Hisboddedus Preparation - 005 Foundation of Hisboddedus

The Summary (and Goal) of the Previous Chapters

With the help of Hashem, in the previous classes, we have discussed how to begin hisbodedus. To summarize, the first class was about the importance of hisbodedus. The second class focused on how to make this a more pleasant experience. The third class was about how we can calm down our senses. Previously, in the fourth class, we explained how to use smell, breathing or music to reach deeper into our soul.

There are two classic methods of hisbodedus. One method, which is the more common and general approach, is to set aside time for hisbodedus every day, and to make a soul-accounting during this time; and to thank Hashem during this time. There is a second method, however, which is a different take on hisbodedus. It is that hisbodedus is a way of life – that hisbodedus deepens the whole way we live our life. This second approach is the way we are discussing now.

Most people have only heard of the first approach, which is the general approach towards hisbodedus that people take. They therefore find the second method, which is our method here, to sound strange at first.

Our method of hisbodedus here consists of two gains. First of all, through hisbodedus, we begin to live life more calmly. Secondly, we get to really know ourselves, by going deeper into our soul’s layers.

The approach given here about hisbodedus is not simply “Do A, now do B, now do C.” The point is to change our attitude about life – to live a calmer, quieter kind of life. This is the first goal of hisbodedus. The second goal of our hisbodedus is to reach deeper into our soul, as we said. For this, we gave advice in the previous two classes on how to do this.

That was a brief summary of what we learned until now. Now we will advance with this and explain how to make hisbodedus into a way of life – a quiet, calm kind of life.

The approach given here will require effort on our part, but if we do it, it will greatly enrich our life, and our life will actually taste like Olam HaBa (the World to Come) as a result.

Let us now explain how to live a life of quiet and calmness.

Three Lists To Make

Our life is very busy. There are loads of responsibilities and errands which we have. Our very lifestyle makes us busy and bogged down from everything, especially in today’s generation.

Recently, the advances in technology have only made things a lot worse. Cellphones and other devices connect us to the world on a constant basis, and it takes away our quietness, because we are never alone from these devices.

We need to get back to the quieter kind of life, the way life is supposed to look like. We can’t reach it completely, but we can at least improve our life to resemble in some way how life is supposed to look like. Therefore, let us take the time and think to ourselves: How would we like to live our life? How do we want it to look like? Take out a pen and paper and write this down. We will naturally discover that we indeed want to live a better quality life than the one we are living now.

Now, we have to think to ourselves: What are those things I can do that will bring me to a quieter kind of life? 

Living a higher quality kind of life can only work for someone who has developed a desire to live a quieter kind of life, which we have been speaking about in the previous classes. Whatever we are about to discuss is based on this elementary stage; we can progress only if we have developed the desire to live a quieter kind of life – not just to have a half hour every day of hisbodedus, but to let hisbodedus carry over into the way we live our life.

So write down on a paper about the kind of life you would want to live, and another paper write down all of the things in your life that are bogging you down from having this life of quietness – all the various responsibilities you have which are getting in the way of this.

On a third piece of paper, write down the things you can do which will lead you to a quieter kind of life.

Needs vs. Wants

Look at your list of responsibilities. There are many things we do which we don’t really have to do, and these various activities take away from having quietness. If we have realized the importance of hisbodedus, we will be able to cut out many things we do, in preference of hisbodedus.

For example, on Sundays in America, people are off from work. Many people feel that Sunday is for taking care of all the things we normally can’t do during the rest of the week: shopping, spending more time with family, attending parties, etc. But if we have internalized so far how important hisbodedus is, we can discover that it is far more important to use Sundays to get to know our inner self more, rather than to use Sunday for our various activities.

There is a very big difference to what we must do, to what we want to do. The things we must do cannot be cut out. But the things we want to do, which are not “musts” but rather just “wants”, can be pushed aside so we can do what we want more – getting to know our true self, via hisbodedus.

A very good example of “wants” that are not “musts” is sitting in front of the computer all day. When a person sits in front of the computer for hours on end, he will tend to ignore his family, engrossed in what he’s doing. Does he really have to be on the computer so much? The computer is not a must; it’s something he wants to do. This is a very good example of something that people “want” to do very much – but it’s not a necessity in life. It is not only a computer that brings out this point; there are many other things as well which we do that are not necessities, but rather things that we want.

To give another example, people in today’s times make extravagant weddings for their children. It takes weeks of preparation to make a wedding, and it’s expensive. But how much of the wedding preparations are actual necessities for the wedding? We can discover that most of the wedding preparations we make are spent on things that are not needed, but rather on things we just “want”. A very small part of the wedding preparations are what’s absolutely necessary.

Don’t Become Extreme

Now, we are not suggesting that we become extreme with this and become too frugal, only doing these that are absolutely necessary. We only mean to minimize our wants, and to focus more on our actual necessities in life.

Reviewing the Goal

By practicing hisbodedus, we are trying to enter an inner kind of life, and it is totally different than the loud, action-oriented world we see. We thus need to quiet down our physical life, in order to get to an inner kind of life. If we do so, we will greatly enrich the quality of life – and we will be able to lead a happy, serene kind of life.

How can we do this? We will say how, but again as we mentioned, this can only work on condition that a person has already internalized by now how important it is to have a lifestyle of hisbodedus.

