Reaching Your Essence - 009 Choosing Emunah

The Yechidah Sees No Other Possibilities

We have explained in previous chapters how we can slowly begin to recognize our Yechidah.

Yechidah comes from the word yachid, “individual”. The very concept of the Yechidah is the opposite of having “many” things, because the whole idea of the Yechidah is to have one, single view on things. 

In order to reveal our Yechidah, which is a viewpoint that sees only one possible option, we need to understand what the opposite of this would entail. There is a rule that in order to understand a concept, you need to understand the opposite of the concept.

The opposite of the Yechidah’s viewpoint is the power of bechirah (free will). The Yechidah in us sees only one option, while our power of bechirah tells us that we have a few options to choose from, and we know that we are supposed to choose good or evil.

Bechirah/free will, by definition, is the power to have many possible options in front of you, and then you choose between them. Mankind was created in order to choose good over evil (as the Ramchal writes in sefer Derech Hashem). Man’s very essence is to choose between the many possibilities (and hopefully, he will choose good). All of the time, we are choosing. We choose to get up in the morning and we choose to have a conversation with someone else or to be quiet. We keep making use of our bechirah.

The entire concept of bechirah is the opposite of the Yechidah’s view, for the Yechidah sees only one option.

We need to dig deep into ourselves to reveal the Yechidah, because it is very deep within. However, not only is it very deep to reach – it seems impossible, because our very bechirah contradicts the view of our Yechidah. As long as we live, we have bechirah; our bechirah only goes away at death. So how do we access our Yechidah’s view, which sees only one possibility, when our whole life revolves around bechirah – which chooses between “many” views? How do we reach the Yechidah, when our whole essence if that of free will?!

When you really recognize your power of free will, you know that you do everything because you choose so. As an example, you came here to this shiur because you chose to come.

When you think deeply, you can see how you are a massive contradiction. On one hand, we have bechirah - we choose our thoughts, our words, and what we want. Yet, we are also supposed to subjugate our will to Hashem’s will – to reach oneness with Hashem. Man and wife are meant to become echad, one, and the lesson of this is that man must reach the state of echad with Hashem. One has to reach the inner point of echad in himself. With two options always in front of you, how do you get to echad?

Beyond The Point of Free Will

We need to reveal a deeper layer in ourselves that is beyond our layer of bechirah/free will. Our power of free will tells us that there are several options, while there is a deeper layer in us that sees only one option.  That deeper layer is essentially the view of the Yechidah. We need to cross over from the point of bechirah in our soul into the Yechidah in our soul.

We need to reach our inner oneness, our inner place of echad inside ourselves, and then we can reach Hashem, who is echad.

Let us try to explain how we can get to this place of echad inside ourselves.

Free Will Is The Power of Amalek/Doubts

Free will means that there are two options that oppose each other, and that we choose between them.

There is rule that for everything that Hashem created that is good, He created something equally powerful that is evil, in order to allow free will.

For example, there is the Jewish people on the side of holiness, and on the other side of evil, there is Amalek. If there would only be the Jewish people and no Amalek, there would be no free will.

Amalek is in the soul as well; the numerical value in Hebrew of “Amalek” is “safek”, doubt, because Amalek is the power of doubt, to be at a quandary between two options. The root of all doubts in Creation is when a person is not sure to choose between good and evil. Our bechirah is to either connect ourselves to the good, represented by the Jewish people, or to the viewpoint of Amalek, chas v’shalom.

This is all in order to allow free will in the world; if Hashem would have only created a powerful amount of good in the world and nothing equally powerful enough that is evil, then there would be no free will, because the good would just overpower the evil.

The power of good in the world is represented by the Jewish nation, while the power of evil in the world is represented by a nation equally powerful in its evil – Amalek. The Jewish nation is called the “first” nation, but so is Amalek.

