Two weeks since our last chaburah! It feels like a year has passed!
I hope you were able to speak out loud to Hashem every day of it and had an amazing growth oriented two weeks.
Today we are learning in zchus of complete refuah for Binyamin Chaim Ben Faigie Sarah and Ruchoma Avigayil Maima Rochel Bas Rivka Penina
Bilvavi 2:
Chapter 22: Unconditional Love:
True love comes from the neshama, not from the body:
Need to sense your neshama, feel attached to it, in order to reach this type of love.
There is such a thing as loving Hashem with the body, but can only be reached after this unconditional love from space of neshama (all three parts are included in this term).
Any love that dies away with time is conditional. In Gan Eden, no concept of father and son, because a parent-child relationship is based on our bodies. (there is love based on neshamos only but not called a parent-child or spouse love)
"True love is beyond this world...in this world it is conditional and limited...lasts for a time and then disappears."
In order to love Hashem in this way, need to transcend physical constraints. First need conditional love.
Unconditional love comes from complete union with Hashem (ahava= echad; "Hashem, the Torah, and Yisrael are one unity".
Inherent oneness (like what you feel with yourself) won't cease.
There is an "inherent bond of the Jewish soul with the Creator and His Torah." Rav Chaim of Volozhin wrote that we could not exist without this threefold bond.
Essence love exists where you feel inherently unified with Hashem as you feel at one with yourself.
Two levels of deveikus:
ie, marriage:
1.two people create a bond with one another.
2. return to original oneness (as with Adam Harishon)
either can feel love for Hashem but still separate, of feel total oneness in your soul: unconditional love is this revelation of the essence of the soul.
Tzadikim feel the pain of others. How? They sense the hidden oneness that binds all of our souls (Iyov and his friends were able to feel when one of them was sick, even when far from eachother)
To attain unconditional love:
Must be essentially attached to ruchnius, process of "divesting your soul from your body". This means that you still live in physical world, yet even when doing physical things, your mind and heart are attached to Hashem and ruchnios.
This is not our normal makeup, as our body has needs and will try to lower the soul.
Mesilas Yesharim states that this highest level: "starts with work and ends with reward; starts with effort and ends as a gift." Whatever we attain here, is a gift!
The journey we take to reach this level:
1. simple emunah there is a Creator, and trying to feel His presence.
2. Belief in Divine Providence
3. daven for each thing
4. conditional love
( refine your physicality with each step)
When you reach true ahavas Hashem you will also feel true ahavas Yisrael, a soul based love. You can't have one without the other, because once you reach the space of oneness that's all there is.
In Forest Fields:
(pages 173-177)
To change a midah, requires self composure: example of over-eating
1. Objective thought: no subjective thought involved as to why it's no good for you
2. clarification of truth: knowledge of what damage it does
3. inner strength: will come from realizing it's the same as treif food
4. conviction: nothing will tempt you then!
Every time we succeed, must have gratitude to Hashem. This is essential for reaching self composure= invokes Divine assistance for further improvement 177.
Jewish Meditation:
The meditative schools required strict discipline and regimen. Therefore, others opted to go the easy route and meditate to have the experience (likened to taking drugs)-"lust for idolatry".
Once we went to galus, scattered everywhere, no discipline and regimen could be properly imposed so Anshei Knesses Hagedola made the amidah to act as a "standing" prayer, said three times a day. Talmud verifies that the original intention that this was said as a meditation tefilah.
Read inside for the entire history of Jewish meditation and where it went. For our purposes , know that it is an integral part of being a Jew for many centuries.
The word kavana: concentration, feeling, devotion from Hebrew root Kaven: to aim ="directed consciousness"- "allowing the words of the service to direct one's consciousness"(50).
kavanot: used to direct the mind "along inner paths defined by the esoteric meaning of the ritual"
Hisboneneuth: "self understanding" while contemplating Hashem's creations, vast universe, and oneself (Who am I, How do I fit into all of this?- understanding oneself as part of the entire picture before you). This can bring you to profound love of Hashem.
(is this conditional love or unconditional? What do you think?)
Can begin to see yourself and the Divine within yourself and all the world. (aspaklaria-mirror of prophecy; look in mirror and see the Divine can begin to communicate with The Divine within)
Hisbodedeuth: "self isolation" external- going to private space; internal: "isolating the mind from all outward sensation and then even from thought itself". So this term is for any practice that brings one to a meditative state. Eventually one can learn to blank out stimuli at will.
Homework:
Begin reading chapter 23 in Bilvavi and the next five pages in Jewish Mediation and In Forest Fields
Continue the 6 minute plan of hisbodedus combined with hisboneneut.
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