Fixing Your Middos - 003 Fundamentals of Middos Improvement | Part 3

Learning About Our Middos

It is written, “Your thoughts are very deep, a fool does not know them.” All of the Torah is very deep, but the study of the middos (character traits, as well as our emotions), is a particularly very deep subject.

Firstly, we need to understand each middah, and then we need to understand how each middah relates to the other middos. We can then learn how to “wear” them and how to “detach” from them when we need to.

Then, we can truly work on, and fix, our middos.

Figure Out Your Main Element

Rav Chaim Vital wrote that all of our middos come from the four elements of earth, water, wind and fire.^[1]

A person needs to see which element he has a tendency towards. How a person can figure this is out is a separate discussion, but the point is, that a person must figure out what his root element is.^[2]

After a person figures this out, he should realize that whatever his main element is, there are four elements contained in it. In other words, after you find out what your main element is, figure out which is your main middah that comes from it. Identify your best middah that comes from your most dominant element, and identify your worst middah that comes from your most dominant element.

Your best middah and your worst middah are the opposite of each other. If you figure out that your best middah is not the opposite of your bad middah (and vice versa), it is a sign that you haven’t figured out what your main element is. This is because your best middah comes from a certain element in you, and your worst middah has to be the opposite of this.

Therefore, besides for that we have to study the four elements and all their many branching details, each person has to really know well what his main element is. Even after you figure out what your main element is, you need to know it very well and identify it strongly.

Figuring Out Your Worst Middah

If this is too hard to figure out, then at least figure out what your most common good or bad middah (character trait)is, and then learn about that middah very well, in-depth.

Studying The Middos With Depth

Reb Yisrael Salanter said that when a person wants to work on a certain area he needs improvement in, he should learn and study that area of the Torah very well. For example, if a person sees that his most common bad middah is gaavah (conceit), then he has must learn about the topic of gaavah well, in-depth, and to recognize what it is very well. Or, if a person sees that his main bad middah present in his life is the trait of anger, then he has to learn about anger and know all about it in great detail. It should be a “sugya” (discussion) to him, just like a sugya of Gemara that he learns very well and in-depth, which he regularly analyzes and studies all the intricacies of it.

Most people like to take shortcuts when it comes to working on their middos. If someone wants to learn how to control his anger, he is tempted to take the easy route, reading up on it a little and perhaps doing some minimal research on this topic, looking for “tips” on how to avoid getting angry. A person naturally feels comfortable doing this when it comes to working on any bad middah he notices in himself.

But this is not the truthful approach of the Torah. The Torah method is that we must work for many months on understanding what the middah in question is, in concept, before we can even begin to actually “work” on it and fix it. Without studying our middos, it’s like becoming a posek without learning Halacha beforehand.

Discovering Your Personal Weakness

Also, it is impossible to say that everyone must work very hard at fixing one particular bad middah. This is because each person’s soul is built differently, so each of us has different qualities and faults that are unique to our personal circumstances.

But at some point, we will need to cover all of them, so that each person can figure out where his main weakness lies in. We will therefore discuss all the middos that come from all four elements, and as you go along with these classes, you can see for yourself which is your own personal worst weakness.

We will learn about each middah in detail. The details are really endless, and it is like an endless ocean. But we will try, as hard as we can, to learn about them.

So each chapter will be covering a different middah. The disadvantage to this is that not everyone will be able to listen well and follow each chapter, because you might be hearing about a particular middah thatis not of much interest to you right now, for you know that you have other areas to mainly put your focus on.

If someone is very motivated to understand the whole picture of our middos, then he won’t have this problem. But anyone else who just wants to find out what his particular weakness is and how he can work on it will have a hard time learning all of these classes, until he hears about his particular bad middah that he knows he must mainly work on; and then he will lose the desire to continue. So patience is required from you, as you go along this series. We have no choice but to go through each middah and then give advice on how to work on each middah, and at some point, each person needs to find himself in all of this, where he fits in, and what he has to mainly work on.

That is the purpose of giving over the whole picture of our middos, as opposed to concentrating on one topic the entire time.

There is general advice here in these chapters that can apply to everyone, but there is some advice which cannot be written in any sefer - and it can only be arrived at when you use your “understanding of the heart”.

Working On Our Middos: “Breaking” and “Removing”

When a person wants to get rid of a bad middah, there are two possible options he can try. One of them is the correct and sensible approach; the other method is detrimental.

One way is to simply try to fight and squash the bad middah at hand. For example, if a person has an evil desire, maybe he should try to hold back from giving it to his desire and practice restraint. He is attempting to kill off the desires. Or, if he gets angry a lot, he could try to pause before getting angry, and wait until his anger subsides. The point of this method is that the person attacks the bad middah directly head-on.

