Fixing Your Water - 014 Desire For Motivation

Water-of-Wind-of-Water: Enjoyment of Transcending Limits

We will continue, with the help of Hashem, to discuss the trait of desire. We are currently discussing desires that stem from water-of-wind-of-water. First we will briefly review what was discussed until now.

When a person performs an action, there are always the factors of ‘earth’ and ‘wind’ involved. Wind is the idea of unlimited movement, and earth limits a movement.

When a person reaches the limit of his capabilities, he feels enjoyment in this, and he stays there, because he has reached his goal. This enjoyment is a kind of desire that stem from earth-of-wind-of-water. (This was discussed in the previous chapter).

But if he’s enjoying it when he goes above his natural limitations and he keeps going beyond the endpoint of where he originally wanted to get to, this is a different kind of desire: water-of-wind-of-water.

The Gemara says that there are people who desire food so much that they fill their stomachs until they vomit, and then they begin to eat again. They reach the limits of the desire and then go beyond it. This describes desires that stem from water-of-wind (of-water). A desire stemming from earth-of-water (of wind), by contrast, is to reach the limit of the desire, stay there and enjoy it. An example of this is that, as the Rambam says that a person should not eat until he is full.

Until now, we discussed what a person will do when he reaches his limits – if he will stay at the limits and enjoy that feeling of reaching his limit (which shows that his desire for the action came from earth-of-wind-of-water), or if he wishes to go beyond the limits of his desire (which shows that the desire is rooted in water-of-wind-of-water). Now we will explore the motivation that is causing a person to act.

The Root of Our Motivations

Whenever we do something, what is motivating us? When a person chooses to do any act, what is ‘moving’ him to act?

Chazal say that “Nothing is better than oneg (holy pleasure), and nothing is worse than nega (evil pleasure).” So in every act we do, we seek pleasure. Rav Chaim Vital writes that taavah (desire) is called ahavas taanugim (the love for pleasures). Sometimes we do things to avoid pain, but here we are discussing why people do things in order to attain: people do things in order to get pleasure. Ahavas taanugim is thus a large factor in all the acts we do.

Wind-of-water is that we move towards whatever we enjoy. So desires take up a large part of our movements. The main motivating factor behind our movements is: desire.

Without awareness of this, a person is unaware why he eats, sleep, and runs. He doesn’t see the root of actions. But when he looks into the root, he can see that desire is what motivates him. So the factor of pleasure is motivating most of our actions.

Awareness to this transforms a person’s life! One becomes self-aware that he does things for pleasure, and he becomes aware of how he acts shelo lishmah (for ulterior motives). We are initially being motivated by shelo lishmah, ulterior motivations, and the shelo lishmah is essentially drawing us towards ahavas taanugim – the love of pleasure.

A person might think he’s doing a certain act because of a certain reason, but if he looks deeper into himself, he will discover that there is some ulterior motivation that is pushing him, and it involves seeking pleasure.

Conscious, Subconscious, and Above-Conscious

Yet, there is a more precise way of describing the inner motivations behind our actions. What was said until now forms the basis of all inner avodah which the masters of mussar spoke about. But there is an even deeper point than this.

There are three parts to our self – the area of our consciousness (in Hebrew, muda, or hakarah), the area of our sub-conscious (tat-muda, or tat-hakarah), and the area that is above our conscious state (al-muda, or al-hakarah).[1]

One part of the self is the areas which are revealed to our consciousness, our “muda” (awareness).  There is a more inner layer to our self than thus, which is called the sub-conscious; it is called tat-muda, and Reb Yisrael Salanter described it as kochos keihim, “hidden abilities”. These are areas which are not revealed to our [conscious] awareness, and they are the hidden motivations behind how we act.

Getting To Know Your Sub-Conscious

If a person knows himself a little, he is aware of his conscious motivations, but to become aware of the subconscious motivations, a person needs to attain inner calm in order to be able to get into them.

