Fixing Your Fire [Conceit] - 005 Knowing Your Capabilities

Water-of-Fire: ‘Dragged’ After Spiritual Jumpiness

With the help of Heaven, let us continue to discuss the element of fire, and the main trait which stems from fire, which is gaavah (conceit). Until now we explained about earth-of-fire and its four divisions. Now we will progress to discuss the kinds of gaavah which stem from water-of-fire, and its four divisions.

(We must emphasize this again, as in the past, that there is far more to gaavah than merely feeling conceited towards others. Gaavah(גאוה)  comes from the “ge’us”(גאות), a nature in the soul to be higher. Ge’us can manifest as the negative trait of gaavah, but it is essentially a nature in the soul to go higher, whether for good or for evil. Thus, much of what we are discussing in these classes is not about the actual trait of gaavah itself, but about the very nature of it, which is called “ge’us”; it has many applications.)

Water-of-fire is the nature in a person to become ‘dragged’ after the ‘fire’ in the soul. Fire jumps from its place and doesn’t stay where it is. Water gets dragged after things. When a person is getting dragged towards jumpiness, it comes from water-of-fire. This has four divisions: earth, water, wind and fire. First we will describe these briefly and then in detail.

Four Types of Water-of-Fire

(1)  Earth-of-Water-of-Fire is when a person is getting ‘dragged’ after ‘jumpiness’ in a built and orderly manner.

(2)  Water-of-Water-of-Fire is when a person ‘jumps’ in a ‘dragged’ manner.

(3)  Wind-of-Water-of-Fire is referring to the nature of the ‘jumpiness’ itself.

(4)  Fire-of-Water-of-Fire is referring to the point where the ‘jumpiness’ has led him to: a higher place than before.

I know the words here sound closed and mysterious. With the help of Hashem, we hope to go through each of these concepts in detail, one by one.

‘Kefitzah’: Jumping Levels

To be general, every person has the point of “ratzu v’shov” (running and returning) in himself; there is the point of “ratzu” and the point of “shov”. (On a more subtle note, there is the point below our “ratzu” and the point below our “shov”. We discussed this in earlier chapters.[1])

Besides for this point in the soul, there is also the point of “dilug” (skipping), or “kefitzah” (jumping), in our soul. This refers to the ability in ourselves to access levels that are normally above us. Sometimes a person can jump to a level that’s a little above himself, and sometimes he can jump to a level that is way above himself.

Sometimes a person imagines he is at those levels, and this is all a dimayon (fantasy); sometimes it is coming from gaavah (conceit), in which he feels that he is on a very high spiritual level and thus he thinks that he’s eligible for those higher levels. These are negative uses of the ability of dilug (or kefitzah). But in essence, dilug\kefitzah (jumping) is the power to access a level that is above his normal level.

Every person has a set place where he identifies as “this is where I am”, but at times, he can go above his normal level. When a person goes above his normal level, he cannot stay there for that long. He can stay there for a little bit of time, but soon after, he returns to his normal level.

How can we see it manifest? We can give a few examples where we see it.

To illustrate, a person is riding on a bus from Yerushalayim to Meron, which can take 2-3 hours, or he’s on a flight from Israel to Europe, which can take 4-5 hours. Or, he’s flying to America, which can take 12-15 hours. He might enjoy the trip very much, but would he be able to live permanently on a bus or plane? He can stay on it for a few hours, but not longer. We can be there for some time, but then we go back to our normal place. People even go to outer space, but they know that it’s not a place to live there.

When a person goes on a vacation with his family, he can stay in that place for a few days and even enjoy it, but he knows that he cannot live there all the time.

Another example: a person learned in a certain yeshivah for many years, and then he gets married, and he finds a new yeshivah to learn in. If it was going good there, why should he leave? He’s been there for many years and he succeeded there, so why should he move from there? The answer is, it was good to be in that yeshivah for a certain amount of time. At a certain point, he must be able to move on to a different place. If he stays in his place and he can’t get out of there, he will suffer, because since our soul is going through changes, it might not be able to adapt anymore to the surroundings. Our nature changes and our needs become different.

