Fixing Your Fire [Honor] - 004 Inner Contradictions

Fire-of-Earth-of-Fire: The Contradictory Emotion of Rising Higher While Lowering Oneself

With the help of Heaven, we continue here to discuss the trait of honor, which stems from the element of fire. Here we will discuss honor that stems from fire-of-earth-of-fire.

Fire-of-earth-of-fire, on one hand, contains fire, a force that rises; on the other hand, it contains earth, a heavy element which weighs it down and prevents it from ascending as it should. That will mean that even if a person is “descending”, the fire will cause him to feel like he is going higher.

This force in the soul contains contradictory forces. The nature of fire is to ascend, to go higher, whereas earth is heavy, weighs things down, and it is at the lowest point of all the elements. Earth stays at the lowest point. The element of water descends towards the earth, but it is originally from a higher source than the earth.

(From a deeper understanding, the water also originates at a lower point, because the Vilna Gaon says that everything in Creation yearns to return to its root. Fire comes from a higher place and therefore it seeks to rise, so that it can go back to its root. Water wants to go back to its root, therefore it goes downward, towards the earth, which it came from. However, the waters are really found above, and it is just that they are drawn downwards towards the earth.)

Earth, however, always remains in its place, below. Fire and earth bear similarities and differences with each other. Fire and earth are both dry elements, and in that sense they are similar. They are opposite of each other, though, in the sense that fire naturally rises higher, whereas earth is found below and it stays below.

Therefore, honor, and especially honor that stems from fire-of-earth-of-fire, contains a deep inner contradiction. On one hand, honor is an expression of the soul that wishes to rise higher, to become exalted and above everyone else, but at the same time, the “heaviness” contained in honor pulls a person downward. The more there is “heaviness”, the more a person will remain below and he won’t rise, but at the same time, he will feel that the heaviness is actually lifting him higher. This is clearly an example of contradictory forces.

The Deeper Root Of This Power

The deeper root of this matter is because “Hashem desired to have a dwelling below”, which was a “descent” so to speak from His lofty level, and Hashem “lowered” Himself as it were, in order to allow this world to be a domain for His Presence. This is the holy root of “descending” from a higher level in which one is “lowered”.

The “Baal Kavod” – A Person Who Has An Inflated Sense of Status About Himself

The trait of kavod\honor is the negative, twisted form of the above concept. An example of it is as the Mesillas Yesharim says, that when a person is a baal kavod (one who is obsessed with his own status), he will belittle others even if others insult him in return, because he believes that he is so honorable that he is even above the need to feel honored by them. In doing so, he doesn’t care to lower his esteem in the eyes of others, because he thinks that he will always be above them anyway. Hence, he “lowers” himself as a result of his self-inflated sense of kavod that he has for himself.

When this power is used for holiness, a person will allow himself to be belittled by other people and to “lower” himself in the eyes of others, in order to do Hashem’s will. In the side of evil, a person will use this power to be completely insensitive to others’ feelings as he belittles them, which “lowers” himself in the eyes of others, because he believes that he will always be above them anyway, and that he is even above the honor that people accord him.

Contradictions In The Soul

The contradiction contained in honor is stemming from fire-of-earth-of-fire, which makes a person feel a downward pull, and the more “heaviness” he has, the higher he will feel about himself.

This particular point in the soul is one of the major areas in which we notice contradictions in the soul, and the idea of contradictions in the soul is a much broader topic that goes beyond this particular point we are discussing.

The soul which Hashem created us with contains many different kinds of forces. The Vilna Gaon writes of 70 forces of the soul, and those are just the roots; there are many more branching forces, which are endless. However, the forces in the soul are not just a myriad group of details thrown together. If we view them as intrinsically separate from each other, this is a view that comes from the “world of disparity”.

Also, there is no count to a particular order (seder) of forces in the soul. Although order (seder) can be given to the soul’s forces, every force in the soul contains an opposing power to it (this concept is known as dovor v’hipucho – a “thing and its opposite”). There is a verse in the Torah, “Man and woman He created them”, and Chazal expound upon this verse that for everything Hashem created in this world, there is a “man” and “woman” to it, meaning that in every force in Creation we find, we can find a force that opposes it. Similarly, Hashem created the forces of good and evil, which are constantly at opposition with each other.

