Fixing Your Middos - 002 Fundamentals of Middos Improvement | Part 2

Summary of Previous Lesson

Previously, we began to discuss the prerequisites we will need [before embarking on this series of fixing our middos.] Now we will mention some more points which complete the discussion, so that we can get to practical outcomes from this - which is the purpose. We will briefly review the previous lesson.

There are three steps we need throughout this series of fixing our middos.

The first step is to get used to learning how to think, through hearing these lessons. Just as we need to acquire a way of thinking in order to learn Gemara, so do we need to acquire a way of thinking when it comes to the avodah of working with our soul.

The second step we need is to acquire the ability of putting together all of the information, becoming aware of all the different aspects of a topic, so that we can become clear in these matters – to live in a “clear world.”[1] (Although we cannot attain perfect clarity, we can still become clearer and clearer about these matters with the more we seek to clarify.)

The third step is to develop self-awareness towards these concepts, becoming palpably aware in our heart of the information we are learning about with our mind. Unlike learning Gemara, where you are learning about things that do not relate to you personally (whether it’s an abstract kind of Gemara or a Halacha-focused kind of Gemara), when you learn matters of the soul, you need to see how the information about the soul relates to you on a personal level.

These are the three steps we explained previously. We also explained two root reasons behind the avodah [of knowing our soul’s middos]: We each need to fix our personal worst middah (character trait), based on knowledge of the four elements; and we also need to balance our soul’s elements even when they are not producing any bad middos in particular.

We explained this briefly, but we didn’t yet get to how we can work on this on a practical level. We hope to explain now how we can practically work on the concepts.

All Inner Work is Based on the System of the Four Elements

The following important point must be explained, and it is being asked about: Why must we work on our middos specifically according to the system of the soul’s four elements (earth, water, wind and fire)? Let’s expand upon this question a bit more.

Anyone who is familiar with the methods of avodah that exist knows that there are many different approaches, especially in our generation. There are many different and valid approaches of how we can do inner work with ourselves. Can we say that there is one specific way which everyone must use? The answer is clearly “No.” So why is it, then, that these classes are always based on the system of the four elements?[2]

The answer is: the system of the four elements is brought in a sefer attributed to the authorship of Avraham Avinu.[3]

So if you were wondering if the system of the “four elements of the soul” comes from our generation or if it came before our generation, you should know that it has been around since the times of our Avos. It is the system which Chazal based their words upon, as well as the system used by our many wise leaders who came after them.

However, not every sefer written in previous generations openly dealt with this system. But the system of the four elements is the backbone behind all of inner wisdom of Judaism. The four elements are rooted in the four letters of Hashem’s Name of havayah. The name of havayah is the root that Hashem used to create everything, and from it came everything else that we know of.

Therefore, all of the other systems [of avodah], besides for the system of the four elements, are considered to be ‘partial’ systems, which are not all-inclusive. The only system which is all-inclusive is that of the four elements. The other systems [of avodah] are of course rooted in holiness; and there are also other systems that do not stem from any holiness at all, which people in our generation are using.

Thus, the fundamental way of how we work with our soul is based on the system of the four elements, which comes from our Avos. Since it is the root system, I try to mainly work with it when I teach about avodah. 

Giving Order

Therefore, we must know the following.

When you open a sefer, you should know that not every sefer is openly working with the system of the four elements. Rather, there are certain details, based upon the system of the four elements of the soul which each sefer tells you; but the system is not being presented in any specific order. Therefore, there is no sefer which tells you how to go from A to B, from B to C, etc. It is up to each person, as his personal avodah, to give order to all of the details - using the system of the four elements.

The difficulty of this, which you have raised to me, is that there is no sefer which gives you an exact order of what to work on. Our world is called “olam”, as our Sages state, from the world “he’elam”, concealment; everything is concealed from us. We cannot tell a person to learn a certain page of one sefer and a certain paragraph of another sefer until a complete picture forms. The inner world, as our Sages describe it, is scattered throughout the pages of many sefarim hakedoshim that describe it: “a little here and a little there.” It is like fruits scattered all over the place.

The first difficulty involved in it is that one would have to know the order to all of the information. And even if a person would have that order, to know how to connect all of the details is daunting. Therefore, there is no sefer which we can recommend that each person should learn so that he can see an exact order of what he needs to do.

The approach that I use is based on the system of the four elements, which is described in the beginning of Rav Chaim Vital’s sefer, Shaarei Kedushah. The words there briefly describe an orderly system based on the four elements, but it is only a small amount of content in comparison to the many words of our Sages that describe avodah. Rav Chaim Vital briefly describes what we need to do based on the roots of the four elements, but there is much order that is needed after that.

The matters are spread out all over the words of our Sages, like scattered fruit. If a person has the structure to work with, he can use it as a compass to guide him that will enable him to connect all the details he comes across. He knows how to connect all the details to the root.

But when a person is missing the structure, he sees a myriad amount of details, and he sees the details, without knowing how to connect them. He gets the false impression that our avodah is to work on a bunch of random details, with no structure to it. As we are explaining, though, all matters of our avodah are based on the system of the four elements.

(Of course, this doesn’t mean that all of the Gedolim in the past used the system of the four elements.)

Learning Mesillas Yesharim - In Conjunction With Using The Soul’s Elements

Now we come to the following question, which you are also asking about.

Let’s take sefer Mesillas Yesharim, for example. This is a sefer which describes ten levels in a ladder of growth (based on the Ten Expressions which Hashem used to create the world with). It is a sefer which shows you which step to start from and how to progress to the next stage. However, being that all avodah is based on the system of the four elements, as we explained - you need to bear in mind, as you learn Mesillas Yesharim, that the system of the four elements must be incorporated as you move along the ten stages.

Mesillas Yesharim starts with the level of [Torah], zehirus (watchfulness), then zerizus (alacrity), then nekiyus (cleanliness), then taharah (purity), then perishus (abstinence), then chassidus (piety), then anavah (humility), then yiras cheit (fear of sin), then kedushah (holiness), ruach hakodesh, and techiyas hameisim. There is also practical advice contained in the sefer, and there is also much to be gained from reviewing the chapters again and again. But it is describing our avodah in very general terms.

If someone is trying to serve Hashem based on sefer Mesillas Yesharim alone, he will not be successful. We can see this apparent from the fact that there are many people who try to become a living Mesillas Yesharim, and it doesn’t work. (And there are others didn’t succeed due to various other reasons).

It is most difficult to practically implement the words of Mesillas Yesharim in your life. This is because Mesillas Yesharim is telling you the general facts, but the details of what he is discussing aren’t being told to you.

It’s like if you were to learn Shulchan Aruch without the commentaries (such as Bach, Taz, etc.); can anyone know the halacha properly if he just learns Shulchan Aruch alone, and he doesn’t explore the commentaries in-depth? Even if a person looks in the commentary of the Beis Yosef, which contains all the main information you need to see, it is not nearly enough. The Beis Yosef is telling you general information. The commentaries need to be learned and discussed, so that you can absorb it and notice the details that are not seen at first glance.

The same is true with learning Mesillas Yesharim. The author of Mesillas Yesharim was holy and saintly, and he doesn’t need our approval; it goes without saying that every single word he says if holy. But just because that is true, does that mean that the words of Mesillas Yesharim alone tell us all the rules and details of avodah? Clearly, the answer is “No.” So if a person is trying to serve Hashem using the path of sefer Mesillas Yesharim alone, it will be too difficult.

But if a person understands his four elements of the soul and he is in touch with them, and he knows how to use his strongest element and how to avoid his most negative element, he has a structure to work with as he’s learning Mesillas Yesharim. When he learns about zehirus (watchfulness), he works on it according to the nature of his elements, and the same goes for when he learns about zerizus, etc. The point is that he is works on acquiring levels through a clear awareness of his four elements.

Example: Trying To Acquire “Zehirus”

Let’s explore how we use the system of the four elements when we are learning about how to acquire zehirus, for example.

Zehirus is that a person is careful in keeping the Torah, so he avoids certain acts that will prevent him from zehirus. If a person’s most dominant element is earth, he is drawn towards sadness. If he begins to become consciously aware of trying to acquire zehirus, his sadness will become activated as he tries to be more careful. Without getting into the depth of zehirus right now, this is what will happen.

Let’s use an example of an opposite kind of person to see how this is true. If a person is very strong in his element of fire, he is more energetic and enthusiastic; when he begins to work on acquiring zehirus, every time he is more careful, it is not zehirus which is being awakened; it is rather his hotheadedness which is being awakened. The difference is that zehirus comes from the light of the neshamah,[4] whereas being energetic comes from the element of fire in the soul, located in the nefesh habehaimis (animalistic layer) area of the soul.

So although the sefer Mesillas Yesharim is based on ten steps of a ladder of growth, the ladder of growth is really built on the four elements of the soul. If one has properly built his elements, he has the firm basis of his ladder, and he can progress, step-after-step. But if one hasn’t properly built his elements, the ladder is based on shaky ground, and then he cannot really progress on the ladder of growth described in sefer Mesillas Yesharim.

The Basis: Working With Our Elements

Without a clear picture of the four elements of the soul, a person is missing the inner wisdom which Hashem used to create the world with, which means that he will be missing the main wisdom. The system of the four elements is the wisdom from Hashem, which was given to our prophets. All of the other systems of avodah that are brought in our sefarim hakedoshim, while certainly being valid [for they are brought in our sefarim of our Gedolim of the past],are not based on the system of the four elements, therefore, those systems are not working with the roots.

To illustrate what we mean, there is one system of avodah brought which is based on 5 parts of man; another system says that man is comprised of 9 parts; and another system says we are comprised of 11 parts. There are many approaches that describe our avodah which differ from each other, and we cannot say they are incorrect, but what we can say is that none of those systems are a root system.

To further illustrate, there are many languages in the world, and our Sages even validated these languages (as we learn in Tractate Nedarim). But the root of all languages is Lashon HaKodesh (the holy tongue). The root language, Lashon HaKodesh, doesn’t invalidate the other languages; but although this is true, the other languages are still not a ‘root’ language. The only root language is Lashon HaKodesh.

Along the same lines, we can understand that since the system of the four elements is the root wisdom Hashem used to create man, it is the main structure of man; thus, the system of the four elements form the backbone of a person’s avodah.

Balance In Our Avodah

In previous generations, there were Gedolim who based their avodah mainly on emunah (faith in G-d). Others mainly based their avodah on temimus (earnestness). However, any sensible person understands that we cannot serve Hashem today entirely through our emunah, or through temimus alone, or through tefillah alone, etc. There are people today who attempt this, and we will not mention their names, but anybody who is sensible understands that those people are misguided.

This is because it is impossible to truly serve Hashem when we work with just one point of our soul. If someone were to only use his emunah and he doesn’t work with the rest of his soul’s abilities, his emunah will become extreme, and he cannot succeed.

Of course, we can say that each beis midrash and each private soul in Klal Yisrael can have a particular fundamental point that it excels in. But that doesn’t require everyone else to mainly work with one quality.

