Love your fellow Jew as yourself - bearing the burden of confusion of mind for being alive with free will?

When we are two years old, we learn the word NO and enter into a development of what appears to be autonomous existence. The word No is our first experience with power. We have a choice, or so it seems, regarding what happens. And if we don’t want something or if we do, we can take actions toward our goals.

Is there an end to the imaginings of what we desire? What boundaries are there in what we can or can’t do to see that our vision is achieved in reality?

All of these skills and executive functioning activities necessary for life need a very important context.   That context is to know how to submit to the reality that the Source for everything is Hashem, not our imagination, not our own doings.  There is a necessary cushion of emunah that is crucial through which intellect and imagination must be grounded.

But we forget. Probably more often than we remember Hashem we forget He is in the picture. And this causes us to blame others, stripping them of divine dignity with our reducing their value. And then we shame them, getting angry, speaking badly of them,virtually annihilating them.  This causes so much pain, negativity, resentment and darkness.

When we do this, when we forget Hashem is the Source of all Vitality and that happiness and pleasure come from learning Torah, emulating Hashem’s attributes of mercy, giving love and value knowing our survival is in Hashem’s Hands, WE are suffering from confusion of mind. We believe the amazing illusion that free will is designed to create, and that illusion is that the “me” is autonomous from Hashem. Thinking we are autonomous from Hashem is often caused by cynicism, a doubt regarding Hashem’s reality in every moment, Gd forbid.   Most of us realize we fall into that trap repeatedly throughout the day. Consciousness of Hashem and having Hashem before our eyes is something we have to train ourselves in, and it still fades when emotions are high, when the world of action is providing stimulation and challenge.  Spiritual training is all towards learning to keep Hashem in the center of our consciousness throughout the day.

How do we handle the confusion of other people when THEY fall into this?

Perhaps this gives new insight into the idea of love your fellow Jew as yourself. Just as we enjoy Hashem’s compassion when we fall into confusion of mind and act without full consciousness of Hashem’s presence with us in the moment, so too those around us fall into the same human frailty, by Hashem’s design. Thus emulating Hashem’s mercy in bearing the discomfort of the confusion of mind of those who insult us, hurt our feelings, don’t properly recognize our value and more, becomes an action reflective of our understanding of our own vulnerability to that matter. And when we are able to forgive it in others, it is because we love ourselves the same way, and appreciate so much that Hashem tolerates our confusion until we see our mistake and correct it.  Thank you Hashem!
 Loving our fellow Jew means understanding that we are all confused by Hashem's design of human nature.  Even if we believe we sometimes transcend and someone else does not, bearing confusion of mind creates positive influence because we are emulating Hashem’s mercy, and being aligned with His Mercy places us in a calm inner space glued to His Attributes. From there, we can interact revealing Hashem’s glory.  Having the certainty that whatever happens is from Hashem, is good, and our happiness and pleasure come from THERE rather than the resolution or complication of the circumstance takes emunah but gives us access to true happiness and pleasure, no matter how illogical that may seem to the natural part of our mind. Hashem takes our positive influence and creates the next moment. This is important to understand.

Love your fellow Jew as yourself is the whole of Torah because Hashem bears the burden of OUR confusion of mind and when we do so, we  emulate Him and treat our fellow Jew with awareness of their divine dignity, albeit they might be confused in the moment. Welcome to the club! Treating each other with divine dignity creates positive influence for all. Effort in emulating Hashem to create positive influence is the real basis for esteem, happiness and pleasure.

Let’s break the blame, shame cycle of kidnapped pleasure and happiness. And may the koach from the natural reactions we make an effort to transcend become the concrete walls and new wiring of neuropathways delivering into our hearts and into our speech and deeds revelation of Hashem’s Glory.

May the light we are able to reflect like the moon reflecting the sun be a merit for all Klal Yisrael.

Erupting divine dignity into our neurocircuitry as the natural order - come do teshuva with us!

We are doing teshuva to create positive influence and protection for our people. The process of our teshuva is to effortfully seek to identify as tzelem elokim and cling to the root Source of happiness and pleasure – learning Torah, emulating Hashem, living with emunah and bitachon, giving love and value with knowledge that our survival is in Hashem’s Hands alone. We are trying to stop basing esteem, happiness and pleasure on the ego and animal-self goals. We are submitting with emunah to the reality that there is Hashem Who is the Source for all Vitality.