Thus, each of the root soul abilities, as well as their branching abilities - all of them without exception - contains an opposite force that contradicts it.

Here are some examples. If we want to work with any force in the soul and improve it, we need to understand the force that opposes it. For example, in order to know what love is, one needs to know what hatred is, and in order to understand hatred, one needs to understand love. In order to fix laziness, one must know what zerizus (zeal) is, and in order to know what zerizus is, one must know what laziness is. In order to know what simchah (joy) is, one must understand what sadness is, and in order to understand how sadness works, one needs to understand what simchah is.

There are countless examples we can give about each of the traits in the soul. The point is clear – every force in the soul has a power that contradicts it.

The Mixtures of Forces Within Us

During childhood, one tends to thinks in terms of extremes, where everything is seen in terms of either black or white, happy or sad, etc. As a person gets older and matures, a person can understand that life is complicated; when things are left impaired, everything remains as an unsorted mixture (“taaroves”\mixture), and when things are rectified, there is harmony (“mizug”) and balance between the many differing forces present in a matter.

Ever since Adam ate from the Eitz HaDaas Tov V’Ra which contained a mixture of good and evil, the entire Creation has become a mixture of good and evil. Before the sin there was always a concept of opposing forces, but the opposing forces were not mixed together. Only after eating from the Eitz HaDaas did all of the opposing forces in Creation become mixed with each other. In any case, every force in the soul has some other force that opposes it, both for good and for evil.

Since there are contradictory forces built into the soul, as a result, when a person attempts to recognize his own soul, this work will not only entail recognizing the soul’s forces and working with them, but to recognize each opposing force in the soul. After a person uncovers the two opposing soul forces, his work is then to uncover how they are mixed with each other. Every force in the soul will mix with another force in the soul, and every force in the soul is actively working with an opposing force at the same time, because they are mixed together.

On a more subtle note, whenever a person activates the potential of any of the soul’s forces, there is always a mixture of forces manifest. A person with little self-awareness will not notice this, however, even when it is apparent that the two contradictory forces have been working together.

Here is an example. There is a point in our soul which acts shelo lishmah, for non-altruistic motivations, and there is our point in the soul of acting lishmah, for pure motivations. Rav Chaim Volozhiner wrote that there is always a motivation of lishmah present even in our motivations of shelo lishmah when learning Torah. The same is true in the converse as well – in every act of lishmah, there will always be some trace of shelo lishmah.

When a person has not yet reached maturity of mind, whenever he feels inspired to do something holy, he might feel “I am doing this entirely for the sake of Heaven”. When a person says “I am doing this entirely for the sake of Heaven”, it really means that he doesn’t recognize himself at all. As for how much the percentages of lishmah versus shelo lishmah are present in our act, that is a separate issue, and it depends on the level of each person. But there will always be both lishmah and shelo lishmah in every person’s act.

Another example: When a person hears of the death of a parent, he must say “Baruch Dayan Emes”, expressing the seriousness of the situation, but at the same time, if he is receiving an inheritance, he must make the blessing of Shehechiyanu, because there is some joy he feels upon receiving inheritance. There are contradictory forces here at once. He has both grief and joy in the same moment.

There are countless examples as well we can give of this concept, that there are contradictory forces in everything. In some cases, it is apparent, and in other cases, it is not as obvious, but it’s all the same reality.

When a person becomes familiar with this concept, his self-concept will greatly change. Whenever he notices a certain characteristic about himself, he will see an opposite aspect of this characteristic as well that is in him, and he will also see how the two opposing characteristics are mixed with each other. He should become clear about which aspects are on one side of himself and which aspects are on the completely opposite side of this aspect of himself, and he can find how they mix with each other when he sees the middle point between them, where he can clearly see how they mix.

The Difficulty In Accepting Our Own Inner Contradictions

Thinking into this matter requires intellectual contemplation, and it also requires an ability of self-acceptance. It may be very difficult for a person to accept the reality of his own contradictory emotions about something.

