MenachemGYE wrote on 03 Feb 2020 21:29:
Interestingly by Sefiras Haomer (which represents leaving the 49 shaarei tumah), we start from #1, and we don't include the 1st day of Pesach. Maybe because we left at midnight, so it's not fully "clean" day...
The power of ONE
The 25th of Elul, the first day of the world’s existence, is further distinguished by being referred to in the Torah as yom echad (“one day”), rather than yom rishon (“the first day”). The Torah thus indicates that on the first day of creation, G‑d was “alone in His world.” Though the entire created world already existed, it was not separate from its Creator; the world was one with G‑d.
Rabbi Shais Taub explains, that if you exist, then you are a something. But that’s only because God is creating you that way at this instant. Your essence is to be nothing. Or, should we say, your true and natural state is to have no existence of your own, and to exist only as He exists, within the totality and oneness of God.
If that’s the case, then it explains the mystery of why it can be painful just to exist.
Our somethingness is not our true essence. Oneness is our true essence. Not that it bothers all of us equally. Some people can live with it. Some people can’t (the addicts).