Golus made by emotions is within our free willed choice to change
Eventually, the difference between our soul and our body will be clear to us, at the time when our body no longer breathes. At that moment, our consciousness will continue into another world.
In this world, our consciousness is dominated by our senses and our emotions. Unless we feel it or sense it through the body or emotions, we do not consider it to be part of our reality. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Our neshamas are encased within our bodies. The emotions and sensations that we have will never lead us to discover the neshama in the same way that an infant discovers his hand or foot, or a child discovers the deliciousness of chocolate, or the emotional pain a student feels when ego is bruised. In this way, the emotions, because they are in response to physical stimuli, are part of the sensations and physicality of the world, says the Maharal.
Where is the neshama?
The neshama is constantly present within us but silent and tortured in many instances. What the neshama wants is to give and to emulate Hashem – to be like Hashem, to use physicality in a way that tells Hashem that it knows we have no separate consciousness from Hashem and that we comprehend that our bodies are the vehicle through which we use free will to acknowledge that Hashem is the true Gd and that there is nothing else other than Him, that every force in the world and in all of the worlds is filled only with His simple unity.(Nefesh Hachaim).
Will we see Him in everything before us? Will we search our challenges for the time and place to demonstrate one of His attributes or to perform one of His Mitzvohs, even though our bodies and emotions might be tempted to react or respond in a manner that brings something less than that into the world?
Hashem constantly loves us. Hashem constantly gives us consciousness, breath, and more. We are day laborers – we get up in the morning and it is up to us to bring His Name, His Attributes, His Mitzvahs and His Torah into the world. That is our privilege.
What is our motivation? If we don’t feel anything when we put on our shaitls, if we don’t experience a pleasure when we say a mitzvah, how can we comprehend that there is the greatest pleasure that can \be felt in it?
When we lose our bodies, our souls detach. If we will be able to continue on at that time, perhaps there is something we can do while alive.
We can detach our emotions from physicality enough to attach them, our emotions, to love and fear of Hashem. Emotionally love and fear Hashem? What does it mean? Do we tremble at the thought of being out of rapport with Hashem? Many might be scared, emotionally frightened, but I am speaking about a preceding joy, the feeling of dread, at the very thought of doing anything that might cause a sense that I have separate consciousness that is not in harmony with Hashem. But more, are we aware of the rapture that we can feel if for one second we really can pull our emotions out of gripping our bodies and senses and tell Hashem that we desire for our emotions to connect with Him in love and fear – and if not can we at least hold our emotions in abeyance while we observe the nothingness of the body without the meaning we ascribe to it?
How much of the pleasure that we feel is attributable to the meaning we attach to our emotional investment in what is happening?
And how much pleasure do we derive from experiencing consciousness in harmony with Hashem’s, and then directing our bodies to joyfully emulate Him?
If we have even 10 seconds in a lifetime of the latter, we have experienced something of another world in this world, for Hashem stands before us at all times, He is responding to us at all times. If we can reach a level of service where we can consistently maintain consciousness in harmony with Hashem’s, we will be experiencing tremendous rapport and pleasure beyond the five senses and beyond the happiest emotions.
Step 1 is to know that this experience is actually why Hashem created man.
Step 2 is to realize when our emotions are gripping physical existence
Step 3 is to choose to disconnect and quiet our emotions that are blocking us from seeing what Hashem desires of us, doing teshuva if necessary, thereby recognizing the aspect of the Divine within us as “the real me.”
Step 4 is to consistently choose to emulate Hashem or do a mitzvah directing our emotion of love and fear back to the Hashem, sticking ourselves like glue to reality
Step 5 is to experience a pleasure beyond this world.
We won’t ever regret doing this, not in this world nor the next. Why wait until it is obvious to our consciousness that our essence can experience the joy of re-connecting to Hashem in shemayim, which will ultimately happen when we are separated from the body (through death) ? If we comprehend this NOW, we can use it to build eternal bliss by touching that joy here, simply by realizing that our noisy bodily urges and emotions are not our essential selves but rather vehicles through which we can experience the joy of connecting to Hashem in THIS world.
Pull back. Yearn to attach emotions to love and fear of Hashem. It is the very best use one can make of free will..
Many thanks to http://www.becomingdivine.com - Rabbi Yaakov Labinsky
Categories: G-d Consciousness, Chosen People
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