Amalek bears a striking resemblance to our power of free will. If you think about it, the whole power of free will has a lot to do with Amalek! Amalek is the evil ability of doubt, a power in the soul. There is “Amalek” in the soul – the power to have doubts about our faith. Doubt is essentially when a person has many possibilities to choose from. Free will is also when a person has many possibilities to choose from. If so, Amalek, which is doubt, is synonymous with the power of free will in our soul.

How do you erase the ‘Amalek’ in the soul – the doubts inside us?

Faith Opposes Free Will

We need to ‘erase’ Amalek, our perspective of doubt/free will, by introducing its opposite – the power of emunah (faith). When I have emunah, that means that I have no other choice except the option that is right.When there is emunah, when I believe only in doing Hashem’s will, there does not exist a possibility for me to choose evil, because I am following the deeper understanding of emunah.

Emunah is the opposite perspective of bechirah/free will. When I am going with my free will, even if I choose good or evil, I am still saying that there is a possibility to be evil. But if I reveal the power of emunah, I am saying there can only be one option: the right and good thing to do, Hashem’s will.

The power of emunah/faith is what is able to destroy the power of Amalek in the soul. By revealing our emunah, we get rid of the evil power to doubt.

Bringing Emunah Into Daily Decisions

For example, a person walks into the store and he is in doubt about what to buy. How do we decide what to buy?

We all have doubts. Some people are in doubts the whole day and are emotionally ill from this. But we all have some degree of doubts every day. How do we answer our doubts we are filled with all day? How do we escape doubt?

Let’s say you decide to buy something, then you come home and you realize that you overlooked a detail, and it’s not fit for your house. You were sure when you bought it that it was the right thing to buy for your house, and now you discover that you are wrong. How should you view this situation?

Before you buy something, while you buy something, and after you buy something, you can be aware of the following inner understanding. You have a Yechidah in you, which sees only one option – that everything you will have is decreed by Hashem.

When you buy a table or a chair in the store, it can be a way of revealing your Yechidah. What does this have to do with your Yechidah? Doubts about what to decide seem are an ordinary part of our day that seems meaningless, but actually, this is an opportunity for us to work on getting rid of our doubts, thus, it can be a tool for a person to reach his Yechidah. When you feel a doubt about something, you have an opportunity now to erase the doubt and thus reach your innermost point of the soul, the Yechidah.

So even when you go to buy a table or a chair, it is a time to get in touch with the understanding of the Yechidah. Why did Hashem place the doubt in you about what to buy? It is because you can remind yourself now that there is a deep part in you, a Yechidah, which can be revealed through the simple act of buying a table.

Our bechirah says, there are two options. The Yechidah in us says, have emunah - Hashem has already chosen what is good for you. You can’t get it if it’s not coming to you. Everything you will get was already coming to you.

Practically speaking, as you’re about to buy the table, think to yourself: “I can only get this table if Hashem wanted me to have it.”

The Vilna Gaon said that even a robber, before he steals, prays to Hashem and believes that he will get it. Why? Because the truth is, whatever a person gets is supposed to come to him. The robber has chosen to get it through evil, through stealing, but in essence, the item will come to him as long as Hashem allows it to.

If a chair breaks in the house, we can give all kinds of reasons why it broke, but the truth is: it was decided by Hashem that it would break. There are no two possible reasons why it broke – there is only one reason why it broke: Hashem wanted it to break.

When one is aware of this, he accesses his Yechidah’s understanding, through an ordinary occurrence of a chair breaking in his house. And when a person goes to the store to buy something, if he is aware that there is only one reason that he will be able to get the item – namely, that he can only get an item which Hashem decreed that he will get – he reveals emunah, the perspective of the Yechidah, in this ordinary act.

This does not mean that one should only consider the understanding of emunah/Yechidah and ignore your logical thinking process. If you buy something in the house and you see it wasn’t good, don’t buy it again! In this way, you can be aware of both emunah as well as the outer layers of your soul at the same time. You cannot only live in your emunah, because the emunah/Yechidah is one of your five soul layers, and you have other layers in your soul as well which need to be taken into account.

