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

Why use submission separation and sweetening as the frame of reference for teshuva - expanding our vessels through growing in Yiras Shemayim

The frame of reference that the three steps submission separation and sweetening that we are using during our teshuva (www.brachagemach.com - if interested send email to shulikleinman@beyondanydoubts.com) to benefit the teshuva we do is important to understand more deeply.

In order to receive the true happiness and pleasure that Hashem wishes to bestow upon Nishmas Am Yisrael, we have to be a vessel that can contain it, meaning that it will feel like a pleasure to us.

For our mind to expand from the happiness and pleasures we associate with worldly matters, physical and emotional satisfactions, a sense of value based on the appearance of being capable independently existing beings, we need to grow in yiras shemayim.

We have an inner strength to ask Hashem to help us bend our firey responses when experiencing a lack of love and value from other people.  We beseech Hashem to help us release happiness and pleasure from being trapped in the thought that we must "do something" to secure our perceived need for love and value from people or events. The way we beseech Hashem is by effacing with yiras Shemayim anything that blocks us from the reality that He Alone is creating every detail of our circumstance in order to give us the opportunity to realize Hashem is One, to internalize what it means to say Know there is Hashem.  KNOW IT, even in that moment.

Knowing it in that moment effaces the grip that our natural being, our ego-development even when healthy, trusts as the source for happiness and pleasure.  Knowing there is Hashem in that moment, releases the soul's source of happiness and pleasure to its true root, its inseparable connection to Hashem.

Happiness and pleasure come from learning Torah, emulating Hashem (toleratiing insult, overlooking faults, bearing the burden of confusion of mind, forgiving, and casting sins into the sea) and living with emunah, faith that the Source of all Vitality is Hashem and bitachon, trust, that our our firey reactions can burn out lower levels of existence in order to instead flow passion for Torah to create warmth and light.  Our effort to do so is the basis of real esteem and the consequence of doing so is the experience of real pleasure as we build our mind's capacity to receive it and prefer it over the natural we just effaced.

This effacing of worldly matters during the three weeks is a teshuva that comes at a time that has the potential to be a time of holliness but got covered over because of the sin of the Golden Calf.  All progress we make in returning happiness and pleasure to serving Hashem helps us to repair the false belief that there is any glory other than Hashem's Glory.

Nishmas Am Yisrael - Taking Cover? Hashem help us dissolve what we need to from our hearts to reveal You as is Your Will

How do tyrants gain power? The world unfortunately has many examples of brutality, of killings, of actual control over the lives of others, of those who adversely affect the lives of others in order to dominate and to require submission of the others to the will of their tyranny. When it comes to the physical existence of people, it is not hard to understand why people fear for their lives and conform. That is a natural human response.

One reason to love Hashem is that He is all loving. He gives us a Torah and multiple times a day, He tolerates our insults to His Stated will, we say the wrong bracha, we omit an after bracha, we have a negative charge against a family member and more. Hashem knows every emotion, every ounce of electrical impulse, within our makeup because at every moment it is He Alone Who is providing the Source for its existence by uttering it into existence. Hashem weaves the circumstances of our lives together so seamlessly though that we lose sight of His Constant Presence, His Omniscience, and His Omnificence.

The hiddenness of Hashem is in order to give us free will. Yet it also gives tyrants a tool to dominate, and that is through the illusion that they are in charge of our lives, our survival, in what esteem the world community will hold us. For those who do not have Torah to help see Hashem’s hiddenness, it is easy to understand how emotions can be swayed with political means.

There is a place in every person that needs love and value. It is oxygen for our existence. As people, being well thought of, cared for, appreciated, and having a productive existence is imperative to having a healthy life. There is no question about it. It is obvious that a tyrant can take that away. What is not obvious is that it is only with Hashem's permission.  And what is really hidden is that the success of the tyrant does not mean that Hashem favors the tyrant.  In human terms, in terms of human justice, it seems that way, that Hashem "rewards" the tyrant by subjugating the Jewish people to their actions.  In Torah terms, in terms of the function of Nishmas Am Yisrael, there is a more elevated effort towards creating positive influence for which Hashem desires to give us real eternal reward.

In the Holocaust, the Nazis took away productivity, took away the jobs and positions of the Jewish People. They forced us to wear garments labeling us as Jews. In this way, they used their power over the physical realm and their speech to create labels intended to strip away the divine dignity of the Jewish people.   It hurt the part of us that is physical. It was crushing. And then because they convinced themselves and others that the Jews were not really human, they went through with their plan to eradicate us, annihilating six million people.

Over the years we have become very sensitive to that place where our sense of feeling loved and valued based on emunah and bitachon in Hashem has been ridiculed, tortured, lowered, and murdered in order for tyrants to appear victorious over His People. That connection between the Jewish People and Hashem is our Bais HaMikdosh. It is a special flow. When our physical existence or ability to survive in healthy environment is threatened, unless we are so very strong in emunah and bitachon that we FEEL our love and value coming from Hashem, chances are that our happiness and pleasure will become trapped in goals seeking responses from external sources. No one is immune from this.

The Torah response is to understand at all times that EVERYTHING is Sourced in Hashem and He is the one to turn to. We lift our eyes and cry out regarding the bitterness, in prayer, Hashem this is bitter! We are turning to You! Hashem Echad!  Even if we don't understand.
Hashem wants to give us the relief we want. He wants to fill us with the pleasure of feeling love and valued by Him. He is in a constant state of desiring to do this, for this is the purpose for which He creates the world. Yet if He sends this chesed to us and we do not have a vessel to receive it, what will happen? We will not be able to contain the pleasure. It will just fall away and we will still be seeking the happiness and pleasure from external sources, believing that is reality. In other words, Hashem’s chesed to us would not be good for us! Why? Because even if intellectually we want it, our hearts are biased towards lower pleasures, an inevitable consequence of having had our existence challenged, traumatized and exterminated and threatened throughout history.

