Bilvavi Part 5 - 087 How To Work On Your Middos

בלבבי חלק ה. תיקון המידות פז-צה

Bilvavi 5: Talking To Hashem About Our Middos

Introduction

The Ramchal writes in the beginning of Mesillas Yesharim that “going in Hashem’s ways (halichah b’drachav) entails working on one’s middos and perfecting them. It as the Sages say (Shabbos 133b), “Just as He is merciful and compassionate, so should You be merciful and compassionate.”

It seems that we must cleave to Hashem’s middos because since He is entirely good, we need to cling to the good of His ways. Yet, this is only a superficial perspective. The deeper reason why we must cleave to Hashem’s ways is because they are the middos of Hashem – and that itself obligates us to cleave to His middos. By cleaving to His middos, we come to have d’veykus in Him; Chazal say that the way to achieve d’veykus (“And you shall cleave to Him”) is by cleaving to Hashem’s middos, by getting our middos to resemble Hashem’s middos.

How indeed does resembling Hashem’s middos bring us to have d’veykus in Him? It is because in order to become attached with Hashem, we need to resemble Him. The more and more we get our own middos to resemble Hashem’s middos, the more we become one with Him.

Thus, the mitzvah to go in Hashem’s ways – halachah b’drochov – is not because we have to cling to His middos since they are good. It is more than that. It is because by getting our middos to resemble Hashem’s middos – such as by acting merciful – we get ourselves more and more to resemble the Creator in an inner way. That is what brings us to become attached to Him.

1.

Working on your middos is a vast, deep subject. We will try to explain its fundamentals briefly.

The first thing to do is that one has to find out what his worst middah is. The sefarim hakedoshim say that a person’s main job on this world is to fix his worst middah, and that it is for this reason that he was sent to this world. The Vilna Gaon even writes that if a person doesn’t break his bad middos, there is no point in living.

2.

After a person is clear which middah he has to fix the most, he can begin to work on his middos (and after he has decided to work on it, he must still figure out what he should work on first, according to the current situation he is in. Even after you work on a certain bad middah, eventually you will have to work on it again in a few years from now, because the more you purify yourself, the more you can fix the bad middah on an even deeper level than before. Working on your middos is a lifelong task, and each time you work on it, you are able to purify that bad middah more and more. This is well-known to anyone who searches for the truth in life).

When you want to begin working on your bad middos, do not immediately begin to work on it. First, you need to learn about its nature, and included in this is to learn what its opposite will entail; there is a rule that in order to know about something, you need to learn about its opposite. Also, each of the bad middos comes from one of the four elements – fire, water, wind and earth, as Rav Chaim Vital writes. We will also need to know what the results each bad middah gives birth to, and how each bad middah affects different areas of your life.

3.

While you are doing this, don’t think about your “self” at all. Just think about the actual middah you find in yourself which you are trying to fix. This is a very large part of the job: don’t try to “find yourself” in this and how it is affecting you, and don’t begin to work on improving yourself right away. Without this mentality, a person has a very superficial approach to working on his middos, and he doesn’t understand what it means to work on your middos. It is impulsiveness to attain levels, and it lacks a properly built plan.

Thus, the first part of our job here is not to think about yourself. Just learn about the bad middah you are trying to fix. Learn about its root (fire, water, earth, or wind), what it causes, and how it can be fixed. You are trying to learn about the bad middah and what you can do about it, not about what this has to do with “you” per se.

4.

After you have studied the bad middah, write it down – the concept of it, what its roots are, and what other bad middos it leads to. This is very necessary to do. It takes time, and it might even take a few weeks. This is not because of laziness – it is simply because it takes time to build up a plan. That’s the way it works.

After this, you can begin to see how this bad middah relates to you, and where it manifests itself in your life. You can think what awakens it in your life, and how strong it is in your life. Then, think how much you want to fix this middah, how much energy you are willing to put in to fix it. Write this all down before you begin to actually try to improve yourself.

5.

After you have clarified all this, now you can sit down and think into what you can do about this bad middah. Pick one strategy that you feel will work for you, from all the advice you learn about on this bad middah. Only after figuring out what the best strategy is to work on it should you actually begin to carry it out. You first have to learn what the bad middah actually is before you see how it relates to you as a person. It is an art that you need to learn about, and a person is apt to make many mistakes when he tries to improve himself, because working on a middah is a deep wisdom.

After you begin to actually work on the bad middah, you will gain more and more clarity about the middah with time. You will see the bad middah from all different angles. Keep paying attention to your perspective on the bad middah as you work to improve, because clarifying it once to yourself before isn’t enough.

6.

In order to work on your middos, a lot of patience is required, because you need to keep paying attention to your growth along the way. For this, a person needs an inner calm, as well as a power of subtle feeling to see progress and more clarity with the bad middah at hand. A lot of patience is required if one wants to bear results. But the main thing is never to give up, not even when you fail. Even if you fail a thousand times, pull yourself together and don’t give up. Just tell yourself that maybe you made a mistake somewhere and try to examine yourself. But again, don’t be depressed when you do this! Stay calm inside, and hold onto your motivation to build yourself up.

You can this for every bad middah you want to work on. The basic method is that there must be a carefully built plan, and you shouldn’t just work on your middos impulsively.

We should stress a very important rule: Never work on two bad middos at the same time. Each middah needs to be worked on separately.

7.

