Search for Serenity - 007 Menuchah Throughout The Soul

The soul is made up of five parts: the Nefesh, the Ruach, the Neshamah, the Chayah, and the Yechidah. Each of these five parts of the soul can give us a unique kind of Menuchas HaNefesh.

Menuchah of the Nefesh: Being Ready For New Levels

The most simple and basic kind of Menuchah is the Menuchah of our Nefesh. The word Nefesh is associated with rest, like we say on Shabbos, “Vayenafash” – “And He rested.” Shabbos is the rest of the six days of the week, which are days of action. On Shabbos, we rest from the action.

Chazal (Avos 3:17) say that “Anyone whose wisdom is greater than his actions, his wisdom will not last.” When a person’s wisdom matches his actions, his wisdom fits in with his personality; he has the tools to receive the Torah. But if a person’s wisdom isn’t the same as his actions, he cannot be at peace with his Nefesh, because he doesn’t have the tools to be able to hold the light of his Torah learning.

There are people who know a lot of Torah, but they don’t have Menuchas haNefesh. Why? The reason for this is because they don’t have the tools to receive new levels.

This is Menuchas haNefesh – when one has the tools to receive spiritual growth.

Menuchah of the Ruach: Being Above Your Actions

The Menuchah that a person has in his Ruach is when he does an action and makes sure to be above the action. Whenever a person does something, he shouldn’t be too involved in it.

Ruach means wind, which moves. Normally when a person moves, he can’t have Menuchah, but if he makes sure not to become too involved in what he does, he can have Menuchah even in his movements.

Ruach is also identified with speech throughout Chazal. When you speak, you are using your Ruach. “The heart is not revealed to the mouth.” Chazal say that one is not supposed to reveal everything that’s on his heart; some matters are meant to be kept hidden inside your heart. This shows us that we shouldn’t tell over everything to others what we are thinking about; not everything we know has to be revealed to others.

If you say everything that comes to your mind, you lose your Menuchah; if you make sure not to say everything on your mind, you hold onto your Menuchah , and you have Menuchah in your Ruach.

So Menuchah of your Ruach is that in whatever you do, make sure you have some space for yourself in the action. If you use up all your energy when you do something -- you don’t leave a space for yourself in your actions -- then you lose your Menuchah.

The concept of this Menuchah is that you keep some of your movements to yourself. In this way, you gain Menuchah even from your movements. If you don’t reveal this ability in the soul, then your actions make you lose your Menuchah. You must protect the ability in your soul to hold onto your movements – in other words, you have to always leave a space for yourself in your actions.

Menuchah of the Neshamah: Reflection

The Menuchah that comes from one’s Neshamah is a more profound kind of Menuchah. It is only for someone who has it on a constant basis – it is not for someone who only experiences it temporarily.

This is when a person reflects with calmness. Reflection is hisbonenus, which comes from the word binyan (to build).  This is by reflecting: Where do I come from, and to where am I going? A person builds up his thinking in this way.

The Neshamah is when one builds up his thinking, utilizing the ability of hisbonenus which develops  your thinking. Shlomo Hamelech is called “ish Menuchah”, and that is why he was able to build the Beis Hamikdash. Without Menuchah, you cannot build.

How do you begin to develop your thinking?

The purpose of reflection is to connect many details to a root, which is the source of the information. This is not because a person simply wants to gather all the details together into one piece, but because one wants to connect them all to their source. This is hisbonenus – the power that gives a person Menuchas Hanefesh from his Neshamah.

Torah scholars are called “builders.” Torah scholars also have the quality of Menuchah, and this is because they know how to build their minds.

In order to build, you have to connect things together. When you build a house, you connect the bricks to the ground. That is the beginning of building – connecting things together to its source.

To give an example, let’s say a person is thinking while he is learning Torah, and he has a question which he is trying answer. Is he just trying to come up with an answer, or is he trying to build something from that? Let’s say a person has seven questions on the Rambam, and he is looking for one answer that will answer all of them at once. If he comes up with one answer that takes care of all seven questions, then he hasn’t really connected them, because in his mind, he has dealt with seven different problems. But if he is trying to come up with an answer because he wants to take that and build upon that something more, he has really unified all the information into one, because he is using it to build more information.

This method of hisbonenus is taking all the details and connecting it to their root. A person who only amasses information hasn’t really used hisbonenus, because he’s not really trying to connect all the information; he has split up the information.

A person has to be at the right level in order to have Hisbonenus. Not everyone can think like this. Hisbonenus is when a person knows how to connect all the information and build upon it,  while a person who thinks more superficially first has a “first take” (hashkafah rishona) on what he learns, and then he wants to connect all the details with one particular fundamental (yesod) that he comes across.