That is the area we need to restore. Each one of us can, in personal prayer, identify where we experience a discrepancy between the way things appear to be and the reality that everything Hashem does is good and just. Even if we can’t articulate all the ways our complaints and charges interfere, we can say two words with intention and sincerity. Hashem Echad.

Hashem is One. He is the Source. There is No Other Power.

Whatever it is that I seek through whatever means outside of Hashem that I seek it, that hishtadlus is not the hishtadlus that will prepare me to receive the real pleasure Hashem wants to give to us. We can argue with that a long time with many proofs. But Hashem wants our hearts and He knows when He has our hearts.

We know when we have given Him our hearts when we experience the pleasure of revealing His Glory over our natural urges otherwise.

Hashem wants a relationship with us. He wants us to spend time dissolving, bitteling, our sense of having any glory whatsoever that is not His Glory. He wants our egos to surrender to animating His Glory and His Torah and emulating His Attributes of mercy. He wants our imagination to happily connect to the role of Nishmas Am Yisrael and He wants to give us the pleasure He intends for us, the pleasure of being that vessel which reveals His Attributes of Mercy.  The Jewish people are intended to be as the moon reflecting the sun, with no light of our own.

All day long Hashem tolerates our insults awaiting us to remember Hashem Echad.  May His Love for us give us strength to reconnect our yearning for love and value, for happiness and pleasure, for our survival, to our hishtadlus to learn Torah, emulate His Attributes of Mercy and to live with emunah and bitachon revealing more and more His Glory and less and less the false belief that we have light of our own. Whatever doubts come up upon reading this, that is the work on our hearts we must do in order to become a vessel that can receive the pleasure He desires to give us. Individually, it is our tikun. And once we bring ourselves glued more closely to Him, and take our next step revealing His Glory, that is our yeud, our unique role.

No matter where we find ourselves, in government, politics, professions, positions of power and leadership, these principles apply to every Jew and it is a worthy pursuit, to remove what blocks His Glory from flowing through our hearts. Effort to do so creates the spiritual beings that can then help us in our positions to serve Hashem and make kiddush Hashem.

May we be zocheh to redemption b’ahava.
Please see www.brachagemach.com

Entering the Three Weeks - Love and Awe of Hashem heal our nature and reveal His Glory

Before we are bar or bat mitzvah, existence is dependency on our parents and our neurocircuitry and thinking are developing.  A nurturing environment reduces the amount of trauma that gets lodged in our memories.  Yet no matter how secure an environment, the structure of the human brain is such that perceived threats trigger our defense mechanisms.  Because everyone has a soul that is made in Hashem’s image, each of us understands ourselves as meritorious for being loved and valued.  If a child is in a natural environment where messages damage the child’s ability to experience being loved and valued by the parents, the teachers, friends, community, the natural defense mechanisms that associate with child-like misinterpretations become incorporated into our brain reactions.  We develop unhealthy fear, a fear that we believe but that is not real. The fear has fallen from healthy fear, awe of Hashem.  And when that happens, when we don’t have healthy fear of Hashem, awe of Hashem becomes trapped in thinking that happiness and pleasure come from worldly matters, such as other people.  Such fallen fear covers up our divine dignity. 

We have intrinsic divine dignity because we are made in the image of Hashem. Effort to reveal Hashem’s glory is the basis for esteem. 

Our fallen fears create more layers over our divine dignity and that  blocks our ability to reveal His glory, for the coverings over our heart divert our attention through imagination toward self-referencing goals.   The more damaged we are, the more layers and the more magnetically the winds can stir up our imagination to quickly pull us away from real Divine dignity, tzelem elokim, and instead sell us on the illusion of pleasure to be had if this one or that one respected us, loved us, treated us better, ad infinitum.

Even for a person who has awe of Hashem, when someone “hits” us with an insult or an unkind word, physiologically we react with a red alert, a natural brain reaction that, when we have awe of Hashem we can “:field” and subdue the natural reaction.  A person with awe of Hashem then reacts kindly in return with a respectful response or with loving boundary setting.  Yet when there are many instances that a person feels that their divine dignity has not been recognized by another person due to the manner in which a request is made, a statement is said, a comment directed, a desire expressed and more, the natural reaction of red alert becomes more and more associated with the person and the circumstances, and this begins to cover up divine dignity unless a person, using emunah and concerted effort, is determined to grow only in healthy awe of Hashem.

We can take our “red alert” reactions and with love in our hearts tell Hashem this is bitter and we know it is all from Hashem, that He is One.  We can then begin to sense the amazing animation from the natural and distill its strength with intention to grow in awe of Hashem for how He has created the world and His People.   By declaring Hashem is One, we create a spiritual being to lead us in the path we desire to go and we pat that strength from the natural to solidify awe of Hashem to a new level.  The strength that we can add can only be obtained by going through this process of relating to the circumstances with emunah, opening the love in our heart to Hashem to declare He is One, and then asking that the animating energy that flows through our heart reveal only His Glory.  It is the role of the Jewish people to do this. Without Torah we would just do what is natural, experience a diminishment in our divine dignity, react as if it is dangerous, and then perceiving ourselves as good, take action to secure what we feel we need to in order to preserve ourselves.  Such actions generally blame the other person, stripping them of divine dignity, and then we shame them, causing injuries to have them doubt their divine dignity by giving them painful emotional experiences that cloud things over. 

All of this happens because of one huge problem:  We left Hashem out of the picture. Our divine dignity became obscured because we fell victim to the winds that blew through us strong self-preseving reactions out of fear of abandonment or annihilation or both.  When such an error happens that our imagination becomes associated with our fears rather than with emulating Hashem’s attributes of mercy, the forces of nature have triumphed in covering our divine dignity and whispering in our ear a faulty basis for determining if we have love and value.  

Such a victory for the yetzer hara succeeds in lowering everything. Yet when we beat even one small aspect of that natural fear, we can take the animating strength from the imagination and from the yetzer hara that naturally wants to dominate and instead have it enhance awe of Hashem.  We can bring it to the healthy side of fear  we have to fight for Hashem’s truth.

