Bilvavi Part 5 - 033 My Feelings Are Not Me

בלבבי חלק ה. פרקי עבודה ומחשבה. מאמרים לג

Recognizing Who You Really Are

If you ask a person: “Who are you? he will naturally respond: “I am the son of so and so”, or “This is what people call me” - or something else like that.

If you think about it, though, this is a very superficial answer. When a person identifies himself based on how he relates with others, or based on how others view him - then he has never yet discovered his real identity.

What does it matter who his father is, who his children are, or what people call him or know him as? A person has to know that there is much more to who he is  than how others perceive him.

The Essence of the Soul Vs. The Garments of the Soul

Let’s say a person gives his friend a gold watch as a gift, and the watch is wrapped up in a nice box. Is he giving him a nice box with a watch inside, or a watch with a nice box? The actual present is the watch, and the nice box is just the superficial layer that covers over the real present.

So too, a person can’t identify who he really is based on superficialities. The box that the watch comes in is just the garment that wraps over the actual gift, which is the watch. The same goes for a person – a person has an actual essence, and he has garments that cover over his essence.

What we need to know is: What is the essence of a person, and what are the garments?

The Six Garments of the Soul

The sefarim hakedoshim say that a person has six “garments” altogether. They are one’s house, his wife, his clothing, his body, his bad middos, and his feelings.

(There is another approach that says there are three general garments of the soul – the actions, the feelings, and the thoughts.) These six factors are just the garments on top of our actual essence of our soul.

Let us explain how each of these is only a “garment”, as opposed to our actual essence.

One garment that covers our self is our house. Your house is not who you are. If a person spends his whole life immersed on how he can have the nicest house, then he’s spending his entire life immersed in his “garments”, and he never was involved with his actual self.

A second garment over a man’s soul is his wife. Chazal (Yevamos 62b) say that a wife is called the “wall” of her husband, and it is written as well, “A woman surrounds her husband.” (Yirmiyahu 31). Although a person must honor and love his wife, no man should imagine he doesn’t exist and instead view his wife as his very essence, receiving all his vitality from her. If a man depends on his wife for vitality, and he never develops his own actual essence, then he is only involved all the time with a garment of his soul, and not with his actual soul.

Another garment of a person is the actual clothing a person wears. Many people spend a lot of time involved with what to wear and spend a lot of money on clothing. They spend a great deal of time only with their garments, not with their actual self; they are just living a superficial kind of life.

The body of a person is a garment that covers who he really is. A person is not his body. Rav Chaim Vital (in sefer Shaarei Kedushah) brings proof to this from the possuk (Shemos 30:32) “On the flesh of man, it shall not be smeared.”  The possuk divides the “flesh” and “man” as two separate entities. If a person is involved with his body, he is far from himself.

The bad middos of a person are also not part of one’s essence. We have good middos and bad middos, but there is a big difference between them. Our good middos are part of our intrinsic essence, while our bad middos are not part of our soul – they are just garments on top of our soul.

(The soul is composed of layer within layer. The good middos are not our actual essence, but they are an intrinsic part of our essence. Our bad middos, however, are just the outer part of our self, and they are not part of the self at all. This is a deep, fundamental matter.)

If a person only involves himself with working on his bad middos, then he’s still only working with his garments of the soul, and not with his actual soul.

Chazal say that the three things which take a person out of this world are jealousy, desire and honor. The sefarim hakedoshim explain that these three things take a person out of his actual essence, and instead cause him to only be involved with his soul garments, which are only the external part of himself.

Feelings Are Not Yet “You”

The last garment of a person are the emotions\feelings.

Let’s say a person identifies his “I” by his emotions – happiness, sadness, anger, calmness, etc. If he feels happy, he thinks that he is a happy person, but if he thinks he is sad, he will think that he is “a sad person”.

If you think about it, the emotions are not really the actual self. Emotions are merely various situations we go through. Sometimes “I” am sad, and sometimes “I” am happy, etc. Therefore, there must be more to who we are since our emotions are prone to change, Emotions are only the outer layer of our self.

