Fixing Your Focus - 015 Jolted By Changes

Wind-of-Fire: Skipping In Different Directions

With siyata d’shmaya we are continuing to learn about the power of focus, and in this lesson we will learn [specifically about issues with focus that stem from] wind-of-fire [of earth]. As it was explained earlier, the element of fire in the soul causes a person to have dilug, skipping, which is the antithesis to the orderly power of focus. When a person’s fire is active, it can cause him to skip any of the four directions. As explained in the previous chapter, a person is able to “skip” yet stay within the same direction.

When it comes to the nature of wind-of-fire, though, a person’s fire will skip in different directions, just as the wind moves in all the directions. This is the general outline, and soon we will give examples of it, to see how this affects us on a practical level.

Example – Skipping Stages In The Maturation Process

Every person has stages of maturity in his life. Each person matures at a different stage of his life, and not everyone matures at the time. A child begins to eat on his own, to talk, to walk on his own, etc. Generally speaking, children will mature in stages, in a certain order. But there are some children who skip between stages of maturity. They are delayed and then they suddenly mature quickly, at a later time.

For example, some children aren’t taking any steps yet, and suddenly they begin walking, to everyone’s surprise. They were delayed until now, but when they eventually mature, they mature quickly and suddenly. In other examples, a child may not be talking much even though others his age are, and at a later time, he suddenly begins talking, or he suddenly begins to understand things better, when it had seemed previously that he was not a bright child. In another example, a child may be physically short, and it seems as if he is taking time to physically mature, but a few months later when we see him, we notice that he has grown much taller in only a short amount of time.

Maturation in most children happens slowly and in stages, through the years of childhood, puberty, and adolescence. In more recent years, children are maturing at a faster rate in how much they know and understand things, and this is due to the advances of technology, which enable a person to read and hear so many more things than what people were used to. It has been proven that this “early maturation” which is taking place in children today is actually damaging to them, in most cases.

There are some people who matured faster than most other children, due to some event in their childhood which had a particularly strong effect on them, and this caused them to quickly mature, making them become more motivated, or more serious, etc.

External factors can also cause early maturation. If a child had to switch schools, this can bring an early maturation, because he had no choice but to learn how to deal with this change, and this has made him more mature. Or, the child may have gone through a certain event in his life which caused him to suddenly and quickly mature.

However, when external factors are the cause for early maturation, although he has “skipped” over the gradual maturation process, it is only due to external factors, so the maturation is external as well, and it doesn’t cause a fundamental change in the soul. But there are others who did not mature due to any external factor or major event in their life. Rather, they went through an inner change where they suddenly felt more motivated and serious about their life.

For example, a 16-year-old or 17-year-old may suddenly feel that he is more motivated and more serious about life. Anyone can recognize a point in his life where he felt this maturity suddenly emerges. In most cases, this maturity happens as a slow, gradual process, which is not recognizable. In a few cases, though, this maturity takes place at a rapid rate, and the child\teenager will skip over the normally slow maturation process. His maturation is delayed, and suddenly at a later point, he matures rapidly. When this happens, his soul has “skipped” over many stages at once. Of course, when he matures rapidly like this, he will not completely mature all at once, but he will be generally drawn towards a more mature perspective.

External and Internal Changes In Our Life

There are two ways in how one’s soul may develop.

In our life, there are two parts – the external factors and environment which we are placed in, as Hashem has decided to place us in, and there is also our inner world of the soul, which is where we use our power of free will, to choose where we want to place ourselves.

Hashem places each person into a certain family, community and neighborhood, and that is where we grow up. Some people stay in the same environment their whole life, until their last day on earth. But most people expand beyond their given space, with varying degrees, some more and some less.

In addition to this, most of us go through changes in life, which make us change directions. One example includes changing yeshivos, changing our style of learning. Marriage is another major change. As for the place where one lives, most people usually will stay where they are used to, but there are some who will move out of their old neighborhood, out of their comfort zone where they were used to all of their old friends, and they move to a different community.