The place within our subconscious is remote from us.  It is in our nature and the yetzer hara dominates human nature and has entrée to that subconscious place, to that switch in the tracks, like an infiltrator walking through a door that is open only to it, a door that may be locked to us!!  It is very important in verbal introspection to dig and dig to understand our inner switch. 

The door the yetzer hara has access to that is closed to us explains why we have sympathy for people who cry out from a place of feeling that their divine dignity is not respected.  Because we are familiar with that feeling, without understanding it feels as though we have been insulted or denied divine dignity because of a challenge to awe of Hashem, we have empathy for it.   The only problem is, imagination is building on fears and upsets that are not truly reflecting an understanding of revealing Hashem’s glory.  If I desire to reveal Hashem’s Glory, I do not need to argue with yours.  Instead, by revealing Hashem’s Glory, I see the divine dignity of the other and Hashem is in the picture.  Since everything is Hashem, such an approach is bound to be effective.

With emunah, we rise above our red alerts in order to do battle with internal winds that would have our divine dignity concealed in favor of self-referencing goals.  Emunah and healthy awe of Hashem help us strengthen our ability to reveal Hashem’s Glory through our thoughts speech and deeds. The more we reveal Hashem’s Glory out of love, the more positive influence we create that leads us in the path we wish to go, to have healthy boundaries to keep negative attacking forces out. We have many opportunities each day to build positive influence in this area of awe of Hashem.  When the challenges come, dissect them back into their elements – all desires must conform to Know there is Hashem and He is the source of all vitality. All anger and fear must conform to No other Power  and fire must be subdued to create warmth, light and burn out lower levels of existence that cause pain. Ask Hashem for help in wiping human nature off the animating force and revealing His Glory instead. 

This subconscious switch, when closed properly, connects our imagination to serving the truth that happiness and pleasure come from emulating Hashem’s attributes of mercy and nothing else.  It feels like we are pulling ourselves from something real but that something real is false yet we believe it, as designed by Hashem, in order to give us real free willed choice. Yetzer hara, Torah tipped your hand!  But we still have to work and work to discover the place this switch happens and to apply effort to reveal His Glory instead of the natural places of destruction our defensiveness is heading us towards.

When we truly subdue this inner switch, attaching happiness and pleasure to learning Torah, emulating hashem’s attributes of mercy, and living with faith and trust in Hashem, we will have the ability to draw Hashem’s glory into one of the darkest places of human nature, illuminating it and removing circumstances designed to direct us to hunt for the switch and make the repair.

May we soon see a new light in the world with redemption.

Bracha Gemach - Teshuva that removes our nature so as to reveal His Glory

please see www.brachagemach.com

When we are compelled by our human nature, very often we conduct ourselves in a manner that is designed to achieve our personal goals.  This is normal, every day human life.

Yet we also have a capacity to rise above in order to conduct ourselves in a manner that serves Hashem in an altruistic way.  This is a moment of holiness.  Yet when we do have these moments of transcending our nature out of love for Hashem in service to Hashem for His Sake alone, what we reveal in our actions reveals His Glory.  It also removes something from our nature, dissolving something, rectifying our unrefined characteristics in the process.

We can "donate" our unrefined characteristics and by revealing Hashem's Glory not only rectify ourselves but we also create merits for the Jewish people.  The Jewish people are one soul, and whatever we rectify in regard to our unrefined characteristics affects in a good way everyone, raising the amount of Hashem's Glory that is revealed in the world and aiding everyone to a higher level from which people may have more choice at their own free will points to rectify their unrefined characteristics and in turn reveal Hashem's Glory.
Posted here are recordings of guided teshuvas.  Women who would like the handouts and to be on this distribution list, please send an email to shulikleinman@beyondanydoubts.com

July 13, 2014 night: https://www.dropbox.com/s/clq1oik9h9b80u1/july132014.mp3
July 14, 2014 morning https://www.dropbox.com/s/clq1oik9h9b80u1/july132014.mp3

Join a guided hisbodidus women's work group for teshuva

Please think of a situation that is not too overwhelming but is a good example of experiencing upset based on a lack. 1. Submission: Hashem I am experiencing bitterness.
2. Separation: Please whatever is animating this is Sourced in You. Baruch Shem Kavod Malchuso Leolam voed
3. Sweetening: Please Hashem I ask that this animating energy be moved so that I may use it to reveal Your Glory.


Submission: Hashem I am experiencing bitterness. I am crying out to You.
(intentionality – I realize happiness and pleasure have become trapped in a worldly matter, something that is experientially internal but external to tzelem elokim. As Nishmas Am Yisrael, we have a relationship with You. )

Separation: Baruch Shem Kavod Malchuso Le’Olam voed – Hashem Echad “With these emotions in my heart, I understand it is all from You. You alone are the Source of all the animation. I don’t understand all the emotions, nor do I understand how it is good. But I do understand that there is No Other Power and that everything is Sourced in You, is just, and for the good.. With my free willed choice I make effort to dissolve whatever is necessary to dissolve so that the animating energy is available to reveal Your Glory”
(intentionality – the world of nature is under the domain of the Soton. Hashem utters the world into existence, embuing His Essence into letters that yield the elements into different unique-appearing expressions. Our physical being perceives the world on the level of appearances. Our spiritual being has the innate role and power to reveal from the concealment of nature Hashem’s Glory when we submit and activate love in our hearts and choose emunah as the platform to have a relationship with Hashem and open a flow of shefa by “cleaning off” the mask of nature. The primary deep place we need to reach is awareness that happiness and pleasure are expressions of tzelem elokim that is inseparable from Hashem and experiencing happiness and pleasure in relation to learning Torah, emulating Hashem, and living with emunah and bitachon. Finding the switch inside of us, that subconscious split second, where we are deceived by nature that happiness and pleasure come from somewhere in this world is our unique tikun)

