Getting To Know Your Hisboddedus Practice - 016 The Way of External Simplicity

Getting Closer To The Inner Point of Hisbodedus

With the help of Heaven, in the previous chapters, we were able to explain the stages of hisbodedus with the Creator: hodaah (thanking Hashem), tefillah (praying to Hashem for our requests), and more recently, we explained how to reveal the depth of our ahavah (love) for the Creator.

All of these stages are essentially the preface of how we can bring ourselves, with Hashem’s help, to the inner point of hisbodedus. The inner point of hisbodedus is not about thanking Hashem or davening to Him, nor is it mainly about revealing our love for Him. The essence of hisbodedus which we are coming towards is to feel the very existence of Hashem.

This is not a superficial kind of emotion, inspiration, or enthusiasm. It is to experience a recognition of the true reality of Hashem (hakaras hametzius).

This is the outline of the goal, and we will hopefully expand upon these words and explain how we can get there.

Internalizing The Purpose of Life

Firstly, every Jew needs to know, that our entire purpose in life – whether you are Jewish or not, but it is especially applicable to a Jew is to come to recognize the Creator. We must come to recognize Him, and that is the purpose of our entire life. We must know, and internalize in our hearts, that there is nothing besides Hashem, as it is written, “And you shall know today and you shall return the matter upon your hearts, that Hashem is G-d, and that there is nothing besides Him.”

Even if a person knows this intellectually, it is not enough, because life takes us in all kinds of directions that hold back this recognition from us. Therefore, each of us must deeply ingrain in ourselves what the purpose of life is (to come to recognize how Hashem is the true reality and that there is no other point to life other than this0. We must be very clear that this is the goal of all our life. It should be clear to both your intellect and your heart of why you live, what the purpose of life is: to recognize the reality of Hashem.

This is the purpose of life, and it is also the depth of the goal of hisbodedus. The goal of hisbodedus is to become separated internally from everything, and to be concentrated fully on the knowledge of this goal: that the goal is to recognize how Hashem is the reality. Everything else that we explained so far with regards to hisbodedus were just the rungs in the ladder we climb to get to the top of the ladder . The top of the ladder is the goal.

The stages of cheshbon hanefesh, tefillah, and ahavas Hashem, etc.were all tools we need to get to the goal, and they are necessary, but they are all there to bring us to the inner point of our soul, where the true hisbodedus is reached. It is in the innermost point of the soul in which one can become totally secluded from everything around him and be fully immersed in recognizing Hashem, with his entire mind and heart.

Purity of Heart and Inner Calm

There are two fundamental inner abilities in our soul which can bring us to that innermost point of recognizing the reality of Hashem.

One inner ability to get there is through taharas halev, “purity of heart.” Every day (in the blessings before Kerias Shema) we daven, “And purify our hearts to serve You in truth.” The more a person purifies his heart, the more he experiences a recognition of Hashem.

The second ability which can us help us get there is the ability of inner calm (hashkatah, or sheket pnimi). The more inner calm that a person reaches in his soul, the more he can palpably feel Hashem.[1]

1) Purity of Heart: Keeping The Mitzvos

Purity of heart can be attained not only during hisbodedus; it can be attained throughout the rest of the day as well. All of the mitzvos are able to bring us to purify our hearts more and more. The 365 negative commandments that we have are meant to keep us away from contaminating our soul, and the 248 positive commandments we have are given to us to shine a pure spiritual light upon our soul.

Thus, purity of heart can be attained throughout the course of the entire day, and it is not attained exclusively through hisbodedus.

2) Purity Of Heart : Fixing Our Worst Middah

In addition, tikkun hamiddos (improving our character) also provides us with purity of heart. When a person has bad middos, they remain entrenched in the heart and cover it, preventing purity of heart from entering the person.

Therefore, a person has to find out what his good middos are and what his bad middos are, and he should discover the worst middah he has and then sensibly go about trying to uproot it from within himself.

The more a person works to uproot his worst middah, the more purity of heart that will enter him.

Thus, purity of heart entails doing the mitzvos, avoiding sin, and improving our middos, in particular, to uproot one’s personal worst middah.

3) Purity of Heart: Temimus (Point of Simple Belief in Hashem)

There is also a third power which enables a person to receive purity of heart: the power of temimus(wholesomeness, simplicity, earnestness, simple belief, innocence). It is written, “You shall be tamim (wholesome) to Hashem.” It is also written, “Like an infant on its mother’s lap.”

The first two parts to purity of heart – doing the mitzvos and improving our middos – are not exclusive to hisbodedus. But the third part of attaining purity of heart – uncovering our temimus – is a very inner kind of experience, in which a person enters deep into his soul and feels the temimus there. When a person feels his deep point of temimus [during hisbodedus], he will feel purity of heart with it.

