avakesh

Tu B'AV: Choices we make and Marriage

Shidduchm are hard, like splitting of the Red Sea.  It is a difficult "parsha". Much suffering, pain and vexation! Many find their partner easily and some do not and some never.

Many things contribute to this difficulty. Sometiems it is a matter of bad luck, of unfortunate circumstances. Sometimes it is psychological blocks.  At time, there are too few choices.

There are times when it is because there are too many choices, none of them exactly "right". Having too many choices and thinking that one needs not "settle" can be a barrier. 

One can't have everything in people.  Every person and every shidduch prospect has positives and negatives. A tsadik thinks of marriage as an opportunity to give to someone else, to contribute, to build. A tsaddik looks for a person to whom to give. A lesser tsaddik looks for someone with whom to build and with whom to grow. Most people unfortunately  look at marriage as an occasion to take and to gain.

In our modern world, we have learned to expect to have everything and to give up nothing. Sometimes we want a dashing, handsome and charismatic captain who would walk down the plank and sweep us off our feet.... and he should be carrying a Gemara under his arm too. Certain qualities go together and others do not. A brave person can be rash and a frugal one can be overcautios. A studious, intellectual type may be naive and emotionally unaware; not that a proper partner cannot develop the  qualities that are weaker, but they are not present at the inception.

People who look to take and acquire will often be unable to see a prospective partner clearly and even if they do, what they want may interfere with them choosing what they need.

In the past, people expected less. Often they got less too. Were there more happy marraiges then? I don't know. Were there fewer? I don't think so.

Tommorow is Tu B'Av. Here is a humorous but seriously important reflection on this question from another culture.

Caveat! There is nothing untsniusdig in this clip but it is from a different culture.

Names determine

Names are interesting. Sometimes they tell us much about the person who carries the name; at other times they can guide us to what he or she likes.

 

In Tanach names are certainly reflective of their bearers. For example, Esav has a name indicating his physical appearance (Genesis 25:) and is also called Edom (red), alluding to his violent tendencies, that he sheds blood. Moses's name reflected how the daughter of Pharaoh drew him from the Nile (Exodus 2:10). Noah's birth was accompanied by the aspiration that the newborn would provide comfort "from our work and from the toil of our hands, because of the ground which God cursed" (Genesis 5:29). There are countless such  examples.

We learn from a verse that names "determine" (Berachot 7b) and the gemara gives us concrete examples, such as the meaning of Reuven and Ruth. The Sages certainly believed that names tell us much about people (Yoma 83b) and they conducted themselves in accordance with this belief.

RABBI Meir, Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Yosi were once on a journey. Rabbi Meir was always particular about the names of people, but Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Yosi never bothered about them. They once came to some place and looked for lodgings, which they found. They asked the innkeeper what was his name and he said: Kidor. Then said Rabbi Meir, I gather that he is an evil man, for it was said: (Deut. xxxii, 20) For they are a very forward generation (Kidor). Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Yosi entrusted to him their money, but Rabbi Meir did not. He hid it in the grave of that man's father. The innkeeper dreamed that some one said to him: Go and take the purse that is lying under that man's head. The next morning he told them about his dream. Said they to him: A dream of a Sabbath night has no meaning. Thereupon Rabbi Meir waited the whole day and took away his purse. The next morning they said to the innkeeper: Give us our purses. He answered that he knew nothing about them. Then Rabbi Meir said to them: Why didn't you pay any attention to the name? They answered:—Why didn't you call our attention to it, Master? He replied: I considered that one ought to be suspicious, but I did not consider it a certainty. Thereupon they asked the innkeeper to go with them to a shop where they noticed lentils in his beard. Whereupon they went to his wife and gave her this as a sign that he had ordered them to return the purses, and they received their purses. When he returned home he killed his wife...... From then on they too paid attention to names. Once they came to the house of a man named Balah, they did not enter the house, for they said: He must be an evil man, for it is written: (Ezek. xxiii, 43) Then said I unto her that was old in adulteries (Balah).

There is a great deal written on the roots of names in the higher spheres and the implications that this fact has on giving additional names to a critically ill person but that is not my focus here. Recently,a paper by Jones at al came across my desk that explains why "names determine".  Here is the abstract:

From the perspective of implicit egotism people should gravitate toward others who resemble them because similar others activate people's positive, automatic associations about themselves. Four archival studies and 3 experiments supported this hypothesis. Studies 1-4 showed that people are disproportionately likely to marry others whose first or last names resemble their own. Studies 5-7 provided experimental support for implicit egotism. Participants were more attracted than usual to people (a) whose arbitrary experimental code numbers resembled their own birthday numbers, (b) whose surnames shared letters with their own surnames, and (c) whose jersey number had been paired, subliminally, with their own names. Discussion focuses on implications for implicit egotism, similarity, and interpersonal attraction.