For example, you can have a place in which tefillah is their strongest area; let’s say it’s a shul in which 200 people daven beautifully. Can we say that each person is davening in the same exact manner? It is not possible, because each soul is built differently. Even if they are all striving to daven as best as they can, they cannot all daven on the same exact level.

There are people today who feel that the avodah of the final generation is tefillah, so tefillah must be everything. (There is some basis for this in the words of our Sages, but it is not definite, because not all of our Sages had this view.) Even if this is the case, does that mean that everyone davens in the same exact way?

Other views maintain that our main avodah now is learning Torah. Does that mean that everyone must learn Torah in the same exact manner and with the same methods of thinking? Others are of the opinion that our main avodah now is chessed. Does that mean we all need to do chessed in any one way? There are other examples as well that we can use, but the point is, there is no way to work on something.

This is because each person’s soul is comprised of the four elements, and in each person the makeup is different, so it is not possible for everyone to act in the same exact manner.

The system of the four elements is therefore not just another concept you hear about when it comes to avodah. It is the fundamental system of all wisdom. It is the backbone of all wisdom that Hashem used to create the world with, and it was used to form the makeup of man. Thus, it is the system which each person’s avodah is based on; all the words which our Sages said are really meant to become aligned with the system of the four elements and to work together with it.

This answers another question you may be asking: Why are we choosing this particular path of working with the four elements, when there are so many other ways to work on ourselves? Why must all our inner work be based on working with the four elements of the soul? According to what we explained here, this question now falls away.

Again, the system of the four elements is not my own invention. It is the system which is first attributed to Avraham Avinu, and from there everything is based.

Maintaining A Positive Self-Image As We Work On Self-Improvement

An additional point to know is as follows.

Our avodah requires us to work with our soul, which is the makeup of man. We must know the general makeup of the soul. In our soul, there are several layers. There is the nefesh habehaimis (animal soul), which is the external layer of our soul; and there are the spiritual areas of our soul.

When you begin to learn about what is contained in your nefesh habehaimis, which describes the negative and evil aspects contained in man, you must be aware that it is not all there is to your existence. If someone identifies ‘himself’ as being a ‘nefesh habehaimis,’ he will develop a terrible and negative self-image of himself! Upon discovering the depth of his traits of conceit, anger, idle speech, desires, sadness, laziness, etc., if he thinks that is who “I” am, he will become terribly broken upon all these discoveries.

Surely we need to learn about our weaknesses so that we can see how to fix them, and we can even derive a sense of vitality from this. But we need to have a deeper approach towards self-improvement: that we are comprised of both a neshamah, (a Divine soul), as well as a lower layer of the soul, the nefesh habehaimis.

When we work to improve our nefesh habehaimis, we must realize that our “I” is not entirely evil, even before it is improved. We have a neshamah in us that is pure, it is “a portion of G-d from above”, and there are garments that cover our neshamah which need to be rectified, all the way down to the lowest elements of our “I.” We need to become aware of those ‘garments’ that are in need of being fixed, and we must become clearly aware of them - but at the same time, we must realize that our “I” is not defined by these negative attributes that we discover in our personality.

A person is not defined by his conceit, even if he is terribly conceited; he is not defined by his anger, even if he has a big temper, and he is not defined as a glutton even if he has little self-control over his desires. First of all, we have aspects of our personality which are tolerable, and even our bad middos have already become rectified to a certain extent [as we work on our middos]. Even more so, there are parts of our self which are entirely pure and spiritual.

To illustrate what we mean, a person is davening and standing before Hashem in prayer, and he is aware that he has a problem of being gluttonous. Must he daven to Hashem the entire time thinking about how he needs to uproot his evil desires? Is that all he needs to focus on? When a person davens, now is not the time to fix the nefesh habehaimis. Prayer is the time to talk to Hashem and pour out one’s heart to Him, and as a result from this, he can also speak to Hashem about his problem of desires.

One certainly needs to consciously focus on fixing his middos and with awareness of the four elements that are present in our nefesh habehaimis, but he must not think that this defines his entire “I.” It cannot be the definition of one’s self-image, because it focuses too much on the negative aspects of man. Although self-improvement is a major part of our task, it is not everything.

Without this perspective, a person will come to look at himself as a lowly being, with the more he learns about his nefesh habehaimis. He will lower the entire spectrum of his soul to the level of nefesh habehaimis, and whenever he discovers a fault in himself (even a small fault, and all the more so if he discovers a big fault in himself), he will lose the basic healthy perspective towards self-awareness.

One must always be cognizant of the fact that his essence is that of a pure neshamah. There are parts in oneself which are totally spiritual and pure, and there is a middle area of the soul which is not as perfected, and there are lower parts to the soul, the nefesh habehaimis, which are in need of rectification. But the nefesh habehaimis area of the soul is just one part of the soul! It is not your entire self.[5]

We are emphasizing this point specifically, because we have spent much time in this series[6] discussing the negative aspects of the soul and how to fix them; it can mislead a person to erroneously think, at least subconsciously, that he is evil. When learning about our nefesh habehaimis, one becomes aware of all the negative aspects of his personality and all of the bad middos in himself, and he might come to think as a result from this that all of his Torah learning is negatively affected from all his bad middos, and other such erroneous beliefs that he might form.

Although it is true that the bad middos exist in oneself, it must be viewed as being part of the nefesh habehaimis, our lower aspect, and it must not be considered to be the general whole of the person. There are higher parts to our existence than our nefesh habehaimis! Although we have been focusing the discussion on our nefesh habehaimis, this should not imply to you that you are entirely a nefesh habehaimis, even though we are specifically focusing here on the area of the nefesh hebehaimis. You must realize that your nefesh habehaimis is only a part of who you are; it is not all there is to your “I.”

This enables you to work on improving yourself with a perspective that is both truthful and healthy at the same time.

Learning About The Soul: More Than ‘Patience’ Required

Now we will discuss the more practical points of this discussion.

In the previous class, we said that just as we are used to learning Gemara in the way we are used to from our youth, so do we tend to approach learning about our soul with the kind of thinking we are used to from our youth. However, there is a big difference between learning Gemara and learning about the soul.

When learning Gemara, if you don’t get to the next page of Gemara, you need to be patient. When you learn about the soul, and you become aware of certain concepts, you might also think that it is upon you to remain patient before you get to learning about the next step. But it isn’t quite like that.

When learning about your soul, you might wonder how you can make the concepts practical, and then you become impatient; but it is not merely upon you to become patient. According to what we have been explaining in the previous chapter, the entire path we are taking here in working on our middos is a path that deliberately requires a gradual process. It is simply not possible to work on all of the advice within these pages as soon as we hear about them.

Identifying Soul Concepts, Within Yourself

When you become aware of concepts that have to do with the soul – whether the information is coming to you via learning a mussar sefer, or because you heard a mussar shmuess, or because a thought or feeling came to you, or because you feel a concept from within yourself – in either case, you are coming into contact with various aspects of the soul.

Therefore, you can become aware of a feeling in your soul as soon as you feel it, and your job is to simply recognize it and acknowledge it. You don’t have to learn what to do with it right now and how to work with it.

Understandably, if you find yourself sensing 10 new things about your soul, you won’t be able to register so much information and identify with it at all, because of the information overload. But let’s say you notice something new about yourself once a week, or twice or three times a week; you can take note of it and simply learn how to recognize it in yourself, as follows:

(1) Ask yourself if what you if it is a good middah or bad middah. (2)When you hear or learn about a certain good middah or a certain bad middah, try to discern how it is personally found in yourself.

Basic Awareness

This is not referring to yet to the ability of acquiring conscious and palpable awareness of the middah, [which is a deeper ability that we discussed in the previous class].It is something else entirely that needs to come way before that: to simply ask yourself how the middah is manifest in your life.

For example, if you hear about zerizus (alacrity), try to recognize how there is zerizus in yourself. If you hear about simcha (happiness), ask yourself where simcha is found in your life. This slowly gets you used to acquiring information and how to recognize it within yourself.

We are not talking about simply ‘amassing knowledge’ of these matters when you have no connection to it. A person might learn about simcha or about the topic of fixing desires, but he is simply hearing it for the sake of inspiration, and he isn’t even attempting to recognize how the matters are manifest in his own personal life. So we are not speaking about simply acquiring information for the sake of amassing knowledge.

Nor is the intention to acquire the art of conscious awareness. It is a stage that must come way before that: to simply identify in yourself the concepts that you are learning about, whether you are learning about a good middah or a bad middah. This is a general kind of recognition you need to acquire.

[To be more specific], as an example, if you hear about simcha (happiness), ask yourself if you can remember three times this past year in when you felt simcha. If you hear about zerizus (alacrity), try to recall if you recently acted with zerizus in anything. There are many more examples as we can give. The point is to learn how to identify aspects of the soul you hear about, in your own life.

Discovering New Things About Yourself

By getting used to this, week after week, month after month, you slowly will gain an overhaul of perspective towards yourself and towards life. Instead of merely becoming inspired for a few minutes before tekias shofar (when you were far from any avodah) or from the superficial inspiration you were used to from trying to learn mussar passionatelyby mussar seder, you will suddenly begin to recognize yourself.

As time goes on and you continue like this,you will see a new person in yourself. It will feel like you are experiencing your soul, as opposed to just amassing knowledge about what the soul is.

When you are happy, for example, you will be able to discern what exactly is making you happy. When you are sad, you will be able to discern what is making you sad. You will begin to experience your emotions; it will be a change that happens from within. It is hard to explain this in words; it is a path of deep, inner change that a person experiences within himself.

A person then slowly begins to see the world differently, to see his life differently, and to see himself differently; he gains a new lens on reality. After you become clearer about your soul comes the next step we will soon describe. Some are already there as we are giving this lesson, and some haven’t even begun the first stage.

In Summary

To summarize briefly, the first step is for one to identify the concepts within himself, as much as he can, until he sees that inner changes are taking place in himself - to the point that this ability comes to him naturally.

Of course, reaching this stage does not mean that one has reached the complete depth of knowing his soul. If one thinks that he knows the entire depth of his soul, he has fooled himself, and it is a sign that he doesn’t recognize his soul at all. The sensible approach is for one to keep revealing more depth about his soul, becoming aware of the many faculties of the soul, subtlety upon subtlety.

The point is to that a person acquires a whole new perspective towards himself. He begins to see things in himself he never knew about until now. He begins to see beyond the superficial layer of things. As opposed to viewing himself from a mirror, he begins to see himself from within himself.

This ability is developed slowly, as a person gets used to the process of inner change we are describing.

Making A List of Qualities and Shortcomings

After this stage, a person must then give order to what’s going on inside himself - by becoming aware of all his qualities and shortcomings.

This cannot be done in merely 2-3 hours of reflection; that would be like trying to take a shortcut. It takes at least 1-2 months of thinking about one’s personal qualities and shortcomings, until a person can become aware of all of them. Each time he realizes he has a quality or a shortcoming, he should write it down.