There are several ways to become aware of the sub-conscious, but the root way of getting in touch with it is to recognize the inner and subtle voices of our soul, though inner quiet. Being that the subconscious is an area of subtle sounds inside us, we can’t hear them amidst noise, so we need quiet in order to hear them and discern them. Through attaining inner calm, a person begins to experience his soul more, and then he can hear subtle sounds inside himself. The more inner calm a person attains, the more he can hear the subtle sounds.

We are not referring to having mere physical quiet; sometimes a person can be sitting in a quiet place but he’s still raging inside himself, and the quiet atmosphere can actually make him more anxious and cause him to awaken his evil! We are referring to one who attains internal calmness.

The “Above-Consciousness”

There is a third factor to our psyche as well, which is often not spoken about. It is called the al-muda, “above” the conscious - and it is above even the subconscious.

This is the area in us which we cannot comprehend through our logic. The conscious and the subconscious areas can be understood; we can know and understand our conscious motivations, and if we attain inner calm, we can understand even what’s going on in our subconscious. But the area of “above-conscious” cannot be comprehended logically.

It is described in the statement, “The purpose of knowledge is to know that we do not know.” The root of our own motivations is really above our comprehension, and this goes deeper than even our sub-conscious.

The above-conscious is really our point of emunah (the belief and faith in Hashem that all is dictated by Him). Our emunah is essentially what leads us in how we act. Emunah is the point beyond our seichel (intellect), because it is above all logic and human understanding.

The Three Aspects Of Our Motivations

These concepts are very fundamental to know about. We are always moving and heading towards something. Why are we moving? What is motivating us? These are the three factors that always somehow motivate us to act: our conscious awareness, our sub-conscious motives, and our above-conscious (emunah).

Losing Consciousness

Most people are only in touch with their conscious, and when people are bogged down from life, they lose even their basic level of conscious awareness. They overlook things that can be seen which the physical eye. A person might not even be aware of his conscious state - either because he is so swayed by ulterior motivations that are blinding him, or simply because he is bogged down from things in his life, and therefore he isn’t paying attention to his conscious motivations. 

There are actions people do each day and they aren’t even aware that they did them. For example, a person forgets that he bentched Bircas HaMazon. He is simply unaware of his physical actions that can be seen by the eye.

Becoming Conscious: Attaining Inner Calm

The more a person attains inner calm and he is more concentrated within himself, he becomes more aware of what he is doing.

After that, he can begin to become aware of his subconscious motivations, what is motivating him to act. But the first level of awareness is to at least become consciously aware of what he does as he is doing it, and the second and higher level of awareness is to become of why he is doing it.

Most people don’t even attain basic self-awareness of their actions. The more a person has a settled mind and he’s paying attention to what he’s doing – and this is a gradual process which cannot happen so fast – a person can slowly become more and more aware of his actions and be consciously aware of them as he’s doing them.

After that comes the second step: to become aware of the subconscious motivations in the soul, which are only reached through deep inner calm.

Entering Your Sub-Conscious: Two Steps

In this stage, becoming aware of the subconscious, there must be a deep kind of inner calm, and in order to attain it, a person needs to get by two layers.

1) Nullifying The Will.

First of all, your very ratzon (will) might be getting in the way of your inner calmness. If we have many desires, this makes us anxious, preventing us from the inner calm we need in order to enter the soul. So a person needs to nullify the ratzon.

In order to nullify the ratzon, Reb Yeruchem Levovitz zt”l gave advice that for three times a day, do something against your will. This weakens your ratzon more and more and helps you acquire the art of bittul haratzon, nullifying the will.

2) Giving Inner Order To The Soul.

The second factor getting in the way is a lack of seder (orderliness) in your life. If you are very bogged down from all the troubles of life, this will hamper you from entering your subconscious, because it will get in the way of deepening your inner calmness. The lack of seder creates a bilbul, a confusion in the soul, which mixes up the soul’s abilities.

So you have to give seder to your soul’s abilities: isolate each of them and place them in order, by becoming aware of the order of the four elements (earth, water, wind and fire) in your own personal soul. This helps settle the mind.