R. Dessler wrote many years ago that all love is self love (Kuntress Hachesed, Michtav M’Eliahu vol. 1, pp. 32-51, 140-145). We develop love from investing ourselves in others and what we love in them is the love, giving and effort that we invested. From the psychological perspective, you might say that the Sages preceded him by millenia in this insight and in understanding that names that we carry shape how we think of ourselves, because names are so closely related to who we think we are that we shape ourselves to conform to our names . Jones merely offers experimental evidence to support this contention. It's simple. A name that suggests a quality, a character trait, or an occupation, may lead its bearer to develop the same qualities within himself or herself.

A kabbalist, of course, will interpret the associations reported by Jones differently. A kabbalist would say that the connection we see between names and choices are merely a reflection of the fact that things that have the same name stem from the same root. People, for example, tend to marry those with similar names because their names reflect something essential about their similarity, etc. Whichever way you explain it, this paper supports and explains the Sages belief that names "determine".

 Related: here, here and here 

Do we all have the same Torah?

It is not uncommon for people to disagree on Torah topics and we are all familiar with this. It is a part of the background of aTorah life. However, it pays to ask, "Why?".

Many of us have had the experience of encountering knowledgeable Torah learned people who not only hold different opinion than we on many matters but hold opinions so outrageous and so obviousely different from what we perceive the Torah to teach that it is hard to believe that we all belong to the same religion. This is not only true in many debates in halacha where one says that a thing is permitted and another that is forbidden and even esteemed authorities come to radically opposed conclusions. It is also so in regard to basic hashkafa where it is not uncommon to find that one group holds something to be good and desirable and another group views it to be bad and outside the pale. There are those who are convinced that Zionism is an authentic and indipensable Jewish teaching and others who view it as a betrayal of religion. Some consider secular studies to be essential and others shun them. There are opposing views on so many matters of practice and doctrine.

Why is it so and shouldn't we attempt to understand it?

On the practical level, one encounters people who believe that Torah requires them to fight with all possible means "for the sake of truth" and others who will compromise every esssential belief and practice for the "sake of peace". There are those who light fires because they argue that the Torah requires them to do so and others who work only thorough peaceful and pleasant ways and  "turn away wrath". Though my sympathies lie with the latter and not the former, they also deserve to be understood - with respect, and not dismissed as psychologically or morally unbalanced.

We know, of course, that machlokes exist and always existed. But why do we, in this generation and place, disagree so profoundly and with so much conviction on so many subjects?

Chazal do say that there seventy faces to Torah ((Bamidbar Rabbah 13:15) or in other places, that there are fourty nine faces to Torah (Sofrim 16:5). Both statements might be true: the Gaon writes: " In the Torah there are seventy faces to the Orally transmitted Torah and 49 faces to the written Torah (Song of Songs 2:4). Another way to understand it is as  per Pesikta Rabbati (21:4, see Eruvin 13b), where we read: R. Yanai said: The Torah which God gave to Mosheh included forty-nine arguments in favor of purity and forty-nine arguments in favor of impurity [on any given question]...[Mosheh] asked: "How should we rule?" - to which God answered: "If those who argue in favor of impurity are the majority, it is impure; if those who argue in favor of purity are the majority, it is pure."

There is really no disagreement. In P'ninim mi'Shulchan ha'G'ro it says that  the seventy souls that went down to Egypt correspond to the seventy 'faces' via which Torah can be expounded, and b. the total of forty-nine of the children of Leah (33, including her daughter Serach) and her maidservant Zilpah (16), correspond to the forty-nine 'faces' of Taharah, and forty-nine 'faces' of Tum'ah via which the Torah can be expounded (Gen. 46).This we can handle. So far so good. However, here is a statement from Shaar Hagilgulim of R. Chiam Vitalm Hakdomo 17, that at first glance one might call "outrageous".

