This is what I meditated on today. In fact I was trying to understand why I keep being bothered with doubts -- about G-d, about Torah. Why, even when I have committed to this path, even while I pray to the Creator, I suddenly will be gripped with an almost overwhelming doubt about everything. So why the box? It is a bit of an illusion. Stare at it and the box changes from pointing down and right to pointing up and left. Where is the real opening? It is all an illusion actually. There is no box, no cube. There is no depth. It is only the illumination of phosphors on my screen. Only the result of a program deep within the computer ordering the flow of bits from component to component until the CRT spits out a stream of electrons at the surface of the tube in just a way to create the illusion. I know all that. I drew the box. I know it is made up of two squares and four connecting lines. I know that every point is at the same depth on my screen. I know I cannot touch it. I know that if I shut off the computer or the monitor it will go away. I know it. And still my mind refuses to see the truth. No matter how much or how long I stare at this illusion, my mind tells me it is seeing a cube oscillating unpredictably between up and down. But what has it to do with my "crisis of faith?" The sages teach that this world, too, is a world of illusion. Just like the cube, what we think we see is not really what is so. Beyond the illusion of our world are truer and truer representations. The letters and words of Creation, the Creator Himself. And I can understand that -- even at some level "know" that. Yet I am still captive to the illusions of my mind. And sometimes, even knowing what is so, my mind still sees the world as a "cube." That fact does not change what I know to be so. It does not mean that I am a hopeless failure who will never really have complete emunah. It just means that, my mind still interprets what it sees as an illusion. And maybe there is nothing -- for the moment -- that I can do to change that. But it is important that I recognize that it IS an illusion: That the reality is far deeper, and only in the most indirect of ways is the illusion related to what is truly so. And in recognizing the illusion, I must act on the reality as much as I am able to learn it. My mind sees the drawing as a box. But only a fool would try to pack his hat in it. My mind may see the physical world as "real" , but wisdom teaches that our actions, our thoughts and our lives must be guided by the truth behind it. Shoshana's Page