Fixing Your Earth - 011 Root Causes For Laziness

Until now, with the help of Hashem, we discussed the trait of sadness, which is rooted in the element of earth. We also discussed imagination, which can also come from our element of earth. Now we will discuss the next trait which comes from our element of earth: laziness.

As we mentioned earlier from Rav Chaim Vital, the soul consists of four elements – earth, water, wind and fire. Each of these elements can produce both good and evil traits.

Besides for this, each of the four elements consists of the other four, as we mentioned previously. For example, there are sixteen different kinds of sadness, as we explained in previous chapters. The same goes for laziness; there are sixteen different kinds of laziness.

The elements can keep subdividing endlessly. Each of the four elements contain the other elements, adding up for a total of sixteen; and each of these sixteen can subdivide even further, since every element always contains some amount of the other elements.

The Two General Kinds of Laziness

Let us give a general introduction to the concept of laziness. There are two general kinds of laziness. One kind of laziness is when a person moves slowly. The second kind of laziness is when a person doesn’t move at all and stays where he is. (When this power is used for holiness, it is called menuchah, and it resembles Shabbos. But when it is used for evil, it becomes evil laziness).

The Four Basic Sources of Laziness

1)    The first kind of laziness comes from earth-of-earth. This is when a person doesn’t move at all, due to the heavy nature of his earth which is dominant.

2)    The second kind of laziness comes from water-of-earth, which is when a person cannot free himself of the direction he finds himself flowing towards. Water tends to flow downwards; when a person can’t deal with the “flow” of life, there is a problem with his water-of-earth, and this causes him to be lazy. (We can find this with people who find it very difficult to change their way of life, because they have gotten used to a certain way of living.)

3)    The third kind of laziness comes from wind-of-earth. The nature of wind is that is clashes with other winds. This is when a person despairs upon realizing that he has desires that contradict each other.  Most people who encounter contradictions have a hard time dealing with.

(Someone on a higher level will be able to unify with whatever is challenging him, similar to the idea of how a man and woman, if they are worthy, merit the Shechinah. But must people aren’t like this, and they can’t deal with anything that contradicts them.)

The person then feels despair from this, and becomes lazy. His laziness causes him to despair. It is not that he is lazy because he despairs which would essentially be sadness (that we discussed earlier). It’s the other way around: his laziness is breeding on his despair.

We find this people who, because they despair, they come to a point in which they don’t feel like doing anything. Sometimes the person will claim that it’s better not to do anything than do something which is a risk, as Chazal say – “Better not to do anything”. But that’s just the excuse the person is saying; the inner reason is really because the person feels a despair inside, since he has encountered a contradiction that he can’t deal with.

4)    The fourth kind of laziness comes from fire-of-earth. Fire tends to rise; when one is lazy and he doesn’t feel like progressing, his fire-of-earth has become impaired, because he has a hard time with wanting to ascend and progress.

These four kinds of laziness each subdivide into another four kinds of sadness. Therefore, earth-of-earth subdivides into water, wind, fire, and earth. They each produce a certain feeling of inner heaviness in the person, which results in the laziness. We will now explore each of these more in detail.

1-A) Lack of Movement (Earth-of-Earth-of-Earth)

When a person feels that he doesn’t want to move at all, the inner heaviness he is feeling is stemming from the earth itself of his earth-of-earth, because the earth in the soul has gotten so dominant that it has become total. He feels totally heavy inside, and therefore he doesn’t move at all. That’s one kind of laziness: earth-of-earth.

1-B) Lack of Self-Control (Water-of-Earth-of-Earth)

When a person’s desires are overpowering him, his element of water is impaired. His desires have become too “heavy” upon him – a nature of earth. The ensuing laziness is coming from the water in his earth-of-earth. When a person can’t overcome a desire he’s facing, he feels heavy inside, and he can’t get himself to pull away from it – he becomes lazy.

Desires make a person feel heavy inside. If a person wants to stop indulging in his desires, it might be because he wants to attain spiritual perfection, but it can be for a much more simple reason [which isn’t spiritual]: it’s because he feels heavy from all his desires. When faced with a desire, he feels heavy inside when trying to fight it, and that is why he gets lazy and falls into indulgence.