The point we see from this is that there is a place in ourselves that can live a certain way for a certain amount of time, but it must not become the norm. There is a point in our soul which is capable of living in a different place and lifestyle, for a certain amount of time. It is good and healthy to be able to live differently for some time.

However, it is only good for that amount of time. It doesn’t obligate us to change our lifestyle for the rest of our life.

So besides for the fact that our soul is always progressing and returning from progress (ratzuy v’shov), our soul is also able to live in a different mode than the norm, for some time; but we must understand that it’s only for a certain amount of time, and not more than that.

It is a power in our soul to go above our normal bounds, but this is a power that must not be used too much, or else we break our healthy boundaries. The temporary break from our boundaries gives new meaning to our normal boundaries, and that is the gain of this power.

The Festivals Vs. The Rest of the Year

Now let us apply this concept more practically.

We have the festivals and the high holy days of the year, in which we feel more elevated during the rest of the year. These are times where we go above our normal bounds. Most people are not able to live with that level all year round.

When it comes to the festivals of Pesach, Shavuos, and Sukkos, not everyone identifies with the holiness of these times. But when it comes Yomim Noraim, when Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are approaching, every Jew feels a bit of elation during these times. It is brought in halacha that one should be stringent not to eat bread baked by a non-Jew during this time of the year, even if he normally eats it during the rest of the year. In other words, these are times of the year where we act above our normal level.

A person might think, “Okay, so that if is what we are supposed to do, then let’s be that way during the entire year as well, not just during Yomim Noraim.” If a person can do it for the rest of the year, that’s wonderful. But if he finds that he can’t, it shows that it is not his normal level to act like this.

Another example: a person stays up learning the whole night of Shavuos. He might feel, “Why can’t I do this during the rest of the year as well?” He is full of idealistic aspirations. Then he davens Shacharis and Mussaf and struggles to stay awake, he gets back to his house and he falls upon his bed, and sleeps for several hours until the meal. That shows that he can’t stay up a whole night learning for more than one night a year.  

We see from this that the high levels we live with on the festivals cannot be the exact way to live during the rest of the year. It is good for the time being, but it is not a basis of avodah for the rest of the year.

On the festivals, there is a special spiritual light that helps us reach higher levels on the festival, but after the festival is over, the light is gone. It can certainly inspire a person to reach deeper into himself during the rest of the year, but he definitely cannot be on the level of the festivals during the rest of the year.

When a person doesn’t understand this point, he does not know he really is and what his actual capabilities are. It is not a mere mistake; he will have a total misunderstanding of who he really is, and it will cause him to become conceited, as he tries to work with levels that are way beyond what he can do right now. It can cause much confusion in his soul. It also breeds delusions.

Here is another example. On Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, a person davens a longer Shemoneh Esrei. He realizes how wonderful this is and he would like to do the same during the rest of the year as well. He will find that sometimes, when his soul feels more opened, he will be able to do this. But he will find himself in times where his soul is closed, and it feels to stressful to daven a long Shemoneh Esrei.

The Two Sides of Our Life: Seder (Routine) and Dilug (Jumping)

So one must know his natural capabilities and his normal schedule, which is his point of seder (order) in his soul, and he must also be aware that there is a point of kefitzah (or dilug) in himself, where he can jump levels at certain times. One must learn how to act when he’s in a period of dilug: the rules of dilug are different than the rules of one’s regular seder.

When one properly understands the nature of dilug in the soul, he has a better understanding of his times of elation, and these times are then given more orderliness.

How To View The Festivals

Many people have a hard time with the day after Yom Tov, because it can feel like falling from a high spiritual plateau to the daily routine of life. They have the same feeling when it’s a day after a wedding or after an inspiring time, where they felt themselves soaring to higher spiritual levels, and the next day they find themselves back to normal routine. That’s one kind of spiritual pain.

