our “divided” consciousness (we put it on quotation marks because this is how we are conditioned to perceived ourselves and the material reality) we have all potential archetypes, negative and positive, to choose from.

This means that we have the potential to become like Moses and Aaron, or like Korach and his proxies. Ego, as our powerful sense of individuality, can lead us either to Love's ways and attributes that unite us with each other and with God, or to illusions and fantasies that separate us from each other and from God.

At this point in the history of our collective consciousness we must be aware of what unites us and what separate us. We have learned this by our own experience throughout history, and we have the Torah to instruct us and to remind us about the means to do it in our Creator's ways, not ego's ways.

Let's insist again and reiterate that our “separation” from God's ways -- His Love as He wants us to understand it through His attributes stated in the Torah -- is the most illusory of all illusions we may have.

Indeed, this is the greatest dilemma as confusion we have, and it requires as well the greatest certainty and clarity of all. We end our separation from the Creator when we become fully aware of love as our uniting and bonding connection with Him and the rest of His Creation.

Korach is the individualistic separatist that we must remove from our consciousness in order to fill his space with the collectivist unifying awareness represented by Moses and Aaron. We have to be watchful and mindful in all our discernment, thoughts, ideas, feelings, emotions, passions and instincts in order to lead them in Love's ways and attributes, and maintain our consciousness united in the potential goodness of their purpose (see our commentaries on Parshat Korach: “Overcoming Ego's Illusions” of June 9, 2010 and “Discerning Truth from Illusion” of June 19, 2011).

God gave us the precious gift of life to be experienced as individuals who depend on the care for one another, and this care is love. As He cares for us providing our daily sustenance and nurturing us with His grace, He also wants us to care for each other and provide for each other.

We know this by experience, by empirical evidence, and the Torah instructs us and reminds us about this. We live in times that compel us to eradicate the separatist mentality and replace it by the unifying consciousness that love invites us to live for the goodness of it.

Expecting others to change their separatist mentality first and then we change ours is part of Korach's approach, while Moses' and Aaron's approach is first to start the process to transform our individual consciousness. After all, it is about our individual and personal Redemption from ego's fantasies and illusions. Once we all do it, collective Redemption will come. May it manifest fully and promptly in our days!