The Trail to Tranquility

Now, think of a cold and snowy winter. Come back to the present, and open your eyes. Within a few seconds, you've traveled several thousand miles and transcended several decades. That's the power of the divine soul within you.

 

 

We have learnt that the more a soul thrives, the more intimate a person’s relationship with God becomes. In order to nourish his soul, the person needs to develop Spiritual Awareness, (SA), which can be acquired by working on six important points:

 

 

1) Everything in the world has a purpose, and Hashem sustains all that He created; 2) Each individual creation has a unique purpose; 3) We each have a spark of the Divine within us – our soul; 4) Hashem control the universe, but we have the freedom to choose between good and evil; 5) Hashem communicates with us through the events in our lives and 6) Every person has a unique mission to fulfill.

 

 

Now, let's examine each of the above points in detail:

 

 

Point one: Understanding that the creation of the universe and all of its inhabitants, from the great galaxies to the one-celled ameba, was not a random, inexplicable event. The Almighty created the world for a purpose, and continues to sustain all that he created.

 

 

The Almighty transcends time and space. He is both infinite and eternal. He has no physical attributes, nor can a human mind grasp His magnitude in the slightest. The Almighty's presence is everywhere, and his love and personal attention for each of His creations are unfathomable.

 

 

Over 3,750 years ago, lived a man by the name of Avraham (Abraham), the first Hebrew and the father of monotheism. As a young child blessed with cogent powers of observation, he scoffed at the folly of idol worship, and began to seek the real master of the universe. At first, Avrohom thought that the sun ruled the world. Then, darkness defeated the sun. Maybe the moon rules the world, he thought, and then the sun returned to the eastern horizon and chased away the moon. Later, clouds appeared in the sky and defeated the sun. Then came the wind and blew away the clouds. Avrohom looked up to the heavens in confusion, and asked, "Who is the great power that created everything, and nothing rules over Him?" The Almighty answered, by instilling the capability in Avrohom's heart and mind to know that God is The Creator of the world.

 

 

One may ask why the account of the young Avrohom recognizing the supremacy of The One God wasn't recorded in the Bible^[1]. The answer is simple: The Bible doesn't consider such a phenomenon remarkable, because every human being has the innate capability of recognizing God. If a person genuinely seeks spiritual awareness, God will be more than happy to assist.

 

 

Spiritual awareness directly contributes to happiness. Let's use the human heart to illustrate this point. A person devoid of SA thinks that the heart functions automatically, according to the course of nature. Most people don't appreciate their own hearts. If they realized the intricacy of the heart, they'd jump for joy every time the heart beats, they'd feel happy, and certainly not angry or depressed. Therefore, by taking their hearts for granted, they miss an opportunity to appreciate their good fortune. Lack of appreciation is rooted in spiritual ignorance.

 

 

On the other hand, those with SA make the following calculation: The average heart beats 70 times per minute, or 4200 beats per hour. Multiplied by 24 hours, the heart beats approximately 100,000 times a day. Multiplied by 365, the heart beats over 36 million times a year. By the time you reach the age of thirty, your heart has expanded, contracted, and pumped blood through your body over a billion times!

 

 

People with fine-tuned SA know that The Almighty is personally responsible for each and every heartbeat. They have 100,000 reasons per day – by pondering the healthy functioning of their hearts alone – to be happy and to express their gratitude. Such people don't know the meaning of anger and depression, and are usually level sevens and higher on the tranquility continuum (see chapter one).

 

 

Kabbalists refer to two ways that The Creator runs the earth – general supervision and personal supervision. General supervision is the overall global plan, whereas personal supervision controls the tiniest detail of each creation's sustenance on a mind-boggling moment-to-moment level. The more one develops SA, the more one senses divine intervention. The more one senses divine intervention, the more one feels the proximity of God. Nothing in the world grants a person such a wonderful sense of happiness, inner peace, and security as the feeling that God is close by.

 

 

Point two: Understanding that each individual creation has a unique purpose.   

