Understanding Your Middos - 001 Editor's Intro

This sefer, Da Es Middosecha (Getting To Know Your Middos), is as its title implies – it is about how we can improve our middos. However, this is not your typical sefer. It is a deep journey into our soul, and it is recommended to read this only after becoming familiar with the author’s previous sefarim, most notably Da Es Nafsecha (available in English as Getting To Know Your Soul).

It is based on the beginning words of Rav Chaim Vital’s sefer, Shaarei Kedushah, which state that there are four elements in the human soul, and that these elements are the roots of our “middos” (behavioral or character traits). They are: earth\laziness and sadness, water\desires, wind\evil speech, and fire\conceit.

The basic idea is that each of the four elements manifest themselves in our middos, so if we want to improve on our middos, we need to work with its root element and understand it.

Chapters 1-30 are about earth, Chapters 31-65 are about water, Chapters 66-88 are about wind, and Chapters 89-103 are about fire.

The author begins with our element of earth – the middos it produces (laziness and sadness), as well as the various other traits that earth is responsible for, such as constriction, hardening, dryness, containing, nullification, lowliness, heaviness, descent, and other natures. The traits of despair, brazenness, cruelty, hatred, forgetfulness and silence are also discussed within these chapters. The element of earth – its middos it produces, as well as its various natures – are the subject of Chapters 1-30.

Chapters 31-65 explains the element of water and its resulting middos (desire, pleasure, envy and jealousy), as well as the other traits of water, such as inner “coldness”.

Chapters 66-88 explain the middos of the element of wind (evil speech, scoffing, mockery, falsity, and bragging), as well as its others nuances, such as the four directions of wind.

Chapters 89-103 explain our element of fire, its middos (conceit, anger, grudges, honor, control, and fiery hatred), and its other various traits (such as ascension), which help us understand our soul and work with it.

Da Es Middosecha is the largest in the “Da Es” series, numbering over 100 classes\chapters. This is a deep and challenging series. As mentioned before, it is best to learn sefer Da Es Nafsecha of the author before embarking on Da Es Middosecha. It is also helpful before this to learn Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh, Vol. V, Chapter Nine: Working On Your Middos (Available in English at www.bilvavi/net.) as well as Da Es Yichudecha (also available in English at the Bilvavi website), chapters 11-19.

How should one learn this sefer? Da Es Middosecha serves as a database for the knowledge about our middos, and we can use this information to help learn about ourselves. It is recommended to first peruse each chapter on a superficial level, even if you can’t understand it fully right away. Then you can go back to review each chapter and attempt to understand the concepts by deeply reflecting into the words, slowly and carefully.

Don’t forget to daven to Hashem for help in this – learning about your middos is only the hishtadlus (effort) part, but it’s not everything! The author has reminded us that we need to involve Hashem throughout this entire journey toward self-improvement (See Bilvavi Part 5-“Working On Your Middos”).

Hopefully, the study of this sefer will help each person improve his middos and come to perfect his character on this world, so we can all reach our shleimus – and to ultimately reach closeness to Hashem through all of this.