These are all external factors, however. What about inner changes? Most people do not go through inner changes, only external changes. When most people go through changes, the changes are usually due to external factors and they do not cause an overhaul to the soul. But a few others have gone through major changes in life, and because they have gone through these changes, they are able to succeed in life, because they have the ability to keep going through changes. The Vilna Gaon says that if a person is not rising, he is falling. The power to accept changes in life is a constructive power which facilitates growth.

Extreme Changes Can Jolt The Soul and Destroy Focus                       

However, changes are only constructive when they are not causing a “jolt” to the soul. If changes are causing the soul to feel “jolted” by the changes, it is detrimental for the person when he experiences changes in his life, because the “jolt” to the soul felt by such changes can totally hamper a person’s ability to focus. We will slowly explain more about this concept, in the continuing lines.

Those who are successful in their lives, who have gone through certain changes, were only able to do so because the changes weren’t that extreme. People may go through all kinds internal kinds of changes, without necessarily changing how they look on their outside. Sometimes it’s hard to tell a person has changed so much, because he doesn’t look like he has really changed, but it’s very possible that he has changed a lot inside. Such changes are kept at a balanced level.

When a person decides to grow spiritually and to live differently than those around him, such as his family, these changes make him into a successful person as long as he has carefully thought about how he wants to change his behavior, along with prayer from the depths of his heart to Hashem for assistance. When those factors are in place, this is the basis of true spiritual growth. But when a person goes too far with his changes, he doesn’t think too much about how to make the changes properly, he may make extreme changes in his life which end up being detrimental to his soul.

All changes, even when they are done properly, are painful, but a person can mitigate the pain by carefully thinking about it beforehand. But if a person doesn’t know how to do it correctly, he doesn’t daven to Hashem to assist him in his changes, and as a result, any changes that he makes will not be truthful. In addition, he is having an emotional reaction to something, which motivates him to change a certain aspect of his life, but it comes from strong emotion, and not out of a search for truth. His changes aren’t truthful, and understandably, the results of such changes will be detrimental.

Another issue is the pace of the change. When people make changes in their life, if the changes are done too quickly, this can also offset the balance in a person’s life. Although change is needed in every person’s life, they should not be done so quickly. Neither should too many changes be made at once. So if a person makes any changes in his life that are either too rapid, too extreme, or in quick succession of each other, such changes will scatter the soul and destroy any inner peace. And, with particular regards to our discussion, it will totally uproot a person’s power to focus.

In fact, even if a person doesn’t make actual changes, as long as he has a nature to readily make rapid or extreme changes in his life, his power to focus will still be hampered, because his entire stability is already shaky to begin with.

People with this nature are perpetually in a state of instability, because they are readily prepared to make extreme or rapid changes at any given moment. In some cases, this unstable nature can lead to mental illness. Even if he doesn’t get to that point, he still won’t be able to concentrate that well with his mind. Since he is ready to make such extreme changes in his life at any given point, he does not have a firm stability, so he cannot become focused on anything. As explained in the previous lessons, the power of focus is based on stability, which is rooted in a strong element of earth, so if a person is ready to make extreme or rapid changes in his life, his stability is shaken from the start, and this impairs his ability to focus.

On the side of holiness, there is also a power to readily accept extreme changes, for every day a Jew must await Mashiach, which will be a transformation to the world and the biggest change possible. As long as Mashiach hasn’t yet arrived, there is stability in the world, in the sense that the world continues on its routine, but a person must await Mashiach, and that means that everything can change in one moment. But here we are speaking of the impaired use of this power to readily take on extreme changes. As we are explaining, as long as a person is the type to readily make extreme or rapid changes in his life, his focus is impaired.

Always Being Ready For Extreme or Rapid Change – An Impediment To Focus

We will give some examples from life, to bring out the issue.

Every person is born into a certain environment. Some people will stay in their environment and community for their entire life, and they will live and think like their surroundings, until their last day. Others change - they make a certain change in their life, either by identifying themselves with a different community or sect of Jewry than the one they grew up in, or they switch their Rabbonim, or they change their manner of dress.