"Torah is the root of the souls of Israel for they were hewn out of it and rooted in it. This is why in the Torah there 600.000.00 explanations in pshat, 600.000.00 in derush, 600.00.00 in remez and 6000.00.00 in sod."... In the Future, each one will will achieve that explanation through which he was born...".The commentary Benei Aharon connects that second part of the statement to the Lurianic teaching that seventy "nitsosos" of Adam generate six hundred thousand souls. That explains the second part of what we quoted but how can one explain that every word and statement of the Torah can be explained in 600.000.00 different ways on the level of pshat. We can perhaps envision that derush and sod, even remez, can produce many differing explanations, but how can you generatesix hundred thousand explanations according to pshat?

Benei Aharon suggests that you can take this statement to refer to a chapter or topic. If so one can to produce many variations. So, for example if there are two words in a chapter that can each have two different explanations, there would be the following combinaitons: AB and BA. If there are three words or phrases that can have different explanations, we can have abc, acb, bac, bca, cab, cba. The general formula is n(n-1). (For the pruposes of Tsirufei Osios it would be divided by 2 because of duplications (i.e. abc and cba is the same etc).)

 You can see how you can quickly work this up to 600.000.00 combinations with only  a few different explanation as long as you are looking at a chapter of a group of verses.

I would like to suggest something else.  At the basis of it is the statement that  "once a talmid chacham learns Torah, it becomes his, as it says, "for in the Torah of Hashem is his desire and his (own Torah he engages day and night (Tehillim 1) ( A"Z 19a). I used to explain this with a parable of a puzzzle or a mosaic. Imagine that an artist is given most of the pieces of a mosaic but not all the pieces and not the the overal plan. He would start by matching pieces and come out with some kind of a partial picture. He would then extrapolate and fill the missing pieces as well as he can, based on his own udnerstanding and imagination. In order to complete the picture, he will have to extrapolate from the partial picture to the overall image and then manufacture pieces to fill in what is missing. This is essentially what a talmid chacham does nowadays. We do have many pieces of the mosaic, but, through forgetfullness and loss, not all of them. Every scholar constructs his own version of what the entire picture must have looked like. Not surprisingly these reconstructions can look very differentlly.  It is because of this that talmidei chochomim can disagree and diverge so greatly.

This is a good explanation but it still does not fully explain why different scholars come out with different overall reconstructions of the original intent.

The statement of Shaar Hagilgulim helps in this regard. As is now appreciated, words do not have a single meaning and many if not most words mean different things to different people. The more abstract a word or concept, the less do people share the same understanding ot it. To some people Love means control, to others abrogation of control and giving freedom and autonomy. Some  view "spirituality" as self-abnegation, others as redemptive self -fulfillment and so on... This is especially true in Lashon Hakodesh. In other words, words have a whole range of different meanings and different people have slightly different, sometimes very different understandings of the same word. In fact it would not be wrong to say that there are 6000.000.00 different understandings of the same word or concept. In everyday communication we share enough agreement about the basic meaning of words to understand each other. However, once we go farther, to interpreting complex and complicated verbal structures, we begin to understand words and their applications very differently.

There are six hundred thousand different souls and so, there are also that many ways to understand even a single word. We can now see that this kabbalistic teaching is not purely technical but, at its core, philosophical and practical.  

So, yes, we all have the same Torah but we do not all understand it the same - because each one draws an understanding according to his own soul-level. The Shaar Hagilgulim goes on to say that higher neshomos, ones that incorporate several different "roots' can possess multiple understandings at the same time. The ultimate in this regard was Moshe Rabbeinu, who was the source and encompassed all the six hundred thousand souls of Israel and could understand and contain all possible explanations.

Liberation from lust

This is very important. I have seen men who had heroically torn themselves away from their families, communities and friends, who have gone thorugh incredible challenges to become frum and eidel yidden to then be brought down by the internet. I have seen respectable families destroyed by this evil.  Christians have been dealing with this issue for years and now, B"H, there is a resource for Frum people as well.

From Jerusalem Post:

But for "Ya'acov" - an observant computer programmer living in the Jerusalem area who two years ago singlehandedly established a virtual "community" to help haredi men fight their addiction to porn - it brought only sadness. A happily married man with several children, Ya'acov had "personal experience among some family members" with this specific addiction and wanted to help sufferers.

His free English-language project, called Guard Your Eyes (at www.guardureyes.com and www.guardyoureyes.org), has already helped thousands.

THE WEB sites include 250 pages of information, all composed or collected by its founder. ....The project, says Ya'acov, has received the blessings of leading haredi rabbis who are aware of the problem in their communities. The project continues off tax-deductible donations and without help, but the man behind it says that despite the uncertainty, he is determined to reach more religious men and their families. ....