There is another way to deal with bad middos, though, which is based on the first method; without the first method, it will be impossible to implement this method. The second method is, that besides for practicing restraint over our bad middos, we can ‘remove’ the very middah itself, regardless of it is good or bad right now.

The first way is an attempt to “break” one’s middos. There is a statement from the Kotzker Rebbe that if someone breaks his bad middah, he will be left with two of them, just like when you smash an item and you are left with two pieces of it. Thus, a person has to make use of another way to deal with bad middos: he needs to remove the very middah itself at its root, rather than attempting to break it.

According to the second approach, which is the ideal method, even a good middah would have to be removed, at times. It is about removing the nature of the “middah” itself, and it is not focused on getting rid of the “bad” in the middah.

For example, Chazal say that if a person has mercy on the cruel, he will come to act cruel even to those who are deserving of mercy. A person has to act ‘cruel’ to his children sometimes, like when he disciplines them. In such a case, it is not the time to use the middah of rachamim (compassion). This is an example of ‘removing’ yourself from a good middah – in this case, by withholding the middah of rachamim (compassion).

So on one hand, while we must certainly work to break our bad middos, we must also remove ourselves from even good middos sometimes. That is one fundamental point in our discussion here.

The Roots of Middos

Another important point we must know here is that we need to have the whole picture of middos as we work on our middos. There are different kinds of middos. The root of the middos is the middos of Hashem; the 13 middos of Hashem, of which Chazal say we must cling to His middos. The lesson of this is that we must realize that our middos come from Hashem. Lower than those are the 13 “middos of the Torah”. The middos of the Torah are the revelation of the middos of Hashem. Lower than those are the middos of a person.

The Sages state, “Hashem looked into the world and created the world”. So if we want to examine our middos and work to fix them, we need to realize their roots – the middos of Hashem, which are manifested in the middos of the Torah.

Without this outlook, a person’s view on the middos is superficial and immature. We need to bear in mind the whole picture of middos – the roots, and the branches. If we have the ‘roots’, we can arrive at the ‘branches’.

Three Layers of The Middos

Some of our middos come from our soul, while some come from our body. The middos from our Divine soul (our Nefesh Elokis) are entirely good and have no bad in them. Middos of the body come from the ‘animalistic’ part of our soul - the nefesh habehaimis. They are a mix of good and evil. There is a lower source of middos within then nefesh habehaimis, though, which is entirely evil.

A person has in himself a pure and lofty part in his soul that has entirely good middos. This is the nefesh Elokis (G-dly soul).

A person also has inside himself a yetzer hora (evil inclination) and a yetzer tov (good inclination), mixed together. The natural evil found in a person is in the nefesh habehamis(animal soul), and it is essentially the yetzer hora. The Chovos Halevovos writes that the yetzer hora is mixed up with the good in your soul. This evil manifests itself in one’s bad middos.

The third layer of a person is the part of a person which is totally evil, and it is present in the lower area of the nefesh habehaimis.

A person has to recognize that there are three layers in himself – a part in himself which is entirely good, a part in himself which is a mixture of good and evil (it can be used for either good or evil), and a part in himself which is entirely evil.

If a person is only aware that he has a mixture of good and evil in himself, and he isn’t aware that there is a part in him which is totally good, then he has nowhere from where to draw forth his inherent good that he was created with. It is not enough for a person to separate the good from the evil in himself; he has to also realize that there is a part in himself that it totally pure and good. The way we work on our middos involves all three layers. Therefore, in our avodah of being able to ‘wear’ and ‘detach’ our middos, we need to be aware that we have all of these three layers.

Desire for Food – Good or Evil?

For example, if a person feels a desire (taavah) to eat a certain food, how does a person look at this?

If a person hasn’t yet become aware of the mixture in himself as well as the good in himself, then he considers desire to be totally evil. If that is his attitude, then his desire to eat food is indeed always evil, because he has never revealed any good about desire. When he fights the evil desire, he will feel like he is fighting evil, but he doesn’t know how to reveal any good in such a situation.

But if he becomes aware that he has in himself a mixture of good and evil, then he can be aware if his desire is coming from an actual need to eat, or if it is just coming from a lack of self-control.

If a person becomes aware of the highest part of himself – the part in him which is completely good – then he has an even higher reaction when he feels a desire to eat food: he is able to view it as a reflection of his desire to be close to Hashem.

In Conclusion

We only gave one example, but we need to become aware of our soul’s three layers in every bad middah we discover.

In order to do this, we need to learn about the middos from the words of Chazal, and it takes a lot of time. We have to learn about the middos so we can work on them, and then we can learn when to use them and when not to use them. This is part of how we can wear and detach the layers of our soul, which is necessary in the path of trying to reach the essence of our soul, our very havayah.