But there is a deeper kind of spiritual pain which is experienced by those who are very serious about their Avodas Hashem: they have a difficulty with their very times of spiritual elevation that they experience on Yom Tov. Thus, they are nervous about Yom Tov. Why? Because they are deeply aware that they are entering sublime territory that is way above their comprehension.

(If a person views Yom Tov as a “gift from Hashem” as it’s called, he won’t have this problem, but when he does not have this understanding, he instead views Yom Tov as a ‘high spiritual state’ that he must enter, naturally, he is afraid of such a thing.)

There’s another way to live that’s entirely different which would solve the above problem. Anyone who is serious about his Avodas Hashem needs to deal with this point somehow: We must know that the spiritual light which is present during the festivals give us the power to carry over a little bit of into the rest of the year as well.

Although we cannot be on the level of the festivals during the rest of the year, the festivals are able to deepen our already existing qualities and raise the bar a bit. It is not coming to make us change our avodah entirely. Rather, it’s is enlightening us to further pursue and deepen our already existing spiritual levels.

The Festivals Can Strengthen Your Torah Learning

For example, if a person is immersed in Torah during the rest of the year, the festivals can help a person raise the bar in his Torah learning.

It is not only Shavuos and Simchas Torah which gives a person a stronger power of learning Torah. The festival of Sukkos can also do it; when you read Koheles on Sukkos, you can realize how futile the world is (as Koheles says), and that in turn strengthens your desire for Torah learning.

On Pesach, which is the time of our freedom, we can realize the statement of Chazal that “there is no free person except a person who learns Torah.” The festivals come to strengthen a point in you that’s already active. Rosh HaShanah and Purim can also accomplish it.

That is the sensible way to view the festivals, but most people have a different attitude about it. When we enter a high spiritual time, such as Yomim Noraim, we realize that it’s a higher level than our normal place, and can feel like an exile. It makes a person feel like he’s imprisoned from his regular routine.

So not only is it hard to deal with the “fall” after Yomim Noraim ends; it’s hard to enter in the first place, because it feels imprisoning, for we are entering higher levels.

Frustration On Simchas Torah (and afterwards)

Here is another simple example. On Simchas Torah, anyone who has learned a little Torah during the year will feel some joy on this day as he’s dancing by Hakafos. He feels elated after each Hakafah. But he’s feeling deep down, “Why can’t I love the Torah this much during the rest of the year as well?” He feels an inner contradiction in himself.

Others experience a different problem: they enjoy Simchas Torah and they rise to high levels of loving the Torah on this day, but the day after Simchas Torah, they find themselves back to routine, and they wonder where all their high levels went.

Obviously, this frustration is not experienced by those who don’t live an internal kind of life. Such a person doesn’t even feel the changes, and he has no problem making the transition from Simchas Torah to the next day. But the more a person is sensitive to his inner spiritual world, the more he can feel the difficulty, of making the transition between the festivals to the normal routine of the year.

Lessening The Frustration

What, indeed, is the correct way to go about it? A person must be aware that before the festival, he will not feel as elevated, and that the festival will elevate him, and after the festival ends, he will go back to the regular routine of the year. In other words, he must know beforehand that it will be like this.

This is not because a person should simply despair from trying to acquire higher levels and to avoid the pain of the disappointment. It is because one must be aware that we simply cannot be on higher levels all the time. We can be aware that the elevation we feel on the festivals is temporary, and that it is not meant for the rest of the year to be on this level.

The point is to become aware that there’s a part of ourselves that can jump to higher levels, but that doesn’t mean we need to stay at those higher places we jump to. In this way, when the festivals end, instead of feeling a great fall from our level where we feel like we’ve fallen flat on the ground, we can fall away lightly from it, which will lessen the impact of the fall.

Before, During, and After

This concept is not only applicable with the festivals. It is an inner perspective towards living life, which applies to all aspects of spiritual growth.

Another application of it is when it comes to getting married. On the day of a person’s wedding, he feels elated. The wedding is filled with holiness and aspiration. The next day, the newlywed returns to routine. But instead of feeling frustrated at this sudden transition, he should make himself aware from beforehand that there will be a point of “before” the wedding, and “after” the wedding, and the wedding itself.