When we release happiness and pleasure from the grips of the animal soul’s self-referencing with love in our heart to understand that happiness and pleasure are the result of learning Torah, doing mitzvahs, emulating Hashem’s attributes of mercy  [Tomer Devorah explains the Attributes of Mercy as tolerating insults, overlooking faults, bearing the burden of confusion of mind, forgiving, casting sins into the sea] ,we free the Shechina from the darkness that traps it – the mask of nature over the koach of His Light. By free willed choice, we can ask Hashem to move that koach and leave behind our futile attempts to connect to happiness and pleasure based on ego, time and space in favor of using the koach to strengthen our mind, the vessel, in order that we are able to receive and reveal true good into time and space.

Our survival instincts, when triggered, often presents itself in our consciousness as a valid emotional basis for responding with anger and judgment, saying and doing things that we may justify as good and well-meaning but that are indeed quite hurtful and damaging. Someone said their young five year old was in school and the Morah did not allow them to go to the bathroom without permission. The little girl asked her father who told her that if she has to go to the bathroom, she should go. One day the girl had to go and raised her hand and the teacher told her no, that she should have gone before. The girl tried to wait but had to go and got up to go, following her father’s instruction. She tripped and fell and as she was making on the floor the teacher was giving her a lesson, that she was being taught midda keneged midda for disobeying the teacher. Outrageous as this may seem, it happens to us all the time. When we are young, we want to please the people around in order to receive love and value. This need gives so much power to the adults around us and many believe unknowingly that their agenda for what is good for us is the truth of what is good for us. Their words hurt, their labels stick, the imprint on our minds is planted, and we are challenged to conform to their blaming and shaming rather than to follow Torah or emulate Hashem. After all, we don’t want anyone to be upset with us!!!!

Happiness, pleasure and survival are in Hashem’s Hands. When we learn and follow Torah, emulate Hashem, live with emunah and bitachon giving love and value, no matter what we experience the highest levels of pleasure. Threats of abandonment and annihilation by powerful appearing enemies [ we experience this in our daily lives as feelings of anxiety, judgment, anger and more when something triggers us]  must be remembered as having its Source in Hashem albeit coming to us through a painful or challenging experience. Hashem is the only power. It is upon us to follow the Torah, to return to halacha, to emulate Hashem. Specifically, we are taught to be humble, to remove arrogance, to bitul our ego. Otherwise, when we feel we have power to say and do what WE think may be right in the moment, we might be making a mistake. Our efforts to look at circumstances with intelligence MUST be buffered with emunah in Hashem and awareness that we are made in His Image to reveal His Atrributes of Mercy. In this way, we will be connected to Him. In this way His Glory wlll be revealed. There is no better Homeland Security than that.

No matter what the challenge, the only good is what the Torah tells us. Returning happiness and pleasure to its proper roots will not only bring us happiness, pleasure, survival and good, but it will also reveal to the world Hashem’s Good. For as it says

Yermiyahu 1:18-19:

For I have today made you as a fortified city, as an iron pillar, and as walls of brass against the whole land, the kings of Judah, its nobles, priests, and the people of the land. And they shall fight you but they willnot prevail, for I am with you to ave you, says the Lord.

Yermiyahu 2:2-3
Go and cry out in the ears of Jerusalem saying, Thus says the Lord: I remember yuour favor, the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, when you went ofter Me into the desert, into a land that was not sown.
Israel is holy to the Lord, the first fruits of His produce; all that devour him shall be held guilty, and evil shall come down upon them, says the Lord.

Meam Loez comments that:
Rashi interprets Hashem’s statement as a declaration of His great mercy, and His willingness to accept Israel should they repent. That desire to accept them is founded on His retaining the memory of the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, and the willingness demonstrated then to forgo the comforts of civilation to follow Him into the barren desert.

The teshuva that we are doing is designed for us to rediscover the immense pleasure of revealing divine dignity in every moment. The teshuva we are doing strengthens a relationship with Hashem that is necessary in order for us to do the work of tikun he desires from us. That tikun is the constant effort we make to behave with free will as if we are one with Hashem’s Will, knowing that is the only real good. It is a constant avoda as long as we are alive. Having the challenges MEANS we are alive, in bodies, with egos, and subconscious and unconscious AND with a tzelem elokim including a level of surrounding light that connects us at all times to the real Source of all vitality, a surrounding light that we ask Hashem to lovingly and gently erupt into our neurocircuitry so that it naturally is what flows through our hearts.  During the Three Weeks, we are trying to connect with Hashem internally, to the pleasure and happiness of feeling His Presence, as it was in the Temple of Shlomo HaMelech. 