Hisbodedus and Temimus Are Mutually Exclusive

We need to know that hisbodedus is required in order to reach the deep place in your soul of temimus.

If someone practices hisbodedus and he isn’t interested in reaching his temimus, he is missing the main point of hisbodedus.

He is trying to bypass the main gate he needs to enter in order to discover Hashem. “You shall be tamim to Hashem” – the more a person is a tamim, the more he is with Hashem, for he has penetrated the main obstacles.

Although this is not such a well-known concept to those who are involved in hisbodedus, that doesn’t take away from the importance of it. It must become a very well-known concept to you. The inner essence of hisbodedus, [if one ever hopes to reach it], requires one to reach his point of temimus in the soul.

We will soon try to explain, with the help of Heaven, how exactly we can get to that point.

Getting Back Your Long Lost “Temimus”

The point of temimus in the soul is not some ability found outside of you which you need to acquire. All of the abilities you need to acquire are actually found inside of you, in their potential state, and it is merely upon you to bring them out from the soul into their active state.

Temimus is already in you, and even more so, it is already active in you. It has merely become covered over by many layers! You already had temimus when you were a child. When you were a child, you were “an infant on its mother’s lap” – you were earnest and believing. As you got older and you went through life, your temimus became buried under many layers, and now it is covered.

If the situation would be that your temimus was never activated yet in your life, it would be much more difficult to try to activate it. But it was already activated in you before in your life, and it has merely become covered, so it is much easier for you to remove the coverings and reveal it again.

Just like every other ability we have, temimus can be used for either good or evil. It is used for evil when a person believes everything he hears, which is foolish naiveté. It is holy when a person is a tamim in his relationship with Hashem – when he believes in Him simply with no questions.

If a person thinks that temimus means to be naïve and foolish, then he does not recognize the benefits of having temimus, so he will not be able to uncover it from within himself. He won’t be interested in acquiring it.

Therefore, the first thing a person needs to think about here is to realize that temimus is a power that can be used for either good or evil. Realize that you can use temimus for holiness, and then you can awaken in yourself a yearning to reveal it.

With the help of Hashem, we will now explain a few ways of how we can awaken our temimus.

1) Revealing Your Temimus: Identifying Temimus In Your Life

The first thing to think is as follows. Examine your daily life and try to identify where you have temimus. Where do you see your temimus manifesting itself in your life? Most of us can remember a time in life in which we trusted someone only to be deceived by the person, resulting in a loss of money or in some kind of betrayal.

If you can remember such an experience in your life, you can begin to conceptualize that you had temimus at one point of your life, but it was used in the wrong place. The fact that you were betrayed doesn’t mean that being pure and trusting is a bad thing. It is merely a sign that you didn’t know how to use your temimus, and that is why someone else took advantage of your temimus and harmed you. It is merely upon you to know how to use your temimus properly.

After you discover a time in your life in which you didn’t know how to use your temimus properly, now is the time to regret having used it improperly.

If you identify in yourself how you use your temimus constructively (such as the fact that you trust your spouse or friends, and you see that trusting them enables you to gain from them), try to concentrate on that part in yourself and try to bring it out of yourself, by seeing opportunities which can utilize your temimus.

Don’t just imagine yourself bringing out your temimus. Instead, become self-aware of your already existent temimus in the parts of life in which you see it, and try to expand it further from how much it already is present in your life.

2) Revealing Your Temimus: Returning To Your Inner Child

Another way how you can bring out your temimus is as follows.

When we were all children, we were all pure and trusting, but as we got older and we got a taste of life, we encountered betrayal from others; we realized that not everyone on this world is so nice to us. People tricked us or took advantage over us or spoke about us behind our backs.

It is a long time already that we have lost our temimus. How do we return to our temimus? How can we get it back?

The way you can do it is by returning to the inner childthat is in your soul. There is a place in your soul which contains your childhood, in which you were pure and trusting. There are many aspects to this inner child that you have in your soul, but we are currently discussing one of the aspects of the inner child, which is the point of temimus in your soul. When you were a child, you had temimus, and you can return to it when you concentrate on it.

For example, look a picture or a family video of yourself when you were a child (most of us have such pictures), and think about how pure and trusting you were then, by examining your facial expressions and the like. Don’t just think about what you were doing in the picture - that’s not the point. Just concentrate on the fact that you were so innocent and trusting when you were a child, and now try to attach your current self to the way you were then: pure and trusting. (It is difficult to describe this in words - not everything can be described in the word.)[2]

3) Returning To Your Temimus: Reading A Story of A Gadol

Another way of revealing your temimus is by reading a story about a Gadol and see how much temimus they had.

