Bilvavi Part 7 - 006 Emunah | Really Believing

בלבבי ח"ז – עמ' פט אמונה – כלי לתדבקות בכל מדרגה"

Creation is designed in a way in which everything must be activated to its potential. Man’s avodah is to unlock the potential of each thing and reveal it to fruition. By connecting ourselves to the potential power of something, it can then be released.

Before the power of something is brought to actuality, we must know: how indeed do we connect ourselves to something that merely lays in its potential state, and it is not yet actualized? The answer is the deep secret of “emunah” (belief).

Emunah is known as the “secret of ayin [‘nothingness’]”. Ayin is whenever something is hidden and it lays in its dormant state, where it hasn’t yet been actualized. When one attaches himself to being in a state of emunah, he is essentially attached to ayin; to a potential power of something. Thus, in whatever level a person is trying to actualize, he first needs to connects himself to it in its potential state, and this is done through the power of emunah.

You should know that emunah does not mean to connect yourself to that which is unknown to you. It is vitality-giving. It is written, “The righteous person shall live by his faith.” Emunah is life-giving. When a person knows about a certain concept but he doesn’t live it, the concept is above him and it surrounds him, but it is not yet a part of him (this is referred to as “ohr makif” – “surrounding light”); it doesn’t provide him with vitality and energy. But when the light of emunah has penetrated into one’s mind and heart, a person then lives what he knows, and he receives vitality it, in turn.

When a person wishes to awaken in himself a concept he knows about and bring it from potential state to its active state, he needs to use emunah. As long as one’s emunah isn’t alive by him and it’s not yet ingrained in his mind and heart, it is not able to be awakened. This is because a person cannot work with a spiritual light that he has not yet reached which merely surrounds him.

Only when one’s emunah is alive in himself can he awaken the potential of something to become activated. His thoughts and heart can become connected to the vitality coming from his emunah, and after a while passes, he can awaken the concept, through firmly and stubbornly believing in that which he wants to connect to. Through increasing the connection, the level he’s trying to acquire is awakened from its potential state into its active state.

The sefer Oihev Yisrael (parshas Noach) said that emunah can pull things towards us. Through emunah, we can draw a concept towards us from it source and cause it to come to us.

This is the secret that lays behind emunah. From the viewpoint of our own comprehension, we are far from many levels. But from the viewpoint of emunah, we can awaken our emunah and believe that even the highest spiritual levels are in our reach. By revealing this alive kind of emunah in ourselves, we can connect ourselves to the highest possible levels. This is a big secret.

For example, if a person wants to feel that he is a neshamah and he wants to reveal it (and our neshamah is indeed very hidden), by increasing his emunah in the concept of his neshamah and in its reality, with constantly calm thoughts about this, he can slowly awaken and reveal his neshamah.

Even more so, if one wants to feel the Creator, Who is so very hidden, he can keep concentrating on the reality of the Creator, using his power of emunah. through constant thought (and internalization) of the Creator’s existence. This slowly reveals the sense for the Creator in his heart.

The same is true for any level a person wants to reveal. If he keeps thinking about a matter with his mind and he keeps internalizing it in his heart, and he is very persistent with this, in the end it will be revealed to him. This is a big secret.

When a person is still very attached to this physical dimension (“Yeish”) and he does not how to go beyond what he can logically comprehend, he has no connection to this lofty avodah described. But when a person has trained himself to connect himself in mind and heart to the hidden dimension, he can take this route and acquire anything he wants to acquire.

The sefer Toras Avos ((Slonim), p.25 and p.150) brings from the Kobriner zt”l, “Emunah can reach the highest places. All other comprehensions can reach up until the place that comprehension can reach, whereas emunah is not so, for when one believes that he can reach even places that he cannot normally reach, he reaches it. That is why emunah is the loftiest kind of comprehension from all comprehensions. It is what it is written, “And your faith surrounds you.” (Tehillim 89:9) [It is saying that] through emunah, I can surround You, so to speak.”

This is a very deep matter….