THIS IS a "promiscuous generation," says Ya'acov, although he concedes that there is plenty of promiscuity mentioned in the Bible. "But the religious - and especially haredi - communities see the subject of sex as taboo and don't offer sex education to the younger generation until they are engaged. Many haredi youths have no idea how babies are made, even though their mothers are frequently pregnant. Sex is part of life, but Judaism recognizes it as kosher only in a holy context."

He says he "tries to use the power of the Internet against itself." So far, more than 700 people have become anonymous members of the "community" and automatically receive daily support (called hizuk in Hebrew) on how to cope with their addiction and eventually free themselves of it. About half of them are Israeli, with the rest from the US and other English-speaking countries. Ya'acov says he aims to make the information and support available in Hebrew and other languages. "We are building a forum in Hebrew for producing material for a Web site."

As the Web sites cater to the religious community, many of the "treatment" techniques are based on the wisdom of Jewish sages and the desire to get closer to God. ...

 

Old age is a blessing

And Abraham was old, and came into years: and Hashem blessed Abraham in all things (Gen 24:1).

All things - includes all age, for old age is a blessing.

Klei Yakor pioints out that for spiritually minded, old age with its attentuation of bodily drives and weakening of desires is a blessed time, a period of life when spirituality comes easier and there are fewer distractions.

This is the difference between Abraham and the nations. I recall a conversation years ago with elderly client who was complaining about the infirmities of old age. "But aren't you much wiser and more accomplished now?", I naively inquired. "I myself would not want to return back to those young and foolish years, with their ups and downs, their impetousness and emotionality, the needless suffering for reasons that were not real".

He looked at me without comprehension. Those were the best years of my life", he said "Wine, women and song! (he did not use exactly those words but something much cruder)".

Hashem blessed Avroham in all things, including his old age.

Another point about aging, here

Here is how R S. R. Hirsch expresses this idea (hat tip to hirhurim)

Here on the originally Quaker term Eldering and how it was co-opted by the Jewish Renewal  Movement.

Spiritual maturity

Spiritual growth is of three levels.

The first is the level of the great majority of men and is the level on which we must intend to place out children and to which we should hope to lead our students. It is the realization and recognition that Jewishness and  masorah is at the core of our being, that we identify with Torah and its tenets, that we and it are one. This is a very high level, one that many but not most achieve within their lifetime, so that Jewishness and the frum lifestyle is at the core of their beings, and to abandon it is to be untrue to themselves. Untold numbers have remained within the fold against all difficulties owing to the sights, smells, experiences and patterns of thought welded into them from their earliest upbringing. It does come with a danger, however. Just like to some people Judaism is identified with their selves, so to others their selves are identified with Judaism. Intolerance of religious expressions and ideas and positions that "don't feel right" can follow and it can be passionate and destructive. After all, there are few things that provoke more passion than an attack on the self. The confusion of the personal and religious can permit what is forbidden and make forbidden what is personally detestable but securely within the Torah's limits of tolerance, or simply a different way. It can lead to unconscious hypocrisy, idealistically driven misuse of power and glorification of the self instead of Hashem.

With all this, this IS the way of most men, and it is a safe and good place for most people to be. It is a place of religious naivete, a blessed childhood of Faith, a secure and comfortable ancestral home from which we should not attempt to dislodge anyone.

A few move beyond the self and grow to realize that it is not the true parameter of authenticity and truth, that there are outside criteria and that maturity demands self-criticism. This level resembles  adolescence, in that it is often accompanied by a sense of dislocation and insecurity and a willingness to value the judgments of the outsiders more than one's own. In the secular world, we encounter this stage of growth among those who hold everyone elses's perceptions and opinions as somehow more valid than their own. They are afraid of the power of self-interest to pervert their view, for they have recognized its power to do so. In the religious world, it manifests itself as the desire to encompass all views and to live as detached from the inner voice and subjective opinion as possible. Modern maimonideans sometimes fall into this group.

This is an inherently unstable position; it only has value as a transitional device. Rav Kook in Orot Haemuna compares this situation to a sapling that has been uprooted from its native soil and must very quickly be replanted, for if it is not, it dries out. Similarly, those who remain at this level are at a real danger of spiritual dryness and impoverishment, if not worse.