Moshe Rabbeinu ascended to Heaven for 40 days, where he resembled an angel, and he did not touch food or drink, but then he came back down, where he continued to eat and drink. If a person were to try fasting 40 days, he would be a sinner, because he is endangering his life. Similarly, Klal Yisrael was told to abstain from marital relations for three days, to prepare to receive the Torah. These were high levels that a person normally cannot do.

One must be aware that the higher levels we can reach are only for the time being, but after that, we need to return to routine, and there is nothing wrong with this, for it is supposed to be this way.

Two Kinds of Seder (Giving Order)

When a person understands this concept well, he knows that the times in his life where he has extreme growth are but temporary periods in his life, and it does not obligate him to act extreme during the rest of the year. Rather, we have a certain routine we follow during the year, which is our normal “seder” we follow. The other “seder” in ourselves is a time where we jump to higher levels, and our behavior during those times of jumping are only meant for those times.

We must give another example of the concept, because this is a very important aspect in our life which, when not understood, can cause much frustration. Sometimes, it happens in a person’s life that he is taken out of his normal seder. What does a person do when he’s on the go, or when his life is throwing him around from place to place, and he can’t keep to his normal seder of life?

There’s actually a seder of going about things even in a time where there is no seder. This is not referring to the concept of knowing how to utilize your time to its fullest when you’re learning in your normal seder in yeshivah. There’s an idea of knowing how to give seder to your life even when you’re not found in your normal seder. Besides for your normal seder hayom (schedule), you should know how to utilize the time of being outside seder. This is another kind of “seder”.

So a person has two abilities of seder: his normal seder, and knowing how to give seder to himself even when’s not in his normal seder (such as by knowing how to maximize his time). These two abilities must not be confused with each other, because then a person will seek how to maximize all his time during his seder itself, which will actually cause him to lose his ability of seder. Rather, a person needs to have the ability of seder, and outside of seder, he must know how to maximize his time, which is another kind of seder.

As an example, there is the normal zman (time) of the year, and then there is Bein HaZemanim (off season). During Bein HaZemanim, there is certainly a seder to it. It is not the regular seder of the year, but it is a kind of seder. One must know how to properly utilize his Bein HaZemanim. There is regular seder a person needs, and there is another kind of seder a person needs: how to maximize all of the times that are outside of the normal seder.

A person should have a regular seder hayom, but he also needs to know how he will act during Yomim Noraim, where he acts differently than his normal seder. Each of these do not have to invalidate the other.

In Summary

Earth-of-water-of-fire is about setting proper limits and bounds to ‘jumping’ spiritual levels. In this way, when we do have times of jumping higher in spiritual growth, we can do so in a sensible manner.

Retaining Inspiration From The Festivals

Until now, we explained how to go about the times in which we jump to higher levels, and how to properly approach them. Now we can understand the following deeper point.

If our high spiritual levels we reach on the festivals and Yomim Noraim are just temporary times of inspiration, then what do we have from it afterwards? There is usually some mark that it leaves on us. But we can understand it now more deeply: we are able to access those levels somewhat even during the rest of the year. We have our normal limits, and we also have a place in ourselves where we can re-experience those higher levels we saw during the festivals. And in fact, we can go there regularly.

For example, Yom Kippur is day where we stand before Hashem all day in prayer and in service to Him. We resemble the Kohen Gadol then, where he entered the Holy of Holies to do the avodah, which was only on Yom Kippur. But although it was once a year, that doesn’t mean that the levels of Yom Kippur can only be experienced on Yom Kippur. When we become elevated on Yom Kippur, we really gain a power to be able to go back to it somewhat and to have some connection to it, even if it’s in middle of the ordinary days of the year.

Some Insights Based Upon This Concept

During the prayers on the festivals, we ask of Hashem, והשיאנו ה' אלוקינו את ברכת מועדיך לחיים ולשלום– we ask Hashem to become uplifted from the festivals. There are many explanations of this prayer, but along the lines of our discussion, it is implying that we have a place in our soul which can regularly re-enter the inspiration of the level of the festivals, and we can live on that level, at times.

