Fixing Your Earth [Sadness] - 001 Coming Out of Despair

Sadness Is Confinement, Happiness Is Expansion

With siyata d’shmaya, the element of earth, the trait of atzvus\sadness. The opposite of atzvus\sadness is simchah, happiness.

What is atzvus\sadness, and what is simchah, happiness? We find in Chazal two different measurements, amah atzeivah, a measurement which appears exact and confined to its place, and amah sochakas, a measurement which looks like it is expanding.[1] Thus the term atzvus, which is related to the term atzeivah, is when one stays confined exactly to where he is, whereas simchah, happiness, is to expand past where he is. Thus, sadness is about being confined, while happiness is about expanding.

Sadness Is Unutilized Potential, Happiness Is Utilized Potential

A deeper way to understand the difference between sadness and happiness is, that happiness is when a potential is actualized, which results in expansion, while sadness is when potential is not actualized. Or, if a person has begun to actualize his potential but he reverts back to leaving the potential state, this also causes sadness.

That is the fundamental understanding of the difference between sadness and happiness.

The Elements of Sadness

The four elements (earth, water, wind, and fire) can all be different root causes for sadness, and they each their subdivisions. [The general root of sadness is in the element of earth, so all sadness is generally rooted in earth. But each of the elements contains all four elements, so there is earth-of-earth, water-of-earth, wind-of-earth, and fire-of-earth. Therefore, sadness can come from either: earth-of-earth, water-of-earth, wind-of-earth, or fire-of-earth.]

1. Sadness - When Potential Isn’t Actualized

We shall start with the sadness that comes from earth-of-earth-of-earth. This particular sadness comes when one’s potential is completely not actualized.

When we left Egypt, the joy of our redemption was, besides for being a simple freedom from our slavery, a deep joy, of leaving our potential state, where we were not yet made into the Jewish nation (only in the potential sense we were), and we now entered into our actualized state, to become the chosen Jewish nation. This was the deep cause for our joy.

Our main joy is on the festival of Succos, “time of our harvest”, and the apex of all the festivals, because it is the total actualization of all our potential as the Jewish nation. The Torah calls Succos as “chag ha’asif”, “time of harvest”, and the depth of the joy of the harvest season is that it symbolizes the gathering of all potential and its actualization, and now, we can truly rejoice.

In contrast to this, if we plant something and it doesn’t sprout, or if it grows deformed, we haven’t actualized the potential of the seed, so we are sad over it. There is reason to be sad when:

1)     Something stays where it is, in its raw, potential state. 

2)     When it doesn’t expand from where it is.

3)     If it started to expand, but then it reverts back to its raw, potential state.

4)     The worst is when it has no potential at all. When we do not see potential in something, this is the greatest cause for sadness. This is the sadness stems from earth-of-earth-of-earth, as we will soon explain.

The element of earth is depicted in our Sages with the term, “She has nothing of her own” (in Hebrew, לית ליה מגרמיה כלום, “les lei m’garmei klum”).[2] When the earth becomes ruined and nothing can grow in it anymore, it cannot produce. It can no longer give anything of its own. It has nothing to give. When nothing can come from earth, the earth is “ruined”, damaged, impaired.

Every human being has the ability to keep growing throughout his life. The tzaddikim (the righteous) are especially growing people. But the wicked stay stagnant their whole life; they never grow. Even if one is not in the category of the wicked, and he is simply a non-growing person, he slowly ‘rots’ throughout his life and he eventually returns to earth, when he dies and his body decomposes in the earth. At death, his existence reverts back to his potential state. But he still has the potential to grow again at the time of the resurrection, when the dead will rise from the earth. Therefore, death is not the end of a person - it is merely a return to his potential state.

Earth-of-Earth-of-Earth: Total Despair

In the soul, though, a person may feel like he has reached his “end”, whenever he feels despair. That is earth-of-earth-of-earth – it is the state of despair, and it is the very opposite of the soul’s power to have hope.