Sweetening Please Hashem I ask that this animating energy be moved so that I may use it to reveal Your Glory. I direct the animating forces involved flow through my heart to reveal Your Glory. Help me to tolerate insults, overlook faults, bear the burden of confusion of mind, forgive and be part of casting all sins into the sea and may it be a merit for Klal Yisrael.
(intentionality: Just as a second ago You Hashem were bearing the discomfort of my confusion of mind as I felt bitterness, just in order to give me the opportunity to declare Baruch Shek Kavod Malchuso LeOlam Voed and Hashem Echad, I choose to emulate You and bring that same compassion and patience to this matter. The Source of all vitality is Hashem. Please may I be a vessel guarded from the negative thoughts that distract happiness and pleasure to worldly matters. Please solidify me more and more as a vessel whose neurocircuitry for bringing Your Glory through my heart into speech and deeds remains unobstructed by downward pulls.)
Interested?  Email shulikleinman@beyondanydoubts.com

Prayer and teshuva to reveal Hashem's Glory as merits for Nishmas Am Yisrael

It is possible that each of us can do something merely through speaking a few words that can make a huge impact.  Anyone interested in a guided work group to do this type of prayer and teshuva please email me at shulikleinman@beyondanydoubts.com.

Here is an example that anyone can do, if inspired - it is adaptable to help with every negative bitterness, no exceptions, when we understand our primary functioning is regarding the elements - the middos- and bringing them from the state where they are designed to confuse us and thereby conceal Hashem's Glory to a flow through our hearts where we have clarity and serve instead to reveal Hashem's Glory:

So and so didn’t return my call – I feel a lack of love! (this is a subconscious or unconscious response that triggers us...consciousness catches up with it when we are feeling "right" or the need to be 'right" or feeling judgmental or hurt)


Stop! Following that will not bring me to a place of happiness at all even if I am right and even if the person feels obligated to now call me! Is that the happiness I want? Is securing my dependency needs in my hand?

Hashem, I am feeling lack but the intensity of it is coming from a self-referencing desire for a dependency need to be filled. It feels as though if I don’t take care of this dependency need for love that it will not be satisfied. Please help me to break the illusion of independent existence propelling me toward defense mechanisms designed for danger. Iit helps to repeat out loud so we hear what the emotion is and can regain proper perspective - e.g. I am experiencing lack. Lack. Lack. Abandonment. Lack. But wait. I am not abandoned. Hashem is with me. I am inseparable from Hashem’s love.)

Please move the energy gripping my consciousness and subconsciousness for although it is coming through Your Utterances and is filled with impurities that I am responsible to repair, I wish to flow this amazingly potent magnetic energy instead to love Hashem, have awe of Hashem, to emulate Hashem, bearing the discomfort of mind we all suffer from.

Thank you for giving me life so that I can tell you Baruch Shem Kavod Malchuso Leolam Voed. Please help me cling more and more with emunah and bitachon to knowing Hashem Echad, with no doubts. The greatest pleasure is You! Please help me experience You with a constant sense of love and value coming from You. My soul is inseparable from real love and value, You.

Hashem thank you for the opportunity to declare Hashem echad and please may I, by learning from this matter and doing teshuva, ask that the teshuva be a merit for klal yisrael and create a positive influence through which You deal with Klal Yisrael and maintain the world.

Hashem may the manner in which You maintain the elements water, fire, wind and earth be filled with positive influence that reveal Your Glory and may we receive bracha and redemption b’ahava and may I be a fitting vessel to reveal more and more tzelem elokim with love and awe in my heart, as the moon reflects the light of the sun.

When we are torn between identifying with self referencing goals and tzelem elokim goals, ask ourselves if the self referencing goals really will bring happiness. Real happiness - or trapped kidnapped happiness that produces negative influence. The choice is ours.  Hashem waits for Nishmas Am Yisrael.  He loves us. He wants to give us everything. But if we are not aligned with identifying with the goals of revealing tzelem elokim, the redemption will give us a terrible headache for our vessel, our mind, will not be ready to receive the real good over our self-referencing definition of good.  Hashem does only good.  He is waiting for us to be ready.  Teshuva empowers us, it is not accepting blame.  Prayer empowers us. By speaking to Hashem in relationship, we form the spiritual entities that lead us in the path we wish to go, may we choose a path of revealing His Glory in the world.

May our understanding of identity as tzelem elokim break open the unique expressions of our trapped happiness. Know there is Hashem! May our understanding help us build only on emes and forgo imagination built on trying to serve self-referencing goals. There are no other powers, there is only the Shechina hiding in nature through His Utterances. May our efforts in prayer from a sincere heart requesting in teshuva that the energy of our past failures now become merits and that the energy be drawn back into the elements through our choice to speak and act based on tolerating insults, overlooking faults, bearing the burden of the confusion of mind that happened because of ingesting from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, forgiving and begging Him for forgiveness, and asking Hashem to cast our sins in the sea and because of our teshuva to be able to have any similar sins within klal yisrael cast into the sea. Hashem is One and we are inseparable. May our verbal introspection help us discern the impurities given to us to dissolve back into the Ein Sof to draw it back down into our hearts in a way that reveals His Glory instead of self referencing. May we walk as solid vessels with His Glory becoming more and more what flows naturally through our hearts. And may the impact on water, fire wind and earth, by infusing the elements with His glory, remove the influences that are sustaining our enemies.

 Interested in starting?  Please register by emailing me your name, phone, city, state, country and email address.
shulikleinman@beyondanydoubts.com

Hate Hatred? Release Happiness from its Captivity

The whole world is filled with the Glory of Hashem.  It is not too hard  to bring that reality and live it every moment if we comprehend the power Hashem gives us through speech and our true identity as made in His Image, tzelem elokim.

No matter where in the world we are, it must be quite clear to everyone that there is massive confusion and the pursuit of happiness as we know it does not have the results we are seeking.

