Tefillah - 074 Living An Elevated Life

A Prayer To Become Elevated

In the blessing of Refoeinu we ask Hashem, והעלה רפואה שלימה לכל מכותינו, “And let a complete healing ascend upon all of our wounds .”

The word העלה means to ‘ascend’. Why we do we ask Hashem that healing should ‘ascend’ upon us? Why don’t we just ask Hashem simply to ‘send’ us a recovery (and instead say ושלח רפואה שלימה?)

As mentioned earlier, all sickness comes when there is an empty void in the soul. We are asking Hashem to be elevated to a higher level, that we should be taken out of our void of emptiness that has caused the sickness, and from that, we will be healed. We are not merely asking Hashem to heal us in the same way that a non-Jew wishes to be healed. We can only be healed when we become elevated from our current state of sickness.

We need to develop a power to uplift ourselves. Chazal say that the Shechinah rests by the bedside of an ill person; the meaning behind this is that the healing depends on revealing Shechinah, that the sick person should elevate himself spiritually, and that will heal him. This was said with regards to being sick, but it is a concept that applies to all of life: whenever we are in a void, we need to be uplifted and elevated from the void. We don’t just want to be healed – we need a healing that will elevate us.

The Vilna Gaon says that a person is either ascending or descending in his spiritual level; a person is never stagnant. Either he is going up or down. In order to elevate every situation in our life, we need to know how to elevate ourselves.

This is the meaning behind והעלה רפואה– we have the power to ascend, and we need to reveal it. This does not just mean that a person should be able to become elevated from a period of sickness. It is about living an elevated kind of life in general – to always seek spiritual elevation.

To Have Aspirations For A Growing Life

It is very possible for a person to go through life, with all its difficulties, yet he never changed once. People get married and have children, but often they haven’t changed one bit since their younger days. A person is drawn towards taking life as it comes, and he doesn’t naturally seek to live an elevated kind of life; he is pulled after the way others live, which is to stagnate.

But a person needs to develop the power to uplift himself beyond his surroundings and not go along with the flow.

As an example, a person is deciding if the girl he is going out with is a good shidduch, if she’s good for him or not, like is she has all the qualities, such as beauty, money, etc. Is that all he thinks about?!  Does he have any aspirations to grow from his marriage and live a more elevated kind of life? A person is married on average for 50-60 years; he makes a bris nisuin (covenant of marriage) with her. Will he get married to her for such a long time without any plan to live a more elevated kind of life?

Many times people got married without thinking too much, and later in the marriage the man wants to elevate his spiritual level, but his wife isn’t ready for it…they never decided before they got married that they were going to seek an elevated kind of life. Now it’s too late – he’s already married to her; had he known she wouldn’t join him in his aspirations, he never would have married her. But he never thought about it beforehand.

But if a person has a little bit of daas and he thinks, and he is about to get married, what indeed should he think about? He should be aware that he is marrying this woman for the next 50 years, and that she should be a person who he can live an elevated kind of life together with. If not, he won’t become elevated - and he will only descend.

If the chosson and kallah never decided together that they’re getting married to grow spiritually, what kind of happy wedding is this?! Doing teshuvah about this once a year on Yom Kippur won’t patch it up. Most of the simchos in today’s times are not a real reason to have a simchah – aside from the fact that they need to have hakaras hatov (gratitude) to Hashem for having found each other.

What are they so happy about if they’re not going to live an elevated kind of life together? Does the husband have any idea what he is getting himself into, when he has no aspirations from his life? His wife will want a fancy apartment, he will want a fancy apartment, and they will both need to have their tastes met; by the time they find the apartment of their dreams that they’re both happy with, who knows how much anxiety they will go through from this. It’s all because they didn’t make up before they got married to have an elevated kind of life together.

Spiritual Holocaust: A Life Devoid Of Aspirations For Growth

If people would seek to live a more elevated kind of life, everything would look different. The jobs people work at, the newspapers people read, the conversations people have, the clothing people wear – everything would look totally different.  

Nowadays, without having aspirations to live an elevated kind of life, a person will fall to the lowest level possible, because we are living in spiritual holocaust! Anyone who seeks to live an elevated life is actually heartbroken from the lifestyles he sees in today’s times.

If someone asks, “What’s wrong with today’s generation?” The answer is: “Everything is wrong”.

If people would be interested in elevating their life – day by day, month by month – everything would look different.

This is not about trying to reach high levels. If a person doesn’t try to live an elevated kind of life these days, he will fall to the lowest abyss! The world today has become a Gehinnom to our spiritual situation.

Disconnecting From Falsity

We need to feel like we were forced to come down here onto this world; Chazal say we were forced to be born, and it would have been better for us to stay in Heaven, and now that we are here, we need to examine our ways. This was always true; how much more so does it apply to our generation.

The words here are not meant to make you feel negative about life. It is just meant to give you the proper perspective towards life. When a person doesn’t think about this, he will ‘follow the crowd’, and today that will mean that he will sink very, very low with the crowd.

Every day, people are going to work in all sorts of place that are destructive to their souls. Souls are being destroyed every day!! Now we can understand better the meaning ofוהעלה רפואה שלימה…

We must demand from ourselves, on a constant basis, a desire to always live a more elevated kind of life, a life of searching for truth. Understandably, this is not the popular way in the world right now to think like; it is hard to accept. But on the other hand, if we follow the way the rest of the world is going, it will be much harder and much worse for us.

We must disconnect ourselves from this world and instead feel ourselves burning inside for more holiness, and to yearn to connect to the kind of life that our Avos lived, to wish to connect ourselves to Above.

We all have the free will to seek Hashem and live a life of constant elevation.

In Conclusion

The words here were not an exaggeration. It barely described the problems of today’s world.

If someone has even a little bit of heart that is still sensitive to spirituality, he can see how there is total destruction taking place on this world[1], just as Yirmiyahu HaNavi was pained as he helplessly watched what was taking place in his generation as they sank lower and lower….

May we merit from Hashem to see the comfort of the Jewish people – to merit the meaning ofוהעלה רפואה שלימה לכל מכותינו.