Getting to Know Your Inner World - 003 Inner Peace: Getting Closer To Your Essence

Introduction

The Mesillas Yesharim states that a person has to be able to be on the top of the maze so that he can see how to navigate through the maze. One of the important fundamentals taught in Kelm was “menuchas hanefesh” – inner peace. There is a story with the Alter of Kelm’s daughter that she had to go to the doctor once. The doctor told her that the remedy to her sickness is that she should get menuchas hanefesh. She told this over to her father, who remarked, “And did the doctor tell you how to get menuchas hanefesh?!”

Menuchas Hanefesh – The Way To Reach the Self

We must understand that although menuchas hanefesh is the ultimate perfection we can reach in our Avodas Hashem, just because it only comes at the end doesn’t mean we can’t have it a little to start out with. Menuchas Hanefesh is our end goal here, but “the end of action, is first in the thoughts” – and thus we have to also practice Menuchas Hanefesh even in the beginning of our way. menuchas hanefesh has to always be part of our avodah, and on a deeper note, none of our avodah is genuine unless we do it with Menuchas Hanefesh.

A person’s true self is his actual essence - his true “I.” On top of that one has many “garments” that cover over his essence; his true self. Menuchas Hanefesh is essentially to touch upon one’s very essence. In fact, reaching menuchas hanefesh is really to reach the actual self, and in its most perfected form, it is the utterly calm recognition of Hashem’s existence. All the forces of the soul – pleasure, will, wisdom, etc.[1] – are all the garments of the soul, but they are not the soul itself. They are all movements of the soul. But menuchas hanefesh is the unmoving part of one’s existence. All of our Avodas Hashem must be based on menuchas hanefesh. Menuchas hanefesh is really the last stage one reaches in Avodas Hashem, but the end goal has to also be part of the beginning. In order for a person to do any of his avodah, he has to reach his essence somewhat, and the way to do this is through menuchas hanefesh. Without this, our soul will be left very unsatisfied.

The View From Your Essence

The forces of the soul are movements of the soul, and they do not give a person a view from within himself. They only offer an outer kind of view, like a person who sees something from outside of it.

Only one who is on top of the “garden-maze” can have the real view, because he sees from above. This is when one sees from his very essence. Such a person is able to see all his soul’s movements from a calm, unmoving place in the soul.

This inner view on reality is essentially when one is reaching his very essence. When a person sees from the viewpoint of the calm place in his soul, he can have this view. But if a person hasn’t yet reached menuchah, he only sees everything through the movements of his soul, and this isn’t the real view. Such a person looks at himself like movements, because he only sees himself from the view of movement. He doesn’t see reality as it is. He doesn’t have Menuchah, and his vision is inaccurate.

Menuchas hanefesh is really the secret of all our Avodas Hashem. With menuchas hanefesh, a person begins to see a whole different world. One of the Sages said, “I see a clear world.” This is the kind of view that comes from menuchas hanefesh. If a person is trapped in the “garden-maze”, his view is unclear. But when a person sees from above the maze, he has the clear view.

A person has a better view when he can see things from outside himself, as opposed to when he’s still stuck inside himself. When a person has menuchas hanefesh, he has begun to reach his self, and he has this view from above, which sees things from outside himself. But when a person doesn’t have menuchah, he only knows of the other forces in his soul, and he views reality through these moving parts of his soul, which is an inaccurate view; he’s still stuck inside himself.

To illustrate the concept, Chazal say that Avraham Avinu learned Torah from the kidneys, who advised him what to do. The depth of this matter is that a person has a better view on reality when he can see from outside himself.

When a person has real menuchas hanefesh, all wisdom is opened up to him. Without it, a person just has intense desires to serve Hashem, but he isn’t calm and he doesn’t have clarity in how to go about this.

Using Darkness To Reach Your Inner Silence

Now we will try to explain how we can this concept more practical – how we actually get to this place in our soul.

Hashem created light and darkness. Light enables a person to work by daytime, while night makes people come home. In terms of our soul, darkness is a time where we can access ourselves. Darkness was not just created for us to go to sleep, but to be able to silence everything that’s going on around us.

Those who taught about Avodas Hashem (and especially Sefer HaMaspik L’Ovdei Hashem[2]) described this as the ability to “silence” everything. A quiet environment, such as forest, can definitely help for this, but that’s not the point. It’s not about the type of place where you are in. A person can be “alone” in his house – or even when he is amongst people. It is a power to be “alone.”

This is essentially called the “detached” part of the soul: “makom mufshat”, a detached space, in the soul. It is the innermost part of yourself. It is accessed when divests himself from the outer layers of his soul and he gets by all these layers, and then he touches upon his very self.

