Transcendence

“It is indeed fitting that his every inclination……every action, great or small, be motivated by no purpose other than that of drawing near to the Blessed One and breaking all the barriers [all the earthly elements and their concomitants] that stand between him and his Possessor, until he is pulled towards the Blessed One just as iron to a magnet.” Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, The Path of the Just

A couple of days ago, something quite unexpected happened to me – I was walking home with some shopping and suddenly found myself converting from a vertical to a horizontal position as my knees made rather hard contact with the ground below me. As I lay with my arms splayed out before me still holding the shopping bags, I heard a few voices above asking if I was “alright”.  Well, I guess I was. I managed to get up with the kindness of strangers, albeit with some difficulty, and hobbled home, thanking Hashem for most likely not having sustained any major injuries since  I was  still able to walk. I was absolutely convinced that whatever injury I had incurred would take at least a week or more to heal because my knees hurt very badly and were a bit swollen.

I found it quite easy to thank Hashem for this occurrence because the thought briefly crossed my mind that had it been more serious, I didn’t really know how I would have been able to look after my mother as her sole caretaker.  I carried on thanking Hashem during my personal prayer session that evening and by the following afternoon felt much better. My knees didn’t seem to be bothering me that much and  two days later, today, apart from a small graze which is a bit sore, I’m feeling pretty much back to normal.  I’m quite amazed.

You may be wondering what this has to do with the above quote taken from the classic work, The Path of the Just.

To be honest, my first thought was how this could possibly have happened to ME! After all, I follow Breslev teachings, I do my personal prayer, I say tehillim etc etc. so why did this happen to ME!

It obviously happened for a reason and Hashem wanted me to learn something from it and draw closer to Him through it.  I am not sure exactly what injuries to knees mean from a spiritual standpoint. I know Rabbi Shalom Arush says that it means that a person is on an improper path – “faltering knees”, as he puts it. The one thing I do know is that my main avodah, or spiritual work, at the moment is caring for my mother.  Without going into details, although I genuinely believe that this is what Hashem wants me to do at the moment and for the most part it’s extremely fulfilling, there are times, particularly recently, when impatience and irritability have taken over. Times when I have been  sounding a bit authoritarian towards my mother, who unfortunately is becoming more dependent on me.

I have been asking Hashem to help me speak in a gentler manner but I realized that when something happens which doesn’t quite go my way, i.e. my mother can’t do exactly what I want her to do even if it is for her well-being, I hear my vocal decibels go up almost automatically.  It had become a habit. And worse, I was even justifying it: I’m not getting enough sleep (which is true, but Hashem still gives me the mental and physical energy I need because I ask for it) or I tell myself that I am only human, I can’t react perfectly all the time (which is also true –  both small scale and large scale suffering is still suffering).

Since the fall, the proverbial light bulb went on and I realized that my mother’s unfortunate situation not just my avodah but also is Hashem’s test for me, and that while I have a responsibility for her well-being, I need to speak to Hashem about it, not her.  All the irritations are just that, irritations. They are nothing that I couldn’t just step back from emotionally and just deal with as they are happening. However, my need to be in control of the situation was starting to take over.

Yesterday, I felt lighter and more relaxed.  I don’t feel I have to persuade my mother to do things.  If she wants to, she will, and if not, she won’t.  I have to remember that it’s my mother who is suffering from ill health, not me, and that my sole job is to make her happy (as a chassid once told me a few years’ ago when my father was alive).

The yetzer hara is very clever and devious; it can make us rationalize that we aren’t expected to transcend all our ordeals because we are “only human” and by definition deficient.  But of course that it is exactly the purpose.  The Ramchal is saying just that: this world is created with deficiency and our job in this world is to try and break through our personal barriers, overcome obstacles and  transcend our limitations because the main reward is not in this world, it is in the next world, Olam Haba, where will merit to have real attachment to Hashem.