For example, when a person is about to get married, he is joyous, but if he is very self-aware of the contradictory forces in him, he will also connect to the sadness of remembering the destruction of Jerusalem, which we mention when standing under the wedding canopy. As an example, there is a custom (for some) to wear ash on the head when standing under the canopy, and there is also the halachah of leaving aside a corner in one’s new home in remembrance of Jerusalem. So even as we are in a time of joy, there is also sadness present, but a person might not be aware of it.

This sadness is present even in the height of one’s joy, but it may be very hard for a person to deal with this and accept this reality. Most people, when walking to their wedding canopy, are so immersed in the joy of getting married that they do not have the self-composure to reflect about the ash on their head or on the mention of Jerusalem under the wedding canopy, regarding it as a mere custom to fulfill and get over with, but with no desire to connect to this sad feeling. The soul of a person has a struggle with dealing with this sadness, amidst its joy.

The same goes for an opposite kind of situation, where a person is amidst a situation of sadness, but there is also some inner, subtle kind of joy that is present with him at the same time, which he may not want to think about. He is instead immersed in his sadness and he has a difficult time accepting that there can be any joy right now.

Here is another example: when a person feels enthused to do a mitzvah, he would have a hard time admitting to any traces of laziness that are present at the same time.

The Soul’s Self-Denial

It is difficult for a person to admit while experiencing one kind of emotion that he is also experiencing some trace of an opposite emotion than what he’s feeling. In most cases, a person is not prepared to accept that he is full of contradictory forces.

A person may have a self-concept of himself as being a “depressed” kind of person and thus he thinks that he is truly pathetic, or, to the opposite extreme, he may view himself as a “happy” person, but most of the time, he will not be able to accept that there are contradictions in him, because if he thinks of himself as being full of contradictions, he will feel very confused about who he is, and he doesn’t want to think this way about himself.

A person wants to feel clear about himself and where he belongs, so he would not want to deal with the reality of inner contradictions. He would not want to think that there’s another “half” to himself which may be Chassidic, Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Mizrachi, or Chareidi. He’d much rather prefer to view himself as being entirely one kind of person, but to admit that there are other parts to himself can be too difficult of an acceptance, so they instead deny these other parts of themselves.

Often this is because people prefer clarity about themselves rather than to be confused about themselves, but this is not stemming from an inner search for clarity (olam barur, a “clear world”), but a superficial kind of clarity about themselves, which is not interested in internal, truthful discoveries. The external part of our soul is usually not prepared to accept that we may be full of inner contradictions, because that would mean that we have no clear self-concept about ourselves at all, and no one wants to think that way about himself.

As we explained, this all takes places in our subconscious. But even if a person would consciously recognize that he has inner contradictions, deep down his subconscious will still not want to accept this.

In light of the above, there is a fundamental concept about the soul which we must know about, which affects our entire inner work: the soul, deep down (in its external layer, that is) denies what is taking place inside itself. It would rather fool itself and feel clear about itself, rather than admit to the contradictory forces that take place within it, which would make it feel confused about itself.

This denial, which takes place on a subconscious level, causes most people to run away from the reality that takes place inside themselves. This is not done consciously, of course (except for a few poor souls who, sadly, are consciously running away from themselves, by various means of ‘medicating’ their painful situation – either by taking pills, going to sleep, and other external ways that will get them to run away from themselves). Deep down in the subconscious layer of the soul, a person prefers to run away from himself.

This is a jolting revelation about our own reality, but it is the simple truth.

Running Away From Ourselves versus Facing The Truth

Chazal say that three things takes a person out of the world – jealousy, desire, and honor. Simply speaking, these negative traits take a person out of the world, but the deeper meaning of this is that a person in these instances isn’t prepared to deal with his own “world”, with his own inner reality. The traits of jealousy, desire, and honor were just various means of getting him to leave his own inner reality, but the real issue is that the person deep down cannot accept his own inner reality, which is full of contradictions. As a result, the soul of a person runs away from its own inner reality.