The good news is we can do something about it. To do so, the foundations of our identity must be expanded and the gift of speech must be directed to Hashem, which meets His Utterances in a special important way.

Let’s start with our identities.

Why do many young babies get so angry when they get hungry? When we experience their anger, young mothers often feel like they are doing something wrong. There is an insecurity that they are to blame. The young baby has no idea that it is creating such a painful reaction in its mother. How does a young baby even know what anger is?

In the womb, the baby is learning Torah with an angel. All of its dependency needs are being met. It is happy. A baby’s soul is happy when it is learning Torah and it has the experience of all its dependency needs being met by Hashem Let me repeat. A baby’s soul is happy when it is learning Torah and it has the experience of all its dependency needs being met by Hashem. The baby does not have any sense of abandonment at all.

The baby is born into a completely different, fallen world! In order for its needs to be met, it’s very life depends upon imperfect people! When the baby is hungry, its cry is one that could, if the baby were conscious of it, be described as fear of abandonment and fear of annihilation. The mother’s role is to feed and soothe the baby, and the baby learns that this fallen world also fulfills it dependency needs to survive and for love. It is not abandoned or annihilated.

The soul of a baby triggers the baby’s unconscious so that the baby gets angry when it feels abandoned and/or annihilated. This is a built in response that continues within us, by design. Before in the womb, a baby’s soul is happy when it is learning Torah and it has the experience of all its dependency needs being met by Hashem. The criteria for happiness while we are dependent continue to be satisfaction of our dependency needs in a loving environment. When we mature and are no longer dependent, though, the criteria for happiness reverts back. Once we are mature, it becomes our spiritual work to realize in every moment that our soul is happy when it is learning Torah and has the experience of all its dependency needs being met by Hashem.

Yet because a child is dependent for 21 years, by design Hashem develops coverings over the soul, a real appearance of separate independent existence. Much happiness is associated with interacting with the world based on the development of intellect, of social circles, and of all types of learning and skill building.  It is important for the healthy development of a person for this to be. But there is one point that eventually surfaces through the challenges of life, and that is the pursuit of happiness, lasting meaningful happiness that is NOT dependent on anything outside of our own choosing.

Out of respect for all those who have died in pogroms, in the holocaust, in the intifada, through terrorism, and throughout Jewish history, the model of happiness that is being discussed here is not a guarantee for staying alive. It is in alignment with what we learn from Rabbi Akiva, who died having his flesh combed but expired saying Shema on the word Echad without feeling pain. No one wishes to experience such suffering. Yet we learn a great deal about the ability of the soul to experience happiness despite the surroundings and circumstances, may we never be challenged to do so. The purpose is to begin a journey to understand that our happiness is a function of our soul serving Hashem and how we can attempt to bring the awareness of that happiness more and more into our lives by freeing happiness from its captivity in worldly affairs.

Let’s begin by looking at what has happened because we have not really been attuned to releasing happiness from its captivity in worldly affairs.

What is baseless hatred? It is a hatred that has no basis, but what does that mean? We hate people who hurt our feelings, who insult us, who dismiss us, who deceive us. That surely is a good enough reason, no?

NO!

The first step to understand is that even though we are in a fallen world, our soul is inseparable from Hashem. We are made in Hashem’s image. Tzelem Elokim. And remember, the whole world is filled with His Glory. That includes us. Our soul is a thought from Hashem, Nishmas Am Yisrael, formed in the highest created world, corresponding to the yud in Hashem’s Name, and He infused tzelem elokim with His Attributes of Mercy, a reflection of the tip of the yud of His Name, the crown of His Kingship. Nothing can diminish this reality by even a microdot. It can be covered over if we don’t realize it, but in fact, in every moment of our lives, Hashem is with us, is aware of us, is providing for all of our needs, including the need for us to come to the consciousness that He is providing all our needs every second. We are not alone. We aer not abandoned. Hashem loves us. Our soul is happy every time we do a mitzvah or learn Torah or emulate Hashem.

The second step is to comprehend that it is our choice to identify with the goals of the body, to take or the goals of the soul, to serve Hashem and make kiddush Hashem. When we have clarity that identifying with the soul does not mean we are abandoning the needs of the body, because Hashem is running the entire world, we can take the next step. Emunah makes it possible for us to move our esteem to our effort to reveal tzelem elokim. If all there is in the world is Hashem’s Glory, including us, then what other esteem could there possibly be other than the effort we make to reveal His Glory? It is okay to know that Hashem, will continue to take care of our dependency needs in bodies, as He has done every day since the day we were born. But that is not our motivation. Our motivation is to release happiness from the captivity of the body so we can reveal His Glory and experience the happiness of fulfilling what Torah tells us is the mission of Nishmas Am Yisrael, to make a kiddush Hashem.

This second step, understanding it is a choice to identify ourselves as body/ego or as a soul, is dynamic. It is crucial to understand that we are in bodies and that means we are alive. Without body and ego, we would be not alive. Thus there is no need for frustration in experiencing this tension in our identity. In fact, the tension in how we identify at every moment is the Design for how Hashem’s Glory meaningfully comes into the world and is the basis for our eternal happiness.

We are not perfect. We are a mixture of body and soul. And after we ingested from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, life became even more confusing because the messages of the body and ego, which had been less prominent and which messages we could experience as external stimuli, became internalized and come through our hearts and neurocircuitry in a second. How can we come to understand that body and the reactions of the ego are external to us when they feel like everything, when they feel like our identity, when we experience them so dramatically and even treat them as the basis of our esteem until we arrive at adulthood?

Ask honestly, do the goals of the body and ego truly bring happiness? How long?

