Droshos - Preparing For The Times of Mashiach

The foundation of all our avodah on this world is to recognize Hashem. That recognition is called emunah. We believe and we come from believers, in the Existence of Hashem. Let us think a little here and see how we can attain emunah.

A person is born to a father and mother. He doesn’t know who they are, and slowly he comes to recognize them. He is told they are his parents. He doesn’t know, he just believes. And when he believes these are his parents, this shows him what he is and where he comes from. The father and mother each give him certain aspects. When we believe in Hashem’s Existence, that He was before the world and He is forever, He created us - that is all the external part of having emunah.

The inner core of emunah is to believe He is my Father and that He is part of our existence. Hashem is not just found above in Heaven and not only is He feeding us and taking care of us. He breathed into us a soul of life, and Chazal say that He breathed of Himself into us, so to speak. That breath of Hashem is hidden within us. Hashem is called Avinu, our Father, just as a father is in us potentially because he gave of himself to us, so is Hashem revealed within us.

This perspective can change deeply your entire life. A person is looking for Hashem and trying to find Him – that is what our life is about. How do we look for Hashem? Some people look for stories of miracles and Divine providence. Certainly we can find Hashem in such stories, but we should realize that we can find Him inside us. When we look for Hashem, we not looking for Him on the outside, but we are looking for Him within ourselves, inside us. He created us in a way that He is within us, as it were.

When we understand this, our whole life changes. When we are looking for Hashem, that means that we should be looking for His Presence inside our heart, inside our thoughts - in our heart’s thoughts. This search is our entire avodah. Hashem is found in the heart of every Jew, “And I will dwell amidst them”, within the heart of each Jew. “The rock of my heart and portion is G-d”, “Hashem is the heart of Yisrael.”

But why don’t people feel Hashem in their heart all the time? Because the heart is covered with layers and blockages. There is a “blockage on the heart”. Just like there must be a Bris Milah, so is there orlah, spiritual foreskin, on the heart, which makes it hard for a person to feel what’s in his pnimiyus. But when he removes that covering, he has done a Bris Milah on his heart and then he can feel what’s in his heart – the reality of Hashem. Keeping the mitzvos and fixing one’s middos brings a person to there.

The heart is compared to an esrog. As esrog can have dots on it, and layers. So too, the “heart of man is evil from youth” - at first the heart is covered, but when we are zocheh to remove those coverings on our heart, we become a new being. Dovid HaMelech asked Hashem for a “pure heart, G-d, create me with.” The heart - after we remove its coverings - makes a person into a new being.

How is a Jew supposed to look? Where Hashem’s reality is in front of us always, and we can feel Him no less than we can feel anything real or tangible. We know clearly if it’s night and day, even in middle of our sleep when we get woken up. The reality of Hashem is the most tangible reality we can feel more than anything else. For most people, it is less tangible than other reality, but in the inner reality which will be revealed to all in the future, the most revealed thing in creation is Hashem’s existence.

Every day we say the Ani Maamin and we await Mashiach. What is Mashiach? He is not just a person who will come. In the days of Mashiach, the world will change. We won’t just have more parnassah, health, and no more wars, and only nachas. That is not the deep reason to await the era of Mashiach. It is the time when our natural senses will feel Hashem and He will be so real. The Baal HaTanya said that the Mashiach that people are waiting for will not come and the Mashiach who will come is not the Mashiach who people are waiting for. Why? Because the “Mashiach” that he waited for, and which we must all await for, is a Mashiach who will not simply end all of our problems, but a Mashiach who will reveal Hashem on the world.

We try to daven to Hashem and speak to Him naturally, but for long are we able to concentrate? For most people, it’s hard to concentrate for that long on a simple feeling that we are talking to Hashem. We can talk to a friend for a long time, because the other person feels real to us. But when it comes to talking to Hashem, if we haven’t yet removed the covering over our heart, a person feels alone and that he’s talking to himself.

In the days of Mashiach, a person will be able to naturally talk to Hashem, and to feel Hashem next to him no less than when he feels a friend next to him. Believing and awaiting Mashiach - one of the principles of emunah - is to await what? To await that time “When I, and the rest of Klal Yisrael, will be zocheh to emuna chushis - to feel Hashem no less than how we feel anything else in front of us. That is what it means to await Mashiach - to await a life very different from today.

