Fixing Your Focus - 002 Basis of Focus & Overcoming Distractions

Concentration Problems Stemming From Water-of-Earth: Easily “Dragged” After Distractions

We have begun, with siyata d’shmaya, to explain how problems of concentration stem from each of the four elements; previously, we studied “earth”-of-earth. Now let’s see how problems with concentration can stem from “water”-of-earth, and how it can be fixed.

The element of earth in the soul ties a person down to where he is, for that is the nature of earth – it weighs things down. The “water” within earth is when one is “dragged” towards aspects of earthiness. Here we are not dealing with the general element of water, but with the “water” that is part of the element of earth, where a person is lightly “dragged” away (like water), from concentrating on something.

He quickly loses track of what he was thinking about, as he is easily dragged after something on the side of his eyes that caught his vision. A person may be “dragged” after these things and then may lose his thought process.

Examples

1)     For example, if a person is sitting in a room and he catches sight of a candelabra that looks nice, and he is easily dragged after looking at it. He quickly spaces out and he stops concentrating, then he returns to what he was concentrating on, and returns to examine the candelabra, repeating the cycle.

2)     He gets distracted by some noise in the room, such as a fly buzzing around. Then he re-focuses, gets distracted again by the noise, then returns to focusing; and the cycle repeats.

We can bring more examples as well, but the point is that there are small distractions that prevent a person from concentration. We aren’t talking about cases of majorly losing focus; it is just a small distraction, which stops a person’s thought process, making a person think about something else instead.

This is not the same thing as spacing out and daydreaming, where one doesn’t catch himself until much later. Here we are talking about small distractions, where a person loses focus for a few moments, then returns to what he’s thinking about, and the cycle repeats. Although the degree of distraction is small and he’s not majorly losing focus, the problem is that these moments of distraction can happen multiple times, in quick succession of each other.

Two Negative Outcomes of Being Easily Distracted

The first problem here is that a person loses his ability of consistency. The secret of holiness is consistency, and when a person has constant interruptions, he loses the consistency of thought.

But a more serious problem here is that when a person gets used to being easily distracted, his thought process develops interruptions, and his thoughts will “skip”. Not only is he losing focus, but his very thought process will become jumpy, and his thoughts will jump around from one thought to another.

Jumpiness In The Mind

We need to understand that almost all people have this problem of “jumpiness” taking place in their thoughts all the time. A person can try taking a few moments to watch his thought process and see how fast his thoughts jump from one subject to another. Most people cannot remain focused on one kind of thought for more than 20 seconds! The thoughts are usually jumping from one subject to another, before returning to the previous subject. 

For example, a person is in a car and he’s looking out the window, he does not take his mind off the road in front of him, but he can definitely lose awareness of the fact that he is driving in a car. After a few seconds, his mind will regain awareness of the fact that he is driving, then he thinks about something else, and the cycle repeats.

Usually, the shift of the focus isn’t that noticeable, so it is relatively easily for the person to return to what he is thinking about. But the fact is that the thoughts have still jumped. It can be compared to a person looking at one place with his right eye, and another place with the left eye. When a person does this, his thoughts are really jumping from one subject to another.

You cannot think of two different thoughts at once. So how does a person think of so many things at once? It is not really happening all at once. Rather, the shift of the thoughts happens so quickly that it doesn’t register in the mind as different thoughts.

In most people, the thinking process is jumpy. As to the degree of this jumpiness, and the nature of these thoughts, that is something that varies with each other person. We can say that this is true with almost all people. This fact is the root of all problems having to do with lack of mental focus.

If the thought process in most people would be orderly, with one thought leading to another thought on the same subject, a person would be far from the issue of losing focus. But because the thoughts in most people are usually jumping from one subject to another, lack of focus is commonplace. It causes the entire thought process jumpy.