The only good is Torah. There is No Other Power. We are made in Hashem’s image. He is the source of all Vitality. When we trust in Torah, following the halachos, emulating His attributes, doing mitzvahs, loving Hashem, giving love and value to others and trusting our survival to Hashem alone, there is nothing to fear at all. 

May the teshuvas that we do in our personal examples of this create positive influence and be merits for Klal Yisrael. May the eruption into our consciousness of tzelem elokim and the pleasure of that experience help us understand most deeply what we lost when we lost Shlomo's Temple. May our building into our minds His Presence conclude once and for all the grief of all these years of living without the Temple, internalizing our connection to Him, and making it so natural as to flow through our hearts in order that His Glory once again is seen in time and space.
May Hashem protect us and cause our enemies to stop being enemies.

Teshuva does not mean guilt – teshuva means return to functioning as Nishmas Am Yisrael

Being alive is a constant source of opportunity to reveal divine dignity. Inherent in life are the necessary concealments of what divine dignity is, for covering our divine dignity is a body, with an ego and subconscious and unconscious mind. What we experience in our natural responses is tangible and experiential. That “delivery system” for stimulus, thought and emotion is one that we can bend into service for revealing divine dignity. It is a lifelong journey. But our effort to do so creates positive influence.

Imagine all the benefits we get from a tree – wood for building, shade, fruit, home for birds and animals and ultimately, its waste product, oxygen, which is formed through photosynthesis. A tree takes in carbon dioxide and produces so much benefit for us and its waste product is necessary for our very lives. If we were to ask which is the most noticeable of a tree’s function, we would say most likely shade, home for animals, or even wood. It takes scientific understanding to know it is also producing oxygen.

Thus can we understand what a return to functioning as Nishmas Am Yisrael is like. When the Jewish people do mitzvahs, when we rise above our natural tendencies with love in our heart to put aside our self-referencing in favor of emulating Hashem’s Attributes of Mercy thereby revealing divine dignity, we are expressing a higher understanding of the spiritual science of the universe and of our functioning. It is empowering to understand that what we go through is not the basis of our esteem, either here or in the heavens. What we go through here is the playing field upon which our free choice is given so that we can do the functioning of Nishmas Am Yisrael. The functioning of Nishmas Am Yisrael is to generate positive influence that Hashem can then fold into the elements and His utterances in creating and re-creating the world each moment.

With love in our hearts and emunah as the place from which we view our intellectual understanding of circumstance, may we cry out to Hashem that we understand that He is the place of all, that His is the only Glory, and to please help us to access the koach of what is natural with expression of divine dignity so that divine dignity is what naturally flows through us, rather than self-referencing. We do this by refining our unrectified attributes. This is teshuva, but it is not to feel guilt. It is teshuva to produce positive influence we are created to produce and to build our being into one that can hold and reveal His Glory.

May our effort to do so be a merit for klal yisrael that we should be deemed to be the generation meritorious for redemption and may the koach of our past mistakes now having taught us be brought to the side of merit as they teach us and impress upon the natural delivery system within us an expanded ability to hold and choose to reveal divine dignity over lower responses.

As we cry for the tragic loss of Malaysia Flight 17 -Seeing the Hashkacha Pratis in today’s situation – Where is Divine Dignity?

We cry out feeling the tragedy, the incredible loss to mankind and the eternal pain of the families involved.
Where is our divine dignity as mankind? How do we lift ourselves and the world from a level where shooting a plane out of the sky based on self-referencing fears or judgments can seem like a good idea to anyone?

Happiness and pleasure inherent in learning Torah, emulating Hashem's attributes of mercy, and living with emunah and bitachon as the only real pleasure that there is and that the fact we don't feel it is the problem. Happiness and pleasure for non-Jews is included because Torah gives the seven Noahide Laws for non-Jewish people. Happiness and pleasure come only from Torah. There is no other good, for the Jews, as well as for the non-Jews. Torah is for all humanity because it is through Torah that we access the way to reveal the divine dignity with which our life force is created to reveal, Jew and non-Jew alike. When we experientially touch the pleasure of doing so, no other pleasure can compete.  None.

We need to return divine dignity to Hashem and break the cynicism, shame, blame culture. Whether we call it western values, materialism, ego, narcissism, evil, whatever you want - but happiness and pleasure as the result of divine dignity has been trumped by money, power, friendships and the ability to assert boundaries in a way that causes others to feel blamed and shamed.  We have fallen to the lowest depths. But it is from Hashem Who gives us the Torah to lift us out.  The ropeline is what is built into the soul of every person, the potential to gain experiential understanding that the soul experiences pleasure when involved on a constant basis with revealing divine dignity, that we are inseparable from Hashem and are built to reveal Hashem's Glory and experience the immense pleasure of doing so.

