From Falls to Ascent

In material matters such as health and  livelihood, it’s clear that we need to believe that everything that happens is all from Hashem, but the truth is that not everyone realizes this. Even so, when a person has a mental understanding of this, he’ll be able to recognize this if you explain it to him.  We need to know that this is also how it works with spiritual matters.  Whatever doesn’t work out for you, or every time the evil inclination beats you, every fall, difficulty, and lust, know that this is all “I am Hashem”.  The foundation that everything is from Him, may His name be blessed, is true for everything, both physical and spiritual.  If a person would know that his evil inclination and all of its fight against him is all from Hashem, then he’d say thank You for all of it and respond to it fittingly – then he’d merit fixing everything and going upwards in the service of Hashem.

However, concerning matters of spirituality, it’s hard for a person to recognize that everything is from Hashem.  A person says in his heart: ‘I have free will and I had the ability to choose good, but in the end I chose bad – it’s all my fault.’  Therefore we need to learn over and over again until we internalize the principle that the Gemara says that unless Hashem helps, a person cannot overpower his evil inclination!  This means that a person needs help from Hashem also in matters of free will.  Therefore, before every action, a person needs to remember that he needs Hashem’s help to succeed and to avoid failure.  Then, after a failure, he must know that Hashem didn’t help him.  After he’s already failed there’s a new way to exercise his free-will:  to think, Heaven forbid, that now, too, he doesn’t need Hashem’s help, the direct result of which is to blame himself in his failure and fall to self-persecution.  The result of this is clear – he’ll be depressed and distance himself from Hashem and from prayer.  His other option is to know that he needs Hashem’s help and ask Hashem to let him know that the reason he failed in the first place was because Hashem didn’t help him and ask Hashem to let him know why He didn’t help.

When a person wants to understand what Hashem wants from him, first he needs to say thank You for every fall or failure in spirituality. A person asks: “I’m going to say thank You for sinning and going against what Hashem wants?!”  This question comes from not knowing what it means ‘to say thank You for failing’.  Certainly you’re not happy about sin and you don’t say "thank You for the sin".  A sin is a sin and a person needs to regret sinning and repent.  If so, for what do we say thank You?  We’re saying thank You for the knowledge that we acquired: because of the failure, you woke up and became aware that you need Hashem’s help – the thanksgiving is for the emuna and for the knowledge that you acquired only as a result of failing.

The knowledge of emuna is that you don’t have the power to overcome the evil inclination without the help of The Holy One, blessed be He. If you weren’t successful, then you have to admit that Hashem didn’t help you.  If Hashem didn’t help you then this is certainly for the good, because everything that Hashem does, he does for the good. You thank Him for waking you up and bringing you closer to Him by way of not helping you.  If you don’t say thank You for your spiritual failures, it’s a sign that you think that “you” failed - that is to say that you think you’re a reality and it’s in your hands to fail – this is atheism and arrogance.  If so, you’ll never be able to succeed or make progress because you want to succeed “on your own”, without recognizing the truth - that it’s all just Hashem.  Practically speaking, you’re living a huge lie.  The only real mark of “I am Hashem” is giving thanks for everything and this is the only first step towards genuine rectification.

Therefore a person needs at least an hour of hitbodedut [personal prayer in your own words] of proper repentance and self-evaluation each day.  This hitbodedut will bring him back to living the reality of Hashem - that everything is “I am Hashem”, and giving thanks for everything and requesting  forgiveness.  It’s forbidden to remain with the feeling of “sorry, I sinned” and that’s it.  Rather we need to understand that his sinning is also what Hashem wants, because Hashem didn’t help him in order to teach him emuna and this is genuinely good.  With every sin, first say thank You and say to Hashem: “Thank You for not helping me so that I can internalize the knowledge that I can’t make it without You; I need You always.  Even with spiritual matters I need Your help to choose properly.  Also, when I fall, help me to choose to learn emuna from it instead of falling into depression.”  Then, only after a person comes to recognize this and says thank You, as we learned, he can come and ask Hashem for help not to fail in the future and ask for more help from Hashem, because only He can help him in the war against the evil inclination.  This way he’ll learn how to live the reality of Hashem in every situation and how to get closer to Hashem through all of the falls and tests of life. That way, the falls turn into the greatest ascents.

By: Rabbi Shalom Arush.

Website: http://www.breslev.co.il