Get to Know Yourself

Usually, self-help books are full of exhortations to readers to ignore their limitations and go for broke; don’t let anything get in your way! That might work (for a while) if you’re young and inexperienced. But the older and wiser amongst us know that we all have our limits, and we simply can’t get beyond them – unless we put G-d in the picture.

G-d wants us to see that He’s the only One in the universe that doesn’t have any limits. It’s hard to admit to ourselves, but we aren’t G-d. We have limits. If a woman spends all her time with her girlfriends and entertaining and doing acts of kindness in the community, then she will never be with her children. All her giving is limited to people outside of her own family.

The opposite limitation is also a problem. If a woman is only with her children; if she can only think about her children and no one else’s; if she can only talk about herself and her wonderful children’s accomplishments – then her kids will grow up to be spoiled brats. She is ruining their lives and her own.

So how are we meant to know what limits to set? What to let go of, what to hang on to? When to leave well enough alone, and what to choose?

How do we deal with the existential problem of freedom and too much choice? The answer is that G-d wants us to have only one choice right now, and that is to have faith in Him. He wants us to know that we only have this moment and there is only one thing I’m supposed to do right now. G-d isn’t going to tell me what to do next, until I finish this.

He’s setting things up like this, because He wants us to have peace of mind and pleasure from life. He wants us to see how much fun is packed into every precious moment, and to see the beauty He’s created all around us. If we live this moment fully, we can really enjoy a full breath of fresh air for the first time in our lives. We can smell the fresh herbs and flowers.

G-d wants us to know that multi-tasking is no good for us, that it’s dangerous, both to our souls and our physical bodies. Multi-tasking takes away our power. When we focus on so many things at once, we lose ourselves and become super-efficient robots. The Evil Inclination would be so happy to make us all into successful religious Robots.

The more we try to live in the moment, the more likely it is that we’ll really be living, in every sense of the word.

The only way to not fall into the many traps being set for us by the Evil Inclination, is to really believe in G-d. A person who really believes in G-d is not going to waste time trying to use his own intellect to work out who he really is. A person who really believes in G-d is not going to spend hours obsessively researching on the internet what his symptoms really mean. He’s also not interested in hearing the opinions of “experts” who are so far away from G-d, that their ideas about reality are completely meaningless.

Rather, when a person really believes in G-d, he only wants to be told by G-d or G-d’s representatives what to think, what to do and what his problems really mean. That person understands that everything is being orchestrated from Above, and that nothing of real importance is being created, decided or affected down here.

The choice is ours: we can certainly choose to go with the opinions and “knowledge” of secular professionals who have no real way of curing our problems, or we can turn to G-d with sincerity, openness and a willingness to know what G-d really wants for us and from us.

If we pick the second option, we will then be helped from Above to know whatever we need to know, at least for now, on the level we actually find ourselves on. For some people, that might mean getting a small dose of Heavenly inspiration, insight or self-revelation, just enough to get them through to the next stage of the process.

Other people may need some very deep, penetrating insight into themselves, because G-d may think that a fuller “self-knowledge” will help that person to accomplish his mission and purpose. The point is, if we really believe in G-d, we trust that whatever insights G-d is sending down to us, big or small, they are all 100% tailor- made for us, to help us discover what G-d really wants from us.