 

 

Rabbi Yisroel (The Baal Shem Tov)^[2] once explained the above point (to a group of disciples who seemed skeptic about the above point. He took them to the forest, and asked them to observe a simple creation, which they consider useless. They chose to observe a falling oak leaf. It was an unusually warm Ukrainian October morning, and a gentle breeze ushered the leaf out of the forest to a sunny, green meadow. The leaf came to rest on top of a distressed worm that was caught in the hot sun.

 

 

The shade from the leaf saved the worm's life. The Baal Shem Tov's disciples were amazed by The Almighty's personal care of a worm, and by the importance of a seemingly insignificant dry leaf.

 

 

Over 2300 years ago, Dovid HaMelech (King David) asked The Almighty why the world needs spiders. The Almighty answered, "One day, you'll find out", and closed the subject.

 

 

Alone in the desert, exhausted, his throat parched and limbs in agony, King David fled from his enemies^[3]. The enemies pursued him mercilessly, and were about to seize him.

 

 

King David had no choice – his last place of refuge was a cave. He crawled inside, and cried out to God from the depths of his soul. He could hear his enemies approaching on horseback.

 

 

A large spider began to weave its web on the opening of the cave. After a few short minutes, the entrance to the cave was completely covered by the spider web. The pursuers reached the cave. "He can't be inside there", they said, "Look at that spider web!" The spider saved King David's life, and King David no longer questioned the necessity of each and every creation.

 

 

A mosquito once saved the life of an Israeli infantry platoon during the 1982 confrontation between Israel and the PLO, Lebanon, and Syria^[4]. During the first five days of the war, the Israeli spearhead troops fought day and night and barely slept. A ceasefire was declared on the morning of the sixth day of the war. The platoon camped in the shade of an olive orchard, and after the sergeant major in command assigned sentries to four different watch posts, the rest of the soldiers collapsed in utter fatigue. The exhausted sentries struggled to keep their eyes open, but to no avail; they too fell into a deep sleep.

 

 

A relentless mosquito buzzed in the ear of one of the sentries, and then bit him on the neck. Reinforcement mosquitoes joined the campaign, with further buzzing and biting. The sentry awoke from his irritated slumber, and saw a rustle in the distance, about 300 yards away. Instantaneously, he opened full fire with his Browning .03 machine gun, exhausting close to 300 shells within twenty seconds. The entire platoon jumped to its feet, and repelled an ambush of Syrian El-Saika terrorists equipped with Russian RPG shoulder missiles that planned to exploit the ceasefire. A mosquito foiled their scheme.

 

 

If every mineral, vegetable, and animal is vital to the world, how vital is each human being!^[5] That brings us to point number three.

 

 

Point three: Understanding that you have a soul within you, a divine spark of The Almighty, and which elevates you above all the other creations. Man is above the animal. The soul within him is like its Father in Heaven^[6] – spiritual, with no physical attributes, and eternal.

 

 

Here's a simple test to prove what we're talking about: Close your eyes, and think about your childhood in your parents' house. Now travel to a far away site. Think of summer. Now, think of a cold and snowy winter. Come back to the present, and open your eyes. Within a few seconds, you've traveled several thousand miles and transcended several decades. That's the power of the divine soul within you.

 

 

Rebbe Nachman of Breslev says, "A person is where his thoughts are." As such, it's no problem for humans to jump from one end of the world to another. The great scholars of Torah purified their minds and elevated themselves to an extent that their souls had complete control over their bodies. Since their divine souls overruled their bodies, their minds could function beyond the limits of time and space.

 

 

During the mid 1700's, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov lived in the Ukraine, and his contemporary, Rabbi Chaim Ben Attar lived in Morocco. As the respective giants of their generation, they had tremendous spiritual contact with one another even though they never met one another in person.

 

 

The Baal Shem Tov once sat at his Sabbath afternoon meal with his disciples, when he suddenly remarked, "The lights of the west have been extinguished", cryptically referring to Rabbi Ben-Attar. Shortly thereafter, news of Rabbi Ben-Attar's death reached the Ukraine. He passed away on a Saturday afternoon, exactly at the time of the Baal Shem Tov's meal. The Baal Shem Tov's ultra-refined soul could actually feel Rabbi Chaim Ben-Attar's soul leaving this world, despite the tremendous physical distance that separates the Ukraine from Morocco.