Sometimes it is hard to determine if a certain part of his nature is a good quality or a negative quality, but generally speaking, one needs to give order to his soul, by writing them down. On one side of a paper write down all your qualities, and on the other side of the paper write down all the shortcomings.

After doing this for about 1-2 months (and you don’t have to do be involved with this for an hour each day – just go slowly with this, and go about it calmly), you now have a list of all the qualities and shortcomings you recognize in yourself up until this point. Now you can give even more order: Ask yourself which of these abilities are more dominant in yourself, and which are less dominant.

It is hard to figure out which is your strongest ability, your second-to-strongest ability, your third-to-strongest ability, etc. It requires deep thinking to be accurate about it. But with the more you attempt to figure it out, you become clearer about yourself.

Learning About The Four Elements of the Soul

After this, a person has gotten past what we can call the ‘first’ stage, which was all the beginning to the ‘avodah’ stage. Now a person can progress to the ‘second’ stage, to a certain extent: One must learn about the four elements of the soul.[7]

One must understand how each element can contain the other three elements. Although there are four root elements – earth, water, wind and fire – those are the general roots. There are more details to those roots.

After one knows which middos can stem from each of the four elements, and he is aware of his own good and bad middos, and how dominant they are in himself, he should know try to trace the middos to their elements that they come from. This takes time to figure out. It is a process of inner learning.

Most of our ‘Avodah’ Is Gradual Clarity, Not Practical Change

There is a statement in our Sages, “The question of the wise, is half the answer.” What we explained until now can bring a person to the “question of the wise”, but it is ‘half the answer’ – it is half of our avodah, and perhaps even more so. Most of our avodah is not practical work; most of our avodah is when we recognize our true self (this is called “hakarah”).

Hakarah, recognition [our soul], is the essence of our avodah. Without hakarah, a person is impatient and he wants to immediately get to the practical outcomes of what he’s learning. This comes from a lack of hakarah. If one would know what hakarah is, he would know that the very process of recognizing oneself is the root of avodah itself. Hakarah of our self is already halfway towards the finish line of our avodah - and in fact, it’s even more than half.

Therefore, as one is working at this process of inner recognition of himself, he becomes clearer about himself, as time goes on. He will discover that many problems that he had before will suddenly disappear on their own.

Anyone who has persevered with this path of inner change can testify that many of their problems went away on their own, even without any actual avodah!  I don’t mean that there was no avodah at all, but since they had been unclear about themselves before they started and they became clearer about themselves as they went along, many of their problems went away on their own, from the clarity they gained.

After reaching that stage, there is still avodah to be done, of course. The practical changes still need to be implemented, which haven’t been implemented until now, being that the beginning stage of avodah was a learning process.

Giving Order To Your Personal Four Elements

When one is tracing each middah to each of the four elements, a person comes to the following challenging stage, the most difficult of all: What is the order of the four elements in your personal soul? Which element is your strongest, which is your second-to-strongest, which is your third-to-strongest, and which is the weakest? And, more specifically, which is your strongest middah, your second-to-strongest middah, etc.?

This particular point is the aspiration and goal of anyone who wishes to serve the Creator through his soul.

Reb Naftali Trop zt”l once said that our most difficult issue in serving the Creator is that we don’t know which part of ourselves are our greatest quality, our second-to-best quality, and our third-to-best quality. If we would know ourselves like this, it would be clear to us what our avodah is, and the problem is, we don’t know ourselves. The lack of knowledge about our soul is the core reason why we have difficulty in serving the Creator with our souls.

Failures in one’s avodah are usually contributed to “My yetzer hora overcame me”, and this might be true, but it is not the entire reason. It is usually because a person doesn’t understand his soul – either he didn’t realize that he has misconceptions, or he was overdoing himself; which sets him up for failure.

As we said, the process we are describing takes time and effort. But as time goes on and a person perseveres, a person becomes clearer about himself, and he begins to see clearly and precisely what he needs to do to work on himself. Although complete clarity is never possible, the aspiration of every one who wishes to serve the Creator with his soul must be: to reach more and more clarity about the soul.

In Summary

In summary, we must first give order to our elements, then to our middos, then to our personal qualities and shortcomings, and then we can become clear in the order of our own personal soul, by seeing which aspects of our soul are balanced and which are unbalanced. (As we mentioned earlier, imbalances in the soul are caused not only by bad middos, but even by good middos, when they are extreme.)

A Change of Perspective Towards Hearing ‘Mussar’

To conclude the discussion here, we must be aware that there is a big change of perspective which we need to get used to, as we are learning this series of fixing our middos.

People are usually interested in hearing a “mussar shmuess” only if there will be a practical tip or resolution at the end that they can work on, to actualize what they heard. But if one understands deeply the words of Chazal, he knows that there is a more inner approach than this.

The inner approach is to first amass knowledge of these matters and think into them, until a person recognizes the matters from within himself. This takes a while. Thinking into these matters is at least half of our avodah, and the practical part comes at a later point, after one has already thought and reflected deeply into the concepts.

If someone seeks only practical advice of how he can change and he is not interested in doing any of this long process of thinking and reflecting on the material he is hearing, the path here is not for him, and he must seek something else.

These shiurim are not the kind of shiurim you hear in which you resolve afterwards that from now on, you will say “Amen” with concentration, or some other resolution. Although those are truthful points to work on, this should not be the goal in hearing these shiurim, because the purpose here is different. The purpose of these shiurim is to help a person slowly gain more and clarity about his avodah. Although there is no such thing as perfect clarity, we can become clearer and clearer as we go along, as much as we can.

Thus, when you take the path being presented here - which is the path that our Sages took – you must know that it is not merely about ‘remaining patient’ until you can get to the practical avodah part. It requires you to see the gain of just learning this information and in becoming clearer as you go along.

That, itself, is the main and desired part of our avodah. It is supposed to be a long and gradual process of inner change; it is not supposed to result in immediate changes in your life. The practical changes will only come after you have persevered for a long time learning and studying the information, because this enables you to become clearer and clearer about the matters, as you spend time on learning these matters.

Compare this to a person who learns a sugya of Gemara very quickly, so that he can get to know the halacha that results from the Gemara he is learning. He quickly learns the Gemara, Rashi, Tosafos, Ran, Rosh, Rif, Tur, and Beis Yosef, until he gets to the halachah of the Poskim. He learns all of this very quickly [which means that he is learning it superficially]. But if a person really wants to learn the sugya well, and he also wants to know the Halacha that results from the Gemara, he understands that he will only be able to do so if he learns it slowly and analytically. Of course, he wants to get to the Halacha of it also, but he understands that he first needs to notice all the subtleties.

Does this mean that he’s being ‘patient’? It’s more than just patience. It is because he knows that in order to really understand what he’s learning, he must take his time in trying to understand it, slowly, patiently. It’s not because ‘he has no choice’ otherwise. Rather, he understands that this is the ideal way to learn Gemara and then the Halacha.

So, too, when it comes to learning about avodah, which is a long learning process, the purpose is to become clearer as we go along in our learning of these matters, long before we get to the practical changes. It is the very clarity that we gain, as we persevere with this long process of learning, which eventually helps us get to the practical outcomes from all of this.

We have briefly outlined the main points we need to understand before we approach our avodah [of tikkun hamiddos].

***

Q&A WITH THE RAV

Q1: In the previous lesson, the Rav explained that a person will need to hear hundreds of lessons [of the Rav on the series of the four elements] before he can know how to put these lessons into practice. However, in this lesson, the Rav seems to imply the opposite, that a person needs to begin immediately with practical change.

A: I must repeat again, that practical action cannot be implemented based upon these lessons, until a person has heard at least hundreds of these lessons.  However, it is possible for a person to gain proper self-recognition from these lessons, and that is the path which we have explained here. This is not about practical change in action, so it is not what people are referring to when they say “l’maaseh” (“practically speaking”).

When a person takes the inner approach described here, he isn’t only searching for what to do “l’maaseh”. Certainly, that should be in the plan, but if a person comes and tells me that in another 10 years he will arrive at practical change in his actions, but for the 10-year learning process that comes before that, he will certainly gain tremendous clarity, which will change everything. 10 years is really a more exaggerated case. It can probably take around 5 years. But for those 5 years of learning, a person will be traversing a lot, and he will change dramatically, and a large amount of self-improvement will come by default, without even putting in the hard work to get there. Of course, there will be some self-work that is needed, but it will only be a small percentage.

When a person thinks superficially, he thinks, “I need to improve in this area, that area, and another area. How long will all of this take?” The true answer to this is that a person’s entire inner structure changes [as he gets used to hearing and studying these lessons], and sometimes, this inner change causes a person to re-calculate his thinking. What he thought he needs to work on, he really doesn’t need to work on – it was just that he needed to re-organize [the different abilities in his soul]. There is an inner perspective here which needs to be absorbed.

When people enter this kind of learning with any of the erroneous mindsets mentioned before, they will immediately seek how to make all of the lessons practical, and then it will be most difficult for them to listen to all of these lessons, because they want to get the practical part already. Some people like to hear razor-sharp intellectual definitions of something, others enjoys these lessons because it helps them unwind once a week for 45 minutes from the normal routine learning sessions of the beis midrash, etc. But if you understand how the approach here is supposed to work, you see a different perspective. It is a certain journey we are traversing here. The results will not come only at the end. The results will come even in the middle of this learning process, because you will further advance in your clarity [about matters of the soul].

Of course, you will not always see instant results every moment, but you may find for example that in 2 months’ time, you have become much clearer about yourself. Another 2 months will pass and you will notice that you have gained even more clarity. The progress is slow, but it is consistent, for the entire time [that you will be hearing and studying these lessons], and that, itself, is the factor that will bring about personal change.

Q2: How much time is needed to be set aside, in order for a person to test himself on any of the points which the Rav addresses? And how much time does a person need to set aside to learn practical halachah?

A: There are no clear definitions. The factors change, depending on each person’s unique soul, on the particular period one is in, such as if it’s in middle of the season or during a break [bein hazemanim]. During the time that a person is immersed in Torah study, he should not be involved with these matters [of studying the soul] at all. At others times, a person needs to spend more time on studying these matters [of the soul]. To illustrate the idea,  there is a statement of Reb Yaakov Kamenetsky zt”l, who learned for half a year in the yeshiva of Kelm, that every person should learn at least for half a year in Kelm – but only for half a year, and not more. 

Q3: Should a person spend time learning about [the four elements of the soul] for 10 minutes before he begins his Torah learning session?

A: 10 minutes will not suffice for this. A person would have to be exceptionally brilliant to study this for 10 minutes and then immediately enter into the Gemara. Each person has his challenges, based on his unique circumstances, with many complex factors, and while some have more complex situations than others do (more or less), the common denominator is that most people are coming from a complex life. Before arriving at the Beis Midrash, a kolel avreich may need to be busy with babysitters, the bank, preparing meals for his children, etc. Each person has what to take care of, so each person is coming here with his fair share of ‘noise’. 10 minutes of inner silence before opening the Gemara is the bare minimum, just to help a person leave all the ‘noise’ and be able to enter into the world of Torah learning. But of course, the inner world of a person is not developed based on 10 minutes, and certainly not on 5 minutes.