(The power of ‘jumpiness’ (dilug) is also found in the side of holiness. In the future, Moshiach will “jump” and “skip” over the mountains and hills. But here we are explaining with the downside to the power of dilug\jumping: jumpiness of the mind.)

Even if there would be no external factors present to steer the mind away from what it is thinking about (there is no such thing of course, but even if theoretically it was possible), there would still be problems with concentration, due to the nature jumpiness of the thoughts in a person’s mind. Since the thoughts tend to jump from one subject to another, even a small distraction can activate this jumpiness.

We have explained that this stems from water-of-earth. For this reason, a person may be distracted by an interesting looking item that is in the room, or by a fly that is buzzing around, and his thoughts will quickly jump from the subject at hand to thinking about the distraction, then he will go back to thinking about the original subject, then back to thinking about the distraction, etc. It is all an extension of this nature of jumpiness in the mind.

Earlier Roots of Mental Jumpiness

If we look into the earlier roots of this problem, it begins in childhood. A child is easily distracted by anything we wave in front of his face. He can be playing with one toy and a second later he is playing with another toy. As a person gets older and mature, he can learn how to stay focused, but in childhood, in the beginning of the mind’s development, there is jumpiness and a lack of orderly thought. There is also a deeper reason for this: when the power of thought hasn’t been developed yet, it is of a superficial nature, and therefore it is naturally less orderly and less capable of focus.

Distractions Come From Outside The Mind and From The Mind Itself

If the above has all been understood, we can now proceed to the following.

On the inside of the matter, we have the mind itself, and on the outside, we have the external factors that influence the mind’s thoughts. The mind itself may have an issue where it cannot focus for too long on one matter, and therefore it will jump to another thought. And there are external factors that cause the mind to be dragged away from what it is thinking about. This is water-of-earth: small distractions that are coming from the external surroundings of a person.

Getting deeper with this, small distractions do not only come from external surroundings of a person. They are actually coming from the mind itself.

A person’s inner essence, as we know, is not just one single force. (If it would be just one internal force, a person would shine the light of his “Yechidah” so strongly that it would reveal the Individual One of the world.) The inner forces of the soul are many. There are 70 root forces in the soul, as the Vilna Gaon describes.

In addition to this, we have the many thoughts of the mind that a person thinks about. So there’s a lot taking place on the inside of a person. How many thoughts does a person think, since he is born? There are thousands and millions of thoughts. If we would add up all of the thoughts that people have thought of since the beginning of time, it would be endless. It is well-known that thoughts, even after they are over, still remain; the thought leaves behind an imprint of it. Understandably, some thoughts will leave behind more of an impression than other thoughts. Every thought, even after it is over, will remain as a potential force, though it is no longer active.

Therefore, something may trigger the once-long-ago thought to be released from its potential state and to make its appearance again. It may become activated through a sight, through some imagination, or through smelling something that reminds him of that thought, etc. Once the old thought is awakened again, a person loses focus on his current thought and he will focus on the old thought. This creates hesech hadaas (removal of awareness).

As mentioned, our power of thought in essence cannot think constantly of the same thing at least not in the current state that we are in, where we are no longer in the state of Adam before the sin, where the thoughts of the mind were are able to focus constantly on nothing but total truth.  Ever since the first sin of man, the mind is possessed with “many calculations”, meaning, a myriad amount of thoughts taking place. This makes it impossible for our mind to only think of one thing, and to keep thinking of different thoughts. So in our current nature, our thoughts cannot focus on one matter for that long.

In addition to this factor, there are also the emotions, which there are also many of, ever since the first sin when men deviated. The many emotions in a person can also breed hesech hadaas. For example, whenever a person is saddened, or whenever he is joyous, he is will very much about what he’s sad or happy about, and he loses his focus of what he was thinking about beforehand.