The Methods of Entering The Sub-Conscious

When you have the combination of yishuv hadaas (settled mind) and inner quiet and calmness, you are then able to slowly enter your sub-conscious motivations and discern them.

Our Rabbis had other ways as well how to reach the sub-conscious, such as by writing down what happened in their dreams, or by writing down what’s happening as they were in middle of doing something, or by becoming aware of the passing, fleeting thoughts that come and go very quickly. But the root way of how to get to your subconscious is the method described here: to attain deeper inner calm.

To summarize, inner calm is attained through giving seder (personal order)in your soul, by isolating each of the soul’s powers and categorizing them if they belong to the area of earth, water, wind, or fire. In addition, one needs to practice bittul haratzon (getting used to doing things against your will).

Bringing Our Sub-Conscious Into Our Consciousness

Getting used to this will reveal a whole new world to you that is within you – a completely different “world” than the world you see. Our inner world is nothing like the outside world.

The Gedolim who taught mussar in the past[2]were very involved with being aware of their sub-conscious motives. One who is there sees a whole new world in himself.

Without proper self-awareness towards oneself, a person is really living in a fantasy-like kind of life. He thinks he knows the reason of why he does something, while in reality, there can be an entirely different factor that is motivating him. Once a person becomes aware of his subconscious, he sees a whole new person there inside himself. There, he sees what his true qualities are, and what his true shortcomings are.

Most people do not reach true self-awareness, and therefore, they live fantasies about themselves. For this reason, our great Gedolim of the past would always suspect themselves of “negios” (personal interests), because they were so aware of this concept of inner motivations.

Someone who doesn’t know about this concept might think that it sounds like nervousness or a negative self-image of oneself. But someone who knows what the concept is understands that is simply called true self-awareness. When one is aware of this concept, it changes a person’s approach towards his entire personal avodah and how he relates to others.  

The depth of a Gadol is that he sees the root motivations behind each act which cannot be seen with the physical eye. 

Without awareness to the sub-conscious, a person is always being dragged, subconsciously, after his desires. Not only he is dragged after desires he faces from his surroundings, but even more, he is being dragged after certain actions and he won’t even know what is dragging him. Most actions taking place on the world are being done without self-awareness, and therefore are of the nature of water-of-wind-of-water – total “dragging”. It is usually the subconscious motives which are dragging a person, towards various acts of pleasure.

Even if a person is aware of pleasure, he might not be consciously aware that he’s being dragged towards pleasure. He might know that he’s dragged after ice cream, for example, but it must go beyond that awareness in order to become a true self-awareness. True self-awareness can show a person that he’s being dragged all the time towards certain actions.

There is no other solution to the problem of getting ‘dragged’ unless a person becomes aware of his subconscious motives. This helps a person become aware of what’s motivating him - and then he can choose if he should do it or not. This is the depth of how we use our power of free will (bechirah).

Practically speaking, most people will not be able to identify with this, but it is the root of all inner avodah

Using The Point of Above-Consciousness (Emunah)

The point of our “above-conscious”, otherwise known as our point of emunah, is the more inner motivation in us that goes beyond even our subconscious motivations.

We are not entirely motivated by pleasure, because part of our being is altruistic. Emunah is essentially the power to believe in oneself,[3] that there is a point in us of complete good. This is a deeper point of our soul than the area of our sub-conscious. It is the ‘holy spark of a Jew’ that is present in each action he does.

We must realize that there is always a pure motivation involved as well, even when there are mostly ulterior motivations in an act. This is the deeper way to fix how we get dragged after our inner motivations.

Therefore, one should not dwell too much on his evil subconscious motives, because then he will gain a poor self-image of himself and grow negative towards himself, when he discovers all the self-serving interests he has. For this reason, he has to carry with him the understanding of the above-conscious, the emunah in our soul that we are pure deep down and thus there is always some trace of holy and pure intentions in whatever we do.

Thus, even as we become aware of our subconscious motives that are evil and self-serving, we also need to carry with us our emunah in ourselves that deep down we are totally good and pure, and that is how we work on ourselves.