Efficiency
A person with spiritual awareness can accomplish in fifteen minutes what another person cannot accomplish in seventy years...
Parameter Seven: Efficiency
A person with spiritual awareness can accomplish in fifteen minutes what another person cannot accomplish in seventy years.
The following example helps us understand the above principle:
Mrs. Gold gave separate errands to each of her two twin daughters, Sheila and Shirley. She sent Sheila to the bakery, to buy fresh bread and rolls for a festive meal. She sent Shirley to the butcher, to purchase meat. Each of the two stores is an eight-minute walk from the Gold residence.
Sheila walked directly to the baker, selected exactly what her mother requested, paid for the goods, and returned home within half an hour.
Shirley met a girlfriend and chatted for ten minutes. Then, the display in a shoe store window caught her eye. After browsing and window-shopping for an additional hour, she passed by the ice-cream salon. Her mouth watered at the sight of blueberry delight, her favorite flavor. Six other people waited ahead of her, and fifteen more minutes transpired by the time she received her blueberry delight ice-cream cone. When she finished licking her cone, she proceeded to the butcher. By this time, she forgot what her mother ordered. Shirley was forced to look for a public phone, call home, and verify the meat order. She accomplished her task in two and a half hours.
Sheila was five times more efficient than Shirley. Why? Sheila wasted neither time nor energy on her own appetites; she concentrated her efforts on performing her mother's wishes. Shirley, on the other hand, was primarily concerned with her own appetites, which consumed both her time and her energy. Her prime task, buying the meat, assumed secondary priority.
People like Sheila attain spiritual awareness easily. Since they are goal oriented and not appetite oriented, they are much more efficient. Their souls aren't coated with a thick layer of "appetite fat" which blocks out divine light and spiritual awareness. Physical appetites always stand in the way of the truth, because an appetite-oriented person will deny truth if truth requires discarding a certain appetite. Just as appetites and efficiency conflict with each other, truth and efficiency therefore go hand in hand; both signify spiritual awareness.
Parameter Eight: When I begin to realize that I know nothing
A tenet of Kabbalic and Chassidic thought states that the epitome of knowledge is the knowledge that we know nothing. This concept is worthy of a separate volume in itself. For our present purposes, here's a brief explanation:
The less a person actually knows, the more he thinks he knows. The worst back-seat drivers are usually those who never held a steering wheel in their lives. Every man on the street thinks he can run the country better than the President, and every buck private thinks he can command the battalion better than the battalion commander can. Why? Those who lack knowledge think they know everything. They resemble stubborn little children who think they're smarter than their parents.
The Bible testifies that Moshe (Moses) was more modest that any human who ever walked the face of the earth. Yet, Moshe attained a higher spiritual level than any mortal ever. Moshe received both the oral and the written law directly from God, and was the only prophet ever who could speak directly with the Almighty, as opposed to the other prophets who received prophecy in a dream or in an allegorical form. Moshe nullified all his physical appetites, and his soul completely dominated his body, to the point where he no longer had an evil inclination. Moshe was capable of learning with God for weeks on end, without sleeping, drinking, or eating. Although he had a better grasp than any other mortal as to what divine wisdom and power really is, his knowledge didn't scratch the Divine surface. Moshe knew the limit of his own capabilities, and therefore was truly modest.
Genuine modesty resembles a clean, empty crystal glass. Arrogance is like a full glass, because an arrogant person thinks he knows everything. If you try and pour a fine wine into a full glass, it will be wasted. The clean, empty crystal glass is the proper vessel to hold a fine wine. Spiritual awareness resembles a fine wine. A modest person, who realizes that much remains to be learned about his or her own divine soul, let alone about God, is a worthy vessel for spiritual awareness.
To be continued…
(The Trail to Tranquility is available in the Breslev Store.)
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