There is always hope for the redemption. The depth of this is because the Redemption exists in a potential state, and we await and hope for the day when it will be actualized. But when a person despairs, he doesn’t believe in his potential, or he doesn’t believe it can be actualized. He feels weakened from this. From despair, a person doesn’t believe in the actualization of a potential of something. What then happens? The potential goes back to its root, raw state, and it stays there, in a hidden state where it is covered over and concealed.

Normally whenever a person is sad, he still has some hope that things will change and get better. There is a verse, “It is good to go to a house of mourning, and the living shall take to heart”[3], and the meaning of this is that a person can derive vitality even from a house of mourning, where there was death. A person can find vitality even from thinking about death. But when one doesn’t believe in resurrection of the dead, as the Sages discuss in Tractate Sanhedrin, there is nothing for him to derive vitality from when he thinks about death, because he believes that death is the end.

There are people who want their bodies to be cremated after they die. They do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Their souls have become so dried out from their element of earth, from their despair and from their absence of hope in a future Afterlife and resurrection of the dead, that they willingly let themselves become turned into ashes after death. They truly believe that their death is their end. The Hebrew word for despair, yei’ush, contains the word aish, fire. The hint of this is that despair can burn up the soul, drying it out completely, and destroying the person. Those who let their bodies become destroyed after their death do so because indeed, they believe that they truly become destroyed after they die, and that their death is their end.

Fire burns something and reduces it into ash, which really means that fire returns any element to its potential state. But despair is even worse than a destructive fire. From despair, a person destroys even his potential state. A person who is dying can have hope that he will eventually be revived at the resurrection of the dead. His death has meaning to it, because even though his body will decay into the earth, he will eventually be revived. He still exists in a potential state, even if he were to be killed by any of the four capital punishments of Beis Din. He can always hope that even though he will die, the death is only a temporary return to his potential state, and eventually, he will become actualized again from his potential state (at the time of the resurrection of the dead). But through despair, a person convinces himself that there is no hope, and that he doesn’t have any potential anymore for anything.

That is the sadness which stems from earth-of-earth-of-earth.

There Is No Such Thing As Total Despair

The earth can produce things from its soil, but earth-of-earth-of-earth will return something back to its potential state and keep it there, where it rejoins its root and stays there. When a person has deep despair in his soul, like if a person totally despairs from living, he would die immediately, as a result of this loss of hope. All he would feel is a state of non-existence, and this, itself, would kill him. This was said in the name of Rav Yitzchok Hutner.

But in reality, there is no such thing as absolute despair. Earth-of-earth-of-earth in the soul, which is the experience of despair, is when a person feels a loss of potential. Despair is experienced either on a partial or absolute level. If one feels total despair, he dies as a result of this terrible state to be in. However, the reality is that “There is no such thing as (total) despair”[4], and that is because there is always some hope (tikvah), no matter the situation. 

Total despair does not exist. Even if there is despair on this world, it can only be partial. In the classical case of despair which is discussed in the Gemara, where a person despairs over a lost item, he believes that he has lost it and he gives up on finding it; his despair, however, is only partial. Deep down, he still hopes he will find it. The commentaries on the Gemara explain that even though he despairs, he is willing to spend money to get it back. It is still considered to be despair, of course, according to halachah, and the item is now considered ownerless and someone can acquire it. But even though it is despair, the despair is only partial, it is never total.

Therefore, even when a person does feel despair, he should understand that his despair does not encompass his entire soul. It is only a partial issue in the soul.

The Creation is composed of two aspects called maaseh Beraishis (lit. “the making of Creation”), and maaseh merkavah (lit. the making of the Heavenly “Chariot”). The maaseh merkavah aspect of Creation essentially means that the entire Creation is vastly complex and contains a countless amount of parts and details. Therefore, even if a person feels despair about something, his despair can only be about one particular aspect. If he would despair about everything, he would die. Since there is no aspect in Creation that is all-inclusive, if a person despairs over one aspect, it is never total, because it does not represent the entire picture.

When a person despairs over a lost item, he has despaired from only one aspect of his life – finding his item - but he still has hope when it comes to other aspects of his life. And even when it comes to the item he has despaired from finding, he will still hope to find it. Although for the most part he has despaired from finding it, and there is a rule that “most is like the entirety”, he still has not totally despaired from finding it.

