ביטול · Nullification, and the ayin between two somethings

The self set aside so that what is behind it can act. The Maggid pushes it furthest: every change passes through ayin, nothing — an egg does not become a chick without ceasing to be an egg — so a person who wants to become something else must first consent to be nothing at the seam.

⭐⭐⭐ This is the finest thing in the wing and it is a structural claim, not a piety. The Maggid takes tzimtzum, which is a cosmological event, and makes it the mechanism of every ordinary transformation. Nothing becomes anything without a gap where it is neither. ⚠ And it is dangerous in exactly the way it sounds: a doctrine of self-nullification handed to a movement with charismatic leaders is a doctrine about who does the nullifying and in front of whom.