When we believe that other people, circumstances, or externalities give us meaning and esteem, then others have the power to take away our divine dignity by denying us words of love and value. There is no question that such cruelty causes pain to the body and the ego and is a terrible test that triggers us to a place where we may not be able to recover. Once others strip off our divine dignity, it then is possible for them to annihilate us, as did all of the persecutors of our people from the beginning of time. We have been the scapegoats. We have been accused of causing the unhappiness of so much! And it is blame that has seeped into our system, hurting our bodies and egos, causing us to develop thick-skin and in our attempts to defend ourselves, falling into emulating our oppressors instead of revealing tzelem elokim through a process of speaking out loud to Hashem in order to reveal His Glory.

I hear it. Where was Hashem to protect us in the Holocaust? Where is Hashem now, to protect Israel? But that is just more blame.   We are not grasshoppers. Hashem gave us a koach of speech for a purpose. And that speech is to meaningfully release happiness from worldly pursuits even if it costs us our lives, to declare His Glory fills the world. This is what we saw in the martyrs who danced into the gas chambers. This is what we saw in Rabbi Akiva. This is why we pray to Elokim of Avraham, Elokim of Yitzchok, and Elokim of Yaakov – for their righteous devotion to Hashem brought visible to the world that Hashem helped them, survive the furnace, survive the Akeida, establish the twelve tribes and more. What they accomplished through their avoda was beyond human and the world saw it. And therefore Hashem’s Name is identified by their victories.  It is the desire of the body to survive, no question.  It is the strength of the ego and the logical mind to create systems to protect us. Without a doubt.  But Hashem is always in the picture and that is the crucial piece. If cynicism has crept in causing us to doubt that emunah, we are stuck in a void with a power of speech misdirected, blaming, accusing, and causing more and more darkness.  The building of understanding must be rooted in truth, in Torah, or we are just falling deeper into more elaborate darkness.

The third step is to comprehend how through creating Adom from the elements of the world, Hashem has given us the ability to draw shefa and blessing into the elements of the world. When we do so making brachas over food and other mitzvahs, do we fully understand that we are drawing bracha into the world? If so, then it might be easier to understand that when we have a discrepancy between what the soul knows and what the body/ego experience, we experience pain. The circumstances, however, can be brought back to their elements. Just like a compound number can be drawn down to its factors, so too our emotional reactions can be drawn down to earth, wind, fire, water or a combination.

How we identify with those elements becomes the key to releasing happiness from worldly matters.

The human reaction is self-referencing. We are scanning for how this will work out well for our survival, for our needs, for our benefit, for our goals. Our imagination helps us dream amazingly well! But  Hashem is often not in the picture. We believe it is from our skill group, our connections, our money, and more that we are able to devise a plan to secure our dreams. The more we build on that, and the more we are financially rewarded by society for specializing in a particular area of accomplishing goals, the more we believe in ourselves and the more happiness becomes trapped in worldly matters. Expanding our consciousness means that we realize at all times that even when we react humanly, all of our dependency needs are being met directly because of Hashem’s constant love and presence in our lives. Without Him, we could not even move. There is no glory in the world other than Hashem.

Adom wanted to come into the world to make a kiddush Hashem from this fallen world. He ate and we must rectify this condition of confusion. There is no glory in the world other than Hashem. Not from the apparent physical existence which is animated by the Shechina uttered into every atom of energy including our neurocircuitry and unconscious, and not from the essence of our soul, animated by a thought of Hashem.

We can sit alone in a room with hugely negative feelings and blame all types of circumstances, people, and Hashem. But if we break it down, it is because we desire something that we feel is important for us to have. Perhaps we feel someone has diminished our dignity. Insulted us. Not given us the love we hoped for. Immediately our neurocircuitry begins to build on this reaction as if it is the true source of happiness.

This is where we must challenge ourselves and bring our emunah back into the picture because this is the foundation of baseless hatred. No one can diminish our dignity. It is not negotiable. It our perception based on a false belief that there is some glory other than Hashem that needs to be restored. It will not help to think of ways of shaming the other person in order to strip away their divine dignity, even though we may falsely believe we must do so to keep them from annihilating us. Such circumstances are not in our hands. Our unique challenge lies totally in an internal plane of existence.

The circumstances are from Hashem. Our tzelem elokim is inseparable from Hashem. The other person(s) are under the total control of Hashem whether they realize it and strive to reveal tzelem elokim or if they have a mixture of cynicism which has caused them to reveal a destructive tendency in order to provide our point of choice. It comes down to how we choose in the moment.

The elements of water, fire, wind and earth can be filled with Hashem’s glory through our choice. Left alone, they are filled with the Shechina that is hidden in nature awaiting us to release it, to dissolve it into the Ein Sof through speech that declares Hashem is One. If we did not have a Torah to tell us to do so, even a class of geniuses might miss it. But Avraham Aveinu did not miss it. He got it. And we are his children. It is in our spiritual heritage to understand this as well as to do it.

Every moment that we do this, we rectify our own soul. We improve our negative characteristics by choosing to reveal tzelem elokim. We break our nature when we understand we can grind down the elements within our negative characteristics to reveal tzelem elokim. For in all the world there is only the glory of Hashem. We can ask Hashem to help us grind down the self-referencing that blocks tzelem elokim from flowing through our hearts. Flowing tzelem elokim through our hearts keeps us in happiness, for we are involved with Torah and aware that Hashem is totally in charge of our dependency needs every single moment of life. From there, we can give love and value to others, serving Hashem.

Blaming others, demanding from others, accusing others traps happiness in a hopeless void of sinas chinum. It is totally without basis. It can never have a basis. Happiness is not attainable except through Torah, mitzvahs and emulating Hashem. Discovering the truth in this is a lifelong process, an infinite path. But starting the journey requires just a simple shift in identity – to effort to reveal tzelem elokim in the moment out of love of Hashem and awe of Hashem, to serve Him and reveal His Glory. There is no way to measure the spiritual impact of the simple choice to ask Hashem to help lead us in the path we wish to go. Doing so is a reflection of emunah that immediately lifts us from the grip of the downward pulls of nature, politics, man-made social systems, ego, and more. It is the basis of monotheism that there is only Hashem Who is all powerful, all knowing and all present. He loves us. Let us arouse love in our hearts for Him, a love that is known and active in our souls. Let us speak to Him to tell Him that we know all there is in the world is Hashem and to please lead us in the path we wish to go, which is to infuse into the world shefa and bracha released from our identifying falsely with our self-referencing as what will bring us happiness.

