Getting to Know Your Inner World - 004 Inner Orderliness

Scattered Inside

We have begun to discuss how we can begin to touch our very essence. A person has to divest himself from the outer layers of his soul and then reach his inner silence, which enables one to reach his essence and thus gain menuchas hanefesh (inner peace, or serenity of the soul).

In the previous chapter, we mentioned how we need to gain a “clear view” in Avodas Hashem.

Hashem created a deep power in Creation called “Echad” – “oneness.” We must learn how to tap into this deep power. When a person begins Avodas Hashem, everything seems so scattered and separated. He finds himself in an ‘alma d’piruda’, a “world of separation”. The surroundings of a person only make a person even more scattered.

For example, a person has five physical senses. How many times a day do we use our senses? We use them countlessly throughout the day. Every time we use our senses, a mark is left on us from what we experience, and the more a person uses his senses, the harder it is for a person to reach his essence, because he has become so muddled from all of these marks.

We only gave one example, but there are endless examples that prove the idea. Our senses put us into imagination and take us away from our inner state of echad.

Your Essence Vs. Your Garments

The inner kind of life we want to achieve is a whole different kind of life than the one we are used to living.

A person has in himself his very essence (havayah), and on top of that are his other forces of the soul: Emunah (faith), Ta’anug (pleasure) and Ratzon (will), etc. This is something which we have explained a lot about before.

There are two ways how a person knows this. One way is superficial – to just know about it and absorb it well in your head. But there is another way to know of it – when you let it become the way you actually look at life. We will give many examples of this soon to explain what we mean.

The point of what we are saying here is that if a person only views life from the forces of his soul and the senses of his soul, he just sees his soul as separate forces. He lives in a “world of separation.” But if a person has the viewpoint from his essence, he can unify everything into “one”. He lives in a world of “Echad.”

Awareness Of What You Go Through

Let’s say a person gets up in the morning and says Modeh Ani. When a person says Modeh Ani, what is he really doing? He is using the power of speech, which is an ability of the soul. But if a person isn’t aware of what he’s doing when he says Modeh Ani, he is just acting mechanically. When a person acts mechanically throughout the day, everything he does has no connection. He is just doing a scattering of actions with nothing that connects what he does.

But when a person is aware what’s behind his actions, he can see how everything is connected, and that he doesn’t just do a bunch of random acts throughout the day.

When a person davens, how much feelings does he experience? Usually, a person thinks that every Tefillah he davens consists of an endless amount of feelings. But if a person has reached his essence, he sees the view of “Echad” – he can see how it’s all one feeling. When a person is unaware of this, he is aware that he has gone through a lot of feelings, but he has also scattered his soul in the process. He only experiences a scattering of many feelings.

How many feelings does a person go through each day? It depends on which way you are experiencing life. If you only have a superficial and undeveloped awareness, then you go through “many” random, scattered feelings.

Another example: When a person learns with a chavrusa, how many feelings and thoughts does he go through? It seems that it’s so much going on at once. With this superficial way of experiencing life, a person’s life is full of scattered emotions and thoughts.  When a person just goes through all these “movements” of his soul, he is scattered and mixed up.

The inner way to live is to be able to experience life from a clear viewpoint about what’s going on around you. He is aware as he does something: Is what I’m doing now a kind of ta’anug, a kind of Ratzon, or some other force in my soul? He sees everything he does in terms of his soul. When a person gets used to this, he will begin to feel menuchas hanefesh. Of course, there are levels to how much menuchas hanefesh a person can have.

The most inner kind of menuchas hanefesh one can have is when he reaches his essence, and this we spoke about in the previous chapter. But now we are speaking of a more elementary kind of menuchas hanefesh which must come way before that: calming the outer layers of your soul.

This is when you get used to giving orderliness to all the forces of your soul. It is when a person clarifies what he does and realizes what a matter is made up of: which forces of my soul are being utilized right now? A person in this way learns how to identify in his actions how his soul is relating to what he’s doing. He connects everything together and gives orderliness to everything he does.

A person who gets used to this will discover that he doesn’t have to listen to everything or see everything that goes in the world. He realizes that the more he uses his physical senses, the more of a mark the senses leave on him, and this hampers him by making him a scattering of emotions and thoughts. He realizes that he can’t bear all the sensual information that floods into his head all the time, and he’d rather just detach from all that.

Seeing What’s Behind An Act

This concept has to be grasped by very well. If the concept is really understood, you will find that your whole view on how you live your life has changed.

To give an example, when a person speaks, he can wonder to himself: “Am I speaking from my Emunah (faith) in myself, or am I speaking from my ta’anug (pleasure) in talking, or am I speaking out of a Ratzon (will) to talk?”

When a person hears someone else talk and the speaker is speaking with this kind of awareness, the listener can often sense that the speaker has purified his soul more and speaks from a calmer place in his soul.

When a person gets used to this, he will find that nothing is simple, and that everything consists of many factors. He will find that when he talks, it’s not just a superficial act of talking, and that when he hears someone, he’s not just hearing the words. He will find that there are many factors behind the act of the talking or the hearing. He will find how everything is really complex and that nothing is simple.

The Chazon Ish said that he doesn’t know of anything simple in the world, because everything is made up of many factors to consider. There is an endless amount of factors that make up every matter.

When a person learns Torah and doesn’t see any connection between the information he learns, this is a problem, because everything is just scattered here. A person has there is a connection between the information. The same thing goes for our soul. Our soul experiences many senses throughout the day, and without giving order to everything that’s going on, the soul feels scattered from all that it has gone through.

Differentiating Between Your Garments and Your Essence

Let us add another point which sharpens the discussion.

Without giving order to what’s going on in our acts, a person doesn’t recognize that there is a difference between his essential self and the rest of his soul, which are only the garments of his soul. This makes a person experience everything in his life only through the garments of his soul, and he never experiences life through his real self.

A person has to take all the “garments” of his soul – the forces of his soul, and the senses – and give order to them.

To do this, a person needs to realize that he has an essential self, and that his outer layers of the soul and his senses are not who he actually is. This gives order to all the garments of his soul – each person according to his level. This makes a person aware of the garments of his soul, and that the garments of his soul are not his actual essence, but just garments.

This can help a person then feel his own essence; since he has differentiated between what his garments are to what his essence is, he is able to reach his essence, because now he can detach from his surroundings.

Making The Transition In Your Soul

To give an example, a person is learning, and then he realizes that now it’s time to daven with the minyan that has just begun to daven. He quickly jumps into the davening. When a person does this, he has scattered his soul around!

Why? It is because there is a time to learn, and a time to daven. The two cannot be mixed together; there has to be a little bit of space that one passes through between them. A person has to actually pass over from his learning into his davening.

When a person is davening and suddenly he realizes that he is all muddled and can’t concentrate, what does he do? A superficial solution is to look for all kinds of ways how a person can increase his kavanah (concentration). But the inner solution is when a person has learned how to detach in the way we have described. He can detach himself from his bothersome thoughts, enter into his feelings, and from there, he can concentrate.

This is a kind of life of someone who lives with order in his soul. It can only be possible when one realizes that the garments of his soul are not his essence. Such a person knows how to pass from his garments of the soul into the essence of the soul.

The more a person gets used to this, the more he increases his Menuchas hanefesh.