The mature man of years trusts the inner voice. The third level is the return to the inner truth, to the naive faith but now from a position of strength. Giving up the self paradoxically makes one stronger." What should a man do so he may live", asked Alexander of the Sages of the South? "He must kill himself". To truly live in Hashems' truth, one must dissolve the self. So taught the Rebbe of Kotsk. Now, unafraid that the self will be injured, the believer is strong enough to open the self to the immediate experience of the Outside.  Before, he feared being absorbed and ceasing to exist should the Divine Light flood in; now he no longer fears it. Inside, he is certain that he will find that simple faith that animated him before but that was dim, obscured by self-interest and self-delusion.  Few achieve this level; few even perceive its existence. People think that tsaddikim are merely more scrupulous in their observances or have learned more Torah. This is true but what makes tsaddikim into tsaddikim  is openness to Hashem's light and it can only flow inside those whose self does not fill all their space.

Repentance is not only an act or series of actions; it is a process of growth and rebirth. Jewish calendar institutionalizes the process of growth in Return during the month of Elul.

Reish Lakish said: Great is repentance, for intentional sins become for a penitent as if they were not intentional, as it says: Return Israel to your God for you have stumbled in you crime (Hosea 14,). Crime refers to intentional sin and yet it is called "stumbling". Is this really so? Did not Reish Lakish say, "Great is repentance, for it turns sins into merits, as it says, "When the wicked returns from his sin…he shall live(in the sense of "prosper") (Ezekiel 33,)". No problem - this statement is about repentance through love and this one is regarding repentance from fear (Yoma 86b)".

Returning to God because one fears for himself, in this formulation, is the return to oneself, out of fear.One is not transformed by fear and neither are his sins. Love, on the other hand, is transformative, for in the light of the face of the King, is Life (Proverbs 16:15).

  

Two messianic traditions - at once.

Who said that you can't dance at two Chasunos? At Meron all things are possible.

How Kabbalists see Prophecy

Prophecy is central to Judaism, for the belief in the divinity of the Torah and the possibility of communication between G-d and man depends on the existence and validity of prophecy.  In fact, it is basic to any revealed religion. In previous posts we have discussed how prophets are chosen and the philosophical explanations of prophecy. In this post I briefly address the Kabbalistic view of prophecy.

Probably the most well-known explanation, popularized by R. Arye Kaplan,  is that of R. Moshe Chaim Luzatto in KL'CH Pischei Chochma. In Pesach 7, Ramchal writes that prophets "see" sefiros or partsufim, each prophet perceiving the interrelationship of the sefiros in a specific vision, the details of which depend on the seer and are not sefirotic realities, as such. At the same time that a prophet perceives a weave of different interrelationships among the sefiros, he also understand that message of what he sees, that it is representation of processes and dynamics rather than static essences of sefiros, for the sefiros themselves cannot be truly perceived, being above the ability of thought to grasp. Ramchal is very careful in this chapter to guard against a simplistic explanation of the prophetic perception as being that of actual sefiros. One could, for example assume that a vision of a sefira is the image of those objects associated with it; for example, a woman or a house being visual representations of Malchus or rushing waters of Chesed or fire of Gevurah and so on. As I pointed out in another post, early Kabbalistic works, such as Shaarei Orah or Pardes Ch.23, presented a classification of various objects and concepts as embodiments of various sefiros. Ramchal does not want us to fall into such an over simplified concept of prophecy and sets out a much more sophisticated explanation of how the vision of sefiros constitute prophecy.

It came as a surprise to me to find a very strong rejection of the view that prophecy is  a vision of sefiros in the R. Moshe Cordovero's commentary to Sefer Yetsira, 1:7. After negating it with strong words, he proceeds to lay out a quite different theory of prophetic perception. Here is a parallel and more explicit passage in Pardes (6:6): "......prophets never saw the essence of sefiros themselves.... the intent is not that prophets grasped the sefiros themselves but that the source of their vision was from sefiros...however, their understanding was from heikhalos (Palaces)." In 24:2, he explains that the sefiros themselves cannot be grasped by any man, even as great as Moshe Rabbeinu. Rather the source of prophecy is in these Palaces, which we can briefly define as pooling of Divine Light along its flow from one Sephira to the next (unfortunately this is not a place for a detailed explanation of this concept). On the simplest level, the Ramak , who preceded the Ramchal, rejected the latter's approach because of his  insistence on immateriality of the sefiros, a concern that we saw Ramchal also share. On a  deeper level, however, the disagreement between them may depend on the different concept of what sefiros are. Ramchal speaks of sefiros as being Middos (KL"CH, 6), an approach that Ramak rejects in Pardes 4:3, adopting instead the explanation that became universal among later Kabbalists (apparently with the exception of Ramchal) that sefiros are vessels that enclose the divine light. Again, I apologize for not being able to expand upon this disagreement in this brief post that focuses on prophecy.