One of the things that can help a person get there is darkness. Through utilizing darkness, a person can divest the layers of his soul and access the true self, an inner part of the soul that is removed from all the other parts of the soul.

It’s possible for a person to run away from “himself”. When a person runs after evil desires, honor, or jealousy, these are the three things which Chazal say remove him from this world. But even when a person is running to do a mitzvah, it’s possible that he’s really running out of his “self” – when he lacks menuchas hanefesh. He isn’t calm when he goes about his Avodas Hashem.

The purpose of all our Avodas Hashem is really to get to this deep place in our self. Menuchas Hanefesh is thus our end goal. Yet, we need to also develop it even in the beginning of our Avodas Hashem: to have a calm place in our soul.

Having A Spark of the End Goal

Chazal say that “shelo lishmah (ulterior motives) leads to lishmah (pure motives). Rav Chaim Volozhiner explained that one has to start out with at least a little spark of shelo lishmah. This really reflects the concept here. By starting out with some menuchas hanefesh, we can get to the goal, which is the perfected menuchas hanefesh.

People usually think that the end goal has nothing to do with the beginning – “If I get there, that’s wonderful, but right now what use is the end goal to me?”

But really, the end goal has to be incorporated into even the beginning. “The end of actions is first in the thoughts.”

The Mesillas Yesharim lists a ladder of growth in serving Hashem. The beginning of his words is that a person should realize that the purpose of this world is to have d’veykus (attachment) to Hashem. Why does he start out the sefer with these words? If d’veykus in Hashem is the end goal, why must a person know this and clarify this in the beginning of his way? It is because the end goal has to incorporated into the beginning stage. Although d’veykus is the end goal, it needs to be worked on somewhat even at the beginning of one’s way.

We have so far given two examples of how the end has to be included in the beginning. Now let us return to the main point.

Setting Aside Time For Inner Silence

If a person doesn’t understand that he needs to have some Menuchas Hanefesh even at the beginning stage of Avodas Hashem, then he’s really involving himself in Avodas Hashem that he has no connection to. He will lose his desire to continue on in Avodas Hashem.

When a person doesn’t understand the importance of Menuchas Hanefesh, he will feel that it’s bittul Torah (waste of learning time) or that in general it’s not as important as other matters in Avodas Hashem. He might feel that it’s more important to learn or to daven; this is because he doesn’t understand how important it is.

A person must realize that Menuchas Hanefesh must be practiced even in the beginning of our way (as lofty of a concept as it is).

This “spark” of reaching the end goal is hard to get (as we will explain soon why it is). But, when people decide to skip d’veykus in Hashem at the beginning of their Avodas Hashem, they never get to the end of Avodas Hashem – which is d’veykus. This shows that the end has to be worked on even at the beginning.

In Kelm, they worked particularly on Menuchas Hanefesh. They did not only speak about it as an end goal, but as an initial goal to work on.

In order for a person for to reach this inner place in his soul, he needs to silence everything. A person cannot do this when he is involved in “doing” something else, like davening or doing chessed. There are times a person has to learn Torah, daven, and do chessed, and so too must there be a time for one to silence everything and reach his essence. This is how a person can have a spark of the end goal already in the beginning stage of Avodas Hashem.

Being In The Dark

Practically speaking, a person needs to be in the dark for this. This is hard to do, because a person naturally wants to do something when one is sitting in the dark. This is where the difficulty comes: the very desire to want to do anything shows that the desires haven’t been silenced yet.

A person has to learn how to sit in the dark and restrain his anxiousness to immediately “do” something. Don’t do anything, and ignore your desire to do something.

Reb Yisrael Salanter wrote that a person is trapped by his middos, and that his thoughts are constantly roaming around. The middos if a person (pleasure, desire, wisdom, etc.) are garments of the soul. A person needs to learn how to silence his middos.

Let’s say a person has a desire for something; how can he control the desire? Desire is a middah; a person can silence a middah. He can learn how to restrain himself from giving in to the desire, as well as silencing the very thought to have the desire. (Uprooting the desire itself is a different subject, and we are not discussing this.)

Menuchas Hanefesh Helps You Approach All Avodas Hashem Properly

The Vilna Gaon says that when a person is learning Gemara, he shouldn’t think about anything else other than the page of Gemara in front of him. By the same token, a person can have Menuchas Hanefesh wherever he is by silencing everything that’s going on, and reach his essence.

When a person begins to reach his inner silence, he begins to reach his very essence, and he feels what it means to have Menuchas Hanefesh. From there on, he can approach any area of Avodas Hashem from a truly calm attitude, and he will be successful in Avodas Hashem now that he has this quality.

May we merit the help of Hashem to continue this further. It is within our reach to do so.