Nullifying Your Desires Each Day

The advice on how to do this as follows. Reb Yeruchem Levovitz zt”l[1] writes that every day, a person should do something against his will – and he should do this for three times a day. This will get a person to come to nullify his desires (bittul haratzon).

By getting used to doing this – three times a day of doing something deliberately against our will – we are starting to enter the inner kind of life. To start, pick things you want every day which you find easier not to give in to.

The purpose of nullifying our desires every day is to attain a more serene kind of life. So as we go against our desires each day, we should be aware as we do this that we are doing this because we want to become calmer. We need to have this awareness as we nullify our desires: that we are trying to enrich the quality of our life. That is the goal of this, and we should bear it in mind as we progress.

When We Don’t Get What We Want

Also included in this is the following point to consider: when we discover things that we felt that we needed, which didn’t end up happening. For example, sometimes we go shopping for something we wanted to buy, and then we get to the store and it’s not on the shelf. Normally, this can be disappointing, but it can really be an opportunity for us to realize that if it didn’t end up happening, it must be that we didn’t really need it. So if something like this happens, we can use it to think to ourselves the following: I wanted this, but I didn’t really need it. It is another way how we can nullify our desires.

The Happy, Calm Life

People will pay a lot of money today to someone who will tell them how to live a calmer kind of life. But the truth is that there is no person who will be able to tell it to you.

The only way to do it is by actually nullifying our own desires, and this is the only thing we can do that will enrich our lives to become more serene.

When we begin to enter the internal kind of life – which is accomplished through living a lifestyle of hisbodedus - we will be able to enrich our life greatly.

May Hashem help everyone here to have a lot of hatzlacha withthis.

***

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WITH THE RAV

Q: If I don’t need to do something, does that it means that it always comes from my yetzer hora? Or are things which I don’t need to do, yet they are not coming from my yetzer hora, and therefore I can still do those things….?

A: There are two kinds of yetzer hora. One kind of yetzer hora is to make us do things that are totally forbidden, and these things are never allowed to give in to. Another kind of yetzer hora is to get us to do things that aren’t forbidden, but they are just not necessary. But even those things, although not forbidden to do, should still not be done.

Q: I live in Israel and am a mother of a large family, and I don’t feel that I have too many desires that I need to nullify.

A: Every person, even if he doesn’t have too many desires, needs to enter an inner kind of life. For example, recently there was a terrorist attack in Har Nof. There was a woman who wanted to go shopping that day, and when she heard about the attack, she decided she’s not going shopping. She suddenly changed her desires. Here we can see that there are things which we think are real needs, but they are not really needs, but desires. This woman realizes that she didn’t need to go shopping – she only wanted to; she gave up this desire as soon as she heard about the terrorist attack.

Another example is when we but clothes for our children. We can think to ourselves: Does our child really need this, or is it just that I want it?

Q: When I do hisbodedus, I feel like I’m leaving my body, and I feel like I’m going up; I felt that I have to become more grounded, because I didn’t think that Hashem wants me to feel like I’m leaving my body like this. and I felt that doing exercise beforehand helps me stay more grounded. Am I doing the right thing?

A:  It sounds like you are experiencing a disconnection from reality on this earth and the reality of spirituality. There is nothing wrong with exercising that you’re doing, but you need to develop a healthier connection between your body and your soul.

Q: (Rephrasing the question): I feel that exercising before I do hisbodedus is something that is necessary that helps my body and soul stay connected. Is this the right thing?

A:There is some kind of disconnection you are having between your body and your soul, and you need to find what it is. Since this is a personal thing you have, I do not know exactly what it is. You need to find in your own life what exactly is causing this disconnection between your body and soul.

Q: When I give up things I want, I feel tense from this, and it’s not making me calmer.

A: We cannot become extreme in nullifying our desires; it’s a slow process. We can’t jump from earth to heaven at once. We need to get used to it, and we can do it by doing it three times a day. You can still do things that you want to do which aren’t necessities. We are merely trying to take a small step in the other direction.

Q:  In order to reach the quiet place in myself, do I also need to silence all my feelings and thoughts?

A: It is very dangerous to do this. If a person silences all his feelings and thoughts at once – all of them – then he’s not really calming himself; he’s running away from his problems if he does this. He will simply be shutting down all his feelings and thoughts; he will come to stop loving his family as a result, because he has closed himself off from his feelings. 

The proper way to calm our stressful feelings and thoughts is to learn how to deal with them, properly, and not to run away from them.  

Q: Chazal say that “Shelo lishmah (ulterior motivations) lead to lishmah (pure motivations), so doesn’t this contradict the avodah of nullifying our desires?

A: Actually, it fits in very well with “shelo lishmah leads to lishmah.” The shelo lishmah we start out with in life is that we have desires in our life that are not necessary, so by nullifying our desires, we go from shelo lishmah to lishmah.

Q: How much time should we spend on hisbodedus (since this is very new to us), and also, should we first make sure that we have the five minutes of hisbodedus before we work on nullifying our desires?

A: You are saying the sensible approach on how to do it – first spend time on hisbodedus itself, and only after that progress to nullifying your desires.Those who are beginning hisbodedus need to spend five minutes a day on it. First think about the importance of hisbodedus, for five minutes a day, and only after that, work to nullify your desires.