It is possible for a person to make a stable kind of change in his life, and succeed. But let’s say, for example, that a person suddenly changes his style of Torah learning. If he becomes happier and he feels more fulfilled from his learning, then it is a sign that he has made the correct change. But if he keeps changing his style of learning, and he is always searching for new approaches – whether in his Torah learning, or towards how to live life in general - this is problematic. When a person is always searching for a new approach, another new perspective, and another new way - he shakes his stability of the soul.

There is nothing wrong if a person is searching for more depth and meaning in his current way of living. But if a person is searching for changes and he is very open to change and he has a very independent nature, he places himself in a risky situation. For example, there are people who have lived in 15 different homes, or they have lived in several different communities, or they have switched their Rav countless times, or they have changed their style of dress many times.

Everyone who knows a bit about life knows such people. They keep going through “42 encampments”, starting over again and again. They keep changing not only their own lives, but the lives of their families as well, because their children are affected by their extreme, unstable, and shaky way of living. As an example, they keep moving to different communities, so they keep switching the schools of their children. Their children grow up confused, because they are constantly being tossed around from school to school, and they don’t grow up with a sense of stability.

At the other extreme are those who never make any changes at all in their life. They are used to a certain way of living, in a certain community, and they prefer to stay that way their whole life, because they would rather follow the same routine. This kind of person never leaves his ‘comfort zone’. The opposite problem than this is the one we are discussing: When a person is constantly making changes in his life.

The first problem with such a lifestyle is that he doesn’t think about the changes he is about to make, and how will it affect others around him, such as his family members. But the deeper problem here is that he has no sense of stability.

In summary, if a person lives life through extreme changes, in most cases, his power of focus is damaged, even if he hasn’t made the changes in his life and he simply has a nature to be readily prepared to make rapid or extreme changes.

The Balance Between Stability and Aspirations

What is the correct balance in life?

In the world which Hashem has created, we always have the power of free will to make changes. The simple use of our free will is to change our any improper behavior. But every situation we encounter must be approached using two different powers in the soul – the power of change, and the power of unchanging consistency. You must be able to live with the contradiction that the place which you are in now is the place which you need to maintain stability in, and at the same time, you should also be prepared that it can totally change.

In different terms, these are the contradicting powers of “being happy with one’s lot” (someiach b’chelko) and aspirations (she’ifos). This is a deeply contradicting experience in the soul. On one hand, you need to be happy with where you are now, and to accept your life’s situation as it is, even if it never changes. At the same time, you also need to be prepared to change everything in one moment. When one can contain both of these aspects at once, he has a strong stability which is balanced by an ability to change. This ability of balance is a deep power of the soul.

External Change Must Be Carefully Thought About Beforehand

Even more so, even when does need to make changes in his life, one should know that there are external and internal changes. External changes are sometimes necessary to make, and sometimes, they are unnecessary. But even in situations where it is necessary to make external changes, one must know that most of the time, external changes in life are not as important in life as internal changes.

We cannot say that they are not important at all, because making external changes can cause a person to make internal changes as well. But when making external changes, one needs to give careful thought about it beforehand. Before one is about to making a change in his life which will be noticeable to others, he must first consider how this will affect his family. When one makes a change in his life that can be easily noticed by others, the extreme change can be jolting to his soul, and in addition, it can be jolting to his family and children.

If a person doesn’t have a family of his own yet, and he far-removed from other people and he doesn’t care about how his changes will affect others, this matter will not be important to him. He will make any external changes he wishes to make and he doesn’t care what others will think. But if a person is married and he has children, he has a family which can be affected by his changes, and therefore he needs to realize the difference between external change and internal change.

Before making an external change, which can be noticed by others around him, he must first take into account how this will affect his family. If his family won’t be able to handle the changes he has made, he is being unfair to them, because they will suffer unnecessarily from his changes.