Going deeper, since despair can never be total, even when a person does despair, it is never a total despair. Even death, which is the end of a person’s lifetime, is not the end. There is an eventual Resurrection of the Dead, and even the physical body, which is dead and buried in the ground, is still here. It is just in a decomposed state. Even the wicked who end up in Gehinnom do not have a total end, because they later become the dust under the feet of tzaddikim,[5] which is their continued existence.

Therefore, even when a person has despair from over one particular aspect of his life, this does not include the totality of his life. A Jew’s soul contains a point where there is no such thing as despair. Even regarding the rest of Creation, there is also a concept where there is no such thing as total despair. In the future, the light of hope will spread to all of Creation, and there will be no despair, all the way until the lowest elements of Creation. It will be like a circle, where all the points are equidistant from the center.

Currently, this power of hope is very hidden, because it is in a concealed dimension. But in the future, this point of hope will become revealed and it will spread to all of Creation, where it will reach every point, all the way down until the lowest elements. Despair is like the empty void (in Hebrew, chalal) which Hashem first made in Creation to fill all of space with, and hope is the line (kav) that fills all of this empty space (as the Ramchal explained).

Step 1: Focus On The Parts Where There Is No Despair.

Whenever there is despair, you can find hope. Therefore, the rectification for a person with a lot of earth-of-earth-earth is, firstly, to focus on the parts he hasn’t despaired yet from. For example, in the case where a person has despaired from finding his lost item, he still hasn’t yet despaired from other things. If he lost his money, he still owns his property.

Step 2: Awakening Hope – By Focusing On Positive Aspects of One’s Life.

The second part of the rectification is to awaken hope, by reminding himself of a part in his life where he feels the least despair in. One should seek aspects of his life which he still feels hope for.

The highest use of this power is when a person awakens his hope in Hashem, as is it written, “Kaveh el Hashem”, “Hope for Hashem”.[6] But even if someone isn’t at this level, he can awaken the power of hope on a very simple level, by finding hope in aspects of his life where he doesn’t feel any despair in his life. He can keep awakening hope by reminding himself of these aspects in his life, and in this way he strengthens his power of hope.

3. Finding The Glimmer of Hope Within The Despair

Even more so, even in what he does feel despair for, his despair is not total. When he loses an item and he has despaired from finding it, deep down he has a hope that he will still find it. So a person can remind himself that even in situations where he feels despair, there is still some hope even within his despair.

For example, if a person’s son went off the derech G-d forbid, and he has long ago given up on him, someone may tell him, “In a year from now, perhaps your son soon will return.” The father, when he hears this, may suddenly be filled with hope again, that perhaps his son will return again, even if he has already given up on his son. What is the logic in this? Didn’t he give up on his son already? This proves that despair is always partial. Hope, however, is always fully intact.

A person can still awaken some hope even after he has despaired. Despair doesn’t really exist [only in one’s imagination, and not in reality], whereas hope always exists. It is just that hope is concealed and covered over, and it needs to be revealed. Despair may feel more real than hope, but in reality, hope is a more powerful force than despair. A person who feels total despair is denying reality, because in reality, there is no such thing as total despair.

After one understands this on an intellectual level, he should try to relate to it better and feel this concept. When people say that they despair, this despair is not total, because deep down there is a hope that things will get better. Even when people totally give up, they will say “I gave up, but I still hope that things will get better.” This further proves that despair is never total, it is only partial.

When a person gets used to thinking about this concept - that there is no such thing as total despair - and he also gets used to feeling it in his reality - he slowly awakens the point of “non-despair” in his soul, and he strengthens this part of himself. In this way, he creates a conflict between the points of despair and the non-despair in the soul, and then these forces in his soul will be at war with each other. With the more he strengthens his power of non-despair, his non-despair will eventually win out his soul’s despair.

