Woman's World - 030 Importance Of Knowing Ourselves

[Ed: The following shiur of the Rav was given to a group of spiritually aspiring women who finished their yearly study of the Rav’s sefarim that explain the soul].

Realize The Simple Need To Take Care Of Your Soul

Baruch Hashem, you have merited to study, on a fixed basis, about your personal souls. Through this, you have merited to grow higher, and to come closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

There is something very important we must know. Just as a person invests in his body, taking care of his physical health, and just as a person takes care of his children, so is there no less of a need for a person to invest effort in taking care of his soul. Just as a person feels a need to eat, drink, and sleep, so can a person realize that he also needs to work hard at understanding the soul, so that he can take care of the soul. That very simple feeling of realizing the importance of eating and other physical needs is the same simple feeling one can have towards recognition of his soul.

The first thing that each person must bear in mind throughout studying your souls is this fundamental point: There is a simple need we can feel to take care of our souls, and it should not feel to us like a novel concept at all. It is so necessary and fundamental, and this is true about every single person.

Clarifying A Misconception

Let us try to imagine the following example, to help us understand this. Just as we understand that our children have physical needs, to be fed and clothed, so do they need to be nourished in their souls. Imagine a world in which children can grow up understanding that just as they have physical needs, so do they have a natural need to understand themselves.

The goal which we should want to bring ourselves to is: We should understand that if someone doesn’t want to invest in trying to understand his\her soul and thinks that this knowledge is not necessary, it’s that person who’s being strange!

We often hear a negative attitude towards those who seek self-knowledge, as if self-knowledge and soul exploration is only for someone who has problems, difficulties and issues; and that it’s only people with serious issues who need to understand themselves, who need to see a psychologist, or a psychiatrist, etc. There’s a misconception that seeking self-knowledge is only meant for people who have issues. But this is a wrong attitude to have, and a terrible mistake.

Here is a parable that can help us understand what we mean. Some people will eat and drink as soon as they get a desire. They never consider their health, and after many years of poor eating habits, they don’t feel good. They end up by the doctor and they discover how their health has been impacted by this. The doctor asks the person: “What do you eat and drink throughout the day?” The doctor then points out to the person that he is eating carelessly, and that he needs to rearrange his entire diet and his entire lifestyle, in order to be healthy. He prescribes to the person exactly what to eat and drink, and at which times of the day, and to follow this diet specifically.

Another kind of person is smarter than this. Before he gets into health problems, he asks the experts about what the right foods are, what to drink, etc. Instead of falling into a life of poor diet, he makes sure from the start to have healthy eating habits, and to avoid the foods that are bad. He finds out what the right way of living is, not because he has run into problems, but because he thinks from the start of the right way to live.

It should be the same with the study of the soul, our task of self-knowledge. Each of us, when studying the soul, must have the proper perspective. We must study the soul not because we have various issues in our life, or with our marriage, or with our children, or with our friends, and other problems in life. Rather, we should be interested in studying our souls so that we can have the right way to live from the start. We need to seek self-knowledge with the attitude that it is necessary in order to know how to live life correctly.

Making The Most of Your Personal Journey In Self-Knowledge

Thus, the deep reason for us to study our souls is because that is what gives us meaning, happiness, and a purposeful way of living. It is about how we can create for ourselves a happy and fulfilling life.

Each of us has certain problems and difficulties in our lives, to some extent. But we need to deeply examine if seeking to understand our souls is a merely an outcome of the issues and problems in our lives, or if it’s because we are seeking to live a life that is meaningful and with purpose. We should become very aware of this reason, and accordingly, to live life with this attitude, knowing why exactly we should be investing the time and effort in knowing about our souls.

The fact that the study of the soul is a consistent part of your schedule should therefore not be seen by you as a way to deal with issues and problems in life. It should rather be viewed as a means of how you seek to live a truthful kind of life, an internal kind of life, an ultimately happier and more fulfilled kind of life.

Therefore, when you embark on the course of studying your soul, you need to have inner preparation, a true inner desire to get to a more truthful way of living, to true happiness, to an internal kind of life. The more you are aware of this perspective, the more meaningful this study will be to you and the better you will absorb the material, and then you will be much closer of succeeding in it.

In Conclusion

I give you a personal blessing that each of you should merit to learn and recognize your own personal souls, and to grow, each of you, on your own level; and that you each reach your own true personal share, in your own inner worlds. Then you will have it good, both in this world and in the next world. I wish all of you much success.