Tzelem Elokim and the Metatronic Human

Man is created בצלם אלקים.

In the image of Elokim.

An image resembles.

An image is not identical.

That distinction contains the possibility of all human holiness.

Because the human is not G-d, he can relate to G-d.

Because the human possesses genuine created otherness, covenant becomes possible.

Love requires distinction.

Service requires distinction.

Prayer requires distinction.

The paradox of bittulבִּיטּוּלbittulSelf-nullification — more precisely, the surrender of the claim to be an independent source. Not the erasure of the self but the emptying of false authorship.Glossary is therefore not the abolition of otherness.

It is otherness that no longer imagines itself independent.

Metatron is an extreme mystical articulation of this.

The Name is within him.

The distinction remains.

The more completely the Name is revealed, the more essential the distinction becomes.

This gives the human being a future that is neither autonomous self-worship nor mystical dissolution.

The goal is not:

I am everything.

Nor:

I am nothing.

The deeper statement is:

I am received.

I exist because HaShem wills me.

My particularity is real because He gives it reality.

My task is not to erase the vessel.

My task is to make the vessel truthful.