A very fundamental point about working on your middos is that it has done be joyously. We should want to work on our middos happily, and not begrudgingly. When someone doesn’t have this attitude, he will become very depressed every time he discovers another fault about himself. But this is a very big mistake, and we can explain why.

Who gave you the bad middah? Hashem! Why did He give you the bad middah? The purpose of Creation is to perfect it, as the sefarim hakedoshim tell us. If so, someone who is sad because of his faults is really sad about the way Hashem designed the world. (Not only that, but he is sad because of his fantasies. He thought until now that he is perfect, which was a fantasy. Now he has snapped out of that fantasy, and instead of being sad about this, he should be happy that he has finally escaped his fantasies and that now he sees the truth!)

When a person discovers his faults, he should be happy, because now he knows what he has to do on this world. It’s actually a happiness that there is nothing greater than! How pitiful is a person who never realizes in his life what he has to work on, because he will leave this world unfulfilled of his purpose.

The proper attitude to have toward our faults is that Hashem created the world so we can perfect it by working on ourselves, and it is thus the will of Hashem that I have my shortcomings. If a person is sad because of his shortcomings, this can either be for one of two reasons: 1) He is haughty, because he doesn’t want to accept that he is imperfect. 2) He is lacking emunah, either in his conscious or in his sub-conscious, because he feels guilty for his shortcomings, which is kind of saying that he created himself! If that is his problem, then he has to work on his emunah, and realize that Hashem gave him the fault, and that this is his Avodah on this world.

So when we work on our middos, we should be very happy to do so.

8.

All mistakes in Avodas Hashem, especially when it comes to working on our middos, should never cause a person to be sad. Hashem wants us to work on ourselves, and it is written, “A righteous person falls seven times and gets up.” It is not my fault when I fall; that is the way it is supposed to be. I am supposed to “fall” in order to “get up.” It’s a cycle we must go through.

If that will be our attitude, we will be happy throughout our growth process, even the failures. The yetzer hora, though, tells people that it is your fault when you fail, and in this way it succeeds in getting people to become depressed. Sometimes the yetzer hora succeeds so well that it can convince a person to drop out of all Avodas Hashem, chas v’shalom. This is all from a lack of understanding that everything is the will of Hashem, and from not knowing that we are supposed to have failures. Without emunah in Hashem, serving Hashem will cause a lot of sadness to a person. Only with emunah can we work on ourselves happily, and when we are happy, we will be very successful.

If a person feels that he cannot do this happily, generally, he should not attempt to work on his middos! What such a person has to do instead is to work on his emunah, and from that, he can come to be happy. Only after a person becomes at least a little happy can he begin to work on his middos. (Of course, for every rule, there are always exceptions to the rule; we leave it at this understanding).

9.

There is a point which even more important, though.

The Gemara (Kiddushin 30b) says that the yetzer hora gets stronger each day, and if not for Hashem’s help, it would be impossible to overcome.

The yetzer hora is far stronger than us. Naturally, we cannot defeat it on our own. What can we do about it then? Were we created to fail and go to Gehinnom?! For this, Chazal reveal that Hashem can help us overcome it. This, of course, is not automatic. If you enjoin Hashem in your battle, you will get help from Hashem, but if you never entreat Hashem to help you, then you are fighting the battle without Hashem.

Thus, a person has to decide that he wants to succeed at this battle, and that in order to succeed, he needs Hashem to help him.

10.

How can a person enjoin Hashem with him in his battle against the yetzer hora? Only by talking to Him. When you need help, you have to give a call for help.

So if a person wants to work on his middos, he needs to talk to Hashem. This is what he can say to Hashem:

“Ribono shel olam, You commanded me in Your Torah to cleave to You, and Chazal have explained this to mean that one must cleave to Your middos. I want to fulfill this mitzvah, and attach myself to Your good middos. Since the middos which You have given me are not matching up to Your middos, I want to correct them and get them to be more like Your middos. You did not give me the strength to overcome all the middos at once, but only to work on one of them at a time. So I am asking of You that You give me the understanding to know which middah I should work on now.

“Ribono shel olam, Chazal have said that the yetzer hora is stronger than me, and if You don’t help me, I can’t win. I am asking of You to help me at all times and be with me throughout this battle.  If You don’t help me, I don’t stand a chance to fix my middos. I am asking of You to help me fix my middos so I can thus cleave to You. Please help me with this, that I merit to cleave to You.”

The sefer Yesod V’Shoresh H’Avodah writes that even if a person keeps falling to the same sin again and again, he should keep davening to Hashem about it constantly that he be saved from the sin, and that if one persists in this, Hashem will definitely help him, because “one who comes to be purified will be purified.” He also adds on that “I tried this with myself many times when it came to trying to work on my middos, and I saw this openly how Hashem helped my when I davened to Him constantly. I especially increased my concentration by Hashiveinu. I did not have the strength alone to purify my bad middos. Therefore, strengthen yourself, my beloved son, in this high service, and you will then be called a true servant of Hashem.”

When a person sees that he has a bad middah, he should not be depressed at this. Instead, he should talk to Hashem and say, “I really want to fix this middah, and I keep failing. I have accepted to keep working on myself, but please help me that I shouldn’t fail again with this bad middah.”

Whichever bad middah you are trying to fix, always talk to Hashem with a prayer that He help you fix it and that you should be shown the way. Each person can daven to Hashem according to how much he needs to. These matters should be discussed with someone else who truly serves Hashem and has been through these matters successfully. You need to daven for this as well – that you be sent the right person to talk to who can guide you.