How Hope Works

Many people don’t know how to awaken the power of hope properly. When they are told that they need to hope that things will get better, they don’t really think about what this means, and they don’t try to feel this power of hope (tikvah) in the soul. So they force themselves to have hope, but during the entire time they are afraid, worried, and anxious that the situation will still not get better. Their fears are not a result of their hopes. Rather, they are afraid of the results if their “hope” doesn’t materialize and they are afraid they won’t be able to handle the difficulty when the terrible results arrive. Instead of awakening hope, they are full of anxiety because they fear that theirs “hopes” won’t materialize.

One should understand that he cannot uproot the power of hope from the soul. This would be like trying to uproot one’s own existence, which is impossible. It is possible for a person to make himself die, chas v’shalom, by taking his own life, but it is not possible for him to take away his own existence. The existence of a person is not within his power to remove. Hope is the very existence of man, and it is the most positive aspect of man’s soul. The Hebrew word for hope, tikvah, is from the word kav, line (which symbolizes all of existence).

Without placing hope in the Creator, people would not be able to exist [they wouldn’t be able to cope]. Hope for the Creator, itself, is the power that keeps people going. These are the words of our Sages. A person might deny his power of hope, but he cannot uproot it. Hope is bound to be revealed in every person’s life, and the only question is, in what way. Will it be revealed to a person in a joyous state, or will he uncover it through painful circumstances?

There is a dispute in Tractate Sanhedrin[7], between Rebbi Eliezer and Rebbi Yehoshua, if the Redemption will depend on Klal Yisrael doing teshuvah or not. According to one opinion, the Redemption will take place even if Klal Yisrael doesn’t do teshuvah, and according to the other opinion, only if Klal Yisrael does teshuvah. Even according to the first opinion, Klal Yisrael will do teshuvah anyway, because if they don’t do teshuvah, Hashem will appoint “a king as harsh as Haman” who will terrify everyone with his decrees. How will everyone do teshuvah because of this? Everyone will be spurred on to place their hope in the Creator alone, realizing that their salvation will come only from Him. Hope in the Creator is always there, it is a present force, and all a person has to do is to agree that it is there.

Most people feel disappointments even after they decided to give hope a chance, but this is because they didn’t hope in the right way. They simply “had hope”, but their hope had nothing to do with placing their hope in the Creator. Their hope was instead a fantasy, which can only be an offshoot of hope, but not hope itself.

In addition to this factor, whenever people hoped for things that weren’t good for them in the long run, they become disappointed when their hopes don’t materialize, and their hearts become ill in the process. When people want a nice house and they are jealous of what others have, and they hope they will have it too, and eventually they see that they aren’t getting what they hoped for, they become terribly disappointed and they give up. On a deeper note, it is not a true hope, because the soul knows that this is not its share in life, so it doesn’t hope for it, though a person is not consciously aware of this.

Hope is proper and constructive when a person hopes that Hashem will give him whatever is good for his own lot in life. Only of such hopes is it said, “Kaveh el Hashem, chazek v’yaametz libecha, v’kaveh el Hashem (“Hope for Hashem, strengthen and fortify your heart, and hope for Hashem”),which is explained to mean that you should keep praying, and even if you see your prayers aren’t being answered, “kaveh, chazor v’kaveh” – hope, and keep hoping.”[8]

In Summary and Conclusion

This is the very opposite of total despair\earth-of-earth-of-earth: to keep hoping.[9] The clearer one is about this, the further he is from despairing. Despair is only possible when one wants to attain something that is within his reach but he isn’t trying hard enough to get it, or when he wants something that isn’t good for him. A person should not hope that Hashem should give him a certain thing, but to hope that Hashem will give him his due share.

On a deeper level, a person should hope for Hashem himself. That is the meaning of “Kaveh el Hashem”. Instead of wanting to receive shefa (sustenance) from Hashem, one should have a desire for Hashem Himself, as it is written, “To You alone I desired.” That is the deep hope of the soul, and this is the ultimate actualization of the soul’s potential – the very opposite of the sadness that comes from total despair, earth-of-earth-of-earth.

We have explained briefly the problems in the soul that result from impaired earth-of-earth-of-earth in the soul – despair – and the roots of how to repair this, with siyata d’shmaya.