Divine dignity exists regardless of income. Divine dignity exists regardless of previous mistakes. All cynicism on this point, no matter how slight,  is what traps us. Where do we really hold our esteem from?


The subconscious and unconscious cover over with the realities of our human lives and sensations and pursuit of happiness the experience of pleasure felt by our soul each time we serve Hashem according to the Torah, Jew and non-Jew. It will be this way until the redemption in order to give people free willed choice until then. But we can do battle with it by bringing our sabotaging desires and urges more and more into consciousness and then making clear choices to follow Torah, Jew and non-Jews through the Noahide Laws. The image that man is created is in the image of Hashem’s Attributes of Mercy. It is the highest and deepest in the world. When we improve consciousness of this, we gain choice in what we will, we improve thought, and then speech and deeds.

Especially as we enter the first Shabbos of the Three weeks, it is fitting to seek out in ourselves this deepest truth, that we are made in the image of Hashem’s Attributes of Mercy, the highest knowable understanding we can have of Hashem. If we don’t feel it – at least desire to seek it out. Know His Attributes of Mercy that we will call out on Rosh Hashana many times. Simply put, Hashem tolerates our insults and mistakes, He overlooks them, He bears the burden and sadness of our confusion of mind permitting Himself to be involved in the pain just to give us the opportunity to choose to recognize His Attributes and to choose to emulate Him, He forgives us, and He casts our sins into the sea.

Understanding what Hashem is doing with us means that we can glue our imagination to ways for us to emulate that in every moment. If we glue ourselves to tolerating insults, overlooking faults, bearing the burden of the confusion of mind of our fellow man, forgiving and casting sins into the sea, we awaken that deep place of divine dignity with us. When we feel relief from the confusion in a moment of clarity and calmness, we know we have moved ourselves into our true identity. Once there, once we realize that the goals we believe could bring us esteem and pleasure are inferior, we begin to be able to extricate ourselves and bring us back to the only good, Torah.

May we soon see a new light in the world just for considering the possibility and even just thinking about trying to do battle with the barrier of cynicism that even with only a microscopic level of effort can be pierced for an experience of pleasure that could help.

Any Jewish women interested in a guided teshuva to do this, please visit www.brachagemach.com

Doing battle with the subconscious and unconscious to reveal His Glory as the most pleasant and desirable experience to choose with our free will.

The extremes of heat and light of summer bring out desires and a sense of independence to a degree that tests us in our ability to recognize and choose against acting upon them.

For the three weeks before Passover, we clean to get rid of Chometz, where has our ego gone beyond what is permissible in Torah? We find behaviors that we wish to corral and we ask Hashem to bring us from being enslaved to freedom. We then spend seven weeks expanding what we need to in order to bring that freed inclination into service of Hashem and contracting what we need to stop doing in order to bring that freed inclination into service of Hashem. In the seventh week, malchus, we live with our re-trained inclinations, and stand at Har Sinai to receive the Torah.

When we sinned with the Golden Calf, the work we did to bring ourselves to the level of Adom before the sin got covered over again. In one second, the keser, chochma and bina, the higher three attributes of the animal soul, dominated the heart of the Jewish people. The three weeks that could have been a joyous time of receiving the commandments have become a time of danger.

Nishmas Am Yisrael, Torah and Hashem’s Name yud k vav k are inseparable. That means our higher soul, the tzelem elokim that is made in the image of Hashem’s attributes of mercy, emulating His Keser is taught Torah in utero. When we understand that all of Torah is available at all times within us, we can approach the work of cleaning off the influence of the animal soul that is covering our awareness of Torah with its arousal of subconscious and unconscious desires, fears, defensive survival reactions and unrectified characteristics inherent in being alive.

During the three weeks, we seem more and more comfortable with the logic and guidelines of fulfilling natural desires based on worldly considerations and comfort. Yet we worked all year to improve our unrectified characteristics – how do we keep from losing them in this time of expanded light and heat that seemingly bring out wisdom in pursuing desires based on worldly rather than Torah considerations?

