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.