How can I ever really change the way that I feel - ask Hashem to change it, but we have to really see something special
How can we ever change the way we feel? How can we ever really change our basic human nature, the same nature that every person naturally feels? And should we even try when it seems so futile? All those lower, negative messages we experience every day – are they really optional? For many, it feels like a life sentence to misery, enslavement and suffering. The barrier He creates, free choice, added to our particular natural negative tendencies, could, without emunah, leave us stranded in a one world picture of suffering and despair, Gd forbid. Even a drop of cynicism could keep us from the most important uprooting of our nature that we are capable of accomplishing.
The primary barrier to changing our human nature is created by Hashem Himself for a good purpose. It is for us to have an experience of self such that our choosing to connect to Hashem has significance.
I (without Hashem granting success) have absolutely no ability to change my nature or my personal challenging attributes. Only He can change the flow He sends me each day, and change it He will if we use our free choice and emunah to ask Him to do so. I was not meant to be able to change my nature or my personal challenging attributes. I was created to ask Hashem to change my nature or my personal challenging attributes AFTER I realize that I have weaknesses and that they are given to me as opportunities to choose. When my emunah is strong, and when I am fully cognizant to the depths of my being of the emotion or pattern or mindset that is trapping my consciousness and causing me distress and suffering, I can begin the “occupy our emotions process” (reprinted below) and with emunah, break through the Divinely created screen called free will that makes my choice in doing so meaningful and worthy of receiving success.
Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller in her Duties of the Heart series, lesson 118 says:
“Gd created a gap between what we think when we take responsibility for our actions and what He knows, but the irresolvable nature of the question forces us to admit we don’t understand the nature of Hashem’s mind. And this is how we get free will. If we had full awareness of Gd’s wisdom, we would feel totally negated before His wisdom and His Will - we would have no self. – called Yeshus, I am, - it is a sense of independence, as if I am not connected to anything greater than me or before me. It is the source of free will. If Hashem wants us to Know Him and still have a sense of self, he will create a reality where the level of what He displays to us of Him will be limited and shield us from His presence. He is both the sun and the shield.”
How can I change my nature? It feels so overwhelming! But that is only because He created it that way. Yet He gives us unlimited free will! When our emunah is strong, and we are thereby sure of His existence and our ability to connect to Him even though at times we are in darkness, we energize our free will to address the area where it feels irresolvable! It feels irresolvable because He allows us to see His gift of consciousness readily in our lower self but not in our higher self. To see Him with our higher self is the area of emunah and bitachon.
From emunah, we tell Hashem that WE wish to direct our hearts - that we wish to remove the emotional bond we have with the lower feeling, the aspect that He gives us such potent comprehension of - and direct the power of His consciousness (in that it is attached to something that plagues us and that we can’t shake off) . Once we use will power to ask that the emotional bonding element be loosened from that part of our nature, we then ask Hashem to direct that same potent bonding to loving Hashem, fearing Hashem and the ability to emulate Hashem. We ask Hashem to please give us consciousness in harmony with He Who we know is there despite the marvelous creation of free will that otherwise would trap His consciousness in our lower self and suffering.
And may our ability to break free of our nature, remove cynicism completely and connect to Him be a merit for Klal Yisrael that tips the scales such that Hashem finds us redeemable.
Daily Hisbodidus
Thank you Hashem for the flow of thought, emotion, and consciousness to this otherwise inanimate body that houses it, may Your name be praised, and for the ability to perceive, experience and learn, for the gift of free willed choice, and for the capacity to discern and integrate. Please flow through me unlimited will power to direct the recipe of personality, circumstance and emotional flow You send through my heart each day so that through the use of conscious choice which You bestow upon me, I can release the innate natural gift of strong subconscious deep emotional bonding from imperfection (unreality, basic human nature) to perfection (reality of the Divine mind, connection to Divine attributes), with the desiring result being that all of my emotions are directed first to loving and fearing and emulating You,. May Your Will and Attributes as expressed in Torah be fully conscious within me and grant me success in bringing Your Attributes and Will to visibility in my actions, my relationships, my thoughts, and my emotions
Occupy Our Emotions Process
"I recognize that I am emotionally bonded to this pattern/thought/experience/programming and I see that it is unpleasant. Hashem please grant success to the choice I declare to shift my emotional bonding from imperfection to love and fear of You. Please give me the will power, to the very depths of this emotion, help me to match the emotion with will power to calm my subconscious clinging to this self-destructive connection. (I am awaiting the will power), I sincerely want to no longer be emotionally bonded with this thought/experience/memory. [once the emotion is calm and the feeling of will power there, say:] Hashem I choose that the powerful emotional bonding instead be directed to love and fear of Hashem alone, please lead me in the path that I wish to go, for the unification and sanctification of Your name, for now I realize that this has been sent for me to responsibly bring the consciousness You give me back into harmony with Your Will. That is my sincere choice and desire, for there is nothing but Your simple unity in all the world."
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