Parshas Matos tells us that the Leviim fought in the war with Midian because no one is exempt from the need to do battle with the subconscious and unconscious, which are the wisdom and understanding coming from the animal soul. Just as during the three weeks before Passover we cleaned for Chometz to reduce our ego, our gains in retraining our inclination now have to take their next step. During these three weeks, we have to ingrain into our thoughts by overcoming the animal soul’s influence that happiness and pleasure come from learning Torah, emulating Hashem’s Attributes of mercy, and living with faith and belief. The tzelem elokim, the soul that is made in Hashem’s image, has not forgotten this. The battle we do to impress upon the animal soul’s chochma and bina that happiness and pleasure do not come to us as it suggests builds into our brain boundaries that will eventually help us to contain the happiness and pleasure that Hashem desires to give us.

May we understand that love and value come from connection to Hashem’s Torah and attributes and that pleasure comes from the experience of revealing His Glory without impurities. May we speak out to Hashem when we feel a bitterness and tell Him with simple words that we know it is all from Him and that it is our choice to connect happiness and pleasure to the degree we merit to reveal His Glory and to please help us clean off the impurities so as to infuse His Glory into nature.

Until Moshiach comes we will continue to have a subconscious and an unconscious, provided by the animal soul directing us towards the fulfillment of perceived worldly pleasures and comfort. Yet we can do battle with it on an individual level and to the degree we make an effort with free will to reveal His Glory, we establish our name in the heavens and our capacity to draw His Glory into the world.

May we soon see a new light.

Teshuva within the format of submission separation and sweetening -an example, a toolbox

Here is an example of a teshuva written out . It is intended as a guide for what may be whispered in verbal introspection inserting the private details of the individual’s bitterness:

Submission: Hashem, I am experiencing a bitterness
Kavana: Within my subconscious or unconscious or basic human nature is keeping happiness and pleasure busy with radioactive/firey defensive or aggressive self-referencing thoughts and it is bitter, resentful, anger producing, terrifying, upsetting  [say out loud the emotion and what triggered it and it is bitter]

I do not wish to follow so reactively whatever naturally comes to mind! Please I turn to You with love in my heart
Kavana:[tell Hashem that I wish to be seen by Him as this effort to make a repair, not with the matter being confessed, as the basis for esteem]!!

Separation:. Blessed is the Name of Your Glorious Kingdom Forever and Ever – You are One.
Kavana: There is amazing light trapped there by the awesome design that You Create the world and I wish to use that light from nature uttered by You and concealing You to instead reveal Your Glory

Whatever nature or human nature is covering over the experience of revealing Your Glory, please dissolve it and wipe it off so that revealing Your Glory flows without impurities through my heart. I only want to be who You want me to be!
Kavana: I realize that built into subconscious and unconscious reactions is human nature, and all nature is under the domain of the Soton! Please Hashem, give me free will over this area of human nature being expressed within these emotions because whatever is being triggered is like a magnet automatically operating within the mind with suggestions and reactions and impulses and desires toward aveiras, hating others, bearing a grudge, feeling resentful, judging, taking revenge and more
 
[Describe the dissonance in the experience and what the challenges are]. Please help me wipe off the impurities and use the entire light to reveal Your Glory That is my free willed choice, please help!
Kavana :Hashem is One and by virtue of stating that, please dissolve the magnetic draw pulling downward into magnetic draw to strengthen resolve to learn Torah, emulate Your Attributes of Mercy, and live with emunah and bitachon.

Please Hashem help with bending whatever the unbounded desires  are [state them] to the truth that the Source of all Vitality is You, and may the desire only for what is good in Your eyes draw me so that happiness and pleasure are derived from divine dignity, Torah, emulating Hashem and living with faith and trust. Help me let go of impurities blocking  the pleasure that Hashem designs for our essence so that I become a vessel capable of receiving the pleasure of devekus Hashem desires to give us. Please Hashem help with burning out lower levels of expression of volatile radioactive urges including anger, anxiety, arrogance and more in order that passion be directed for Torah. Please Hashem through the words Hashem Echad, may the desire bound by knowing that You are the Source of all vitality Who Gives what is Good and only Good subdue radioactive arrogant responses so that together forms warmth and light that is beneficial and that reveals Your Glory.

Hashem I direct that the lights of happiness and pleasure trapped in human nature and subconscious be released [name them and identify them in as much detail as possible out loud]. Please wipe off the impurities trapping them, and please move the strength to cling to revealing Your Glory, for there is no glory other than Hashem. Hashem Is One.
Kavana: With love my heart please forgive us for ever thinking there is any Glory other than Hashem and help me draw deeply into the desert of the subconscious place a healing so that revealing Hashem’s Glory flows naturally through mind and heart. Please help straighten out whatever is in the deepest recesses of thought and emotion with Your Will so that thought and speech reveal divine dignity, as the moon reflects the sun.