Now we have a new understanding in the statement of the Sages, “I have seen b’nei aliyah (those who grow spiritually), but they are few.” It means that a person has times of spiritual ascension, where he can live higher, and not because he has jumped there, but because he can regularly return to it.

Connected To The Beyond

Absorbing this concept enables a person to regenerate his spirituality even as he’s going through a time where he’s not particularly growing higher in spirituality. This is because he retains the ability to go higher, and because it’s already imprinted onto him, he can return to it even as he’s amidst his routine. Although right now he is on a lower level than during the festivals, he is still remaining connected to the higher level, and he can re-access the elation.

One can still retain a deep connection to higher spiritual levels that he experienced, even though he’s not there right now. When a person does not recognize this place in himself, he is too grounded. He is too tied to his current level. Although all our souls are rooted in Hashem’s Throne of Glory, a person is not always consciously aware of this, and without believing in his connection to higher levels, he is stuck to his current level. He feels like he has no connection to higher levels right now.

But when a person understands that there is seder and there is dilug throughout the year, he knows how to return to the higher levels he reached through dilug, even in the midst of the ordinary days of the year.

Without developing seder in the soul, a person jumps from one area to another area, and he lacks balance in his Avodas Hashem; he has random ups and downs from his level. But when one has seder, he can enter higher levels during the normal routine of the year. Although he knows that the levels of Yomim Noraim are higher than his normal level, he can still be open to it during the midst of the year.

Delusion Vs. Connection To Higher Levels

He will be able to hear about higher levels and about higher worlds, and instead of feeling that the words are way above his head, he will feel connected to the words. He can know that he is not actually on those levels, yet he still feels somewhat connected to those levels, and he is still interested in hearing about those levels. Not only do his ears perk up when he hears about those higher concepts, but he can even practice them on some level and be found on that level, to some degree.

Without this ability, a person will think that it’s entirely delusional to hear about higher concepts. But the truth is that we always have some connection to higher levels even when it’s during the regular course of the year. We can hear about those levels during the rest of the year and draw vitality from it, and he will find the strength to continue.

If someone is delusional, he will attempt to actualize the high levels he hears about, which are totally beyond his current level. He uproots himself totally from his current level, and he is acting delusional. But if someone is sensible, he knows that although he is no longer on those high levels he hears about, he still retains a connection to it, thus he always feels open to those higher levels.

Understandably, this ability in a person requires wisdom on one’s part for a person to know how much he should enter into the higher levels, but the point is that his soul should always be open to higher levels. When done sensible, this does not make a person delusional; to the contrary, it helps a person remain with his high aspirations, and even more than this is that it enables a person to relive those high levels.

As an example, in Kelm, there was a practice that for every ten days following Yom Kippur, they would make a self-accounting and see if they were still keeping to the resolutions they made on Yom Kippur. This wasn’t just a means for them to see if they were keeping to their resolutions. It was because they were reliving Yom Kippur, through their souls.

In Conclusion

A person will find himself encountering higher levels during the course of the year, like when he hears of matters that are above his current level, and he needs to know how to approach them properly.

If he lacks inner orderliness in his soul (seder), he will jump from level to level, which will make him delusional. If he has seder, he finds it difficult to jump to higher levels. But when one knows how to have both seder and dilug (when he knows how to apply seder to dilug), he can hear of higher levels even though he knows that he’s not there right now, yet he can derive vitality from the temporary jump.

Soon afterwards he should return to his normal level, now that he is revitalized by the higher levels he has relived. He can know how to derive inspiration from the higher levels he hears about even though he’s not actually there, in a way that doesn’t cause him to become delusional.

He has strongly developed his power of earth-of-water-of-fire in the soul - the power to build and direct the jumps in his spirituality. He takes the jump, and then returns to his original place.

This describes the life of those who are of the bnei aliyah.