The inner layer of our self is our actual “I”, which is a deeper place in ourselves than the emotions. Your “I” isn’t defined by any situation you happen to be in.

If a person only knows about his feelings - but not more than that - he doesn’t recognize his true self yet. He knows how that his “I” can have feelings, but he doesn’t know of his actual “I”. There is an inner layer of our self which is deeper than the emotions. Beyond your emotions, there is your actual “I” – your intrinsic self.

Differentiating Between Your Emotions and Your Actual Self

The sefer Yesod V’Shoresh H’Avodah writes that when one says the words “You chose use from all the nations” in the Shemoneh Esrei of The Three Festivals, he should rejoice that he was chosen from all the other nations, and right after that when comes to the words “And because of our sins, we were exiled from our land”, he should feel great pain at the fact that we don’t have a Beis Hamikdash and that we don’t have sacrifices to atone for us.

I heard a question from an thinking person who asked, “How could it be that is such a short amount of time one can go from a feeling of happiness to a feeling of sadness?”

The answer to this lies in what we have said above.

If we’re dealing with the essence of something, it’s hard to reach. If we’re dealing with garments, though, it’s easy to change from one “garment” to another “garment.” If a person confuses his essence with his garments – for example, if someone thinks that “I” am my feelings – then it is indeed very hard for him to change from one feeling to another, because how do you change your “I” so fast?

But a deeper kind of person understands that there is a deeper part to himself than his feelings – he knows that he has an “I” that goes beyond his feelings, and thus he differentiates between his “I” and his feelings. He knows that his feelings are just garments that cover over his actual self. Since he views feelings as his garments, he can easily change from one feeling to another, because to him it’s like removing one shirt and switching it for a different one.

A Story About Rav Hutner zt”l

There is a story told of Rav Hutner zt”l, that one time he came to a bris of one of his students, and on the way there, he had to also attend a funeral of one of his friends. After the funeral, when he was on the way to the bris, he told the student next to him, “I made two rooms in my heart. One place in my heart is for happy occasions, and the other place in my heart is for sad occasions.”

This is a great example of someone who was able to switch emotions very quickly.

But when a person views his emotions as his actual self, what will happen? His life is a mix of sadness and happiness. He won’t be fully happy when he goes to a happy occasion, and he won’t fully experience the sadness of a sad occasion, because he is one big mix of emotions.

Hashem Wears the Garment of “Gaavah”

These words are based on a concept of the Baal Shem Tov. The possuk says, “Hashem, the King, wears splendor.” What does it mean that Hashem “wears” gaavah\splendor?

The Baal Shem Tov explained that Hashem wears gaavah as a garment. This shows us man’s mission on this world, which is to “resemble his Creator” – that one should view his middos as just his garments, but not his actual self.

How Can We Get To This Level?

The way to actually acquire this perspective is long and challenging, but we will still describe it briefly.

Everything that a person does begins from a person’s ratzon\will. For example, when you think about something, first you want to think about it, and then you think about it.

Most desires that people have are superficial. If a person wants to get to his self, he has to first nullify his desires. When he nullifies his desires, he will then find his actual self, and he will leave the superficial layer of his self, which are his desires.

It’s Possible To Be Happy and Sad At Once

When a person goes about life in this way, he can grow tremendously as time goes on. He will be able to feel both happiness and sadness at once, because since he is aware that he is not identified by emotions, his own emotions will deepen in the process.

Not only will he be able to switch easily from one kind of feeling to another kind of feeling (like to go from a funeral to a wedding, and vice versa), but he will be able to even have two opposite feelings at once!

The Chovos HaLevovos writes that one should have “joy on his face, but mourning in his heart.” A person has to smile at others and look happy to others, even if deep downhe is sad. What does this mean, though? Are we supposed to lie to ourselves?!

The answer, though, is that we can really have two feelings going on at once. We can feel both happiness and sadness at the same time, but we are able to allow that our sadness remain only on the inside, with our face radiating happiness toward others.