Hisbonenus is also called Binah, while the superficial method of thinking is called Tevunah. Most people have not yet revealed their Neshamah, so they don’t have hisbonenus; they would rather first see all the details when they learn and only after that to come up with a fundamental concept that will connect them all. They want to add onto their knowledge more and more, but they don’t know how to build upon their knowledge.

The Neshamah is accessed when we use our seichel (intellect). This is not the regular human intellect that even a non-Jew has; it is a holy intellect, Binah. This is when a person knows of a concept, sees the details and then connects all the details to explain the concept. It is like a magnet that pulls everything toward it; a magnet is one single piece, but it takes many things and connects them to itself. It is not simply gathering many things together – instead, the many things that pass it connect to it. This is also known as mochin d’gadlus (the higher mode of thinking).

Menuchah of the Chayah:  Accessing Your Inner Flow of Information

There is also Menuchah which comes from our Chayah in our soul. The Chayah is the place in our soul from which the rest of our soul gets its flow of information from.

The Chayah of our soul seemingly holds back a person from having Menuchas haNefesh, because it is a constantly flowing source of information; how can a person be at peace with it?

For example, there are people who have a natural ability to always come up with ideas. Such people do not have Menuchas haNefesh, because their constant ideas don’t allow them to have any inner calm. They always have ideas, but nothing ever comes out of their ideas; they never come to fruition.

But this is only if a person’s flow of information comes from his Nefesh. This is a basic source of ideas in a person, such as the ideas that people have to help people, or even the idea to become close to Hashem. Such ideas can take away a person’s inner calm.

The Chayah is a deeper flow of ideas in a person; it is a kind of inner flow in the soul which doesn’t take away one’s inner calm – Chazal call this maayan shel chochmah, a “wellspring of wisdom” in a person. Chazal also say that one who learns Torah with pure motives (lishmah) merits to become a maayan hamisgaber, a “mighty wellspring”. 

It is written, “Wisdom is found from nothingness (ayin)”. There is wisdom which you “find”, and this is the wisdom that comes from other parts of the soul. Then there is the actual source of the wisdom, which is called “ayin” – “nothingness.”

This is a kind of wisdom that comes from a person’s power of Ayin (“nothingness”) in the soul – an inner flow of information, which is poured down from the Ein Sof of Hashem.

 How can a person access this part of his soul? This is when a person is focused on the Ayin in himself, not on the wisdom he is trying to uncover.

This is essentially when a person has bittul (self-nullification); he nullifies himself to the information, and when a person does so, he reaches his inner flow of information, which gives him Menuchas HaNefesh in spite of all the new information he is receiving.

Menuchah of the Yechidah:  Ain Od Milvado

The perfect kind of Menuchah is in a person’s soul, in the place in a person that is called Yechidah. This is when a person realizes “Ain Od Milvado” – “There is nothing besides for Hashem”. It is the ultimate kind of Menuchah possible.

The question is: How could it be that there is nothing besides for Hashem, if we see that the world exists and is full of people? What does it mean that there is nothing besides for Hashem?

It is really the same question about the power of free will: If Hashem knows everything, then how does a person have free will? And if we have free will, then how it could be that Hashem doesn’t know something?

The answer to this is Emunah. When a person has Emunah, he can see how the two concepts do not contradict each other.  When a person has Emunah, he believes that there is nothing besides for Hashem, and he reaches the greatest Menuchah possible. A person is at peace when he knows that there is nothing besides for Hashem.

The Yechidah in a person’s soul is what enables a person to believe in Ain Od Milvado. This is not an intellectual understanding; the Yechidah of our soul is above any intellectual comprehension. It is essentially the power of Emunah in our soul, to have a palpable faith in the Creator. When a person has Emunah, he is able to believe that there is nothing besides for Hashem, yet this does not contradict the fact that there are people in the world. It is a perception of reality not based on one’s intellect – it is through the lens of Emunah, which can perceive a whole different reality we are used to.

When a person reaches this deep ability in his soul to have Emunah that Ain Od Milvado, there is no Menuchah greater than this. This is what we say in the Shemoneh Esrei of Shabbos Minchah, “For from You comes their rest.”

This kind of Menuchah that a person has is really called Olam Haba, the World to Come – a “day that is entirely Shabbos and eternal rest.”

A person who lives with this deep understanding truly lives the renewal of Creation, in which Hashem constantly renews the world. He is living in a reality of Ain Od Milvado, in which before Hashem created the world, there was nothing besides for Him. He feels the constant cycle of Creation as it goes from the weekday to Shabbos. It is the most perfect kind of Menuchah that a Jew’s soul can reach.