Bilvavi Part 7 - 007 Cycling Between Deep Thought & Emunah

בלבבי ח"ז עמ' קיא אמונה ומחשבה – רצוא ושוב

The Cycle Between Thought and Emunah

It has been explained previously that the secret of emunah is called the secret of [accessing] ayin, and that the essence of our power of machshavah (deep thought) is really the essence of this physical and tangible dimension (“Yeish”). When one deeply connects his soul to the plane of emunah, he realizes that all deep thinking is actually a contradiction to this great d’veykus, for it is veering from Ayin and turning him back towards Yeish-thinking.

The truth is that we have an ongoing cycle, “rotzuy v’shov” (running and returning), where we keep ascending and descending from our level. When we are at a stage of spiritual progress (rotzuy), we are able to connect ourselves to the plane of emunah, but it is impossible to stay in that state forever. There is always some stage of “shov” that we will inevitably find ourselves in at some point [and this process keeps being repeated]. When we are at shov, we feel a need for machshavah, deep thought.

When we are in “shov”, we are in “thinking” mode. There are two kinds of spiritual thoughts at this stage which we experience. One kind of thought is to have simple thoughts about the reality of the Creator. Another kind of thought is to have a complex and deep kind of thought about the Creator. The first kind of thought is closer to “rotzuy”, and it is the degree of Ayin that is always found within Yeish. The second kind of thought is analytical, so it is totally Yeish in its nature.

And when a person is teaching others, he is paying attention to his thoughts and to what he will say and how he will say it, which is an increase of Yeish-kind of thinking and doesn’t allow him to be in Ayin.

Returning To “Ayin”

When a person is at shov\machshavah, and he wishes to leave his mode of thought and return himself to the mode of rotzuy\emunah\ayin, there are two ways of how he can get there.

(1) The first way is to let go of his thoughts, and connect oneself to emunah.

(2) A second way isthrough revealing emunah within his very thoughts. One can do this by turning “yeda” (knowledge) into “lo yeda” (“I do not know”). In other words, he should mentally reflect and realize that anything he knows is not absolute. And, in fact, there is nothing that we really know absolutely.

This is for two reasons. First of all, the depth of the power of chochmah (wisdom) is not revealed to us, and there is also the plane of the unknown, havayah (also called Keser), which we never know of.

Getting used to thinking like this is what reveals a degree of ‘Ayin’ even within ‘Yeish’. This method has a gain that the first method doesn’t have. In the first method, although a person can return to Ayin\emunah, he is still within his chochmah. But when a person uses the second method, he reveals Ayin within the Yeish; he reveals emunah within his chochmah, and this raises the chochmah to the level of ayin.