 

 

Our bodies are composed of matter, like the animals. Our souls are completely spiritual, like the angels. The more our bodies control our souls, the more we resemble an animal. The more our souls control our bodies, the more we resemble an angel.

 

 

Man is the only creation in the universe that is both spiritual and material. Man has the potential of reaching great spiritual heights, but if he fails to activate his soul, his body seizes control with its animal appetites. Under the body's regime, man becomes worse than an animal. On the other hand, if one's divine soul prevails over his flesh- and-blood body, one can rise above the level of an angel. When our souls reign over our bodies, we climb to a spiritual altitude where the turbulence of anger ceases to affect us in a negative fashion, like the example of the airplane ascending from the storm clouds to the clear blue sky.

 

 

Point four: Understanding that God controls the universe and all its inhabitants, but grants you the freedom to do good or evil.

 

 

The Almighty runs the universe on a precision- perfect balance of power between good and evil. Therefore, a person can't use the excuse that he or she is forced to do good or evil. Without the balance of power, there can be no reward or punishment in the world to come, and a person could plead "not guilty" to the worst of criminal acts.

 

 

The Torah (Shemot 9:12) says, "And God hardened Pharaoh's heart". Apparently, this is a direct contradiction to the notion of man's free will to do good or evil. Not so. Several times before The Almighty hardened Pharaoh's heart, the Torah states that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and refused to release the children of Israel who were slaves in Egypt for a bitter two-hundred and ten years. Once Pharaoh refused to heed Moshe’s (Moses) plea in the name of God, God decided to utilize Pharaoh's free choice of evil. Pharaoh's punishment included ten miraculous plagues and a host of miracles at the splitting of the Red Sea, which led to worldwide sanctification of God's name.

 

 

Each one of us has the liberty to be a Moshe or a Pharaoh. Our souls have greater power than a nuclear reactor, and a nuclear reactor can either blow up the world or light up the world. A cancer- research physician takes a scalpel in hand to cure mankind, but a terrorist hijacker uses the same sized knife to hijack a plane and to kill people.

 

 

Once we understand the power of free choice that God vests in us, we are prepared to harness our emotions, our talents, our energies, and our desires in order to perfect and refine ourselves to the point where anger and negative emotions become a figment of the past. We don't need to change others so that we'll attain inner peace; we only need to exercise our own free will to change ourselves.

 

 

Point five: Understanding that God talks to you personally by way of the stimuli in your environment and the events of your life.

 

 

The above point, once internalized, is the epitome of spiritual awareness. Once you become aware that God is constantly speaking to you, your entire outlook on life changes for the better. Here's a  example:

 

 

Case study: Richard Green^[7] came to me with a marital difficulty. After an initial three years of peaceful married life, his wife Janet began to be quite belligerent. For the last several months, their marriage was on a downhill slide.

 

 

Belligerence and Janet Green seemed to me a most unlikely combination. She was always a kind, considerate, and sweet-natured human being. I asked Richard a lengthy series of questions, trying to establish the change in his life that triggered negative reactions from his wife. Within an hour, we struck pay dirt.

 

 

Four months prior, Richard left his job as the head mechanic of an automobile dealership to open up a garage in partnership with a friend. Richard handled the auto mechanics side of the business, while his partner handled the administrative end. From the start, Richard's partner was padding customers' bills, charging them for parts and services that their cars never received.

 

 

Richard was a full accomplice to his partner’s misdealing. He knew what his partner was doing; yet, he made no effort to protest. As such, he was bringing home dishonest dollars. The dishonest Richard recalled that Janet began being argumentative about the same time that he opened the new business, despite the fact that he was making more money without working longer hours.

 

 

God was obviously talking to Richard by way of Janet; her displeasure with her husband was none other than God's displeasure with him. I suggested that he sell his share of the business, or find a decent person to buy out his partner.