These can be small, distracting kinds of thoughts of feelings, which are enough to cause a person to have hesech hadaas. We are not even talking about major disturbances, such as sudden tragedy, G-d forbid, or other events which disturb a person’s mind so much that he cannot think or focus properly for the time being. Even a small thought or a small feeling can be enough to make a person lose focus on something. There is a huge amount of them available in the psyche of a person, so there is an endless amount of opportunities for a person to lose focus on what he was thinking about.

It is only natural for a person to have hesech hadaas as soon as he starts thinking about a certain thing or as soon as he’s feeling something which distracts him a little bit. Again, this is true even about very small distractions.

For example, when a person goes to an hour-long shiur, for how long can he focus his thoughts on what he’s hearing about? How much does he space out while listening? Many times a person asks a question in middle of the shiur when the same question was asked half a minute ago. He didn’t realize that the question was just asked because he wasn’t listening. I am not talking about a conceited person who doesn’t care to listen to what others have to say. A person simply loses focus and he does not even hear what people around him are saying.

It’s All Normal

So, there are endless amount of distracting thoughts and feelings that can cause a person to lose focus on what he is thinking, which is hesech hadaas.

Much attention is being given today to the subject of people who have problems with focusing and concentration. The logic of it is: If a person loses focus only minimally, relative to the average attention span of other people, that’s nothing to be concerned about, but if the loss of focus is extreme enough to cause anyone to have a hesech hadaas, this is considered a “problem” with the person. But the truth is that the problem does not begin with the person who has it. It is a natural outcome of the structure of the soul in every person! (There is certainly an inner work to learn how to increase the focus of the thoughts, but this is one of the most challenging inner tasks).

In Summary

In summary, when there is a dominance of water-of-earth in one’s soul, the very structure of his soul is always skipping between thoughts, so he cannot concentrate for that long on something. Just like a person cannot stay in one place for too long without moving, so is a person with a nature of water-of-earth unable to stay focused for that long, and he will have to skip out of his place. He will immediately have hesech hadaas and become involved with something else. He will become externally involved with other things; and his mind will wander to thinking about any other thoughts on his mind, or to any strong emotions he is feeling.

An Additional Factor Which Can Prevent Focus – Reading Into Others’ Thoughts

As you may have realized by now, we haven’t even addressed any of the extreme issues that people may have with focus and concentration. We are only speaking here of what the average person goes through.

An additional factor which can stop a person’s focus, which is rare and experienced by very few individuals, is when a person is constantly “picking up” the thoughts of others in his surroundings and absorbing them.

Normally, we are not able to read another person’s thoughts, and we can only sense what other people are doing and saying. But there are some people in the world who have an ability to sense the thoughts of others. This may be coming from the spiritual ability of Ruach HaKodesh (the holy spirit), which is a very high spiritual level. Or, it may just be that the person was born with an inner sense for this, which is nothing spiritual, for we can find even non-observant Jews or gentiles who have been born with this ability.

Either way, though, when people are able to sense others’ thoughts, their minds are full of the mental chatter of everyone around them – and they cannot focus because of all the information that their brain keeps absorbing.

Developing The Power of Focus

We need to know: What is the way to live, ideally, so that we can prevent these issues with focus?

In addition to the problems we have described here, there may be other factors as well which are contributing to the issues with focusing, but here we will explain what the general outline is, of what we need to do, in order to living a life of being able to focus better. It is a broad matter, and we will explain it briefly. There are two parts to it.

1) Strengthening The Power of Thought - Via Focused, In-Depth Torah Learning.

Through developing a strong power of thought, it is easier to stay centered in the mind.

To illustrate, if a person never learns Torah, and he is only involved in a certain activity or work in his life, such as if he is a carpenter or a repairman, his ability to think is very limited, because all he thinks about is what he does. In contrast to this, if a person learns Torah every day, especially if he is immersed in it and he learns in-depth, he is always building his mind and his power to think. He will be able to focus much better.