1-C) Overwhelmed (Wind-of-Earth-of-Earth)

Wind-of-earth-of-earth has to do with contradictory desires, and this can also create heaviness in one’s soul, resulting in laziness. The fact that a person has so many desires can make him feel ‘heavy’ inside. (Just as our body can feel heavy, so can our soul feel heavy). Most people who are heavy in their souls will feel sad, but besides for sadness, it can also result in laziness.

For example, many people like to see how they weigh on the scale. Some people are doing this for health reasons, but most people who do this are really doing so because they feel an inner heaviness, and they wish to feel lighter.

There are also many people who feel bombarded by all their responsibilities in life, and this causes them to feel heavy inside. If a person is living a very physical kind of existence and he doesn’t live an internal kind of life, then he simply will feel physical fatigue from all his various responsibilities. He has to go to work and support a family, and this is straining. He has to attend many simchos (celebrations) even when he’s tired, and this strains him even more. And then he has to open up a Gemara after all this – and he finds himself utterly tired. That’s one kind of heaviness.

If he is a more internal kind of person, he also experiences inner heaviness with life. He is trying to grow in his Avodas Hashem and he’s working on many middos, but he feels like he’s caving in from all of this internal work.

If a person develops his soul more, he will be able to bear all his responsibilities in his life, just like how the “Aron lifted its carriers.” The more a person refines his soul, the lighter he will feel inside.

Indeed, most people are not in touch with their middos. They just go through life and aren’t aware of what their soul is experiencing as they go through life. But if a person lives a more internal kind of life, he will feel inner heaviness from all the middos going on inside him as he goes through his life experiences.

On a more subtle note, only bad middos cause a person to feel heavy inside, while good middos are light to carry; a person who feels heavy from all that’s going on in his soul is really feeling this heaviness due to all his unrefined middos. When a person purifies his middos, he will only have good middos, and he will feel lighter inside. Only bad middos make a person feel like he’s carrying them.

Many people want to improve themselves in Avodas Hashem, but they feel that there is so much to improve in, and as a result, they feel like they’re carrying a huge burden. They feel an inner heaviness from all of their Avodas Hashem. When people want to keep adding onto their growth, this can actually create a huge burden upon them, if they’re lacking proper orderliness in their life.

For example, a person might be in turmoil over how much sleep he needs in order to be able to learn properly, so he accepts upon himself that he will go to sleep on time in order to get his sleep and be able to function properly the next day. When it comes down to action, though, people don’t always act upon their resolutions, and then they find themselves in a vicious cycle of learning for hours on end, then oversleeping, and then repeating the cycle. It’s all coming from a lack of orderliness. The person finds that he has a hard time moving on.

When a person feels fatigued from his life, due to all his various responsibilities he has, this results in being fatigued. This is the kind of laziness that is coming from the wind in his wind-of-earth.

 1-D) Pampered (Fire-of-Earth-of-Earth)

There is one more cause for laziness\inner heaviness: fire-of-earth-of-earth, which is when a person gets too “warm” inside, which is coming from an imbalanced element of fire in the person; the nature of fire is warmth. Sometimes, a person feels very warm, and this can increase his inner heaviness.

To give a physical example of this concept, a father might have a hard time waking up his son in the morning to get up for davening, and his son doesn’t budge. Why doesn’t the son want to get out of bed? It is because he feels heavy as he lies comfortably in his bed, and he feels like he can’t move. But why does he feel like he can’t move from his bed? It’s because the warmth of the covers is increasing his feeling of heaviness, and that is why he feels like he can’t move.

From the above case we can see how warmth can increase a person’s feeling of heaviness. We can see how this problem can affect the soul as well, for example, when parents caress their little child and hug and kiss him. The child will not want to budge from his place, because he feels warmth. When a person feels warmth, it causes him to want to stay where he is.

In Conclusion

We have explained the four root causes for laziness, and the common denominator between them is that they all have to do with causing a feeling of heaviness to descend upon a person.

We have not yet given the solutions to laziness. We have only said what the causes are, and each person has to find out which causes for laziness are mainly going on in his life.

Each person should figure out which kind of laziness he sees mainly manifest in his life; he can come up with his own examples. One should see which of the information here applies to him, and which of it doesn’t; he can use his own examples, of course, and he does not have to limit himself to the examples we gave. We have only laid out the general outline here, but it is up to each person to find out his personal cause for laziness, from within the outline we have laid out here.