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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