You can do this by reading the Chumash and you learn about the lives of our Avos. Or, you can think about people even in this generation, such as people in your surroundings, who clearly possess temimus.

This will cause your soul to become awakened to temimus, a wish to become close to Hashem.

4) The Deeper Method of Revealing Your Temimus

We have so far brought three ways of how to awaken temimus. However, there is a fourth method as well, and it is the deepest and most fundamental of all of them: to reflect on how Hashem is above our understanding, and believe fully in this.

This is a way to directly penetrate into your temimus. It is the most inner method to awaken your temimus.

The deeper your belief is, the more you will feel the temimus of it.

The higher of a spiritual level that a person reaches, the more internal a person becomes, the more he is in touch with his temimus. Of course, all of our Gedolim possessed great intellect and comprehension, but at the same time, their temimus developed along with their minds.

Yaakov Avinu is called the ish tam (man of wholesomeness), and he is also called by our Sages as “the choicest of the Avos”. The depth of this is that because he reached the most temimus, that is why he is considered the most prominent of the Avos, because temimus is the barometer that measures a person’s true greatness.

The more that a person has simple belief in Hashem and that He is in charge of everything, the less he will have worries and fears with regards to people in the world. By contrast, the less temimus a person has, the more he will have fears and worries of people of this world.

Enjoying Temimus In Yourself and In Observing Others

The more a person reaches his temimus, the more he should strive to enjoy it. We all love to see the pure look on a baby’s face, and the inner reason behind this is because our soul loves to experience temimus, innocence and purity. So too, when we reach on our own temimus, within ourselves, it should be to us a deeply enjoyable experience.

Talking To Hashem From Your Point of Temimus

If a person comes to actually enjoy his point of temimus – not just that he recognizes what temimus is, but that he actually enjoys seeing temimus in others and in himself – he now has the power to penetrate into his point of temimus in his soul when he does hisbodedus, and from there, he can talk to Hashem from an entirely deeper place in himself than before.

The Chofetz Chaim, as is well-known, would practice hisbodedus for 2 hours a day. He would talk to Hashem during that time, and someone overheard him once talking to Hashem like a child asking something from a father, with such earnestness. In the recent video that was released of the Chofetz Chaim, you can see the pure and innocent look on his face. Although the Chofetz Chaim possessed intellectual brilliance, at the same time, he was utterly a tamim in his relationship with Hashem.

The Pure Place Within Yourself

Entering the point of temimus in your soul is essentially how you can free yourself from this entire world; it will feel so relieving! The world, ever since the sin of Adam and Chava, has become a world mixed with good and evil. Once daas of the Eitz HaDaas entered mankind, the world really became a deceitful place, a world that tends to deviate from the truth and from purity and innocence. When a person connects to the point of temimus in his soul, he essentially disconnects from this devious world.

It is a deep and inner kind of enjoyment that one can experience, for two reasons: the fact that he has disconnected from this big bad world of trickery and evil, and because he has entered a place in himself which is true, pure and pleasant, the place of temimus.

Temimus – The Essence of Hisbodedus

As we explained in the past, the external part of hisbodedus is to be physically secluded from the surroundings and be alone in the physical sense. But the inner part of hisbodedus is to enter deeper and deeper into the soul, deeper and deeper.

Just like we see in the physical world that there are places such as a shul, a beis midrash, a house, etc. so are there places in our soul, and there is a place of hisbodedus in our soul. Where is the place of hisbodedus in our soul? It is found in the place of temimus. When you reach your point of temimus - that is the place of true hisbodedus!

Yaakov was called the ish tam, and we also fought the angel “alone” – this hints to us that the “alone” in the soul is reached through the place of temimus.

What Hisbodedus Looks Like Without Temimus

Many people are doing hisbodedus but they aren’t successful, and there are many reasons for this, but the main reason for this is because they aren’t reaching their temimus. They are trying to do hisbodedus in a place in their soul where they can’t really do hisbodedus! This can be compared to someone who is trying to do hisbodedus in middle of the marketplace…

Some people are on a very high spiritual level and they can be very deeply concentrated in their internal world, even as they are amidst a lot of noise; the Chovos HaLevovos describes such a level. But most people are not able to concentrate so deeply when there is a lot of noise. So too, one who does not reach his temimus does not really know how to do true hisbodedus, because without entering the place of temimus in the soul, he’s really amidst a lot of inner noise.

In Conclusion

When a person enters deep within [through concentrating on his point of temimus], and he has also purified his heart through keeping the mitzvos and through attaining the deepest possible inner silence (as was explained in the earlier chapters), he will be able to completely feel and sense the reality of Hashem.