As we explained, this takes place on a subconscious level in all people. Many people only know the external layers of their soul, but if you would tell them about certain deeper layers in the soul that are difficult for them to hear about and accept, they will immediately deny that these deeper parts to themselves exist. Either a person will say:

“I never heard of such a thing. This is not the ways of our rebbeim (teachers)!”
“We did not receive this as part of our mesorah (tradition)!”
“Thinking about such a thing will cause a person to become sad, so don’t think about such things.”
“Thinking about such a thing will cause a person to become confused.”

These arguments are not incorrect, but in many cases, there is a large part of the person that prefers to run away from dealing with the simple truth that takes place inside of themselves. If anyone learns the writings of the Alter of Kelm in-depth, he would see a new perspective about his soul, and then he would understand what we are saying here. But even then, it would still be hard for him to accept his own inner contradictions, because it is a painful self-discovery.

Dealing With Our Inner Contradictions

In order for a person to recognize and deal with his inner contradictions, firstly, he will need intellectual clarity in recognizing them, and he will also need to be prepared for a very painful self-discovery.

It is, in fact, very painful to deal with, and if one isn’t ready to accept it, he won’t be able to handle the discoveries, preferring instead to deny them. When a person discovers it, it can shake him to the core, and nothing is ever the same again. The most painful thing that a person can ever discover about himself is that he contains in himself a mixture of good and evil forces at once, and this is the reality that has entered us ever since the sin with the Eitz HaDaas that brought this mixture into the world and into our psyche.

The reality, then, is clear. The soul contains contradictions, and in fact, it consists entirely of contradictions. Getting used to this realization will bring us to a major, fundamental change in our inner work. (We should know that this is not just another detail in our work to know about, but a fundamental concept that concerns all of our inner work). But when one doesn’t want to accept his inner contradictions, he will form a false self-concept about himself. What about the contradictions he sees in himself? Either he will attribute it to a mere coincidence that happened, due to some external factor; or, he will simply teach himself deny his own feelings.

If one is prepared to work on himself, he will recognize a contradiction in himself, it will feel painful to him, but this won’t deter him from working on himself and doing what he has to fix the contradiction.

On a deeper level, this is the meaning of one who is “brokenhearted”. The truly “brokenhearted” person recognizes that he is full of internal contradictions, he is “broken” on his own inside, and since there is a rule that “its breaking is what purifies it”, this brokenhearted state is actually what purifies him. When the heart is purified, Hashem’s Presence is revealed within the heart. But what enables a person to reach the state of a “broken heart”? The very idea of accepting one’s own internal contradictions enables this “breaking”.

Without this self-acceptance, a person will run away from the reality, by forming an alternative, false self-concept about himself, or by making various excuses for his behavior, attributing his contradictory behavior to external factors.

Becoming Aware of Our Contradictory Emotions

The following is a very important example that illustrates what we mean.

When a person has a family blessed with children, and we ask him if he loves his children, he will say, “Of course, I love them”, but if we ask him, “Do you ever hate your children?” he might quickly say, “G-d forbid! What kind of question is this??” But the truth is that a person also experiences hatred towards his own children! First of all, nobody has complete ahavas Yisrael; only Mashiach will have complete ahavas Yisrael.

In addition to this reason, the soul of a person contains many contradictory forces. If a person hates everyone around himself, he is clearly a person who only loves himself, but even towards one’s children whom he loves, he does not always love them. There are all kinds of situations that arise in the home where the children aren’t always bringing their parents nachas. When the children bring nachas to the parents, it awakens the parents’ love, and when the children pain their parents, it grinds on their nerves and their love vanishes. There are alternating periods of being proud and loving of them, or being upset with them and resenting them.

Usually, of course, the parents will feel love for their children much more than they feel any hatred. But there is no such thing as never feeling any hatred towards them. Any parent can identify a situation with his children that he finds intolerable, in which hatred takes over, but the quick reaction to this is to deny the feeling. The parent might acknowledge the feeling only a little bit, saying “I only feel hatred to my child in this particular instance, but normally, I only feel love to my child”, or, he will begin to deny the feeling altogether, saying: “No, no – I only love my child! I never, ever feel hatred to my child.”