The basis of developing the power of focus – here we are not addressing the general public, but bnei Torah specifically, who are involved in learning Torah in-depth every day – is to build the power of thought through in-depth Torah study. Only in-depth Torah learning can accomplish this; learning in a manner of bekiyus, though, which is certainly wonderful, will not build the power of the mind to focus.

In order to begin developing the power of focus, one needs to get used to thinking about a particular Torah thought. One can think about a particular question, or an answer. Getting used to this is also a way to purify for the mind.

One needs to train himself to concentrate with his mind on a Torah thought – softly, and not in a way which strains the mind (which certainly sounds like a contradiction, but it is possible). One can start doing this for a minute, then gradually increasing it to 2 minutes, then 3 minutes, etc.

A person needs to acquire the power of analytical, deep thinking in Torah (iyun). This ability, iyun, enables a person to stay firmly established in a thought and it centers his mind. The less a person develops his power of iyun, the weaker his power of focus will be; in contrast, the stronger one’s ability of deep iyun is – with emphasis on both aspects of deep and iyun – the more one will be able to focus.

There are different ways of learning with iyun, and this merits its own discussion. But here we have just laid out the outline: one needs to get used to deep iyun in his Torah learning, to be able to analyze and think into a particular Torah thought, and this is the basis of building the power of focus. This is the power that enables a person to remain attached and focused to whatever he does. It is like the glue that attaches things in place. One needs to get used to analytical, in-depth thinking into a Torah thought.

This should certainly be done when you are in front of a sefer in the Beis Midrash, but a large part of developing the power of thought is acquired when a person is walking through the street. This also aids a person in guarding his eyes from seeing anything inappropriate. To implement this idea, one should take a particular Torah thought with him to think about when he’s walking through the street. This trains one’s soul to get used to deeply thinking into the thoughts of the Torah, and this is the basic of how we can develop the power of true focus.

2) Awareness of Subtle Thoughts and Emotions

Most people are not that aware of what they are thinking or feeling. Constantly, there are thoughts and emotions passing through us, but not all of us are aware of them. You can ask a person, “What did you just think about?” and he says, “Nothing”, and you can ask him, “What did you just feel like?” and he also says, “Nothing.” On paper, it sounds as if he is dead – he is not thinking or feeling anything!

But we know that this isn’t true. Every person – with almost no exceptions - is certainly having thoughts and feelings, every moment. But people are usually aware of their thoughts only if the thoughts are particularly tangible, such as a fantasy, which can feel very strong. The same goes for emotion – people will usually feel their emotions only if the emotion is particularly strong and tangible. Subtle, refined feelings are usually not perceived in one’s awareness – the more subtle the feeling is, the less a person will be consciously aware of it.

What happens because of this? There are people who lose their focus because they have begun to think about something, which led to another thought, and then another thought – but the person is not even aware of what he was thinking. If he is not even aware of what he is thinking about, how can he ever focus?

If he knows what he’s thinking about, like if he’s thinking about a question or an answer, then he is aware of what he’s thinking. But if there are thoughts quickly passing through his mind, it is difficult to be aware of them, since they are coming so quickly in succession of each other. The same goes for emotion – if a person experiences several emotions very quickly after each other, he won’t be aware of these emotions.

These quickly passing thoughts or emotions are actually a cause for hesech hadaas – where the mind loses focus. If he is asked why he suddenly lost focus, and he doesn’t know why, someone may tell him, “Maybe you need to see a psychologist – perhaps he will be able to straighten out your mind a bit.” But the true reason of why his mind keeps losing focus is not because there is something wrong with his mind, but because of the inner emotions and thoughts that are quickly passing through him, which he isn’t aware of.

Since he isn’t aware of the quickly passing thoughts and emotions, he won’t even know what the source of the problem is. Not only will he be at a loss of how to solve this issue – he won’t even be aware of the source of the problem. If you want to know the true source of the problems with focus that most people have, it is for the reason we just mentioned.

