Tikkun Leil Shavuot: Betzelem Elokim Creativity and Responsibility

May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude:

There is only really one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that is not to be able to give one’s gift to those one loves most…The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up. Getting a sense of worth from ourselves which then in turn causes us to act like someone who is worthy.

"Excessive fear of sin destroys the goodness in a person, and makes of him a lowly creature, who does nothing but lie there, shaking." So writes Abraham Isaac Kook, in the opening paragraph of Orot Ha-emuna. "A person must believe in his life, in both his physical and moral powers." The lack of emunah in oneself is the greatest of all the curses in the Torah, "Your life will be in the balance...and you will not believe in your life." You will be plagued by self-doubt (Your life will be "in the balance") and lack inner confidence. Because of this inner anxiety, "In the morning you will say, 'Who will give evening?' and in the evening 'Who will give morning?' "katnut ha-emunah," "insufficient emunah," is a lack of confidence in oneself, and "comes from the inability to raise one's own self-worth to the point of understanding how he is deserving of the Divine Greatness."

Therefore we must not stifle any talent, any human propensity, from developing to its fullest. It must first be allowed to exhaust the individuality buried within it. Once its full nature has been revealed and drawn out, then, and only then may the Jewish genius for integration and synthesis, including the rolling back of excessive development, be brought into play. If we impede the power of human creativity in the name of "faith" we sin against emunah.

Rav Kook Orot Ha’emunah (Yehuda Gellman)

Here we sin against God when we block our creativity