And may we begin to see a new light. Today.

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Avraham Fried comforts at Mourning Home

Hate hatred? Move it OUT! Call the Mover

If I have a baby grand piano to move from one room to another, I would not be able to move it by myself. I would need to call a mover to help. But I decide that I want to move it and to where.

It is the same with our heavy emotional content. The first thing that we all know is that we definitely want to get rid of it. We want to move it OUT. The part that takes more thinking in order to choose is where do we want to move it to?

It must be pretty clear by now that blaming others and dumping on our loved ones, friends, co-workers, or even more removed people, like politicians, professionals and more is not exactly bringing us so much happiness. It seems to just go around and around, doesn’t it?

So we want to move out our negative content AND be happy. That adds information!!

The beauty of Torah is that happiness is the experience of the soul when doing mitzvahs, learning, or emulating Hashem’s attributes of mercy. We may not feel happy doing this service, but it is a spiritual reality. Starting with a grain of truth helps because we definitely like to feel happy.

Accepting that truth, there is another truth to know along with it. We experience natural reality that is under the dominion of the sitra achra, the other side, which is a nice way of saying the yetzer hara. The Soton has dominion over the natural world because our test is contained in our approach to the natural world.

When we experience a negative charge, where is its power coming from? Why does it feel so overwhelming as to drive a person to pull the covers over their head? Or get angry? There is nothing in the room with us! A thought has the power to level us? Is it plugged into the wall? If we perceive that it is a thought and an emotion that we are dealing with, then we begin to understand we are experiencing a discrepancy between the tzelem elokim that is happy serving Hashem and the part of us that is natural, which would like to dominate our heart.

Now here comes a helpful tip. The energy driving the natural comes ALSO from Hashem, only it is enclothed in the natural. And because we know that everything Hashem sends is good, even though it is presenting in a confusing and painful presentation, if we remember to rise to a simple level of emunah, we can recycle the energy being delivered through the natural and bring it through us in a way that reveals Hashem’s Glory.

“Hashem! I am experiencing a great deal of energy that is unpleasant but I know it contains the Shechina! I love Hashem and I have awe of Hashem that He creates a world where He gives Nishmas Am Yisrael happiness for serving Him by connecting! Please I ask that You move that energy from this upsetting place and instead give that energy into my free will to instead emulate You. Please lead me in the path that I wish to go and flow naturally through my heart Your attributes to tolerate insult, overlook faults, bear confusion of mind, forgive, and cast sins into the sea”

Try it.   The initial feeling of calmness is an indication that there has been a shift. What may happen is that there will be opportunities where it will feel that we have more choice, instead of being reactive, that opportunity to put our newly acquired awareness will lead to a new pattern of behavior and reacting.

We cannot do anything without Hashem ever, least of all take on the natural world. But Hashem is the Source for everything and with that emunah, and with free will, and with understanding that we are here to recycle the animating force from nature to reveal His Glory, we have a starting place to talk to Hashem.

Negotiating the paradox of soul and body - Tomer Devorah Hisbodidus Cards can help

When we believe illusions that cause us to invest our happiness in matters that relate to our survival, the level of comfort, the feelings of esteem based on status and honor, without intending to do so, we are investing in the strength of nature, in the powers of worldly reality. It is imperative to remember at all times that Hashem is the Source for absolutely everything, including giving us happiness on the level that we relate to it most.  The paradox is that to secure the level of happiness through our senses, our comprehension must be that the only happiness there is comes from serving Hashem and doing mitzvahs.   If we did not have a Torah, we would never latch onto that truth.  But we do have the Torah. Ignoring it or interpreting it otherwise aligns us in a dangerous place, the domain of the forces that Hashem sets up to shepherd us back.
The simple teshuva to turn back to Hashem is to remember that we were once in a womb where all our needs were taken care of and we were learning Torah.  As soon as we are born, we come into a lower existence and the purpose is to acquire for Hashem the animating forces of this world, bringing into them His Glory through our intentions, emotions and deeds that are rooted in Torah.
Despite all our varying personalities and uniquenesses, everyone is expected to do this.  When we feel negative emotions it is because our ego is undergoing a disunity.  No matter how upset we are, if we go into a quiet room and sit with a delicious drink, and no one is around at all to blame, it must become obvious that we are not in any immediate danger of dying if we let go of that negative feeling.  Not only won't harm come to us, but we will receive bracha.
What is in the way is our identity. It is so painful to do this if we are identifying with anything other than our effort to reveal tzelem elokim.
Hashem is One.  He is the Soul and Value in the world.  Tzelem elokim is inseparable from Him.  We have layers over it in order to exist in this lower world.  The task is to recognize and identify tzelem elokim as our primary and eternal identity even though we don't experience life this way.  Torah tells us.  We have the examples of the Avos and tzaddikim. It is okay for us to understand we are not on that level.  It is false to think that there is another esteem out there to be had that is deserving of honor and respect.
Thus it is up to us, no matter what bad characteristics and/or horrible circumstances Hashem has created for us in setting our free will point, to move in our thoughts to remembering that we are inseparable from Hashem.  The soul is the deepest thing in the universe and it connects all the way to the soul of Nishmas Am Yisrael which exists in the highest created world where all Jewish souls are one, where that one soul is one with Torah and with Hashem's Name yud k vav k.  What our reality is can be affected by Hashem in one moment.  If it is good for us.

