Bilvavi Part 5 - 317 Revealing Your Soul

בלבבי ח"ה – עמ' שיז

מילי דעבודה כט - ביאור מספר דרכים לעבודת הבורא

Three Parts to our Self

There are three parts to the self: the soul, the intellect, and the imagination.

The soul in us is perfectly aware of the Creator; “And my soul knows very well.”[1] It is only our intellect and our imagination which gets in the way. When the soul becomes revealed, it shines upon the person, and the intellect and imagination complement it. Therefore, the intellect and imagination are able to reveal the soul, and in doing so, these two forces in our self become sanctified and also are able to identify the Creator.

But as long as our soul remains concealed from us, our intellect and imagination are getting in the way.

There are three general ways how we can reveal the soul.

The First Way: Davening and Crying To Hashem

The first way we can reveal the soul is through davening to Hashem and crying to Him from the depths of our heart that we are searching to find ourselves and our Creator. A person has to consistently cry to Hashem for this. The tears reveal the soul, because the tears are the excess fluids that come from the brain, and they clean it out and purify it. Through davening and crying out to Hashem, one’s heart becomes opened, and the blockage on his heart is torn off. Upon revealing the soul in one’s heart, the brain\mind\intellect as well becomes aware to Hashem. The power of recognition begins in the heart, and then it gets sent to the brain from the heart.

(The brain thinks about what our heart wants, because Keser sends information to Chochmah; Keser is manifest in one’s heart, and the Chochmah is manifest in one’s brain. Then, the information in the brain gets sent back to the heart – the Chochmah of the mind gets turned into the aspect of Binah of the heart).

Through this process, one’s intellect and imagination become purified, and can now recognize the Creator.

(This is the general school of thought of Breslover Chassidus.)

The Second Way: Deep Reflection

Another way how one can reveal his soul is through reflecting intellectually about Hashem. This can be done in either of several ways:

1. To reflect about the greatness of the Creator and about G-dly matters. (This is the school of thought of Chabad Chassidus).
2. By reflecting about Hashem’s deep ways of how He runs the universe. (This is the school of thought of the Ramchal, as well as sefer Shiurei Daas of Rav Yosef Leib Bloch zt”l)
3. By reflecting about the potential greatness inherent in mankind. Through a healthy self-knowledge of the greatness that people can achieve, one is able to awaken his soul. (This is the school of thought of Slobodka [headed by the Alter of Slobodka].
4. By reflecting intellectually about the downfalls and evils which a person can fall to when he doesn’t work on his middos, and together with this, to reflect about matters of fear of Heaven. (This is the general school of thought of the Mussar movement, taught in Kelm and by its great student it produced, Reb Yeruchem Levovitz zt”l.

Mussar, founded by Reb Yisrael Salanter, leans toward the Breslover thinking that a person needs more than just intellectual reflection to reveal his soul. To illustrate, the Mussar method is that one has to repeat a statement of Chazal again and again until he comes to awaken his soul to the truths he is repeating. However, Mussar differs from Breslov in that it does not involve intense crying out to Hashem in prayer; it is rather a different point, that one has to awaken his heart to work on himself.

The Third Way: Imagination

Another way to reveal the soul is by working with one’s imagination. (This is the school of thought of the holy Aish Kodesh of Piaseczno who wrote the sefer Hachsharas Avreichim and Chovos HaTalmidim. Some examples of this include for one to imagine that he is singing with the angels in Heaven, or that he is in the Beis Hamikdash doing the avodah).

Understanding the Second and Third Ways

We need to understand the second and third ways we brought in revealing the soul, which involve using either our intellect or our imagination. What is the depth behind it?

Everything we need to get is already there in our soul, waiting to be accessed. The problem is that our soul is hidden from us; this is explained by the Ramchal in sefer Derech Eitz Chaim. A person’s mission is to reveal his hidden potential that lays in his soul. What is it that is hiding our soul from us? These are the two outer forces of our self: our intellect, and our imagination.

By using our mind or imagination to picture the truths that our soul really knows about, we refine our mind and imagination and get it to follow our soul. When we do that, we bypass the mind and imagination, which were once a barrier to our soul, and the soul becomes revealed. When the soul is revealed, our mind and imagination become refined and purified.

Our mind or imagination by itself wouldn’t be able to picture such matters like doing the avodah in the Beis HaMikdash or singing with the angels. This is because both the mind and the imagination are forces that are rooted in our physical body, and our body cannot go to Heaven or be transported to the Beis HaMikdash. But our soul is already in these places – it identifies with being in Heaven as an utter reality, and it identifies being in the Beis HaMikdash as an utter reality. Thus, our soul is aware of these realities, and it can go to them as well – the soul is not bound to any place or time, for it is unlimited. When we reveal the soul, our mind and imagination is therefore able to picture those Heavenly matters and experience them as real.

However, caution is advised with this. A person has to be aware that his soul knows of these matter and can fully experience them – but not his body. Our body isn’t actually going to these places or realities; our soul is. Let us not confuse the two. If a person thinks that he is actually transporting himself to Heaven or to the Beis Hamikdash in the past in the physical sense, he is trying to disconnect from his body, and he might chas v’shalom go insane from this. Our mind must stay connected to our body – one should never attempt to disconnect from his body when trying to imagine spiritual matters.[2]