A different view of prophecy is presented by R. Chaim Vital. He writes (Shaarei Kedusha 3:7): "...thought of a prophet spreads out and rises form level to level, from below to above, until it raches a place of origin of his own soul. (Standing) at that place he "thinks" to lift the light of sefiros to the Infinite (ain sof) and pull from there the returning light from above to below... until it reaches his intellect. It takes its portion in that light according to the amount of origin of his soul in the higher worlds, from there it pulls through the power of the imaginative faculty of Chaya-soul has in supernal worlds. There in his senses there come to be formed things (meaning images) or in his external senses".

Essentially, and as I interpret these words, R. Chaim Vital teaches the doctrine of "deeper is higher". In other words, prophecy arises from the grasping of the depths of one's own soul which are the same levels and identical to those above.This concept, developed to a greater extent by Baal Shem Tov and his disciples posited that the arena of the Lurianic tikkun is within individual's consciousness within, which in any case is identical to the Great Cosmos outside. Prophecy then is delving deeper into the root of one's souls that can then bring images and visions to the sensory and intellectual faculties to result in a complete vision and a prophetic message.

Physical and Spiritual 9: Daily practice

Once we define the purpose of spiritual life as living on the  level of Ruach, and since we now understand that level as consisting of elevated emotions, the question becomes: "How does one sustain a focus on elevated emotions?" After all, feelings come and go and most humans can no more control their feelings than control their thoughts.

The answer to this question is "training". What I mean is that, while it may be difficult to suppress or reject a feeling,  any individual can learn to call up and evoke feelings. It is also then possible to transform them. With sufficient training, over many years, one can learn how to experience the emotions of the level of Ruach for much of one's conscious time and ultimately even when not so conscious.

The elements of such training are: awareness, riding the commonplace, substitution and reframing, Kabbalistic superimposition, visualization and set times. Each of these elements deserves a chapter in a long book. What I will do now is provide a concise definition of each term, which, please God, we can expand on them in the future.

1.Awareness - without knowing what you are feeling and why, there is no hope of moving forward. Mussar training comes in handy for this task, for it teaches how to be truthful with yourself, how not to rationalize and deny, and how to look at one's state and being in an objective fashion. Once one has learned how to recognize what goes on below his surface, he or she is ready for the next step.

2.Substitution -this entails substituting emotions of Nefesh with emotions of Ruach. When one feels angry, frustrated , envious, or distressed, is the time to consciously replace these feelings with the ones from the level of Ruach. To do so, one must learn how to separate the power that fuels a feeling from the experience of the feeling itself, something for another time.

3.To master an emotion, one must become its friend, to get to know it and become familiar with it. This is difficult to do when one is enthralled (meaning enslaved) by the tide of feeling and  in the moment that it washes over the mind. Meditation helps one learn how to not be"in the moment". Another technique that allows unhurried and leisurely examination of one's emotions is visualization. This consists of imagining a situation, happy or tragic, that usually provokes a particular feeling, so that one can dwell on it, taste and savor it, and get to understand its components, its power, its transience. A number of such visualizations are presented in this chassidic book.

4,. Reframing is taking an otherwise unpleasant situation - like waiting in a long line or being forced to deal with a person you would give anything to avoid, and then redirecting that negative feeling into a positive attitude.

5.Riding the commonplace. This refers to using every opportunity to call up a feeling that you either once experienced in a similar situation ( i.e. a sunset over Manhattan to remind you of when you saw a sunset over the Grand Canyon) or a feeling that you can broaden to include Hashem. This is what Yakov did when he saw his long lost son Yosef. Chazal point out that Yosef kissed Yakov but Yakov did not kiss Yosef. They comment that this was because Yakov was reading the Shema. Why did he choose to read the Shema at that particular moment? Because he experienced a profound love for his son when he saw him after many years of separation. Yakov utilized that emotion to direct it toward Love of God (Kotsker Rebbe).