Most changes need to be kept at an inward, private level, and only a few changes need to be expressed outwardly. There are some people who go through internal changes and then they feel like they need outwardly show that they have changed. If they learn chassidus, they make it obviously that they have a passion for chassidus, such as by changing their manner of dress, etc. If they learn kaballah, they have to go outside of shul by Kaballas Shabbos [as was the practice of the kaballists]. The ideal way to make changes is that whenever one makes a change, it should be an inward kind of change, which is on a private level and not expressed outward. When people go through inner changes, they don’t have to outwardly show that they have gone through a change, and instead, they can keep the changes private between themselves and Hashem.

Part of the difficulty faced by those who didn’t grow up in a Torah environment, who later joined the world of Torah, is that that they feel a need to outwardly show the many inner changes they have gone through. There is certainly a place for this, but many of these people aren’t successful with such changes, and others have setbacks from it. External changes need to be made with subtlety, and in addition, they should only be made after thinking about it for a long time. It takes a very long amount of time until one can let his inner changes be outwardly expressed.

Here is an example. A person joins a certain kind of Chassidus and he becomes so inspired that he changes his manner of dress, so that he can identify himself with that specific Chassidic group. Sometime later, he becomes inspired by a different Chassidus, so he changes his manner of dress once again, to fit in with his new passion. Such a person may change his manner of dress several times of his life. His common thinking, throughout all of his changes, is that he needs to outwardly express the changes he has gone through. When he makes it obvious to others that he has inwardly changed, the extreme change will be jolting to his soul, as well as jolting to others (unless he is the kind of person who is so far-removed from others that he doesn’t care what others will think).

So, to summarize, when one makes any external change, it should be done carefully and sensibly, and only after a long time of thinking about it beforehand, before it can be implemented.

Internal Changes – Not Too Much At Once

As for internal changes, which are more important, most people cannot make too many internal changes at once. The only way to do so is through by way of mesirus nefesh [lit. “giving over the soul”, intense dedication where one is willing to undergo self-sacrifice] which is rooted in the element of fire in the soul. Fire has the ability to skip, and through mesirus nefesh which comes from the soul’s fire, one can skip over the normal bounds. But the Sages warned that “Many did like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, but nothing arose in their hands [they were not successful].”[1]

There are two systems of order in Creation - the normal order, which is called seder, and the way of “skipping”, which is called dilug. The way of dilug\skipping is only for individuals to take, and it is not the way for most people. Even for the individuals who have the inner strength to take the way of dilug\skipping, they should only make extreme changes in rare instances, and not on a regular basis. (As for a small change, which is also a power that comes from “skipping”, this can be sometimes be done by any person on any level.) Those who try to “skip” too much, by making too many big changes in their life at once, will jolt their souls too much from the changes, and their focus will be impaired.

Wind-of-Fire: Quickly Changing Directions

However, sometimes when a person makes a change, it does not come from the power to “skip”, but from the soul’s power of quickly changing directions, which is wind-of-fire. That is what we are coming to discuss in this lesson. Changing directions causes an overhaul to the soul, one which is not always desirable. If a person keeps taking opposite directions in his life, this totally upsets the stability of the soul. Wind-of-fire is the ability in a person to quickly change directions, and it is manifested when one makes extreme changes in his life.

Example 1 – Switching From Zealotry To Unconditional Love For All Jews

Here is an example of this. Some people are raised in an environment where it is commonplace to show kanaus, zealousness, to be very outspoken and to take action against anything that is deemed to be evil in their eyes. They have the ideal that they must wage war against the wicked. One day, for whatever reason, a person raised in such an environment may suddenly abandon this ideal. Perhaps he feels that he is not on such a spiritual level to wage war against evil, or perhaps he is afraid of causing too much damage to others.

At a later point of his life, he may take the opposite direction of the one he was used to, and now he is suddenly preaching about ahavas Yisrael. Now he says that you have to love every single Jew. If he takes this very far, he might firmly believe in“achdus (unity) meetings” where Jews from all different backgrounds and beliefs should all sit around one circular table. He has changed directions completely. He used to wage war against sinners, and now he firmly believes that he must love every single Jew.