There are many more examples as well that we can give, but the point is that in most people, there is a very large gap between their reality and what they are experiencing, which can be as distant as the sky from the earth. The reason for this, as we explained, is because it is a very painful discovery for the soul to come to terms with its own inner contradictions. One needs to be a very truthful person in order to deal with his own inner reality, and in addition, he also needs to agree to work hard on improving himself.

Someone once complained to Reb Chatzkel Levenstein zt”l that the study of mussar causes a person to become depressed, because it causes a person to discover all of his weaknesses, which saddens a person. Reb Chatzkel replied, “To the contrary. Discovering one’s weaknesses and qualities makes a person very happy.” Why? If someone searches for truth, he doesn’t want to run away from himself. There is no difference to him between discovering his weaknesses and discovering his qualities, if it will be easy or difficult, because that is not his concern. He is only interested in the truth and he wants to deal with it, and he is ready to do so.

Even more so, if a person is prepared to serve Hashem and he is ready to do inner work with his soul and attain self-correction, he doesn’t get upset at himself when he discovers his weaknesses. He is aware that these weaknesses are not due to himself, but that they have been given to him from Hashem, Who has created him this way and Who wants him to fix himself, for that is the avodah he has been given; he is aware that all of our life is a war with the evil inclination, and he is prepared to work hard and improve himself.

But if a person isn’t prepared to work hard at the challenges of life, and he is not majorly concerned for the truth, what will be the result? When he inevitably does discover contradictions in himself, and when he notices that there is more evil in himself than good (for the “animal” level of the soul, the nefesh habehaimis, contains mostly evil and only a little bit of good), he will find this so saddening and disappointing that he’d rather not think about it, and he will conclude that self-improvement is only for special individuals who aspire for very high levels. And he will just live his life as he sees fit. The result of this will be that there will be a huge gap of a difference between what his reality really is, with the way he’s experiencing his reality.

In contrast to this, the more a person is concerned for truth, the less he will want to deny what’s taking place inside himself, and he will be ready to face all of the internal contradictions that look ugly. It doesn’t matter to him how many qualities he has versus how many deficiencies he has, because that is not his concern. He doesn’t wallow in his own self. Instead, he realizes that whatever deficiencies and qualities he has are granted to him from Hashem, and the same goes for all others that he sees. Some people have less qualities and deficiencies than others and some have more, but this makes no difference, because all of these qualities and deficiencies are entirely from Hashem, and not from the people that you see.

As a person gets used to this perspective, along with being prepared to work hard at the struggle of our life [which includes fighting against the evil inclination and improving our inner character], a person becomes more self-aware, he becomes more and more aware of truths, he then works harder on himself, and he will discover more and more contradictions in his character. He will grow closer and closer to his true self, because he will recognize himself better and better, and his avodah will be more sound and precise.

The Contradiction Contained In Honor of Fire-of-Earth-of-Fire

Until now, we explained here the concept of inner contradictions in general, which is a broad topic. Now we will focus on a particular application of this concept, which is the subject of this chapter: honor that stems from fire-of-earth-of-fire, which contains one of the most fundamental contradictions in the soul.

Fire-of-earth-of-fire, as we explained, is a contradictory force. Its fire causes a desire for ascension, its earth weighs its down, and there is also a third factor here: the ‘heaviness’ within the element of earth weighs down the fire, which propels the fire higher. The ‘heavier’ the soul becomes, the more it will feel like it is ascending! How can this be? How can a person feel as if he is ‘ascending’ higher, through being ‘weighed’ down? But this is exactly the depth of its contradiction!

Upon reflection into this concept, we can notice the following insight about human nature [in particular, with regards to the trait of honor]. A person might have two negative character traits taking place at once, which are contradictory forces of each other, yet he denies the negative character trait that is contradicting the other negative character trait. He can’t contain the contradiction in himself of being weighed down and feeling honored at the same time. But if a person has developed the idea of accepting his own inner contradictions, he is able to live with the contradiction – and that is exactly what empowers his desire for honor.

