The Power of Ratzon

Light, Goodness.

Expansiveness. 

A contraction. 

Confusion, nothingness.

A thought, a reality.

A word, an existence.

A gathering, a being.

A breath, life. 

We open our Torah and are greeted with the most fantastical story of creation. More than our history, it's the story of our earthly origins. Of our world and our existence, of how we came to be. The story recounts, day by day and word for word what was created and how. The words, each word, a wealth of insight into G-d’s process of creation. We come to understand the steps taken with which to create and the different modalities of creation itself. We come to appreciate the awesome obligation Hashem gave us, His creations, to further create.

Beresheet bara Elokim - In the beginning G-d created…

Hashem begins His creative process with thought, Hashem thought the heavens and earth into existence. What He thought, was, just as what we think, will be. The stunning power of thoughts are demonstrated to be the catalyst for development and growth. It's here we conceive of ideas and begin to build our reality. 

We then expand our thoughts and allow them to take root and blossom. We use our powerful imaginations to refine and give shape to them.  We visualize and begin to manifest our desires. We envision our goal in all its detail, uninhibited and in its fullest expression. We hold back nothing. We feel it and live it in our minds. 

When we articulate our thoughts and visions we give substance to them, we put them out into the world and they become their own beings, they become alive. Our words reflect our thoughts and frame our intentions, they are the bridge between our inner and outer worlds. Words have immense power, our speech creates our realities. 

And then we take action. We take the initial inspiration, combine it with the refined ideas and articulated plan and burst forth through the world. The culmination of the creative process, action is perhaps the most difficult as it is often met with the most resistance. But it is here we see tangible change and our goals realized. 

Beresheet bara Elokim - In the beginning G-d created…

Understanding G-d's process leaves us with a question. What was “in the beginning”?

Referring to a pre-creation stage, Beresheet begs us to consider what could possibly preexist thought. Before an intelligible thought, before the intellect asserts itself, before reason makes itself heard, we only have to be still and feel the answer. We pay heed to that voiceless, internal stirring yearning to be acknowledged. Before we have a conscious thought we experience our ratzon, our will.

Our ratzon is our root desire to be close to Hashem. It's the whisper highlighting our instinctual desires, pulling us toward what is right and good. Our ratzon is who we are and who we will be on the most spiritual of levels. It's the unspoken dialogue between what we intrinsically long for and our earthly selves. It’s our souls yearning to be reconnected with our Source.

G-d’s will, His ratzon, was in existence before the world came to be. G-d desired a world first and thought it into creation second. Ohr Ein Sof, the infinite light of Hashem, G-d’s will, our souls and Teshuva all predate creation; they existed in the pre-creation stage of Beresheet, they were “in the beginning”. The world, our world, was created to co-join these elements enabling man to utilize them and achieve his full potential. Our duty is to fully express our ratzon, just as G-d expressed His.

Hashem entrusted us with the ability to follow through the subsequent levels of creation and manifest our ratzon on the most physical of levels, through action here on earth. The creative process of will, thought, imagination, speech and action allows, step by step, for this very realization. We take the elements of pre-creation already embedded within us and use them to create, to build. A new us, a new world. 

On a higher level, when we perform a mitzva, we harmonize our ratzon with G-d’s. Hashem desires for us to act, we desire what G-d wants, and we complete this exchange through action. A direct connection between the physical and spiritual worlds, a mitzva, is the synthesis of our will and G-d’s. And when we complete His ratzon, He completes ours.

The acknowledgement of our less than perfect pieces, Teshuva is a recommitment to our innate ratzon, and the ensuing elevation and transformation of our wrongdoings to merits. Teshuva is a return to the infinite light of Hashem, an attempt to return our souls to their pre-creation state, before they were encumbered by physicality. It is a return to our divine essence. Teshuva begins and ends with ratzon, the will, the aspiration to grow closer to Hashem.

Nowhere do we live this more than on Rosh Hashana. On Rosh Hashana we acknowledge G-d's sovereignty, celebrate His creative process, recommit to ours and reconnect with our ratzon. We reach deep into our very essence, to our core selves, to our ratzon, we feel our souls stir and desire growth. A life true to who we are physically and spiritually, a life true to G-d. 

Rosh Hashana is the time we recreate creation.