Q4: There are sefarim which write that when a person changes his will, by transforming the egoistic will into a caregiving will, this enables a person to recognize his own inner evil, because his inner senses become heightened, and as a result he gains more clarity about how he needs to serve Hashem. In turn, he also will intuitively know what to work on first, second, etc. in his avodas Hashem. Does this approach contradict the path presented here [of working with the four elements of the soul] or can it also work in tandem with the approach here [of the four elements]?

A: Those are two different ways of thinking which were taught in two Batei Midrashos, as you mentioned. The approach [you mentioned] was taught by Rav Ashlag and also by Rav Dessler, and it is one of the core fundamentals that they taught. But let us repeat again that a person needs to understand the four elements of the soul, in order to attain any inner clarity. There are many other ways, besides for the way you mentioned, which bring a person to inner clarity. But in any case, the inner clarity can also be reached when one has given order to his soul [through balancing one’s four elements]. When a person doesn’t use the four elements as his ‘map’ he cannot get anywhere. When a person changes from being a taker to becoming a giver, this definitely gives him inner clarity in his soul, but that clarity can only be attained through using a ‘map’ within oneself. A person needs to give order to his soul’s four elements, and then he can navigate himself through his inner world, by using the clarity he has attained. When we need a ‘map’ to navigate our way through, let us use the map which Hashem has created.

Q5: If a person has done inner work on himself and he has reached a point where he recognizes his soul well, does that mean that the evil inclination won’t have any control on him?

A: Three people merited a level in which their evil inclination had no control over them – Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaakov. One must say “When will my actions touch upon that of my forefathers?” One can touch upon their level, but one cannot actually attain it.

Q6: Will a person still encounter spiritual failures [after clarifying his four elements]?

A: Certainly one can still fall.

But, much of what a person thinks he needs to work on really stems from poor self-recognition, and from confusion about oneself. And there are some areas a person thinks he needs to work on which really does need to work on. When a person traverses the approach [of the four elements] we spoke about here, he will become clearer about the first two parts [proper self-recognition as opposed to poor self-recognition, and clarity versus confusion]. Then one can discover the areas which he truly needs to work on. That is where one will have to do much difficult inner work – it will be very, very difficult. This is not to say that there isn’t any inner work that needs to done before this, but in the beginning stages it is more about clarifying to oneself, precisely, the unique aspects of one’s personality. Then one’s avodah will be more precise and organized. And certainly there will be failures, because “a righteous person falls seven times, and rises.”

Q7: Is it possible for a person to work with approach by discovering these matters from within himself? Or does he need external factors for this?

A: It was mentioned at the start that a person is able to reach these matters from within himself, but we only mentioned this briefly, because most people do not have the inner tranquility to reach self-recognition from a quieted self. This is because most people have a lot of ‘noise’ in their lives which prevents them from attaining inner quiet. Whenever it’s chaotic, such as Erev Pesach when there’s a lot of tumult in the house, a person doesn’t have to be particularly brilliant to recognize the powers of the soul, but in order to reach subtle points about the soul, a person needs inner quiet. That is surely the inner and truer way, but it is not within reach of most people, and that is why we only mentioned this briefly and we didn’t elaborate upon it.

Q8: After a person begins to recognize his personality, are there any areas which a person certainly needs to work on improving?

A: I will repeat again that there are areas which a person definitely needs to fix, and each person needs to figure out what he needs to mainly fix. There are areas which a person thinks he needs to fix, but the reason he thought about those areas is because he doesn’t have proper awareness about himself, or because there is a lack of order in his soul. It’s not a question of giving order to the soul or repairing the soul [rather, it is about knowing how to work with the elements of the soul]. To illustrate the idea, a person is in a house and suddenly an appliance stops working, he calls a repairman to fix it and shows him what isn’t working. The repairman shows him that there is nothing wrong with the appliance, it is just that you have to know how to use it…

Q9: If a person is often getting angry, does that mean that he needs to mainly work on his anger?

A: That is an excellent example. There are some people whose anger doesn’t stem from anger, but from a lack of order in their soul, which causes them to feel pressured inside themselves. Their displays of anger are a result of the pressure they are feeling. But their anger isn’t coming from the actual trait known as anger. There are many people who have feel pressured from all that goes on in their life. This is not to say that they don’t have what to be angry about, but it’s very possible that their frequent anger is not because anger is their dominant trait, but from a lack of order in their soul. Certainly a person will need to work on his anger, but when he needs to deal with the actual trait of anger at some other point, he will see a whole different kind of anger than the one he was used to experiencing before.

Q10: Should a person learn mussar in the interim, in order to deal with his anger, or will this just prove unhelpful?

A: It will not help much. It’s impossible to say that it won’t help at all. In the end of the day, Reb Yisrael Salanter said that there are two ways to repair any of the character traits – either by fixing it, or by conquering it. If one tries to learn mussar because he wants to fix a certain character trait, this will cause confusion in his soul, because he doesn’t even recognize the character trait he is trying to fix. If he tries to learn mussar because he wants to conquer a certain trait, this can certainly help, but why should a person spend so much energy on an area which isn’t the main issue? First he needs to give order [to his elements] and then he can be helped. I am not speaking right now on a practical level. Certainly, if a person gets very angry about something on Erev Shabbos or Erev Pesach, he should make use of any techniques that will help him overcome his anger right now. He needs a short-term solution for right now. But a person needs to engage in a program of long-term help, to try to build and develop the structure of his personal soul. Because if a person doesn’t uncover the root of what’s causing his anger – for example, if his anger is coming from his element of fire or from pressure in his life, whether external pressure and internal pressures – what will happen? He may be working all the time on areas which he doesn’t really need to work on, and his avodah is lacking in precision.

Q11: Can it be said that all of Gedolim, who lived with mesirus nefesh, were able to ‘skip’ working with the four elements of their soul [since mesirus nefesh enables a person to skip levels]?

A: Generally speaking, our Gedolim who had mesirus nefesh reached the level which the Mesillas Yesharim describes, in which a person is standing above a garden-maze and directing another person below, since has he has traversed the maze and he is above it. When a person is above the ‘garden maze’, he can see the four elements from above. This doesn’t mean that they didn’t recognize the four elements. It is possible that they did not traverse the path of the four elements, but after they reached a view from above, they were then able to see the four elements [from above].

Q12: Is it possible even in our generation for a person to be ‘above the garden-maze’?

A: Who says that any given point can only be applied to a certain generation and not to another?

Q13: Why then should a person use the approach of avodah explained here [about the four elements]?

A: Because [if a person tries to bypass the approach of the four elements and he tries to be above it all], “Many did like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and didn’t succeed”. Chazal didn’t say that it’s impossible to do like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, they said instead that many did like him and didn’t succeed. A few succeeded, because there are certainly a few individuals who can take an extreme path and succeed. But it is not the way for most people. As another example, there are instances where a zealot may attack a sinner, but is that a halachah for all people to follow? It is only applicable to certain individuals, but it is not the way for the majority. It is a very dangerous path to take. It is extremely risky. Most people who took that path didn’t succeed, and in some cases, they fell very low, because they brought chaos to their souls.

Q14: The Rav is implying that all the advice given by our Sages is because they reached a view from above, and they didn’t need to utilize the four elements in their souls. But when the Sages give advice, they do not specify if the advice is for a specific kind of person. But if each person’s main element is different, not every statement of the Sages will apply to him equally, and it may even be harmful to him, if it doesn’t suit his main element…?

A: Yes. This point is elaborated upon in the sefarim, such as in the sefarim of the Ramchal. “The words of Torah are poor in one place and wealthy in another place” – if a person uses a particular advice of Torah in the wrong place, the results will be detrimental. An example which the Ramchal uses for this is an expression that is oft-mentioned in the Talmud: “Hacha b’mai askinan”, “What are we dealing with here?” One needs to always know the specific case that the advice of the Torah applies to. This is the implication of the statement, “Those who learn Mishnah confuse the world”, because when a person only learns a Mishnah, which states general rules, the results are detrimental. The Sages of the Gemara came and explained in what exact circumstances the Mishnah is speaking about. When one doesn’t know the circumstance that a statement of the Sages is applicable to, he will come to transgress the Torah. In the Gemara, it is clear that one needs to know exactly in what circumstances the rule of the Mishnah is talking about. When it comes to avodas Hashem, though, it is not spelled out that clearly. But the rule of “What are we dealing with here?” applies to all areas of Torah [including areas of avodas Hashem].

Q15: To clarify, did the Rav explain in this lessen that one of the problems a person may encounter in self-recognition is that the more issues he discovers about himself, the more he will come to identify his ‘animal soul’ as his “I”?

A: Yes, this is a problem that may occur.

Q16: What, then, is the true “I” of a person?

A: There are two fundamental approaches of how we can define the “I” of a person. According to one approach, the “I” of a person is his power to choose (bechirah), and this is also called the “Ruach” [spirit] level of the soul, as the Gra writes. According to a second approach, the “I” of a person is his pure neshamah [Divine soul] which Hashem has given him. These are two different approaches explained in the words of our Sages, in how to understand the “I”. The Sages who took the path of the Gra would emphasize that the “I” of a person is his power to choose, otherwise known as the Ruach, whereas other Sages emphasized the neshamah as the “I” of a person. This second approach is based on the verse, “Your world can be seen in your life”, and it is the approach that the “I” of a person is defined as “My G-d, the soul gave to me is pure.”

Q17: In order for a person to properly identify his “I”, does he need to know about the four elements of the soul? Does a person need to set aside time in order to see and feel what his true “I” is, no less than how senses anything else?

A: Recognizing the “I” is not like how you sense anything else. It is the root of everything, because it is the root of how a person can sense and feel the existence of the Creator. And yes, a person needs to set aside time in order to recognize his “I”. But I want to emphasize that it is more than this. This is not simply about setting aside time to discover the “I”, because we need to realize that it is not our “I” which is at the center, but HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The center of everything is HaKadosh Baruch Hu and His Torah. After one recognizes that as the center, he should then work on self-recognition.

There is a holy implication of the “I” as well as a detrimental implication of the term “I.” The detrimental implication of “I” is when a person uses his element of fire for evil, and he becomes conceited. The holy use of the “I” is the root that all avodah is based upon. Eventually there is a later stage in which a person learns how to nullify that “I” to Hashem. But self-nullification can only come after one has properly built his “I”, and not before he has built his “I”. So, in the beginning stages of self-recognition, one needs to focus on building his “I” and relate to is as the “I”, rather than focusing on the weaknesses of the animal soul (nefesh habehaimis) and defining oneself as such. Perhaps while a person is trying to fix a negative character trait he can relate to it as a problem in his “animal soul”, but this should only be temporarily. As a general rule, one needs to keep the focus of his self-work on building his “I”, as opposed to relating to himself as the “animal soul”.