This is the meaning of the term nefesh chareivah, “desolate soul”. The word “chareivah” is from the word “churban” (destruction), which can also mean “contradiction”, as in the term, “He builds worlds and destroys them”. The soul can [negatively] thrive on destruction\contradiction.

A Contradictory Force, In And Of Itself

Let us explain this concept better, so that it should be clear.

Until now, we explained that there are contradictory forces in the soul, which a person tends to deny, in order to avoid dealing with them. Now we are pointing out an additional insight: there can be a contradictory force in the soul in and of itself.

Fire-of-earth-of-fire in the soul, which on one hand is “weighed down” at a low point and on the other hand seeks to go higher, is not simply a contradictory force in the sense that it denies one of these aspects.

If there would be a denial here of one of these forces, a person wouldn’t feel any desire for honor, because if the person only views himself as being at a lower plane, he doesn’t feel honored, and if he views himself as being on the higher plane, he doesn’t need the honor; rather, it must be that the person views himself both as being lower as well as higher. And yet, a person is able to learn to live with this contradiction and not be bothered by it, and that is what enables him to feel honored - in spite of the fact that he is not actually elated, and instead ‘weighed down’ by the ‘heaviness’ of earth.

This sounds illogical, because why would a person feel honored if he views himself as being at a low point? But the truth is that this desire for honor is not logical! It cannot be comprehended, logically, why a person would feel honored in this way. It is like any of the other forces in the “animal” layer of the soul, such as lust, which does not always make sense logically. Just as lust cannot be understood as anything other than simply a lust, with no logical reason to explain why it is exists, so is it impossible to logically understand how the trait of honor works, especially in the case of honor that stems from fire-of-earth-of-fire, which is a contradictory force in and of itself.

When a person realizes the contradictory forces in himself and he doesn’t want to face them, either he will take his mind off it, by “thinking in learning” (which means that he is simply running away from his inner contradictions) or, he may instead choose to live with the contradictions, picking and choosing certain aspects of his character that are comfortable for him to live with – a clearly negative outcome.

Rectifying Honor of Fire-of-Earth-of-Fire: Becoming Pained Upon Noticing Inner Contradictions

By contrast, if a person has become more self-aware and he is prepared to accept his own inner contradictions, he will learn how to see contradictory forces within each thing he encounters, and then he will be pained by the contradictions, and then he will not want to live off these contradictions.

This is the depth behind all of the machlokes (argument) that we come across in the words of our Sages when learning Gemara: it is because there are always contradictions in everything we come across. The Gemara is full of machlokes between the Sages, so that we can be trained to see contradictions in each thing we come across. (On a deeper level, there is no machlokes at all, for  there is a rule that “Their words and their words are the words of the living G-d”[1]; and when one is missing this perspective, his arguments are on a level of Korach and his assembly).  

If one is not aware of this, though, he may have learned Gemara for many years and he has been through many arguments of the Sages, but all he has done is gathered more and more arguments together, without understanding what all of this machlokes about.

First one needs to absorb this concept on an intellectual level, and then sense it in his heart, that we are meant to see contradictions in each thing we come across. This must be coupled with a search for truth.

After a person gets used to uncovering contradictions in everything, he will develop a sensitivity to contradictions, and when he discovers his own inner contradictions, he will find them painful. This is the meaning of the verse, “An increase of knowledge, is an increase of pain”.[2] The more inner contradictions a person discovers in himself, the more painful it will feel.

When a person is pained by contradictions, he will then have a hard time living with contradictions. He will then have an easier time rectifying the honor that stems from fire-of-earth-of-fire, which is fueled by a contradictory feeling of being higher and lower at once, because he will be pained by this contradiction and he will wish to disconnect from it.

This will not get him to stop pursuing honor entirely, but it will surely take away the strength of this kind of honor, which gets it fuel from making use of contradictory forces.

This will only work, however, if a person has gotten used to recognizing contradictions in everything he comes across, as we explained; which will in turn weaken his habit of living off the contradictions.