The סְפִירוֹת (“Sefiroth” – ema­na­tions) are the chan­nels through which divine energy (אור אין סוף ”Ohr Ein Sof” – divine, pri­mor­dial light) flows or shines. As the world degen­er­ates because of sin, the flow ceases. This can be seen as, HaShem averting His gaze as he cannot behold wicked­ness, and humans also detaching them­selves from the receiving end of this spir­i­tual light, through לשון הרע (“Lashon Hara” – evil speech / slander), שנאת חנם (“Sinat Chinam” – base­less hatred), impu­rity, vio­lence and other sin, all gen­er­ating low fre­quen­cies of coarse­ness and world­li­ness, becoming mis­aligned, out of tune from spir­i­tu­ality. We humans rou­tinely place other idols in place of HaShem, be they mate­ri­alism, plea­sure, self­ish­ness, ego­mania, nar­cis­sism… the vari­eties are man­i­fold. We set them up to sub­sti­tute the one Maker of the uni­verse, because He is too lofty, too pure, or we’re simply too embar­rassed. 

 If the flow of divine light would stop entirely, the cre­ation would be destroyed entirely. The שערים (“Sha’arim” – gates) were wide open ini­tially, at the time of the patri­archs. As humanity falls deeper into the entan­gle­ments of sin (pri­marily the Jews, but also the nations), the open­ings diminish, the energy reduces, the gates begin to close and the out­flow of energy gets reduced. HaSatan can block the divine energy, and is also enabled to divert the divine energy to him­self, growing his power. 

Tikkun (Repair work) that can inten­sify the flow again has three devices: Mitzvoth, Tshuva (repen­tance) and suf­fering. As the gates close, HaShem opens new חַלּוֹנוֹת (“Chalonoth” – win­dows) to com­pen­sate, as the Jews go into גָּלוּת (“galuth”, exile), in their own land, or evicted into dias­pora. By fur­ther dete­ri­o­ra­tion of world affairs, these win­dows close as well, down to a “nanometer” – i.e., a tiny slit that only allows through the min­imum amount of light to sus­tain merely the foun­da­tions of the world. This is the time of the greatest dark­ness. 

Then, HaShem will open the gates again, ush­ering in the begin­ning of the mes­sianic era. We are very close.

We are right at the onset of this process of redemp­tion.

Go out of the exile with mercy.