Stop Being So Realistic

I like to call myself a realist. Although I’ve certainly got my dreams, I don’t like to get my hopes up dreaming about things I know have almost no chance of happening.  

But recently Rabbi Arush started focusing on his new definition of emuna: Emuna is knowing that everything is for the best, and it’s all good, and it’s only going to keep getting better and better! 

OK, you’re now probably asking the same question I asked – “Excuse me? Corona? The Russia-Ukraine war? Food and financial insecurity, and inflation, and and and – AND you want to tell me this is only going to get BETTER? Like say WHAT? That is not very realistic based on the current circumstances!” 

So Rabbi Arush answered the question we were all silently asking. And the answer is NOT that Rabbi Arush doesn’t understand full well the precarious situation the world finds itself in currently. He knows full well and has spoken about that too on occasion. The answer is so much deeper, and more incredible.  

Rabbi Arush explains it here in his article Your Employment Agency, which is a bit of a funny name for one of the most incredible articles I’ve ever read – but I would like to add my own experience with trying to implement it. It turned my entire world over, and changed the way I deal with just about all the challenges in my life. 

The answer is something along the same lines that I discussed in my previous article What You Believe In, You Get! In order to understand the answer, let’s build on some basic “spiritual rules” or “spiritual truths” as you want to call it. 

First off, it’s obvious that having emuna is a merit. Not having emuna is a very big blemish with the severity of being considered a form of avoda zara or idol worship, because either you believe in Hashem or essentially, you’re worshiping something else (such as money or some lusts often called “freedom,” etc). 

Secondly, emuna specifically means that, by definition, you cannot understand it with your rational mind. As Rabbi Arush puts it, “Emuna begins where logic ends.” If you could understand already now how it was for the best, then it wouldn’t be emuna and it also wouldn’t be a test! That’s exactly where the merit of having emuna stems from – and the harder the emuna test, the greater the reward. 

So let’s quote Rabbi Arush with the hope that now it will make some sense, even if it’s totally mind-boggling: 

I have explained repeatedly that the emuna that Hashem does only good and wants only good and will do only good to all people – is not a hope, and not an expectation, and not a prayer, but reality. This is the reality. And whoever doesn’t believe in that – there is no greater blemish in emuna than that. This is actually the reason for all the suffering… It comes out that “Emuna creates reality” is not only a slogan, not only an inspiring sentence that is uttered to improve one’s mood. This is absolute truth; this is the way that Hashem runs human beings and the world.   

Are you still with me? That means that by being so “realistic”, I was looking at this world essentially without the eyes of emuna, which are eyes that are focused on the truth in the Next World, i.e. that there is a God in the world who does everything for the best! As Rabbi Arush calls it, “Going up from this world to the world of emuna.”  

And specifically, by being so “realistic” I created my own self-fulling prophesy, limited to this world! So, if I want the yeshuot (the miracles and wonders) that I so desperately need, then I have to stop being so realistic and instead focus only on Hashem’s goodness, that He does everything for the best just because we look to Him and NOT because of our merit, or anything else for that matter. 

Now this might sound somewhat simplistic, but it’s actually quite scary to implement because you have to let go of control. You have to let go of having it exactly the way you want. You have to stop trying to “get it” and keep it all perfectly under control and going in the order and the timing you want it, and hand the wheel back to Hashem. And simply know that even though it looks bad (and it really does! It might even look really, REALLY bad!) the only way to reveal the good hidden inside of it is through trusting Hashem that it is really good and is only going to get better. 

Even though it’s “true” that X situation is bad in Y way, the real truth is that it’s only for your ultimate best – not necessarily in this world where we can’t see the truth at all. Certainly, if we could see everything in the world of truth, in the world of emuna,  we would see all the good in it that we simply cannot see or understand in this world with our limited minds and perspective. 

So, when we let go and trust even though we cannot understand, then in the merit of that emuna, everything really does turn over to become good in a way we can see and understand. We create the good reality by believing that it is indeed good even when it looks bad! 

But if we cannot trust since we cannot understand, we assume that it must be bad because that is sure as heck how it really looks! Then we create a terrible blemish, for which we are then punished with suffering… and it really becomes quite bad indeed, G-d forbid. 

OK, wait a minute – I thought I can get whatever I want by just believing? Where did that go? Not exactly… next I will explain real emuna versus Invalid Emuna according to Rabbi Arush…