 

 

Richard sold his half of the partnership in the   garage and returned to his old job. Janet was still irritable. Richard returned to me complaining bitterly, "Hey, Rabbi – you didn't deliver the goods!"

 

 

Richard had sold his half of the business for an $8,000 profit after expenses. I told him that part of the profit was dishonest cash. After he had admitted that his partner usually padded bills by 25%, I suggested that he give $2000, or 25% of his profit, to a crippled children's fund. He agreed. Smiles returned to Janet's face and peace returned to the Green household almost immediately.

 

 

Moral of the Green case study: If Richard would have realized from the outset that his wife's belligerence was none other than a repeated message from God, he'd have taken a spiritual inventory of himself. SA counseling showed him that God was communicating with him via Janet, to prevent the terrible spiritual damage that he was doing to his soul. Once Richard corrected his actions, his marital problems disappeared.

 

 

SA helps one realize that life's problems and difficulties are actually divine messages. Equipped with such cognizance, a person traverses life with reduced anger and frustration, and enhanced inner peace.

 

 

If a man so deserves, his wife is his ally; if he does not deserve, she is his enemy. (The Babylonian Talmud)

 

 

Point six: Understanding your own special mission in this world.

 

 

Imagine a uniformed soldier in the middle of Baghdad. Now, imagine that the soldier doesn't know which side he's fighting for, the USA or Iraq. You ask the soldier what his mission is, and he shrugs his shoulders and says, "I don't know." Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

 

 

Without SA, a person has no way of knowing what his or her mission in life is.

 

 

Do you understand what your own special mission in life is? If not, don't be ashamed; most people have no idea what they're doing in this world. When a person doesn't know what his mission is, he or she becomes angry, frustrated, and constantly restless.

  

 

Ask yourself an important basic question: "If I have a divine soul within me, that's a tiny spark of God and both spiritual and eternal, why does God take me away from the bliss of the spiritual realm to send me here, to this lowly physical world?" The answer to this question is vital to spiritual awareness.

 

 

Doing good deeds. First, God created the world in order to bestow His loving kindness on man. God gives man the opportunity to do good deeds. Each of us has our own individual mission of good to accomplish, based on the abilities and aptitudes that The Creator instilled in each of us. Once a person pursues his or her mission of good, he or she is ultimately rewarded with a higher, more sublime spiritual status of eternal bliss in the world to come.

 

 

Getting to know God. Second, God put man on this lowly physical earth so that man would have to overcome a series of obstacles to acquire faith and spiritual awareness, or simply speaking, to get to know God. By defeating the material obstacles that separate a person from God, such as bodily urges and evil inclinations, man wins a heroic spiritual victory. Again, God lavishes indescribable bliss and rewards on such a soul in the world to come.

 

 

You can't accomplish the above two tasks in the spiritual world. The disadvantage of the spiritual world is that personal advancement is most difficult. Because of the suffering, the trials, and the tribulations of the material world, one earns mind-boggling dividends for overcoming material appetites to achieve even the smallest spiritual gain.

 

 

Since doing good deeds and getting to know God within modern society's hostile agnostic atmosphere are two difficult tasks, the rewards are tremendous. Spirituality, like gymnastics, is rated according to level of difficulty.

 

 

You can perform your two-fold mission of doing good deeds and getting to know God in any career context. Once you begin to fulfill your spiritual mission, you'll be rewarded with enhanced success in all your endeavors.  

 

 

      

^[1] The above account of Abraham's early years are recorded in the Midrash, the compilation of Jewish oral tradition, aggadata, and codified between the 1^st and 3^rd centuries CE.

^[2] Early 18^th Century Ukrainian Jewish sage, miracle worker, and founder of the Chassidic movement.

^[3] See Samuel I, chapters 20 – 26.

^[4] The author witnessed this incident first-hand.

^[5] See point five for more about the purpose of humans in this world.

^[6] The Kabbala teaches that the soul is a tiny spark of The Almighty, so holy and sublime that humans are incapable of understanding its essence. Since our souls are part of The Holy One, we often refer to him as "Father in Heaven".

^[7] Name and circumstances changed to insure privacy.