Droshos - Revealing Our Inner Child

A Prayer for Our Children on Erev Shavuos

On Erev Shavuos, there is a minhag that some people have to say a special Tefillah from the Shelah HaKadosh to succeed in raising children. Avraham Avinu was the first person to start believing in Hashem. Let us try to understand how he was able to come to this, and through that, we will able to understand how we can raise our own children with Emunah.

Emunah: The Ability of Trust

What does Emunah mean?

Emunah comes from the word imun, which is “trust.”

Mordechai was “oimen” Hadassah – he knew her. What does it mean that Mordechai “knew” Hadassash? It means that he raised her; Hadassah, who was Esther, was an orphan, and her uncle Mordechai raised her.

Who was the first person we ever believed in our life? The first person we believed in was our mother! Indeed, emunah has the word “eim” (mother) in it, because the first person we have emunah in is our mother. Avraham also believed in his mother first, but this was not enough for him. He eventually had to leave his parents, and he needed something else to believe in. That is what led him to believe in Hashem.

In life, we believe in many things. We are constantly using a power to “believe.” Why did Hashem make it that way? Why is it that we first believe in our parents and place our trust in them? It is so that eventually, we will use this power to believe -- in Hashem.

Believe in Yourself First

As parents, from where can we derive a power to instill emunah in our children?

Our children are picking up what we teach them, but that is only if we ourselves believe in what we are teaching them. A child believes in whatever his parents say. Are the parents remaining truthful to what they themselves teach to their children? A child will only come to believe in Hashem if he first believed in his parents. But if the child was brought up with parents who themselves don’t believe in truths, then the child picks up on it and doesn’t believe so much what his parents teach. He will have a very hard time later having belief in Hashem.

Before you instill belief in your child, ask yourself: Do I believe in myself?

Every person has an ability to believe in himself; this is the power of Emunah that we use to believe in our own self. When a person believes in himself, he is able to pull himself together. If he commits a sin, he can do Teshuvah, because he believes in himself. But without believing in yourself, then you separate what is true from who you are, and the “truth” and “you” are two separate entities…

If you believe in yourself, you can extend that to others and get others to believe. But if you don’t believe in yourself, how will you get someone else to believe?!

The Gemara says that if you ever see a Torah scholar commit a sin, you can be sure that he repented that very day. A Torah scholar is called a “chaver”, a friend. This is because a Torah scholar has reached the ability to believe in himself, and because he believes in himself, he is able to do Teshuvah. A Talmid Chochom believes in himself, and that is actually what enables others to believe in him.

Why is it that people have a hard time having Emunah in Hashem? Is it because we don’t believe enough in Hashem? That is not the root cause. The real reason why we don’t have Emunah is because we don’t even believe in ourselves.

The Time in Our Life When We Were Pure and Trusting

Emunah is really to go back to the right path which we know is the truth. We all yearn to go back to our roots, just like a child longs to go back to his mother, who is the first person he believes in.

When we started out in life, we were very pure; we had temimus, simple belief. We need to return to that state of childlike purity which we were born with – the power of simple trust in another. When we were children, we naturally believed in our mother, and now that we are adults, we need to naturally believe in Hashem.

The reason why we people lack Emunah in Hashem is because they only believed in their parents. We need to go back to the point in time when we were children.

When was our life better – now, or when we were children? A child seems to have a very happy, carefree life. He doesn’t have problems. A child doesn’t have to worry about mortgaging his home, he has no financial stress, he doesn’t have a baby keeping him up at night. Is there any one of us who doesn’t wish he could just go back to being a child again? Yes, we want to remain with our accomplishments in our life, but can we ever back to our childlike state somehow without sacrificing that?

How You Should Get Into Bed

When we go to sleep at night, our soul goes up to Heaven. We don’t worry when we go to sleep that our soul will go to the wrong place at night. We have many scary dreams at night – what is the reason for this? It is because our soul is entering frightening places, and our souls feels this; this is the source of nightmares. Why aren’t we scared that our soul will go to dangerous places at night? The answer is because we naturally trust in Hashem that He will protect our soul.

Imagine yourself going to sleep, and that you are laying in your mother’s lap, safe and secure. That is how you should go to sleep at night – feel safe in Hashem’s hand, that He is taking care of your soul.

If you do this, you will actually sleep better and you’ll feel more refreshed in the morning. But this is only if you do “Teshuvah” before you go to sleep – in other words, if you “return” to your source. Believe in yourself! Believe that you are doing your best, even though you make mistakes.

The “Inner Child” In You

Children have a quality called temimus. They believe everything we tell them. We need to also connect to this quality. Are we ready to connect to that childlike state? Are we ready to accept simple truths? Do we believe in ourselves that we can be like that? Do we believe that reaching this quality will change our life for the better? You can stay very smart, but you can still gain the pure temimus of a child as well in your life.

If you want to feel like a child again, you don’t have to die and become born again in another lifetime. You can do it right now – in your own lifetime. We all have this power of temimus in ourselves, but it is just covered up.

Who are we relying on? Are we relying on Hashem, the same way a child relies on his mother? That is the kind of pure trust we need to have in Hashem. But sadly, most people rely on the money in their bank account, or on their cellphones, in order to feel safe and secure.

One day, we will all leave this world. Our souls will separate from our bodies. Where will our soul go? It will fly upwards. What happens if no one comes to collect our soul from where it is? Who will bring our soul to Gan Eden?

A child who needs his parents to pick him up from school naturally relies that his parents will come pick him up. Do we have the same reliance on Hashem? Do we believe that He will come and pick us up to where we need to go – when the time comes? We have to believe and trust in Him no less than how a child naturally relies on his parents.