We must emphasize that we are not addressing here the more severe issues with focus. Here we are addressing the “average” struggle with focusing which applies to most people. In most people, there is a subtle problem with focusing which stems from their inner thoughts and emotions that they aren’t aware of, which are deterring their focus on an unconscious level. They aren’t aware of where the issue is stemming from and that is what further exasperates their issues with focus.

Sadly, most people are born like this, and that is also how they end life. For their entire life, they erroneously think that their minds simply cannot focus that much, and in best situations, they recognize that it is not an extreme problem and that they are still considered “normal”. Therefore they never deal with the issue, because if it’s normal, it is not something to make an issue out of….

The truth is that most people are not even using 10% of their mind - as is well-known. Simply speaking, we can say that this is laziness. While that is true, another reason is because the mind is constantly jumping to other topics to think about, the person doesn’t learn how to focus his mind, and he comes to accept that he does not have a strong power of thought, and that his mind is just the way it is and he cannot develop it further.

Gaining Subtle Awareness – Through Entering Your Inner World

The avodah (inner work) which we can do to counter all of this, is, briefly, as follows.

The more a person enters his inner world, the more awareness he will develop, of his thoughts and emotions. In order to acquire these two abilities, of “mental awareness” and “emotional awareness” – one will need the following two factors:

(1) Firstly, he must be able to “view oneself from the outside”. (2) Secondly, he needs the ability to have “inner quieting”.

(I am not speaking about the basic level of awareness, which is on a far lower level. Here, I am coming to explain a higher level of awareness.)

The first ability mentioned, the ability to “view oneself from the outside”, is an ability to view yourself from outside of yourself, as if you are an onlooker towards yourself. Just as you can see another person and observe him and you get to know him from this “outsider” perspective, so can you look at yourself from an “outsider” perspective, viewing yourself from “outside” of yourself. This ability is also known as the “Chayah” level of the soul.

The second ability mentioned, “inner quieting”, is attained through living a generally calm life. The more a person is inwardly calm, the more his spiritual awareness is raised and he can feel subtler things, whereas the more “noise” a person lives in, the less he can identify with subtleties.

Observing Yourself From “Outside” of Yourself, Amidst The Quiet

In order to attain mental and emotional awareness – which are both subtle – a person needs the above two abilities, “viewing oneself from the outside” and “inner quiet.” Generally speaking, the ability of mental awareness (becoming aware of your thoughts) is developed through “viewing oneself from the outside”, whereas emotional awareness (becoming aware of your feelings) is mainly developed through “inner quieting”.

Through these two abilities together, a person can sit in a calm, quiet place and then, amidst the quiet, he can observe himself from outside of himself. From his inner quiet, he can observe his own thoughts and feelings.

Every person has thoughts and feelings which can become consciously revealed, and some thoughts and feelings which will always remain hidden from his awareness. How much thought and feeling will be revealed, and how much of it will remain hidden? That will depend on how much one raises his awareness level to his thoughts and feelings, which is the concept we are mentioning here.

The more a person gets used to “listening to himself”, from amidst the quiet and from using the ability to observe himself from “outside” of himself, he can reveal a whole new state of being. He will discover himself as a new person, and he will not be the same person he recognizes from before. Until now he had been recognizing only the coarser layers of his existence. When he enters the quiet and he begins to observe his own thoughts and emotions from outside of himself, he will discover entirely new thoughts and emotions in himself which he did not know about from before.

He will wonder, “Is that me? That is not the person I recognize as myself. I am a whole different person than what I thought I was!” But the truth is that nothing has really changed. It is just that now the person is starting to see and feel what he did not previously see and feel.

When one reaches this point, he will become much more aware of his thoughts and feelings, so he will feel even the thoughts and feelings that are very subtle.