Another example: the Yerushalmi in Brochos 3:1 explains the practice of mourners to overturn the bed as being, "overturn your Evil Impulse", a reason not given in Bavli Moed Katan 27. This can also be understood as utilizing the unfortunate situation of being in mourning to direct the emotion of anger/ frustration that a mourner feels toward the internal evil impulse.

6.Kabbalistic superimposition. This is the technique of bringing to mind a concept with which the experienced object is associated in Kabbalah.  For example, HOUSE, POOL, EARTH is associated with Malchus,  HEAVEN with Tiferes, INSIGHT with Bina. Similarly, an emotion of experiencing beauty is associated with tiferes, or cause and effect with Chochma and Bina etc. Much of Shaarei Orah by R. Yosef Gikattila is devoted to explaining these examples. Another example: Glory is associated with bright light. When one walks on a street and clouds part so that for a moment the walker is bathed in light and warmth, bring to mind Divine  Glory and how it fills the earth (this example is from TAMING THE RAGING MIND) . Waking hours are filled with experiences and if one learns to utilize them to evoke related but elevated sensations and emotions, he can live most of his time in intimate contact with higher realities. It is not that one auto suggests himself into a feeling what is not there. It is, instead that he reveals the deeper realities behind everyday objects and experiences. This is not my personal teaching - it comes from Arye Kaplan's commentray to Sefer Yetsirah, Ch. 1.

7. Set times. There are times everyday ay that are already a part of your life for spiritual training. They are called PRAYER. Rather than being a bothersome waste of time, make it your laboratory for emotional growth. With the application of awareness and focus, one can turn these daily occasions into a laboratory for experiencing sublimely elevated emotions that kaleidoscope, flow and transform one into another  along with the words of the set prayer which carry them. It can become a time for great delight, a time that one waits and pines for throughout the day, a time for spiritual charging and motivational push.

These are chapter headings. Obviously there is much more to say about all this... but the limitations of the blog medium, available  time, and my limited knowledge demand that we suffice with this, for now.

Pain is not suffering

Questions of theodicy (why bad things happen to good people) are often predicated on an inadequate understanding of the distinction between pain and suffering. The two are different and distinct. The concept of suffering has been extensively analyzed in the medical and bio-ethical literature. Much of this work was done by Cassel.

in brief, the relevant point is that there is a distinction between
pain and suffering. Life often brings with it pain, but suffering is existential. Pain is value neutral and can even be a positive experience. Suffering, on the other hand, requires an interpretation of pain. Thus, for example, childbirth is pain but nor suffering, for it is a happy, meaningful occasion,  whereas chronic back pain is suffering because it is purposeless and is so perceived. Consequently, as we often observe, even minor pain can lead to disproportional suffering, when it is interpreted as a meaningless, hopelessness, helplessness, and loss of worth. On the other hand, suffering can be turned into... just a pain, if it can interpreted as meaningful and beneficial. This teaches us that one's perceptions and interpretations of pain can make it  a tolerable means to some meaningful benefit, or can turn it into exquisite suffering.

If so, animals cannot suffer for they cannot judge or interpret pain. Sure, animals feel pain. People under anesthesia also often feel pain; their heart rate and blood pressure can be demonstrated to go up, especially when anesthesia is light, but they do not suffer because their cerebrums are turned off. The
question why animals suffer pain, however,  is of a different magnitude of impact
than the one of why they undergo suffering.

Here is a brief review of Cassel's work from medscape:

A major voice in recognition of the ethical perspectives on pain and suffering has been Dr. Eric Cassell. His classic article "The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine" was published in The New England Journal of Medicine initially, and later as a text (Cassell, 1982). Cassell contributed to the attention to the problem of pain and suffering. Cassell argued that there are four essential ideas related to patients who are in pain and who are suffering. The first is that "suffering is experienced by persons." He described the historical separation of mind and body and the limiting of personhood if we ignore the subjective context. Cassell suggested that understanding the place of the person in pain requires that we reject the historical dualism of mind and body. His second contention is that "suffering occurs when an impending destruction of the person is perceived; it continues until the threat of disintegration is past or until the integrity of the person can be restored in some other manner" (Cassell, 1982). This philosophy relates closely to the patient in pain who feels the underlying causes of the pain and the destruction of the body and spirit with enduring, unrelieved pain. Cassell has written about suffering beyond the physical. He defines suffering as "a state of severe distress associated with events that threaten the intactness of the person." Finally, Cassell states that suffering can occur in relationship to any aspect of the person.