 

Summary of Previous Lesson

Previously, we began to discuss the prerequisites we will need [before embarking on this series of fixing our middos.] Now we will mention some more points which complete the discussion, so that we can get to practical outcomes from this - which is the purpose. We will briefly review the previous lesson.

There are three steps we need throughout this series of fixing our middos.

The first step is to get used to learning how to think, through hearing these lessons. Just as we need to acquire a way of thinking in order to learn Gemara, so do we need to acquire a way of thinking when it comes to the avodah of working with our soul.

The second step we need is to acquire the ability of putting together all of the information, becoming aware of all the different aspects of a topic, so that we can become clear in these matters – to live in a “clear world.”[1] (Although we cannot attain perfect clarity, we can still become clearer and clearer about these matters with the more we seek to clarify.)

The third step is to develop self-awareness towards these concepts, becoming palpably aware in our heart of the information we are learning about with our mind. Unlike learning Gemara, where you are learning about things that do not relate to you personally (whether it’s an abstract kind of Gemara or a Halacha-focused kind of Gemara), when you learn matters of the soul, you need to see how the information about the soul relates to you on a personal level.

These are the three steps we explained previously. We also explained two root reasons behind the avodah [of knowing our soul’s middos]: We each need to fix our personal worst middah (character trait), based on knowledge of the four elements; and we also need to balance our soul’s elements even when they are not producing any bad middos in particular.

We explained this briefly, but we didn’t yet get to how we can work on this on a practical level. We hope to explain now how we can practically work on the concepts.

All Inner Work is Based on the System of the Four Elements

The following important point must be explained, and it is being asked about: Why must we work on our middos specifically according to the system of the soul’s four elements (earth, water, wind and fire)? Let’s expand upon this question a bit more.

Anyone who is familiar with the methods of avodah that exist knows that there are many different approaches, especially in our generation. There are many different and valid approaches of how we can do inner work with ourselves. Can we say that there is one specific way which everyone must use? The answer is clearly “No.” So why is it, then, that these classes are always based on the system of the four elements?[2]

The answer is: the system of the four elements is brought in a sefer attributed to the authorship of Avraham Avinu.[3]

So if you were wondering if the system of the “four elements of the soul” comes from our generation or if it came before our generation, you should know that it has been around since the times of our Avos. It is the system which Chazal based their words upon, as well as the system used by our many wise leaders who came after them.

However, not every sefer written in previous generations openly dealt with this system. But the system of the four elements is the backbone behind all of inner wisdom of Judaism. The four elements are rooted in the four letters of Hashem’s Name of havayah. The name of havayah is the root that Hashem used to create everything, and from it came everything else that we know of.

Therefore, all of the other systems [of avodah], besides for the system of the four elements, are considered to be ‘partial’ systems, which are not all-inclusive. The only system which is all-inclusive is that of the four elements. The other systems [of avodah] are of course rooted in holiness; and there are also other systems that do not stem from any holiness at all, which people in our generation are using.

Thus, the fundamental way of how we work with our soul is based on the system of the four elements, which comes from our Avos. Since it is the root system, I try to mainly work with it when I teach about avodah. 

Giving Order

Therefore, we must know the following.

When you open a sefer, you should know that not every sefer is openly working with the system of the four elements. Rather, there are certain details, based upon the system of the four elements of the soul which each sefer tells you; but the system is not being presented in any specific order. Therefore, there is no sefer which tells you how to go from A to B, from B to C, etc. It is up to each person, as his personal avodah, to give order to all of the details - using the system of the four elements.

The difficulty of this, which you have raised to me, is that there is no sefer which gives you an exact order of what to work on. Our world is called “olam”, as our Sages state, from the world “he’elam”, concealment; everything is concealed from us. We cannot tell a person to learn a certain page of one sefer and a certain paragraph of another sefer until a complete picture forms. The inner world, as our Sages describe it, is scattered throughout the pages of many sefarim hakedoshim that describe it: “a little here and a little there.” It is like fruits scattered all over the place.

The first difficulty involved in it is that one would have to know the order to all of the information. And even if a person would have that order, to know how to connect all of the details is daunting. Therefore, there is no sefer which we can recommend that each person should learn so that he can see an exact order of what he needs to do.

The approach that I use is based on the system of the four elements, which is described in the beginning of Rav Chaim Vital’s sefer, Shaarei Kedushah. The words there briefly describe an orderly system based on the four elements, but it is only a small amount of content in comparison to the many words of our Sages that describe avodah. Rav Chaim Vital briefly describes what we need to do based on the roots of the four elements, but there is much order that is needed after that.

The matters are spread out all over the words of our Sages, like scattered fruit. If a person has the structure to work with, he can use it as a compass to guide him that will enable him to connect all the details he comes across. He knows how to connect all the details to the root.

But when a person is missing the structure, he sees a myriad amount of details, and he sees the details, without knowing how to connect them. He gets the false impression that our avodah is to work on a bunch of random details, with no structure to it. As we are explaining, though, all matters of our avodah are based on the system of the four elements.

(Of course, this doesn’t mean that all of the Gedolim in the past used the system of the four elements.)

Learning Mesillas Yesharim - In Conjunction With Using The Soul’s Elements

Now we come to the following question, which you are also asking about.

Let’s take sefer Mesillas Yesharim, for example. This is a sefer which describes ten levels in a ladder of growth (based on the Ten Expressions which Hashem used to create the world with). It is a sefer which shows you which step to start from and how to progress to the next stage. However, being that all avodah is based on the system of the four elements, as we explained - you need to bear in mind, as you learn Mesillas Yesharim, that the system of the four elements must be incorporated as you move along the ten stages.

Mesillas Yesharim starts with the level of [Torah], zehirus (watchfulness), then zerizus (alacrity), then nekiyus (cleanliness), then taharah (purity), then perishus (abstinence), then chassidus (piety), then anavah (humility), then yiras cheit (fear of sin), then kedushah (holiness), ruach hakodesh, and techiyas hameisim. There is also practical advice contained in the sefer, and there is also much to be gained from reviewing the chapters again and again. But it is describing our avodah in very general terms.

If someone is trying to serve Hashem based on sefer Mesillas Yesharim alone, he will not be successful. We can see this apparent from the fact that there are many people who try to become a living Mesillas Yesharim, and it doesn’t work. (And there are others didn’t succeed due to various other reasons).

It is most difficult to practically implement the words of Mesillas Yesharim in your life. This is because Mesillas Yesharim is telling you the general facts, but the details of what he is discussing aren’t being told to you.

It’s like if you were to learn Shulchan Aruch without the commentaries (such as Bach, Taz, etc.); can anyone know the halacha properly if he just learns Shulchan Aruch alone, and he doesn’t explore the commentaries in-depth? Even if a person looks in the commentary of the Beis Yosef, which contains all the main information you need to see, it is not nearly enough. The Beis Yosef is telling you general information. The commentaries need to be learned and discussed, so that you can absorb it and notice the details that are not seen at first glance.

The same is true with learning Mesillas Yesharim. The author of Mesillas Yesharim was holy and saintly, and he doesn’t need our approval; it goes without saying that every single word he says if holy. But just because that is true, does that mean that the words of Mesillas Yesharim alone tell us all the rules and details of avodah? Clearly, the answer is “No.” So if a person is trying to serve Hashem using the path of sefer Mesillas Yesharim alone, it will be too difficult.

But if a person understands his four elements of the soul and he is in touch with them, and he knows how to use his strongest element and how to avoid his most negative element, he has a structure to work with as he’s learning Mesillas Yesharim. When he learns about zehirus (watchfulness), he works on it according to the nature of his elements, and the same goes for when he learns about zerizus, etc. The point is that he is works on acquiring levels through a clear awareness of his four elements.

Example: Trying To Acquire “Zehirus”

Let’s explore how we use the system of the four elements when we are learning about how to acquire zehirus, for example.

Zehirus is that a person is careful in keeping the Torah, so he avoids certain acts that will prevent him from zehirus. If a person’s most dominant element is earth, he is drawn towards sadness. If he begins to become consciously aware of trying to acquire zehirus, his sadness will become activated as he tries to be more careful. Without getting into the depth of zehirus right now, this is what will happen.

Let’s use an example of an opposite kind of person to see how this is true. If a person is very strong in his element of fire, he is more energetic and enthusiastic; when he begins to work on acquiring zehirus, every time he is more careful, it is not zehirus which is being awakened; it is rather his hotheadedness which is being awakened. The difference is that zehirus comes from the light of the neshamah,[4] whereas being energetic comes from the element of fire in the soul, located in the nefesh habehaimis (animalistic layer) area of the soul.

So although the sefer Mesillas Yesharim is based on ten steps of a ladder of growth, the ladder of growth is really built on the four elements of the soul. If one has properly built his elements, he has the firm basis of his ladder, and he can progress, step-after-step. But if one hasn’t properly built his elements, the ladder is based on shaky ground, and then he cannot really progress on the ladder of growth described in sefer Mesillas Yesharim.

The Basis: Working With Our Elements

Without a clear picture of the four elements of the soul, a person is missing the inner wisdom which Hashem used to create the world with, which means that he will be missing the main wisdom. The system of the four elements is the wisdom from Hashem, which was given to our prophets. All of the other systems of avodah that are brought in our sefarim hakedoshim, while certainly being valid [for they are brought in our sefarim of our Gedolim of the past],are not based on the system of the four elements, therefore, those systems are not working with the roots.

To illustrate what we mean, there is one system of avodah brought which is based on 5 parts of man; another system says that man is comprised of 9 parts; and another system says we are comprised of 11 parts. There are many approaches that describe our avodah which differ from each other, and we cannot say they are incorrect, but what we can say is that none of those systems are a root system.

To further illustrate, there are many languages in the world, and our Sages even validated these languages (as we learn in Tractate Nedarim). But the root of all languages is Lashon HaKodesh (the holy tongue). The root language, Lashon HaKodesh, doesn’t invalidate the other languages; but although this is true, the other languages are still not a ‘root’ language. The only root language is Lashon HaKodesh.

Along the same lines, we can understand that since the system of the four elements is the root wisdom Hashem used to create man, it is the main structure of man; thus, the system of the four elements form the backbone of a person’s avodah.

Balance In Our Avodah

In previous generations, there were Gedolim who based their avodah mainly on emunah (faith in G-d). Others mainly based their avodah on temimus (earnestness). However, any sensible person understands that we cannot serve Hashem today entirely through our emunah, or through temimus alone, or through tefillah alone, etc. There are people today who attempt this, and we will not mention their names, but anybody who is sensible understands that those people are misguided.

This is because it is impossible to truly serve Hashem when we work with just one point of our soul. If someone were to only use his emunah and he doesn’t work with the rest of his soul’s abilities, his emunah will become extreme, and he cannot succeed.

Of course, we can say that each beis midrash and each private soul in Klal Yisrael can have a particular fundamental point that it excels in. But that doesn’t require everyone else to mainly work with one quality.