Heightened Awareness Leads To Control of the Mind and Stronger Focus

As a result of this heightened awareness, he will also have much more control over his mind. (It is like a person who passes through a place where he is not allowed to think about Torah, who can immediately stop his thoughts as long as he has even a little bit of fear of Heaven. The more a person gains a heightened awareness, the more he can control his mind). It will then be easier for him to avoid hesech hadaas, both in his thoughts and in his emotions; and, as a result of that, he will be able to remain focused in whatever he is doing or thinking right now.

Focus Leads To Success In Torah Learning

With a well-developed ability of focus, a person greatly increases the qualitative level of his living, as opposed to the “amount” of accomplishments, in his life.

Two people can be sitting and learning the same words of the Gemara, with the same commentaries of Rashi, Tosafos and the Rishonim. At the end of the hour, one of them is much more successful. It seems that he is just smarter and that he is blessed with an ability of comprehension. That may be true, and indeed, he may have been blessed with a gift to easily comprehend his learning. But an additional factor is that he has developed his ability to focus, so that he can remain focused in his thoughts on what he is learning about [thus he is successful].

Minor Problems with Focusing vs. Major Problems with Focusing

To review and emphasize, the subject of this lesson, which is water-of-earth, is not relevant to any major problems with focus. Here we are speaking about a subtle level of focus, and that is what water-of-earth is about.

The more major problems with focus stem from the general elements of water, wind and fire. We are currently discussing the average person, who doesn’t have major problems with focus. When the average person meets him, he will not be able to tell if he has any problems with focusing. However, as we have explained here, there are subtle issues with focus which the average person may have. It is still in the range of “normal” because, as we know, normal is relative, with regards to how normal other people are.

Thus, the concept we have described in this chapter is not addressing any of the major focus-related issues which are more extreme. The lesson of this chapter is for the average, “normal” problems that people have with focusing, and it can apply to every person, on varying levels.

When one develops the idea of subtle focus which we have explained in this chapter, he will be able to avoid the small distractions which can easily deter the mind, such as in the examples mentioned in the beginning of this lesson: A fly buzzing in the room or an object in the room that catches a person’s attention, etc. With the ability of inner focus, it will be very easy for a person to avoid these distractions.

Most people are easily deterred by any small thing that distracts them. We can often see this in children when they become distracted by the smallest reason for distraction in the room – their eyes quickly dart to the object of attention and they lose focus. This is because they haven’t yet developed an awareness to their own thoughts, so they easily have hesech hadaas from what they are in middle of thinking about. When any person lives without the ability of awareness to his thoughts, the smallest thing can distract him, as long as it is even remotely interesting, causing them to have hesech hadaas.

How is this problem dealt with? With children, we know that we can distract them with something else, such as by telling them an interesting story. We can distract their minds by showing them something interesting, or by getting them involved with some other activity, etc. That advice can certainly work, but the purpose of this lesson is not to come and give advice of what to do. Each person can come up with his own advice of what works. But these techniques are only about how to take care of the specific problem at hand, and do not address the problem at its root.

As it was explained here, the more a person has strengthened his power of focus, he can easily deal with any small distractions so that they won’t divert his attention.

Bothered By Small Distractions

Small distractions are really more complicated to understand, but we will try here to briefly summarize and finish explaining this issue.

When a person has developed his inner power of focus, on one hand, while he is able to remain very focused, on the other hand, he becomes very aware of subtler thoughts and emotions. What will happen when a subtle thought or feeling begins to bother him? This is stemming from water-of-earth. Will it disturb him, or not?

There are contradictory forces contained here. On one hand, he has developed a strong power of focus. A small distraction is a problem of focus that stems from water-of-earth, which is a light form of distraction, but which he can easily avoid. However, he has also developed an ability to be aware of very subtle thoughts and feelings. So if there is a small noise or disturbance in the room, he will be easily bothered by it!

