Meet you at Mt. Sinai - Soon I Hope!
In all the ways that I have strayed after the thoughts of my heart and eyes, there have been many aveiros, corrupted thoughts, opportunities to do mitzvohs lost and more. Coupled with not even realizing that I was in a mental environment that I see now as so distant from the reality with which emunah enlightens us, I am so grateful that I have an opportunity to make a fundamental change. Yet, there is the sense of having lost so much time and having so much more to fix because of all the years spent outside of the reality of emunah.
I remember once reading in a psychology book that sometimes people don’t want to change because it would mean that they had lived “wrongly” all those years and the ego can’t accept it, so they would rather go on in the manner they have and try to make it work within its parameters so as to not have to deal with the reality that they have been wrong.
Perhaps there is a part of me that is now faced with this dilemma. And if so, if in fact I have lived more than 60 years within a concept or for a purpose that is not within emunah reality, then it was from Hashem for a reason, and I ask His help in turning the entire chain into the stepping stones that help me acquire wisdom.
The more I comprehend how I found the wrong path (not the details themselves, but the way I was influenced toward the wrong path), the more frightened I become, for society is now imposing these influences upon us and steering us to values from which we may never be able to re-discover the proper attachment to Hashem, heaven forfend, unless we have pure leaders to teach us Torah in a way that we can put into our hearts once again proper emunah.
Here is a story that everyone can relate to, to demonstrate the power of the influences that shape people.
A man wakes up in the morning and Gd tells him, “Chaim, do you see that boulder out there in the yard? I want you to go push the boulder.”
Chaim gets up and goes out and begins pushing the boulder. Each day, this repeats itself.
After several years, one morning, as Chaim goes out to the boulder, he sees a small man with firey eyes and and an evil sneer, and he wonders who this is. The man tells him, “Chaim, it is me, the Soton. I don’t normally reveal myself to people but even the Soton has a heart. Chaim, I want you to know something. In heaven there is a comedy hour. Things get a little quiet up there so we have one hour for humor, for comedy, and Chaim, I want you to know that you are it. We laugh at you every day for an hour. How can you come out here every day and push that boulder? It weighs 3000 pounds and you can never move it. You are simply wasting your time! What are you doing? Do you have a brain in your head?” and the Soton disappears.
Chaim does not push the boulder. He is down the whole day. The next day, when Gd tells Chaim to push the boulder, Chaim says “No, I wont push the boulder. I cant move it and people are just laughing at me.” Gd then says to Chaim, “Who says you have to move the boulder! I didn’t say Chaim move the boulder, I said chaim push the boulder. It is up to Me to move the boulder. And when the time is right, that boulder will be the cornerstone for the Bais Hamikdosh, but until then, I am telling you to push the boulder.” Chaim then returns to pushing the boulder, gladly.
No one likes to be laughed at, chastised, mistreated, left out, insulted or any feeling that is a tiny portion of feeling abandoned or annihilated. Those who wish to garner power over others use these techniques to build communities in keeping with THEIR values and goals. Human vulnerability to these influences is what leads us astray. Vulnerability to these influences comes from a lack of emunah or from trust in people who appear to have emunah but who ultimately fall short of emunah as our forefathers had emunah. So you can see how much in danger, how much in golus we are, for who can be on a level of our forefathers?
What do we do? Are we doomed? How do we anchor ourselves in emunah so that we can see the opportunities presented to serve Hashem with love when we find ourselves faced with situations – in business, in community, in our homes, in our extended families- where people are using influence to effect change and exerting pressure towards standards that we see shape opinion and garner support? How do we insulate our primal will to serve Gd from being diverted because of outside influences? In fact, is this what might have happened with Adom – here he sees that Eve ate the apple and was on the other side and he wanted to be with her even though eating the apple was not permitted? He ate it anyway because his will was to be with her.
How do we rectify ourselves and, ultimately Adom’s sin? Perhaps one way would be to make a commitment to bringing out AS OUR SELF the aspect of the Divine within us.
What is our motivation for doing this? Hashem sees absolutely every act, knows every thought, and is constantly responding to us. Do we really know that? If we don’t know that, it is time to acquire that emunah, because, sadly, without that knowledge, we victimize ourselves to the comfort of living in unreality – in the luxury of free will choice to believe or not believe in Hashem – which ultimately means that we are constantly straying after the thoughts of our hearts and eyes.
Instead of scanning the world with intelligence to see how best to survive and protect ourselves from the harm of others, we could be searching our situations with intelligence and emunah to see how best to bring Hashem’s attributes of lovingkindness to the situation or to the others involved! And when we do the latter, Hashem will protect us and take care of us, for our actions and consciousness will be in concert with His, in harmony, acknowledging our emunah by our very thoughts, speech and deeds!
AND we won’t be wasting time pursuing our paper tigers that eat our life force ruminating in unreality while destroying our health and eternity. Instead, we will be climbing upward to stand once again under the chuppa at Mount Sinai.
Many thanks to the shiurim on http://www.becomingdivine.com given by Rabbi Yaakov Labinsky, Shlita
Categories: G-d Consciousness, Chosen People, Ego, Ahavas Hashem, Free will, Divine will
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