If we have this simple trust in Hashem, we can instill it in our children.

A baby does not think so much. A toddler doesn’t think about his past day. Adults, though, have feelings and thoughts from the past. Is this a good think or a bad thing? It makes us so sad. But we have a great ability in us – the power to forget. We can forget all our past mistakes, all our past frustrations and sadness – and return to that state of being a child.

A child’s state of mind is very pure, because he has no past to haunt him. People have heart attacks only because they think about stressful events of the past. If we learn how to forget the past, we can erase it, and become like a child again – pure and innocent.

How To Reach Your Calmness

How can we do this? Sit in a quiet place and calm all your feelings and thoughts. You can reach a calm and quiet place in your soul which is untainted by anything in your life. This is the “child” within you that you can reach – a place in your soul that is totally calm and has no pain.

 A Power for Life

This is a power which we can use throughout our entire life – we have an ability to forget the past and erase it, emptying out all our raging thoughts and feelings that we have gone through in our life.

We all feel worn out from life. We are all physically and emotionally drained. How many people do you know feel refreshed? There is a possuk that says that tzaddikim get more refreshed as they get older. How is this possible?

Children are full of energy. Where does all that energy go? Does it just dry up when you get older? No, it stays there, and it is deep down in us. You are able to become young and energetic again. How can you do this? You can do it by forgetting your past mistakes and frustration, and erase all the stress up until now from your life that has piled up. This is not too hard to do. We can all relate to such a concept.

There are so many problems in life! People are so worn out from life. There is so much sickness and hardships going on in life. Do we want to stay in them, or do we want to have a place in ourselves where we can escape to? There is a place which we can form in our soul where we can go to and feel refreshed and energized, away from all the stress of life. It is an ability to go back to our childlike state. No matter what age you are, you can go back to the stage of childhood in you – that time in your life when you were so pure, trusting and free from pain.

If we don’t build up this power in ourselves, how can we expect our children to lead a stress-free life? The more we connect to our childlike state, the more we will be able to connect to our children in a deeply emotional and highly effective way.

Communicating With Our Children Through Our “Inner Child”

Do parents today have an emotional connection with their children? Do we understand them? Yes, we love them. But do we have an emotional connection with them? Do we understand them? If we think we understand them, then why do many children say their parents don’t understand them?

Although many parents talk to their children and encourage them to talk about their experiences, this alone still doesn’t get them to think that we understand them. The child can still sense that he and his parents are not on the same page.

The child really wants the parents to “play his game”, not the agenda which they have for him. If the child senses that the parents are playing along with him in his “game” – when he sees that the parents relate to his childish antics – then the child will feel that his parents understand him.

How indeed can we play our child’s game? Simply, when it comes to actions, you can sit down with your child as he’s playing a game and play with him. But what about how you talk to your child? When you talk to your child, are you ever doing so with the understanding of the childlike state?

You need to talk to him also with a child’s sensitivity. We usually don’t communicate with them with sensitivity that a child wants to see. We can understand very well when it comes to actions that we need to “play” with him and be like a child with him, but when it comes to communication with our children, it is hard for us to understand why we also need to be connected to our childlike state with them.

How can we do it? It is when we develop a place in our soul that is totally calm and stress-free. We need to come back to the child within ourselves, and then we will be able to connect to our children, all the time – not just when it comes to actions, but even in how we talk to them.

Children often like to explore and go on adventures, while adults are more stable and don’t venture so much. We as parents need to come back to that stage of “exploring” in ourselves – our childlike state within – and from there, we will then be able to have a connection with our children.

In Conclusion

Let us make a summary of what we have said, and make this practical.

If we want to escape the stress of life, we need to know how to empty out all our past feelings and thoughts. We can then go back to our beginning, the time when we were a child. This is the time when we were happy, pure, and fresh. From this place we can truly speak to Hashem, and when we learn how talk like that to Hashem – to talk to Him from that pure, believing place in ourselves – and from there, we can talk to our children in a pure, childlike way that a child enjoys to relate to.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WITH THE ROV

Q: How can we attain this quiet time?

A: Just have utter quiet. No cellphones.

Q: How often must we access our “child” within?

A: Only at times. We do not mean to live in our childlike state 24\7. We just mean that at times, we need to access our “child” in us.

Q: Can we come to our “child” within through Tefillah?

A: You can’t really daven properly unless you have calm and quiet in your life. You need to calm yourself down first if you are to daven properly. Before you daven, you should first quiet your thoughts.

Q: What does it mean to calm your mind? Does it mean to block out all your negative thoughts? How do you get rid of all the negative thoughts that bombard you?

A: This is an excellent question. You have to first realize that your thoughts are not you; they are more like a garment that covers over your actual self. A thought is just something external going on in your head. That itself will calm you down.

Q: Let’s say a child had a very hard, stressful life. How can he go back to his childlike state, since he never had a calm stage in his life to begin with?

A: This is a very good question. When did the stress take place – as soon as he was born, or a little later in his life? That is one thing you have to know. If it only came later in the childhood, then you can still go back into that point of time before the stress came, when you had no stress yet. But if a person has been having a chaotic and traumatic life for as long as he can remember, then it’s a bigger issue, because the stress has gone very deep into his sub-conscious. Such a person has a deeper job – he has to return to his very soul, which came before his physical life started. He can do this by remembering that he has a pure soul which has in it no pain, and reflecting into this can be his “childlike” state.

Q: What do you do if you are trying to access your childlike state, but there are external factors that are holding you back from doing so?

A: It’s a very good question. If you have time every day for trying to access it, it will still be a great help to you, even if you don’t get totally helped. It’s like how it’s better to get a little sleep then to have no sleep at all; it still does something for you, even though it doesn’t help you totally.