For example, you can have a place in which tefillah is their strongest area; let’s say it’s a shul in which 200 people daven beautifully. Can we say that each person is davening in the same exact manner? It is not possible, because each soul is built differently. Even if they are all striving to daven as best as they can, they cannot all daven on the same exact level.

There are people today who feel that the avodah of the final generation is tefillah, so tefillah must be everything. (There is some basis for this in the words of our Sages, but it is not definite, because not all of our Sages had this view.) Even if this is the case, does that mean that everyone davens in the same exact way?

Other views maintain that our main avodah now is learning Torah. Does that mean that everyone must learn Torah in the same exact manner and with the same methods of thinking? Others are of the opinion that our main avodah now is chessed. Does that mean we all need to do chessed in any one way? There are other examples as well that we can use, but the point is, there is no way to work on something.

This is because each person’s soul is comprised of the four elements, and in each person the makeup is different, so it is not possible for everyone to act in the same exact manner.

The system of the four elements is therefore not just another concept you hear about when it comes to avodah. It is the fundamental system of all wisdom. It is the backbone of all wisdom that Hashem used to create the world with, and it was used to form the makeup of man. Thus, it is the system which each person’s avodah is based on; all the words which our Sages said are really meant to become aligned with the system of the four elements and to work together with it.

This answers another question you may be asking: Why are we choosing this particular path of working with the four elements, when there are so many other ways to work on ourselves? Why must all our inner work be based on working with the four elements of the soul? According to what we explained here, this question now falls away.

Again, the system of the four elements is not my own invention. It is the system which is first attributed to Avraham Avinu, and from there everything is based.

Maintaining A Positive Self-Image As We Work On Self-Improvement

An additional point to know is as follows.

Our avodah requires us to work with our soul, which is the makeup of man. We must know the general makeup of the soul. In our soul, there are several layers. There is the nefesh habehaimis (animal soul), which is the external layer of our soul; and there are the spiritual areas of our soul.

When you begin to learn about what is contained in your nefesh habehaimis, which describes the negative and evil aspects contained in man, you must be aware that it is not all there is to your existence. If someone identifies ‘himself’ as being a ‘nefesh habehaimis,’ he will develop a terrible and negative self-image of himself! Upon discovering the depth of his traits of conceit, anger, idle speech, desires, sadness, laziness, etc., if he thinks that is who “I” am, he will become terribly broken upon all these discoveries.

Surely we need to learn about our weaknesses so that we can see how to fix them, and we can even derive a sense of vitality from this. But we need to have a deeper approach towards self-improvement: that we are comprised of both a neshamah, (a Divine soul), as well as a lower layer of the soul, the nefesh habehaimis.

When we work to improve our nefesh habehaimis, we must realize that our “I” is not entirely evil, even before it is improved. We have a neshamah in us that is pure, it is “a portion of G-d from above”, and there are garments that cover our neshamah which need to be rectified, all the way down to the lowest elements of our “I.” We need to become aware of those ‘garments’ that are in need of being fixed, and we must become clearly aware of them - but at the same time, we must realize that our “I” is not defined by these negative attributes that we discover in our personality.

A person is not defined by his conceit, even if he is terribly conceited; he is not defined by his anger, even if he has a big temper, and he is not defined as a glutton even if he has little self-control over his desires. First of all, we have aspects of our personality which are tolerable, and even our bad middos have already become rectified to a certain extent [as we work on our middos]. Even more so, there are parts of our self which are entirely pure and spiritual.

To illustrate what we mean, a person is davening and standing before Hashem in prayer, and he is aware that he has a problem of being gluttonous. Must he daven to Hashem the entire time thinking about how he needs to uproot his evil desires? Is that all he needs to focus on? When a person davens, now is not the time to fix the nefesh habehaimis. Prayer is the time to talk to Hashem and pour out one’s heart to Him, and as a result from this, he can also speak to Hashem about his problem of desires.

One certainly needs to consciously focus on fixing his middos and with awareness of the four elements that are present in our nefesh habehaimis, but he must not think that this defines his entire “I.” It cannot be the definition of one’s self-image, because it focuses too much on the negative aspects of man. Although self-improvement is a major part of our task, it is not everything.

Without this perspective, a person will come to look at himself as a lowly being, with the more he learns about his nefesh habehaimis. He will lower the entire spectrum of his soul to the level of nefesh habehaimis, and whenever he discovers a fault in himself (even a small fault, and all the more so if he discovers a big fault in himself), he will lose the basic healthy perspective towards self-awareness.

One must always be cognizant of the fact that his essence is that of a pure neshamah. There are parts in oneself which are totally spiritual and pure, and there is a middle area of the soul which is not as perfected, and there are lower parts to the soul, the nefesh habehaimis, which are in need of rectification. But the nefesh habehaimis area of the soul is just one part of the soul! It is not your entire self.[5]

We are emphasizing this point specifically, because we have spent much time in this series[6] discussing the negative aspects of the soul and how to fix them; it can mislead a person to erroneously think, at least subconsciously, that he is evil. When learning about our nefesh habehaimis, one becomes aware of all the negative aspects of his personality and all of the bad middos in himself, and he might come to think as a result from this that all of his Torah learning is negatively affected from all his bad middos, and other such erroneous beliefs that he might form.

Although it is true that the bad middos exist in oneself, it must be viewed as being part of the nefesh habehaimis, our lower aspect, and it must not be considered to be the general whole of the person. There are higher parts to our existence than our nefesh habehaimis! Although we have been focusing the discussion on our nefesh habehaimis, this should not imply to you that you are entirely a nefesh habehaimis, even though we are specifically focusing here on the area of the nefesh hebehaimis. You must realize that your nefesh habehaimis is only a part of who you are; it is not all there is to your “I.”

This enables you to work on improving yourself with a perspective that is both truthful and healthy at the same time.

Learning About The Soul: More Than ‘Patience’ Required

Now we will discuss the more practical points of this discussion.

In the previous class, we said that just as we are used to learning Gemara in the way we are used to from our youth, so do we tend to approach learning about our soul with the kind of thinking we are used to from our youth. However, there is a big difference between learning Gemara and learning about the soul.

When learning Gemara, if you don’t get to the next page of Gemara, you need to be patient. When you learn about the soul, and you become aware of certain concepts, you might also think that it is upon you to remain patient before you get to learning about the next step. But it isn’t quite like that.

When learning about your soul, you might wonder how you can make the concepts practical, and then you become impatient; but it is not merely upon you to become patient. According to what we have been explaining in the previous chapter, the entire path we are taking here in working on our middos is a path that deliberately requires a gradual process. It is simply not possible to work on all of the advice within these pages as soon as we hear about them.

Identifying Soul Concepts, Within Yourself

When you become aware of concepts that have to do with the soul – whether the information is coming to you via learning a mussar sefer, or because you heard a mussar shmuess, or because a thought or feeling came to you, or because you feel a concept from within yourself – in either case, you are coming into contact with various aspects of the soul.

Therefore, you can become aware of a feeling in your soul as soon as you feel it, and your job is to simply recognize it and acknowledge it. You don’t have to learn what to do with it right now and how to work with it.

Understandably, if you find yourself sensing 10 new things about your soul, you won’t be able to register so much information and identify with it at all, because of the information overload. But let’s say you notice something new about yourself once a week, or twice or three times a week; you can take note of it and simply learn how to recognize it in yourself, as follows:

(1) Ask yourself if what you if it is a good middah or bad middah. (2)When you hear or learn about a certain good middah or a certain bad middah, try to discern how it is personally found in yourself.

Basic Awareness

This is not referring to yet to the ability of acquiring conscious and palpable awareness of the middah, [which is a deeper ability that we discussed in the previous class].It is something else entirely that needs to come way before that: to simply ask yourself how the middah is manifest in your life.

For example, if you hear about zerizus (alacrity), try to recognize how there is zerizus in yourself. If you hear about simcha (happiness), ask yourself where simcha is found in your life. This slowly gets you used to acquiring information and how to recognize it within yourself.

We are not talking about simply ‘amassing knowledge’ of these matters when you have no connection to it. A person might learn about simcha or about the topic of fixing desires, but he is simply hearing it for the sake of inspiration, and he isn’t even attempting to recognize how the matters are manifest in his own personal life. So we are not speaking about simply acquiring information for the sake of amassing knowledge.

Nor is the intention to acquire the art of conscious awareness. It is a stage that must come way before that: to simply identify in yourself the concepts that you are learning about, whether you are learning about a good middah or a bad middah. This is a general kind of recognition you need to acquire.

[To be more specific], as an example, if you hear about simcha (happiness), ask yourself if you can remember three times this past year in when you felt simcha. If you hear about zerizus (alacrity), try to recall if you recently acted with zerizus in anything. There are many more examples as we can give. The point is to learn how to identify aspects of the soul you hear about, in your own life.

Discovering New Things About Yourself

By getting used to this, week after week, month after month, you slowly will gain an overhaul of perspective towards yourself and towards life. Instead of merely becoming inspired for a few minutes before tekias shofar (when you were far from any avodah) or from the superficial inspiration you were used to from trying to learn mussar passionatelyby mussar seder, you will suddenly begin to recognize yourself.

As time goes on and you continue like this,you will see a new person in yourself. It will feel like you are experiencing your soul, as opposed to just amassing knowledge about what the soul is.

When you are happy, for example, you will be able to discern what exactly is making you happy. When you are sad, you will be able to discern what is making you sad. You will begin to experience your emotions; it will be a change that happens from within. It is hard to explain this in words; it is a path of deep, inner change that a person experiences within himself.

A person then slowly begins to see the world differently, to see his life differently, and to see himself differently; he gains a new lens on reality. After you become clearer about your soul comes the next step we will soon describe. Some are already there as we are giving this lesson, and some haven’t even begun the first stage.

In Summary

To summarize briefly, the first step is for one to identify the concepts within himself, as much as he can, until he sees that inner changes are taking place in himself - to the point that this ability comes to him naturally.

Of course, reaching this stage does not mean that one has reached the complete depth of knowing his soul. If one thinks that he knows the entire depth of his soul, he has fooled himself, and it is a sign that he doesn’t recognize his soul at all. The sensible approach is for one to keep revealing more depth about his soul, becoming aware of the many faculties of the soul, subtlety upon subtlety.

The point is to that a person acquires a whole new perspective towards himself. He begins to see things in himself he never knew about until now. He begins to see beyond the superficial layer of things. As opposed to viewing himself from a mirror, he begins to see himself from within himself.

This ability is developed slowly, as a person gets used to the process of inner change we are describing.

Making A List of Qualities and Shortcomings

After this stage, a person must then give order to what’s going on inside himself - by becoming aware of all his qualities and shortcomings.

This cannot be done in merely 2-3 hours of reflection; that would be like trying to take a shortcut. It takes at least 1-2 months of thinking about one’s personal qualities and shortcomings, until a person can become aware of all of them. Each time he realizes he has a quality or a shortcoming, he should write it down.

