. . The Creator designed the world so that our will, can override Divine will so to speak. In other words, we can choose to disregard truth and act instead from our cravings, regardless of their spiritual integrity. The Infinite One will place obstacles (i.e., angels) in our path to awaken us and to urge us to reconsider our goals. Though these hindrances frustrate our path, they actually express Divine kindness and mercy, for if we would but heed their message, they could save us much greater hardship in the end. But if like Balaam, we barrel right through the roadblocks, ignoring that instinctive, primal part of us (symbolized by Balaam's donkey), then we will surely suffer in the end. Divine will will anyway be done, but now it happens at our expense. . .

. . The Torah contains all that can be known about the world. It is a structure of infinite depth and complexity with layer upon layer of meaning and relevance. Although scholars and sages of every era labor all their lives to understand it, there always remain aspects yet to be discovered by the next generation. In fact, the sages teach that every person has a unique "portion in the Torah," the creative thought and discovery that only he can make. And until that person does so, that revelation, small as it may be, remains hidden to the world. . .

. . . The power of blessing is to peer into the hidden depths of another's soul, see its beauty and its longings, articulate them as prayer, and so facilitate their journey toward realization. One might say that blessing is your request for another, prayer is your request for yourself. . .

. . . When a person of flesh and blood pleads before the Holy One with utmost sincerity and passion, and his prayer is for that which is truly his destiny (i.e., G-d's will for him), then in that moment he becomes nothing but a voicepiece to the Divine in this most lowly world of action and physicality. His personal will becomes aligned with and dissolved in Divine Will. In that instant, he embraces the paradox of physical existence and self-nullification, self-assertion and complete surrender to the Eternal. He binds the material with the spiritual, embodying both antithetical realities simultaneously. . .

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