Sweetening: Please help me reveal Your Glory through speech and deed, and may Your Glory fill the elements water, fire, wind and earth without impurities of human nature so that Your Glory may be seen in the world.

Hashem may will, thought, emotion, speech and deed reveal Your Glory, tolerating insults, overlooking faults, bearing the burden of the discomfort of mind that happened when we ingested from the tree of good and evil causing experientially internalized externalities to appear in our mind as “me”, please forgive us for ever thinking there is any glory other than You, and please cast all our sins into the sea. Please may this teshuva that adds light that through free willed choice has been brought from human nature and dissolved into revealing Hashem's Glory through the statement Hashem is One  be a merit for Klal Yisrael.

May this be a merit for Klal Yisrael that our generation should be meritorious for redemption b’ahava.

The Three Weeks - Between the Straits - Why mourning, which means shifting happiness and pleasure to yearning for His Glory to be revealed and clinging to understanding essence of self and others as having divine dignity during this time is so important

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In the above podcast, Rabbi Yaakov Zalman Labinsky explains through the actual words in theory what the three weeks is about.  Read the transcript and listen to the podcast and then below please see why this is so exciting and inspiring to really ask Hashem to help us reveal His Glory over our natural reactions.
Here is a transcript:

The three weeks of mourning precede the 7 weeks of consolation. It is called Bain HaMitzarim, between the straits. The root letters of straits is tzara, from mitzarim, tzadi raish hai which letters turned around spell ratzon, to want or to yearn. That is the basis of the root of the word yearning, ratzon, to run. The new ratzon the new yearning comes from the tzara itself. The new desire for greater closeness comes from the capacity of distancing itself and your ability to hold onto it, to contain the pain, and then be able to find a deeper yearning within the pain.

In ratzon comes from keser [Hashem's Attributes of Mercy are in keter and we are made in His Image, meaning that our essence, our divine dignity, reflects Hashem's Attributes of Mercy]. That is important to know. If tzara brings ratza, and ratzon is rooted in keser, and  keser is the root behind chochma bina and daas! It is called the shorshe amochi – the root of the mochi is chochma bina and daas. …a person awakening their ratzon and in the ratzon is the root of their keser which is the root of their moichim - you will draw down new moichim from a new yearning to get close to Hashem, to connect to Him and He will give you new moichim to perceive in general and specific, which is chochma (general) and bina (specific), and then integrated into daas based on the new yearning to return, which is based on the pain of the tzara.

For the seven weeks that follow the seven weeks of consolation, leading to Rosh Hashana, that [editor note: the work we do to do battle with the pain of letting go of happiness and pleasure associated with worldly matters and instead seeking to identify happiness and pleasure with divine dignity] will start to permeate your middos.


We can have patience during the three weeks to  look at how our imagination regarding happiness and pleasure are trapped in worldly matters causing us to react with hurt and upset.  We can make an extra effort in teshuva, asking Hashem to please help us release happiness and pleasure along with the Shechina that is in galus with the trapped happiness and pleasure.  We beseech Hashem to please help us re-associate happiness and pleasure as He designs them to be experienced, as the result of learning Torah, emulating Hashem's Attributes of Mercy (keser) and living with emunah and bitachon, faith and trust.  Hashem desires to give us true pleasure, but our minds need to be a vessel that can contain that pleasure.  When during the three weeks we introspect and work to experience what we lost, we develop a yearning for Hashem's presence.  That understanding of real pleasure is an important teshuva.  we  build into our minds a shift from what we perceive as happiness and pleasure in worldly matters to a higher and truer happiness and pleasure.  Our mind becomes a vessel to receive real pleasure proportional to the pain we held and did battle with when re-associating heartfelt pleasures with what Hashem designs for us to be real pleasure.  When we get a glimpse of the new  pleasure that Hashem wishes to give to us - devekus based on our essence - we realize its superiority over where we previously defined happiness and pleasure.

Such a teshuva accomplishes a real change in our will and our thought.  it uncorrupts something at the deepest switch inside of us, giving us more consciousness over an area of our mind that we did not have before.

There is a women's teshuva call, easy, gentle guided teshuva, to help us with this work every day of the three weeks, except Shabbos.  The calls are at 8 am and 10 pm eastern time.  the calls are recorded and are posted at www.brachagemach.com where you can get more details.  If you would like to join us, please send an email to shulikleinman@beyondanydoubts.com