Sometimes it is hard to determine if a certain part of his nature is a good quality or a negative quality, but generally speaking, one needs to give order to his soul, by writing them down. On one side of a paper write down all your qualities, and on the other side of the paper write down all the shortcomings.

After doing this for about 1-2 months (and you don’t have to do be involved with this for an hour each day – just go slowly with this, and go about it calmly), you now have a list of all the qualities and shortcomings you recognize in yourself up until this point. Now you can give even more order: Ask yourself which of these abilities are more dominant in yourself, and which are less dominant.

It is hard to figure out which is your strongest ability, your second-to-strongest ability, your third-to-strongest ability, etc. It requires deep thinking to be accurate about it. But with the more you attempt to figure it out, you become clearer about yourself.

Learning About The Four Elements of the Soul

After this, a person has gotten past what we can call the ‘first’ stage, which was all the beginning to the ‘avodah’ stage. Now a person can progress to the ‘second’ stage, to a certain extent: One must learn about the four elements of the soul.[7]

One must understand how each element can contain the other three elements. Although there are four root elements – earth, water, wind and fire – those are the general roots. There are more details to those roots.

After one knows which middos can stem from each of the four elements, and he is aware of his own good and bad middos, and how dominant they are in himself, he should know try to trace the middos to their elements that they come from. This takes time to figure out. It is a process of inner learning.

Most of our ‘Avodah’ Is Gradual Clarity, Not Practical Change

There is a statement in our Sages, “The question of the wise, is half the answer.” What we explained until now can bring a person to the “question of the wise”, but it is ‘half the answer’ – it is half of our avodah, and perhaps even more so. Most of our avodah is not practical work; most of our avodah is when we recognize our true self (this is called “hakarah”).

Hakarah, recognition [our soul], is the essence of our avodah. Without hakarah, a person is impatient and he wants to immediately get to the practical outcomes of what he’s learning. This comes from a lack of hakarah. If one would know what hakarah is, he would know that the very process of recognizing oneself is the root of avodah itself. Hakarah of our self is already halfway towards the finish line of our avodah - and in fact, it’s even more than half.

Therefore, as one is working at this process of inner recognition of himself, he becomes clearer about himself, as time goes on. He will discover that many problems that he had before will suddenly disappear on their own.

Anyone who has persevered with this path of inner change can testify that many of their problems went away on their own, even without any actual avodah!  I don’t mean that there was no avodah at all, but since they had been unclear about themselves before they started and they became clearer about themselves as they went along, many of their problems went away on their own, from the clarity they gained.

After reaching that stage, there is still avodah to be done, of course. The practical changes still need to be implemented, which haven’t been implemented until now, being that the beginning stage of avodah was a learning process.

Giving Order To Your Personal Four Elements

When one is tracing each middah to each of the four elements, a person comes to the following challenging stage, the most difficult of all: What is the order of the four elements in your personal soul? Which element is your strongest, which is your second-to-strongest, which is your third-to-strongest, and which is the weakest? And, more specifically, which is your strongest middah, your second-to-strongest middah, etc.?

This particular point is the aspiration and goal of anyone who wishes to serve the Creator through his soul.

Reb Naftali Trop zt”l once said that our most difficult issue in serving the Creator is that we don’t know which part of ourselves are our greatest quality, our second-to-best quality, and our third-to-best quality. If we would know ourselves like this, it would be clear to us what our avodah is, and the problem is, we don’t know ourselves. The lack of knowledge about our soul is the core reason why we have difficulty in serving the Creator with our souls.

Failures in one’s avodah are usually contributed to “My yetzer hora overcame me”, and this might be true, but it is not the entire reason. It is usually because a person doesn’t understand his soul – either he didn’t realize that he has misconceptions, or he was overdoing himself; which sets him up for failure.

As we said, the process we are describing takes time and effort. But as time goes on and a person perseveres, a person becomes clearer about himself, and he begins to see clearly and precisely what he needs to do to work on himself. Although complete clarity is never possible, the aspiration of every one who wishes to serve the Creator with his soul must be: to reach more and more clarity about the soul.

In Summary

In summary, we must first give order to our elements, then to our middos, then to our personal qualities and shortcomings, and then we can become clear in the order of our own personal soul, by seeing which aspects of our soul are balanced and which are unbalanced. (As we mentioned earlier, imbalances in the soul are caused not only by bad middos, but even by good middos, when they are extreme.)

A Change of Perspective Towards Hearing ‘Mussar’

To conclude the discussion here, we must be aware that there is a big change of perspective which we need to get used to, as we are learning this series of fixing our middos.

People are usually interested in hearing a “mussar shmuess” only if there will be a practical tip or resolution at the end that they can work on, to actualize what they heard. But if one understands deeply the words of Chazal, he knows that there is a more inner approach than this.

The inner approach is to first amass knowledge of these matters and think into them, until a person recognizes the matters from within himself. This takes a while. Thinking into these matters is at least half of our avodah, and the practical part comes at a later point, after one has already thought and reflected deeply into the concepts.

If someone seeks only practical advice of how he can change and he is not interested in doing any of this long process of thinking and reflecting on the material he is hearing, the path here is not for him, and he must seek something else.

These shiurim are not the kind of shiurim you hear in which you resolve afterwards that from now on, you will say “Amen” with concentration, or some other resolution. Although those are truthful points to work on, this should not be the goal in hearing these shiurim, because the purpose here is different. The purpose of these shiurim is to help a person slowly gain more and clarity about his avodah. Although there is no such thing as perfect clarity, we can become clearer and clearer as we go along, as much as we can.

Thus, when you take the path being presented here - which is the path that our Sages took – you must know that it is not merely about ‘remaining patient’ until you can get to the practical avodah part. It requires you to see the gain of just learning this information and in becoming clearer as you go along.

That, itself, is the main and desired part of our avodah. It is supposed to be a long and gradual process of inner change; it is not supposed to result in immediate changes in your life. The practical changes will only come after you have persevered for a long time learning and studying the information, because this enables you to become clearer and clearer about the matters, as you spend time on learning these matters.

Compare this to a person who learns a sugya of Gemara very quickly, so that he can get to know the halacha that results from the Gemara he is learning. He quickly learns the Gemara, Rashi, Tosafos, Ran, Rosh, Rif, Tur, and Beis Yosef, until he gets to the halachah of the Poskim. He learns all of this very quickly [which means that he is learning it superficially]. But if a person really wants to learn the sugya well, and he also wants to know the Halacha that results from the Gemara, he understands that he will only be able to do so if he learns it slowly and analytically. Of course, he wants to get to the Halacha of it also, but he understands that he first needs to notice all the subtleties.

Does this mean that he’s being ‘patient’? It’s more than just patience. It is because he knows that in order to really understand what he’s learning, he must take his time in trying to understand it, slowly, patiently. It’s not because ‘he has no choice’ otherwise. Rather, he understands that this is the ideal way to learn Gemara and then the Halacha.

So, too, when it comes to learning about avodah, which is a long learning process, the purpose is to become clearer as we go along in our learning of these matters, long before we get to the practical changes. It is the very clarity that we gain, as we persevere with this long process of learning, which eventually helps us get to the practical outcomes from all of this.

We have briefly outlined the main points we need to understand before we approach our avodah [of tikkun hamiddos].

***

Q&A WITH THE RAV

Q1: In the previous lesson, the Rav explained that a person will need to hear hundreds of lessons [of the Rav on the series of the four elements] before he can know how to put these lessons into practice. However, in this lesson, the Rav seems to imply the opposite, that a person needs to begin immediately with practical change.

A: I must repeat again, that practical action cannot be implemented based upon these lessons, until a person has heard at least hundreds of these lessons.  However, it is possible for a person to gain proper self-recognition from these lessons, and that is the path which we have explained here. This is not about practical change in action, so it is not what people are referring to when they say “l’maaseh” (“practically speaking”).

When a person takes the inner approach described here, he isn’t only searching for what to do “l’maaseh”. Certainly, that should be in the plan, but if a person comes and tells me that in another 10 years he will arrive at practical change in his actions, but for the 10-year learning process that comes before that, he will certainly gain tremendous clarity, which will change everything. 10 years is really a more exaggerated case. It can probably take around 5 years. But for those 5 years of learning, a person will be traversing a lot, and he will change dramatically, and a large amount of self-improvement will come by default, without even putting in the hard work to get there. Of course, there will be some self-work that is needed, but it will only be a small percentage.

When a person thinks superficially, he thinks, “I need to improve in this area, that area, and another area. How long will all of this take?” The true answer to this is that a person’s entire inner structure changes [as he gets used to hearing and studying these lessons], and sometimes, this inner change causes a person to re-calculate his thinking. What he thought he needs to work on, he really doesn’t need to work on – it was just that he needed to re-organize [the different abilities in his soul]. There is an inner perspective here which needs to be absorbed.

When people enter this kind of learning with any of the erroneous mindsets mentioned before, they will immediately seek how to make all of the lessons practical, and then it will be most difficult for them to listen to all of these lessons, because they want to get the practical part already. Some people like to hear razor-sharp intellectual definitions of something, others enjoys these lessons because it helps them unwind once a week for 45 minutes from the normal routine learning sessions of the beis midrash, etc. But if you understand how the approach here is supposed to work, you see a different perspective. It is a certain journey we are traversing here. The results will not come only at the end. The results will come even in the middle of this learning process, because you will further advance in your clarity [about matters of the soul].

Of course, you will not always see instant results every moment, but you may find for example that in 2 months’ time, you have become much clearer about yourself. Another 2 months will pass and you will notice that you have gained even more clarity. The progress is slow, but it is consistent, for the entire time [that you will be hearing and studying these lessons], and that, itself, is the factor that will bring about personal change.

Q2: How much time is needed to be set aside, in order for a person to test himself on any of the points which the Rav addresses? And how much time does a person need to set aside to learn practical halachah?

A: There are no clear definitions. The factors change, depending on each person’s unique soul, on the particular period one is in, such as if it’s in middle of the season or during a break [bein hazemanim]. During the time that a person is immersed in Torah study, he should not be involved with these matters [of studying the soul] at all. At others times, a person needs to spend more time on studying these matters [of the soul]. To illustrate the idea,  there is a statement of Reb Yaakov Kamenetsky zt”l, who learned for half a year in the yeshiva of Kelm, that every person should learn at least for half a year in Kelm – but only for half a year, and not more. 

Q3: Should a person spend time learning about [the four elements of the soul] for 10 minutes before he begins his Torah learning session?

A: 10 minutes will not suffice for this. A person would have to be exceptionally brilliant to study this for 10 minutes and then immediately enter into the Gemara. Each person has his challenges, based on his unique circumstances, with many complex factors, and while some have more complex situations than others do (more or less), the common denominator is that most people are coming from a complex life. Before arriving at the Beis Midrash, a kolel avreich may need to be busy with babysitters, the bank, preparing meals for his children, etc. Each person has what to take care of, so each person is coming here with his fair share of ‘noise’. 10 minutes of inner silence before opening the Gemara is the bare minimum, just to help a person leave all the ‘noise’ and be able to enter into the world of Torah learning. But of course, the inner world of a person is not developed based on 10 minutes, and certainly not on 5 minutes.