Although the Rambam says that a person must go the opposite extreme when trying to overcome a negative character trait, one needs great strength of soul in order to make such an extreme change, and to do so in a balanced manner. Most people, when they try to “go to the opposite extreme” by making extreme changes in their lives, will suffer terribly in their souls from such a shift of direction, and such suffering resembles Kaf HaKela (an intense form of suffering for the soul). They are constantly changing their beliefs. One day they strongly believe in a certain ideal and sometime later, they strongly believe in a different ideal that completely contradicts their previous one.

If a person didn’t really love other Jews that much, and suddenly he becomes a very loving person who has great ahavas Yisrael towards all Jews, this should be alarming. It is too rapid of a change, and it can be jolting to his soul. Although there are a few individuals who can handle such changes, because they are capable of “skipping” over their normal bounds, through their power of mesirus nefesh, this is not feasible for most people. In most cases, a person cannot cope with his life when he regularly goes through extreme changes in his life.

More Examples of Extreme Changes That Jolt The Soul

Here are some more examples of extreme changes that can detrimentally ‘jolt’ the soul:

1. A person is learning Gemara b’iyun (in-depth) all day and now he suddenly switches to learning in a style of bekiyus all day, or vice versa. He was used to in-depth learning, and suddenly he realizes that he needs to amass more knowledge of Torah, rather than exploring it in-depth. So he starts learning 7 pages of Gemara each day, when he is not used to this at all.

1. Or, in an opposite scenario than the above, a person was used to learning in a style of bekiyus all day, and he realizes that he doesn’t understand well enough, so he abandons his bekiyus and instead he will only learn b’iyun – one page of Gemara for 5 weeks straight.

1. A person suddenly changes the way of living in his home. Until now, he rarely employed punishment in his home, and he only showed love, warmth, and closeness. Suddenly he changes his approach, and now he is quick to punish and sternly rebuke his children when they do anything wrong. Now he is saying, “This is how my father was raised, and this is how my grandfather was raised. This is how it will be! Everything in this house will change, from this day onward.” Understandably, the children in such a home will be confused and bewildered, and they will wonder: “What changed?! What is going on?!”

1. Sometimes people keep moving to different homes or to different communities. They have a different reason of why they moved from each place. In one place, they didn’t get along with their neighbors, or with their landlord, or with others in the community there, etc. They never stay too long in one community, and when they move to a new place, they do not know for how long they will be living there for. They might say that their life of “always moving” is because Hashem has arranged their life to be this way, and they say that there are pros and cons to it, etc. But all these changes of location are jolting their souls.

In any of the above scenarios, there are extreme changes which are jolting to the stability of the soul, and they impair a person’s ability to focus.

The Balance Between Stability and Searching\Change

In contrast to the above, the ideal way to live is that a person needs to become balanced between his ability of stability and his ability to make changes to his situation. On one hand, one needs to be firmly and securely attached to his way of living, so that he maintains his stability (understandably, this only concerns a holy way of living which is accepted by the Torah’s standards), and at the same time, he must also search for changes.

At first, one needs to search for different paths to take. At a later stage, one needs to become more centered and stay on one path, but he must search for more depth and subtlety in his current path. He can then wonder if perhaps there is a different path which is more truthful than the one he is on. But even then, he must stay firmly attached to his current path, even if he is unclear about it, so that he maintains stability. One must search for more truth in life, all the while remaining firmly and solidly attached to his current way of living, so that he doesn’t lose his stability.

This is an inner way to live, and it is a life of a true ben aliyah (a spiritually growing person), in which one remains firmly and securely attached to his current path in life, while at the same time searching for more truth. (On a deeper level, one uses this power of stability to stay firmly attached to the Creator).

Living with such a balance between stability and change is the deep secret of those who are of the bnei aliyah. It is a balance of great stability in life, together with an ability to totally change over his entire life in an instant. (This power is used for evil when one throws off the yoke of Heaven, G-d forbid). One needs to be deeply and firmly connected to something, yet at the same time be able to switch it for something else, if necessary. When one has this balance of being able to have change and permanent stability at the same time, he is reaching the purpose of man.