Before any beginning is infinitude.
Pure infinitude. Ein sof.
Before the beginning, the infinite articulates itself. Finitude is articulated within infinite ground, inseparable from it, like a ripple in water. Articulate finitude in infinite luminous ground. Atzilut.
At the beginning, inside the threshold of finitude, articulate infinitude defines finitude within itself, enclosing it as being, within its infinite ground, still luminous.
Finitude, inception of being. Beriah.
Within history, being articulates into beings, each a finite everything, each defining itself against what it is not, each bounding its own finitude portion of infinitude within itself. The infinite ground pervades each being, but infinitude is paradoxically excluded, cloaked in nihilitude, oblivion.
For some beings, the infinite ground still glows brightly or dimly behind the oblivious cloak, numinous nothingness, alive with paradox, irony. For other beings, everything is all that there is.
From within finitude, piercing of the cloak is ex nihilo. From without, this is creation, revelation, instauration ex infinitum.
Each being bears within itself an ideal order, a schema of forms, a repertoire of possibilities and impossibilities within itself, what can and cannot be received, what ought and ought not be. This is enception: capacity to receive, to perceive, to conceive. Conversely, and just as importantly, incapacities — rejection, filtration, the maintenance of finitude-preserving oblivion.
Beings suspended in paradoxical oblivion, the ground of actuality. Yetzirah.
Each being actualizes, lives, articulates itself, defines finite beings within its being, beings actualized in myriad ways, acting upon the material ground, which is — surprise! — vestigial inarticulate infinitude, that common ground of beings, that which each being is not, but which is given.
Each being brings its own finite order to materials, its own articulations, its own capacities and abilities, its own objectivity. Each being enworlds what is given.
In the act of enworldment, materials may be persuaded to cooperate, but often they resist, and sometimes they revolt, sometimes the being breaks and must reform. Through the commonality of material, beings encounter one another, and through materials, cooperate, resist, revolt, conflict, win, lose or break.
The infinitude meets infinite in Assiyah.
The capillaries of the divine light saturate the tissues of chaos. This saturation materially forms, combines, shapes, ensouls, and sets the world in motion — literally animates it — like trees climbing themselves from the soil to meet the sun.
The light saturates the common world with meaning before returning the spent light to its source.
And for us, enmeshed in life, this spent light returning to its source, this is reflection on life, on being, on the source of being. Metaphysics is the rising smoke of spent light, piercing the roof of being, seeking its source. In its plumes can be seen rays of incoming light, and here we are told the story of Creation the only way we know it, in reverse.
