Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh book 2
Chapter 21:
Hashem's love for us and Our love for Him:
Seeing Hashem's love for us inspires us to love Him:
Unconditional love can't disappear- it's inherent.
example: man dying of thirst, stranger walks by and gives him a drink, the giver is giving out of a love for human being, the second feels love because he received what he really needed.
Conditional love is reciprocal, but within every one of us there is a hidden love for Hashem that can be awakened by first internalizing how much He loves you.
Therefore, we use conditional love (review our acquisitions, our limbs, our abilities, our emotions- more internal than possessions, "the more you feel you are receiving from Him, the more you will feel His love", when saying brachos feel Hashem's love, when learning Torah...)
Everything Hashem gives us is because He loves us. It is why He created us. Eventually, come to moments that even without thinking you will call out from your soul - "Hashem, You love me!"
Daven to be able to feel Hashem's love more and more and not just know it's there.
"ahavas Hashem should fill a person..a feeling that naturally flows from the heart...must come to define your very being; it is your very existence...if your ahavah is for Hashem, your vitality comes from Hashem Himself."
Next week please read chapter 22.
In Forest Fields; (pgs 169-173)
We do hisbodedus with teshuva daily so that if we sin between one day and the next, the sin does not become repetition and chas veshalom lead to harsh judgement.
What if every day we do teshuva for same thing and see no change in that behavior?
We are missing yishuv hadaat (self composure) and complete clarification of the truth.
This means that somehow we have not taken the time to clarify why we are here and why that particular behavior is an aveira to the point that the truth is vividly clear to us.
(Derech Eitz Chaim by Ramchal: ask yourself these questions daily:1. Why am I here? what strengths do I have within me? 2. Why did Hashem create me? What's my purpose in being here?
3. What does Hashem want me to do in this world? 4. Have i managed to attain any spiritual attainments or have i accumulated a lot of nothing?)
If we take Ramchal's idea to our issue at hand it would look like this: (use example of doing teshuva on lack of kavana)
1. Why do i want to daven with kavana? how can i bring myself into the tefilos?
2. How does kavana make me into a greater me?
3. Does Hashem really care if i have kavana?
4. is it really a worthwhile attainment?
When we go through these questions with any aveira we want to get rid of, what this does is give us clarity and self composure so that when the chance to do that aveira comes up, we are less likely to fall into it.
Homework: read next five pages and add these four questions into the teshuva part of our hisbodedus, see below for full recipe;)
Jewish Meditation:
Chapter 5: Jewish Meditation (40-44)
The goals and results of Jewish meditation are different than other meditative disciplines.
What we know from Torah:
1. meditation was central to nevuah
2. a navi usually had first time nevuah in meditative state, after that he could have "flashback" = adept at higher levels of consciousness through meditation/ then had spontaneous nevuah.
3. From time Torah was written until 400 BCE, meditation practiced by large number of Bnei Yisrael
4. Meditative schools set up to attain closeness to Hashem (side effect was sometimes prophecy) these schools were led by master prophets who were trained by the neviim quoted in tanach (primary prophets)- strict rules and discipline
5. other schools opened to teach meditative experience- that was not Torah based
6. When we were sent to galus, the schools closed and meditation was made into a process in tefilos so that it wouldn't veer off into avodah zara.
please finish the chapter
homework
the reading
hisbodedus- see recipe on next post
Gut Chodesh! love, aviva rus
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