Temptation

Here's a short excerpt from The ABBA Tradition. This is a section about 'lead us not into temptation' from the Lord's Prayer.

The sixth imperative is “Lead us not into temptation.” On the Lord’s Ladder we are below the level of the Soul, at the Foundation of the physical World. This is at the place of our vegetable body and our

autonomic nervous system. From the left come the stimuli of Hod, to which our body reflexively responds and from the right at Nezah come the natural cycles of Life with their inner rhythms and hormones. Here are the laws and drives that support and sustain our bodies, such as eating, sleeping and reproduction.

In all the Worlds, in any building, the Foundation must be sound or the structure may fall^[1]  And to assure that the Foundation is sound it must be tested. ‘Testing’ is the primary meaning of the Greek word peirasmos which is translated as ‘Temptation’ in the Lord’s Prayer. Testing is “an attempt to learn the nature or character of something.”^[2] Tradition teaches that Satan is the great tester whose task is to test the nature and character of the Holy One’s creations to find out if they are sound. So it is that we, too, will be tested.

A temptation is any distraction that may create an imbalance or leads us in the wrong direction, a way away from the Holy One. Temptations are particularly dangerous when they are not conscious. Here, below even the lowest level of the psyche, we may not be aware of the forces that can lead us to forget whence we have come and who we are meant to be. Even more dangerous are temptations that threaten the Foundation on which we are built. These are temptations that test correct or incorrect use of basic functions we often take for granted, such as nutrition and reproduction or need to balance activity with rest. The Foundation is meant to operate automatically without the need of our constant consciousness. When we misuse food or sex or stress, we disturb the base on which we are balanced. If the autonomic systems that operate here are unable to restore the proper balance, the misuses may be incorporated into the autonomic systems, establishing an addiction. When this happens the Foundation is dysfunctional and this dysfunction will recur automatically. To correct an addiction requires action from above.^[3]

This petition is a prayer for direction. The foundation is meant to be a balanced base from which we can rise up, rise out of, not into, the realm of mere physicality. The prayer here is to lead us “not into” but rather “out of” temptation or testing. We pray to be turned around if we are going in the wrong direction. It is a prayer for what is called in Hebrew teshuvah, in Greek metanoia and in English ‘repentance’. Repent. Think again. If you are going in the wrong direction, going down, turn around and rise up. When we come to a time of testing, a place of temptation, it is time to turn around and remember which direction is up. Lead us up, not down. Out of, not into testing.

The tradition says that every temptation is really a test of whether we will move away from or toward the Holy One. Will we, like Adam and Eve, yield to a temptation that leads us away from God? If so, we have failed the Test. But if we do not go into temptation, but rather turn away from temptation and toward the Holy One, then we pass the test. For every temptation is also an opportunity to reject the wrong and follow the right. It is a reminder that there is a difference between right and wrong and that we have a choice. The Way out of temptation is the way Home.

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^[1]. Luke 6:47-48.

^[2]. BDAG, peirasmos.

^[3]. Cf. Gillespie, G, The Kabbalah’s Twelve Step Spiritual Method To End Your Addiction, S.P.I. Books, New York. 1997.