Let's say we believe and do mitzvahs, and things are not better. What is our true preference, for the good of this world or for feeling inseparable from Hashem?
"When He is far, I am troubled. But when He is near, I am terrified. When I am absent, He is present.  But when I am present He is absent" ( unknown source)
Integrated knowledge of Hashem means that He can reside in our hearts without giving us a headache!  If He is present and we choose to be inflated in our self-referencing, He departs until we are able to subdue the animating forces from the kelipas by asking Him to please bring them into service.   Understanding that the experience of His Great Love is so far above the happiness that we are usually associated to is the beginning of grinding down the pride in our heart for doing our mitzvahs and serving Him.  The experience of His Love is the most motivating experience to humble our hearts.  Yet until we experience a taste of  His Great Love, we cling to self-referencing pleasures related to time, space, body and ego.  Without meaning to, we fund forces to shepherd us back to Him.  We don't mean to, but by allowing happiness to be held captive by externalities, we trap the Shechina that we are sent here instead to dissolve back into the Ein Sof and draw into the elements to solidify His Glory in this world.  This is our functionality, to be the neck between earth and heaven.  Happiness will elude us and blame and shame won't help.  Happiness was, is, and always must be  a byproduct of mitzvahs and experiencing the inseparabilitiy of our tzelem elokim with Hashem.  It is just so confusing now because of having eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - internally we mistake where happiness is rooted.

But we can pull all this back by identifying with our effort to reveal tzelem elokim, His Attributes of Mercy.  the more vibration we create each day around our effort to reveal His attributes of mercy, the less difficulty we have with the paradox of body and soul.  and the more courage we have to dip into the territory of nature to dissolve back into the Ein Sof the animating forces by virtue of our verbalizing in prayers and words of recognition that it is all from Hashem Who is Good and One.  Each word brings all our past failures from the side of darkness to the side of holiness, for that is teshuva.

May we be inspired to shift our identity to effort to reveal Hashem's mercy, revealing tzelem elokim as discussed in Tomer Devorah:
tolerating insults
overlooking faults
bearing the burden of the confusion of mind that is the paradox since ingesting from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
asking for forgiveness for ever thinking there is any glory other than Hashem
asking Hashem to bring the animating forces from fears of abandonment and annihilation to dissolve back into the Ein Sof and to give us in our hearts that energy to reveal His Glory in this world
Ask for our sins to be cast into the sea and ask to be part of casting all our sins into the sea, that by virtue of this teshuva we have standing to clean up these errors for klal yisrael .

Tomer Devora with Hisbodidus Suggestions for Internalizing

Emulating the avos - water, fire, wind and earth - a personal relationship with Hashem inspired by the Chariot

Avraham, whose midda is chesed, corresponds to the element of water, which represents Torah and desire to serve Hashem, bringing revealed strengths from the visible world to care for others.  He has two sons, one who represents a kelipa of chesed and then he merits to have Yitzchok.

Yitzchok, whose midda is gevurah, corresponds to the element of fire, which represents passion for Torah, bringing hidden strengths from the concealed world within the boundaries of Torah. He has two twins, one who represents a kelipa of strength and Yaakov.

Yaakov, whose midda is compassion, corresponds to the element of wind, which represents an integrated speech where speech and action bring compassion because they express a thought from tzelem elokim freed from kelipas.

Dovid HaMelech, whose midda is malchus, corresponds to the element of earth, which represents the physical receiving bowl for all the other middos.

Adom is composed of the earth and the impure elements of earth wind water and fire are part of our natural existence.  It is incumbent upon us to comprehend and use intellect to transform the impure elements of earth wind water and fire.  To do so, we model the middos of our forefathers.

Chesed:  the source of all vitality is Hashem.  Whatever I desire, Hashem is the Source for all my needs. By conforming my desires to His Will, I rectify the element within me of water. May my teshuva be deep and also be a merit for klal yisrael.  It is incumbent upon us to expand our consciousness to this reality, because the natural reality is to experience a lowering when we are denied our desires, which is the source of hating others.  Unbounded water floods and is destructive.

Gevurah: the  anger, fear, and outrage that we may experience is the experience of the Shechina that naturally exists or that we trapped within our self-referencing goals.  It is important to understand that all self-referencing, although natural and experientially close to us, is based on a belief in separate existence.  Yitzchok understood that our natural existence is sourced in Hashem and that there is an important strength to be gleaned from re-setting our understanding of who we are to being inseparable from Hashem and here to serve Him.  The natural reality is to experience anger and to do destructive things when we feel abandoned – we try to annihilate those we blame for that abandonment, which is the source for many crimes and it has a faulty basis to justify revenge, despite the logic of the emotions.  When we are disciplined to understand that everything is from Hashem including our negatively charged emotions so that we can bring a certain passion from them into service of Hashem, we are remembering that there is no other power, including me.  Fire is destructive and represents arrogance although it can also be a source of heat and light when properly channeled in Hashem’s service.

Compassion: the merciful speech and deeds we do bring together the concealed inner world of thought that we correct with gevurah with the revealed kindnesses of speech and deed that we correct through choosing chesed.  The element is wind, which can in an unrectified way create damage on its own or by stirring water up that floods.  By combining water and fire, the wind can bring a delightful breeze.

Malchus: Earthiness can be laziness and sadness or it can be a solid vessel to carry substances within the world.  All the elements, wind, water, fire and earth, contain an element of earthiness. Thus it is important to make an effort, to rise like a lion, to push against inertia, when faced with our challenges and not to succumb to depression or laziness.   Bringing into the actual earthy elements the compassion takes real work and effort, through free willed choice.

Each time we have a challenge, if we break it down into its elements of water, fire, wind and earth, it may help us draw out the impurities and permit our higher soul to heal those elements as they exist within our free will points.  It may seem like we are working on ourselves in this way our whole lives. That is actually true.  However, each time we do, we bring a little more light to those elements in general, uplifting them, filling them with Hashem’s Glory, and in time, if we continue to have in mind to reveal within us Hashem’s Glory, the elements within us are affected and once that happens, there is also a merit for the soul of klal yisrael. We are all one soul when each of us approaches this work, we are able to add to the revelation of His Glory in this world.

May the light we shine soon bring a new light and redemption b’ahava.