May all of us merit - the entire Jewish people, as well as all of Creation – to completely recognize the Creator.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WITH THE RAV

Q1: I want to reach my temimus, but how do I nullify my yetzer hora which is telling me that I must understand things?

A: We cannot fight completely our connection to this world, therefore, practically speaking, we should find parts of temimus in our life and identify with them, as opposed to trying to fight our connection with the world head-on. It is more practical to focus on the positive than to try to get rid of all the negativity; the current shiur was based on this approach.

Q2: But how do I nullify my will to understand things?

A: That is a very fundamental question. Do you think you understand everything? (Of course not). How much percentage do you think you can understand, and how much percentage do you think you can’t understand?

Q3: I know in my intellect that I can’t understand everything, but how do I nullify my will to understand things?

A: The will to understand things can either come from curiosity or from haughtiness. If it is coming from curiosity, you can train yourself to pull away from the questions, slowly but surely. If it comes from haughtiness, the way to fix this, generally, is to become more humble.

Q4: Is temimus my essence, or is it one of our middos?

A: It is a middah, but it is not just one of the middos; it is the root of all the middos. The Torah is called “Toras Hashem Temimah” – it is perfect because it contains everything. So too, temimus is the root power of all the powers in our soul, because it can lead us to everything else.

Q5: If I read a book about a Gadol and I am trying to relate to temimus within my own self, how can I identify if I am identifying my good temimus or my evil temimus?

A: It depends. If you are reading about a good story which brings out the point of temimus, then you have identified your good temimus, and if you read a bad story which makes you believe and accept things that are not good, you are identifying your evil kind of temimus.

Q6: When I think about my childhood I am reminded of negative experiences that took place when I had my temimus, so is this negative temimus?

A: The point of looking at a picture of your child self is so that you should focus on the positive side of your temimus, and do not think about the negative experiences. If you had experiences when you were a child and you get reminded of it when you look at the pictures of your child self, then you can get rid of the scars through increasing your emunah in Hashem and that He was behind it all.

***

After the shiur, the Rav was asked to speak about the current situation in Eretz Yisroel (the recent wave of terror attacks since the start of Tishrei 5775):

Q:  Can The Rov please speak about what’s going on in Eretz Yisrael?

A: I am assuming that most of you listening are not from Eretz Yisrael – so why do you want to know what’s going on in Eretz Yisrael…?

(It is because we feel that we are all found there).

Baruch Hashem.

There is a spiritual dimension of reality, and a physical dimension of reality. The spiritual reality is currently mixed up and confused and lacking clarity because it is so mixed up. There is almost no beacon of light visible, except for a few rays of light here and there.  When this almost total confusion carries over into our physical dimension, it manifests in our physical world as the confusion and chaos that we see. As long as everything looks fine in this physical world, the spiritual world cannot be revealed. But, when the physical world becomes overwhelmingly chaotic, mirroring the chaos in the spiritual dimension, then the confusion increases until the physical dimension finally explodes.

When the physical dimension in front of us finally explodes, Moshiach will be revealed.

An additional reason for [the chaos now] involves the concept of hisbodedus. Throughout the generations, most of the wars fought were between nation and nation. But in the last few years, we can see in Israel, as well as outside of Israel, that there all kinds of wars. The people fighting in Syria are a gathering of many people; they are not the nation of Syria alone, rather, they are a combination of many different nations who are fighting each other. The depth of this is that we are living in a generation of “the individual” in which each person fights alone.

Yaakov Avinu fought alone with the angel, and this reflects the holy kind of being alone, which is hisbodedus. This is the generation of hisbodedus and, therefore, we have a unique ability to tap into this innate power of hisbodedus.  But the evil kind of “alone” is the evil kind of individualism which we see rampant in today’s time, in which each person acts individually, for evil purposes [doing their “own thing”].

A person in this generation must separate from their surroundings and live internally, alone with Hashem. The light that is created by the individual can of course shine onto the rest of the world and raise his surroundings in holiness. Practically speaking, a person needs to live internally, alone, just him and Hashem.

So, when should a person do hisbodedus? Will he wait until the grave to be alone…?  Chazal explain that Gog and Magog will merit burial. In order to survive the war of Gog and Magog (the final war), one must be “alone” (to live internally with Hashem), in order to merit the meaning of “And Yaakov fought alone, until the dawn of the morning.” Before the final redemption will be the war of “Yaakov fought alone …” [Each individual needs to persevere until the dawn of the morning.] One can be involved with his environment, of course, and help people, but he must build his internal world, so that he will be able to survive the war of Gog and Magog. The war which we are in today, in the world and especially in Israel, is a war reflecting our struggle of the hisbodedus we do.

May we merit the coming of the dawn, in which the recognition of Hashem will shine completely, may it come speedily in our days, Amen.