Woman's World - 015 Self-Recognition is Prerequisite to Prayer

The Feelings

Until now we spoke about applying our feelings to Tefillah – our inner feelings, which are to really feel the reality of a matter. A person has to build up his self in order to truly feel another person’s reality.

To illustrate, imagine if a person is homeless. If such a person visits other people’s houses, he still feels homeless.

In order to feel what others are feeling, we need to build up our own feelings – to develop our own self, in order for us to feel others properly.

Let us now go to the next step, which is beyond the feelings.

The Self

All of us know that we have a self to us, an “I” that exists in us. But we must know how to identify our “I.” We are not our body. There are three steps to self-recognition.

First of all, we must realize we exist. The second thing we must know is to know what exactly our “self” is.

We must realize who we are and where we are. We must be very clear about how to identify ourselves – who we are and where we are.

The first part, our existence, needs to become more revealed in our life. It is not enough to just know in general that we exist – we have to actually take our existence and reveal it more in our life. We have to reach our existence; without this, we never reach ourselves and we will never be able to really connect to Hashem.

When we connect to Hashem, we are essentially connecting our self to Him. But if we don’t know what our self is, we having nothing to connect with. We must become aware of our true existence and then with that, to connect our “I” to Hashem.

In Tefillah, a person davens from his innermost depths. It comes from the “I” in a person, the true self of a person. If there is no revelation of one’s “I”, our Tefillah doesn’t emanate from our true self and we cannot connect to Hashem.

Without knowing about our self, we live just with our feelings, and we will only derive vitality from external factors that are superficial. But if we are aware of our existence – our essential self – we will be able to derive a real source of vitality in our life, and we won’t have to look elsewhere to get vitality. We will be able to get it all from within ourselves.

“I Am Prayer”

Dovid HaMelech said, “And I am prayer.” What does this mean that “I” am prayer?

It means that one’s prayer is supposed to come from his “I”, his true self – not from his mouth and not from his feelings, but from his plain existence.

Your “I” Is Your Existence

“I” am my existence, not “who I am.” I am not my personality type – I am my existence.

We all know that we exist in our intellect, but we need to extend that knowledge to our feelings and to be able to feel it.

The purpose of Creation is to come to recognize Hashem’s existence. If a person doesn’t know of his own existence, he won’t be able to come to realize Hashem’s existence.

The way to reach your true self is to attain a deep inner silence. Every day for at least a minute, a person should silence everything and focus on the fact that he exists. Don’t focus on the other parts to yourself such as your personality or your feelings, but just focus on the fact that you exist.