Thus, your decisions must involve both your emunah aspect that comes from your Yechidah’s viewpoint, as well as your logical aspect that comes from the outer layers of the soul. This is the properly balanced way to live life and go about all that we do.^[1]

Revealing A New Kind of Free Will

How, then, should we utilize our power of free will? What is the proper way to go about it?

Our natural movements are always choosing. We choose if we will buy something in the store or not. This is a constant kind of choosing we do, and it doesn’t involve any thought; it is made subconsciously. This illustrates the solution which we are trying to get at: we need to uncover a kind of choosing in which we choose to do the right thing, but not because we put any thinking into it. We have to just do what’s good and not see the other possibilities. Our decisions to do good should also be in this way.

This is a power in the soul to make decisions, but it is a more inner kind of decision. This is a kind of decision in which the person decides to do good, but not because he had any doubts whatsoever. It is to decide to do good because you only see one option – you don’t see any other option, because emunah tells you that there is only one option: that all is decreed from Hashem.

This is a way for how a person can get to the Yechidah, the power of “Echad” (“one”) in the soul. A person reaches it by seeing only “one” possibility – what the right and good thing to do is.

A person has this ability: to only see one option, because he has no other doubts. How can a person actually reveal this power?

When a person makes a decision, there are two attitudes he can have. One attitude is the skeptical one, which doesn’t reveal the Yechidah. The other attitude is the correct one to have, which can reveal the Yechidah.

If a person buys the item with the attitude that there is no other possibility that exists other than this item he is buying – because whatever Hashem wants him to have is coming to him anyway - such a person truly believes that there is only one possibility. He doesn’t doubt Hashem for one second, because he knew from the start that it was decreed on him what he will have. He decides to buy it with such an attitude, and such a decision comes from his emunah. This person reveals his Yechidah when he decides to buy the item.

Our physical mind decides by seeing two options and then deciding. Our Yechidah also decides, but it doesn’t see two options, because it only sees one option – the understanding of emunah.

So before you go into the store, tell yourself that it’s already decreed by Hashem what you are getting.

Emunah is a new path to take in how to deal with all issues of life, not just decisions in a store.

Some people don’t use either their emunah or even their seichel/intellect – they decide entirely based on their desires. They live based on their emotions. The yetzer hora is our evil desires, and it is “evil from a man’s youth”; when a person is ruled by emotions, he is essentially being ruled by his yetzer hora. At this stage, one must learn to use his rational intellect and make decisions in this way.

A person whose “mind is in control of his heart” lives life sensibly, and makes decisions through his seichel/intellect. But he still doesn’t yet have emunah affecting his decisions.

A third, higher stage is to go above the intellect – to reach one’s emunah. Our intellect (seichel) decides using our power of daas (specifically, daas d’hachraah)^[2]. But our emunah is the G-dly light in us, which has no doubts, just as Hashem has no doubts.

Amalek creates doubt in Creation. The Amalek within the soul causes doubts in our soul, to doubt emunah, using our power of free will. How do we erase the Amalek within? When Moshe’s hands were lifted, Amalek grew weaker; in other words, when there is emunah in Hashem, when we have no doubts, the power of evil doubt falls away as a result.

In Conclusion

If we want to get to our Yechidah, don’t think that that it’s way too far from you. There are methods of deep meditation and inner silence that can help a person reach the Yechidah, but here we have described how mundane activities in ordinary life can be an opportunity to reach your Yechidah. The decisions and doubts we go through every day are a tool to reveal our Yechidah, because we can use these opportunities to reveal emunah. This can transform ordinary, daily life into a deep way of living.

We have been brief about this, but the concept here describes a way to live life. These are no ideas, but a deep way to live life.

When we get up in the morning, what do we think – that we are just getting up and doing mundane actions, or that we are looking to reveal our Yechidah through the various actions we perform? If we live with conscious awareness that we are trying to reveal our Yechidah, then even our mundane actions will be transformed into a way to reveal the Yechidah.

May we merit from Hashem to yearn to reveal our inner point and the ways of how to reach it, until we reach the highest point of all, which is to be totally connected with Hashem.