We’ve been discussing the concept of taking a
Cheshbon Henefesh, a personal accounting.
You do this when you are feeling numb, stuck, and indifferent towards spiritual pursuits.
When properly done, the result of this spiritual audit will shatter the rough exterior of your animal soul - its false sense of independence - in order for your divine soul to finally be able to shine through.
The longer you linger on these thoughts, the more you’ll begin to feel revulsion for the state you find yourself in.
This isn’t your true self! Driving your self-centeredness, disconnecting you from G-d, and separating you from your essence - your divine soul - is your animal soul.
The way to reawaken your attraction and desire for G-d is to let the animal soul know exactly who he is and what you think of him.
The Alter Rebbe suggests to direct your feelings of disgust towards peeling away the masks the animal soul dons by telling him:
You are wicked!
You are evil!
You are despicable!
You are a disgrace!
Most people, when they refer to themselves, are actually referring to their animal soul, so by taunting your animal soul with these names, you are referring also to yourself, to your self-identity.
The acknowledgement of your lowliness reminds you that this isn’t the *real* you… Your real self is your divine soul.
You'll start feeling angry and pained by the fact that this shell was cutting you off from the source of life - from the divine light.
Hey, you can _feel_ again…!
The numbness and indifference, the Timtum Halev, has dissolved a bit.
A crack has formed in the shell….
Your G-dly soul can shine through once again!
The forces of evil - the animal soul - provide the illusion that this world is an entity independent of G-d
And that you, too, are your own, independent, self-sufficient being
And this separation, this split from your source and who you really are, is the source of all your sins and misdeeds. It’s only when a person denies his core and ignores who he truly is that he would dare put his personal will above the will of G-d.
It’s like those
Holocaust deniers...
Covid deniers…
Who put their personal agenda ahead of the truth…
The biggest deniers of all are -
*The forces of evil and the animal soul*
Who deny what is most obvious - that this world and all of existence is literally nothing 🌬️in relation to G-d.
▪▪▪
What’s the point of all this effort to shatter the animal soul?
Does it exist just so we can break it?
Well, its purpose is much more than that:
_The whole purpose of the animal soul is to enable us to discover the truth of the world on our own._
If G-dliness were not hidden from us, we would clearly see that there is no other besides Him. If we did not have to discover Him on our own, we would rely on our sense of sight, as opposed to our _understanding_ to acknowledge G-d’s existence.
Notice your surroundings for a moment. What do you see☺️?
Plants
Walls
People
Furniture...
Our sense of sight perceives, first of all, the physical form of the objects we are viewing.
In Chassidic terminology, we experience the world as reality and G-dliness as a novelty.
Physical objects are what we naturally relate to and take as a given,
while G-dliness is something we have to get comfortable with.
Since G-dliness is concealed, in order to "see" G-d, we need to don intellectual glasses and learn about Him in classes, study about Him in books, and meditate upon those ideas.
Our goal is to achieve the opposite perspective and to see the world through divine glasses:
To experience G-dliness as reality and the physical manifestation of everything as a novelty;
to perceive every idea, every action, and every object according to its spiritual purpose and meaning without being misled or fooled by its physical presentation.
Studying Tanya slowly educates us to attain this perspective.