Q4: There are sefarim which write that when a person changes his will, by transforming the egoistic will into a caregiving will, this enables a person to recognize his own inner evil, because his inner senses become heightened, and as a result he gains more clarity about how he needs to serve Hashem. In turn, he also will intuitively know what to work on first, second, etc. in his avodas Hashem. Does this approach contradict the path presented here [of working with the four elements of the soul] or can it also work in tandem with the approach here [of the four elements]?

A: Those are two different ways of thinking which were taught in two Batei Midrashos, as you mentioned. The approach [you mentioned] was taught by Rav Ashlag and also by Rav Dessler, and it is one of the core fundamentals that they taught. But let us repeat again that a person needs to understand the four elements of the soul, in order to attain any inner clarity. There are many other ways, besides for the way you mentioned, which bring a person to inner clarity. But in any case, the inner clarity can also be reached when one has given order to his soul [through balancing one’s four elements]. When a person doesn’t use the four elements as his ‘map’ he cannot get anywhere. When a person changes from being a taker to becoming a giver, this definitely gives him inner clarity in his soul, but that clarity can only be attained through using a ‘map’ within oneself. A person needs to give order to his soul’s four elements, and then he can navigate himself through his inner world, by using the clarity he has attained. When we need a ‘map’ to navigate our way through, let us use the map which Hashem has created.

Q5: If a person has done inner work on himself and he has reached a point where he recognizes his soul well, does that mean that the evil inclination won’t have any control on him?

A: Three people merited a level in which their evil inclination had no control over them – Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaakov. One must say “When will my actions touch upon that of my forefathers?” One can touch upon their level, but one cannot actually attain it.

Q6: Will a person still encounter spiritual failures [after clarifying his four elements]?

A: Certainly one can still fall.

But, much of what a person thinks he needs to work on really stems from poor self-recognition, and from confusion about oneself. And there are some areas a person thinks he needs to work on which really does need to work on. When a person traverses the approach [of the four elements] we spoke about here, he will become clearer about the first two parts [proper self-recognition as opposed to poor self-recognition, and clarity versus confusion]. Then one can discover the areas which he truly needs to work on. That is where one will have to do much difficult inner work – it will be very, very difficult. This is not to say that there isn’t any inner work that needs to done before this, but in the beginning stages it is more about clarifying to oneself, precisely, the unique aspects of one’s personality. Then one’s avodah will be more precise and organized. And certainly there will be failures, because “a righteous person falls seven times, and rises.”

Q7: Is it possible for a person to work with approach by discovering these matters from within himself? Or does he need external factors for this?

A: It was mentioned at the start that a person is able to reach these matters from within himself, but we only mentioned this briefly, because most people do not have the inner tranquility to reach self-recognition from a quieted self. This is because most people have a lot of ‘noise’ in their lives which prevents them from attaining inner quiet. Whenever it’s chaotic, such as Erev Pesach when there’s a lot of tumult in the house, a person doesn’t have to be particularly brilliant to recognize the powers of the soul, but in order to reach subtle points about the soul, a person needs inner quiet. That is surely the inner and truer way, but it is not within reach of most people, and that is why we only mentioned this briefly and we didn’t elaborate upon it.

Q8: After a person begins to recognize his personality, are there any areas which a person certainly needs to work on improving?

A: I will repeat again that there are areas which a person definitely needs to fix, and each person needs to figure out what he needs to mainly fix. There are areas which a person thinks he needs to fix, but the reason he thought about those areas is because he doesn’t have proper awareness about himself, or because there is a lack of order in his soul. It’s not a question of giving order to the soul or repairing the soul [rather, it is about knowing how to work with the elements of the soul]. To illustrate the idea, a person is in a house and suddenly an appliance stops working, he calls a repairman to fix it and shows him what isn’t working. The repairman shows him that there is nothing wrong with the appliance, it is just that you have to know how to use it…

Q9: If a person is often getting angry, does that mean that he needs to mainly work on his anger?

A: That is an excellent example. There are some people whose anger doesn’t stem from anger, but from a lack of order in their soul, which causes them to feel pressured inside themselves. Their displays of anger are a result of the pressure they are feeling. But their anger isn’t coming from the actual trait known as anger. There are many people who have feel pressured from all that goes on in their life. This is not to say that they don’t have what to be angry about, but it’s very possible that their frequent anger is not because anger is their dominant trait, but from a lack of order in their soul. Certainly a person will need to work on his anger, but when he needs to deal with the actual trait of anger at some other point, he will see a whole different kind of anger than the one he was used to experiencing before.

Q10: Should a person learn mussar in the interim, in order to deal with his anger, or will this just prove unhelpful?

A: It will not help much. It’s impossible to say that it won’t help at all. In the end of the day, Reb Yisrael Salanter said that there are two ways to repair any of the character traits – either by fixing it, or by conquering it. If one tries to learn mussar because he wants to fix a certain character trait, this will cause confusion in his soul, because he doesn’t even recognize the character trait he is trying to fix. If he tries to learn mussar because he wants to conquer a certain trait, this can certainly help, but why should a person spend so much energy on an area which isn’t the main issue? First he needs to give order [to his elements] and then he can be helped. I am not speaking right now on a practical level. Certainly, if a person gets very angry about something on Erev Shabbos or Erev Pesach, he should make use of any techniques that will help him overcome his anger right now. He needs a short-term solution for right now. But a person needs to engage in a program of long-term help, to try to build and develop the structure of his personal soul. Because if a person doesn’t uncover the root of what’s causing his anger – for example, if his anger is coming from his element of fire or from pressure in his life, whether external pressure and internal pressures – what will happen? He may be working all the time on areas which he doesn’t really need to work on, and his avodah is lacking in precision.

Q11: Can it be said that all of Gedolim, who lived with mesirus nefesh, were able to ‘skip’ working with the four elements of their soul [since mesirus nefesh enables a person to skip levels]?

A: Generally speaking, our Gedolim who had mesirus nefesh reached the level which the Mesillas Yesharim describes, in which a person is standing above a garden-maze and directing another person below, since has he has traversed the maze and he is above it. When a person is above the ‘garden maze’, he can see the four elements from above. This doesn’t mean that they didn’t recognize the four elements. It is possible that they did not traverse the path of the four elements, but after they reached a view from above, they were then able to see the four elements [from above].

Q12: Is it possible even in our generation for a person to be ‘above the garden-maze’?

A: Who says that any given point can only be applied to a certain generation and not to another?

Q13: Why then should a person use the approach of avodah explained here [about the four elements]?

A: Because [if a person tries to bypass the approach of the four elements and he tries to be above it all], “Many did like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and didn’t succeed”. Chazal didn’t say that it’s impossible to do like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, they said instead that many did like him and didn’t succeed. A few succeeded, because there are certainly a few individuals who can take an extreme path and succeed. But it is not the way for most people. As another example, there are instances where a zealot may attack a sinner, but is that a halachah for all people to follow? It is only applicable to certain individuals, but it is not the way for the majority. It is a very dangerous path to take. It is extremely risky. Most people who took that path didn’t succeed, and in some cases, they fell very low, because they brought chaos to their souls.

Q14: The Rav is implying that all the advice given by our Sages is because they reached a view from above, and they didn’t need to utilize the four elements in their souls. But when the Sages give advice, they do not specify if the advice is for a specific kind of person. But if each person’s main element is different, not every statement of the Sages will apply to him equally, and it may even be harmful to him, if it doesn’t suit his main element…?

A: Yes. This point is elaborated upon in the sefarim, such as in the sefarim of the Ramchal. “The words of Torah are poor in one place and wealthy in another place” – if a person uses a particular advice of Torah in the wrong place, the results will be detrimental. An example which the Ramchal uses for this is an expression that is oft-mentioned in the Talmud: “Hacha b’mai askinan”, “What are we dealing with here?” One needs to always know the specific case that the advice of the Torah applies to. This is the implication of the statement, “Those who learn Mishnah confuse the world”, because when a person only learns a Mishnah, which states general rules, the results are detrimental. The Sages of the Gemara came and explained in what exact circumstances the Mishnah is speaking about. When one doesn’t know the circumstance that a statement of the Sages is applicable to, he will come to transgress the Torah. In the Gemara, it is clear that one needs to know exactly in what circumstances the rule of the Mishnah is talking about. When it comes to avodas Hashem, though, it is not spelled out that clearly. But the rule of “What are we dealing with here?” applies to all areas of Torah [including areas of avodas Hashem].

Q15: To clarify, did the Rav explain in this lessen that one of the problems a person may encounter in self-recognition is that the more issues he discovers about himself, the more he will come to identify his ‘animal soul’ as his “I”?

A: Yes, this is a problem that may occur.

Q16: What, then, is the true “I” of a person?

A: There are two fundamental approaches of how we can define the “I” of a person. According to one approach, the “I” of a person is his power to choose (bechirah), and this is also called the “Ruach” [spirit] level of the soul, as the Gra writes. According to a second approach, the “I” of a person is his pure neshamah [Divine soul] which Hashem has given him. These are two different approaches explained in the words of our Sages, in how to understand the “I”. The Sages who took the path of the Gra would emphasize that the “I” of a person is his power to choose, otherwise known as the Ruach, whereas other Sages emphasized the neshamah as the “I” of a person. This second approach is based on the verse, “Your world can be seen in your life”, and it is the approach that the “I” of a person is defined as “My G-d, the soul gave to me is pure.”

Q17: In order for a person to properly identify his “I”, does he need to know about the four elements of the soul? Does a person need to set aside time in order to see and feel what his true “I” is, no less than how senses anything else?

A: Recognizing the “I” is not like how you sense anything else. It is the root of everything, because it is the root of how a person can sense and feel the existence of the Creator. And yes, a person needs to set aside time in order to recognize his “I”. But I want to emphasize that it is more than this. This is not simply about setting aside time to discover the “I”, because we need to realize that it is not our “I” which is at the center, but HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The center of everything is HaKadosh Baruch Hu and His Torah. After one recognizes that as the center, he should then work on self-recognition.

There is a holy implication of the “I” as well as a detrimental implication of the term “I.” The detrimental implication of “I” is when a person uses his element of fire for evil, and he becomes conceited. The holy use of the “I” is the root that all avodah is based upon. Eventually there is a later stage in which a person learns how to nullify that “I” to Hashem. But self-nullification can only come after one has properly built his “I”, and not before he has built his “I”. So, in the beginning stages of self-recognition, one needs to focus on building his “I” and relate to is as the “I”, rather than focusing on the weaknesses of the animal soul (nefesh habehaimis) and defining oneself as such. Perhaps while a person is trying to fix a negative character trait he can relate to it as a problem in his “animal soul”, but this should only be temporarily. As a general rule, one needs to keep the focus of his self-work on building his “I”, as opposed to relating to himself as the “animal soul”.