In order to draw closer to a life of truth, it should become clearer to us what a true inner life is. It entails a life of keeping mitzvos and doing His will and learning His Torah - each person on his own level - but all of this is meant to bring a person to the true life, to a life where Hashem is clear in front of us, to be so clear about this, not in a vague way, no less than how we feel any emotion. That is the true way for a Jew to live.

But in order to feel how Hashem is real in our life, we have to make a space for Him in our heart so He can enter there, because the heart is full of all kinds of desires and wishes that we have, and this is what’s taking up space our heart and preventing Hashem from coming in. We need to make a space in our heart for Him. Chazal said, “Open for Me an opening the size of a needle…” It means to make for Him just one true space in our heart.

Our heart is full of so many desires and wishes. We should give one thing away for Hashem. Take one wish, one point in your life, and give it up for Hashem. This makes space for Hashem in your heart. If you want to reveal Hashem in your life, you have to go through an internal change. In order to reach this change, you need to keep mitzvos and do His will. But that has to change you from within. The change begins when you give away at least one desire for Hashem. This makes a space in your heart from Hashem, and this is the small opening that’s needed, which allows Hashem to come into your heart. To truly give up one thing for Hashem. It doesn’t just mean not to do a certain thing you were used to doing it. That’s just the first step. Give away for Hashem just one wish, or desire, or yearning, that you have.

You can then find Hashem through that which you’ve given away.

In order for a person to get closer to truth, a person should think every so often: What did I want half a year ago, and what do I want today? A 10 year old doesn’t want the same things that a 30-year old wants. If a person wants to see if he is growing higher, he has to think, “Do I want different things today than I used to?” When a person really matures inwardly, he will want deeper things as time goes on. He will no longer want the same desires that he used to want. He has cleansed out his heart from those desires and he has risen to a higher place, so he will want to give a space in his heart for Hashem.

There are things that a person once desired and later he doesn’t desire them anymore. For example, if a person wasn’t zocheh to keep Shabbos in the beginning of his life, and later he has started to keep Shabbos, he is no longer travelling on Shabbos and he has reached a certain pinnacle of growth. But at a later point, not only doesn’t he travel on Shabbos, but he doesn’t even want to. His heart has been elevated and now he doesn’t even want to travel on Shabbos.

As long as one stays with his same desires and wishes, he doesn’t grow. The heart has to become elevated. In every time of one’s life, when a person thinks about his internal life, he should first think “What did I used to want, and what I do want today?” If you see that your wishes today are deeper and more elevated, you can know that your heart is becoming purer and becoming more elevated. Then there’s a space in your heart for Hashem.

Every so often, a person should think “What do I really want?” Take a pen and paper and write down everything you want in life. Then list them in order of priority. Later, see: What did I used to want, and what do I want? If you see that your list of desires has changed, and if you see that you now put your more spiritual desires as priority, then you can see that you are growing higher and closer to truth.

Our internal world is developed from fulfilling the Torah, together with having a heart for serving Hashem. But the heart has to be built. It has to be made into a heart that desires to serve Hashem. Building our heart is by seeing what desires and wishes lay in our heart. If we don’t know what’s in our heart, then how will we have a heart for Hashem…? If we really want to grow, we need to know what our wishes are, write down all of them in order of priority, and every so often we should see what desires we used to have and what desires we now have, and what do we place as priority. One who lives like this is constantly building his heart.

I have met many people who have been learning Torah and doing mitzvos for many years, yet they don’t feel that their heart has changed, and they wonder why. But can a house get built on its own? There is a certain order of steps needed in order to build a house. In order to build the heart, there is an orderly way to do it: We should keep checking into our desires and wishes and see if the wishes are becoming more elevated and if our wishes are changing with time, if we want the same wishes as a year ago, etc. This is how we purify our heart more and more.

The actions of mitzvos are needed, and they are the way to go in. But if we want to await Mashiach and the time when the daas of Hashem will fill the world - when we will all sense Hashem simply - the way to actually prepare for those times is, like this. [To prepare our heart for Hashem, to give a space for Hashem in our heart, by becoming aware of all the wishes in our heart and giving up one thing for Him, and to regularly check what our heart’s desires are like, to see if our wishes are becoming more spiritual as time continues.]

May Hashem merit us to keep all the mitzvos, and that we should become elevated through them, and to recognize what’s in our heart, to know what we want in life, and to keep elevating our wishes as time goes on. Then each person can be zocheh, with the rest of Klal Yisrael, to recognize and feel simply the One who said that this world should be.

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