Generally, if a person is unable to steer his mind from a small disturbance, this may either stem from an impaired ability in the soul, or it may stem from a rectified ability of the soul. A person may be unable to take his mind off anything that deters him, even the smallest disturbance, if he is a person who is never focused. He is not able to sense anything subtle, so he never learned how to focus, and since he is generally unfocused, the smallest thing can deter his focus and cause him to have impaired hesech hadaas. On the other side of the coin, we have a person who is very focused, who is able to sense very subtle thoughts and feelings, since he has a very heightened awareness – but that will mean that he can be disturbed by even the smallest thing.

So if a person loses his focus due to a small disturbance, this may either because he has an undeveloped mind – which is to his disadvantage - or, it may be because he has a strongly developed mind, which is a quality.

“Ohr Makif” (View From The Outside) and “Ohr Penimi” (View From The Inside) 

In subtler terms, this matter will depend on one’s soul root. There are two kinds of people – those whose souls are rooted in the view of “ohr makif”, (lit. “surrounding light” – a worldview which is connected with the “outside” of a person) and those who have a soul root in “ohr penimi” (lit. “inner light” – a worldview which stems from within the person).

A person with a soul root of “ohr penimi” lives very internally, and he is not bothered by outer stimuli. He can be in a very noisy place yet he doesn’t feel any of it. He can daven or learn Torah with concentration even when he’s standing in middle of a noisy marketplace (as the Gemara discusses). Another kind of person is no less spiritual and internal than this, but since he has a soul root of “ohr makif”, a perspective that is connected with the outer surroundings, he experiences what takes place outside of him and therefore he can be bothered by things there.

Thus, you can have two people who are both on a high spiritual level, but one of them is bothered by disturbances in his surroundings, and the other is not. The person with a soul root of “ohr penimi” can sit and learn Torah even when the surroundings are noisy, whereas the person with the perspective of ohr makif feels disturbed. The person with a perspective of “ohr penimi” says, “Why are you bothered even a bit by what’s going on around you? Just concentrate, and learn.”

Is he right? Should a person not be bothered by anything? The answer to this is that it depends on different soul roots! For the person whose soul is rooted in “ohr makif”, he has no way to completely ignore anything he is disturbed by even small disturbances. This is not possible, because his ability of “ohr makif” makes him very aware of the surroundings and everything that’s happening within it.

What can he do? He can try accessing the view of “ohr penimi” that is within him, for the time being, because he surely has some level of “ohr penimi” in his soul. “Ohr penimi” is the ability to be very centered and focused within yourself, cut off from all outer stimuli, whereas “ohr makif” is a view that comes from one’s surroundings. But if a person’s soul root is “ohr makif” and he tries to ignore any disturbances he notices outside of him, this can still be most difficult for him. The only thing he can do about this is to think about the concept of “Ain Od Milvado”, “There is nothing besides for Hashem” - simply speaking - and then he can disconnect from everything around him.

In Conclusion

In summation, we have spoken here about the issues of small distractions to focus, which stem from water-of-earth. We have described an inner way of how to deal with small distractions, which is that the more a person strengthens his power of inner focus through developing his ability of subtle awareness, he will be able to easily deal with small distractions.

However, we have clarified at the very end of this lesson that this is only if a person was born with a soul root of “ohr penimi”, so he can easily access his nature of remaining centered amidst disturbances. If a person’s mainly experiences “ohr makif”, though, he is easily bothered by outer stimuli, so it will be very difficult for him to mentally disconnect from even small disturbances.

A person whose soul root is in “ohr makif” will usually seek a quieter, calmer environment, so that he doesn’t become disturbed from his surroundings. But this is not possible in the world we live in right now, where we are found in the depths of exile. Yet, even amidst all of the noise, it is still possible for such a person to remain focused and not to be bothered by the surroundings, as much as he possible can.

When a small disturbance comes his way, we explained that either he can try to concentrate on the view from the “ohr penimi” that is in him, which will give him an ability to be somewhat disconnected from everything around him; or, by concentrating on the simple meaning of “Ain Od Milvado” – so that he can thereby escape all of the external disturbances he is faced with.