Chapter 2 Mishna 4
“Make His will like your will so that He will make your will like His will. Nullify your will before His will so that He will nullify the will of others before yours.”
It is necessary to clarify what is meant by “your will,” what is understood as “His will,” and who are “the others” whose will He will nullify before yours.
This can be explained in light of what is taught in the Gemara (Shabbat 17a), where it relates that Rabbi Shimon and his colleagues, who were entirely devoted to Torah study, would interrupt their learning only to recite the Shema, but not for prayer (tefillah). We, on the other hand, who interrupt our study for other matters as well, are obligated to interrupt it also to pray. Based on this, the Tanna teaches that just as you pursue your personal interests and carry them out despite obstacles, so too you must not interrupt your Torah study even if hindrances arise. And do not say “Ohnes Rachmana patrei” (“The Merciful One exempts one who is under compulsion” – Nedarim 27a), meaning, that you cannot say you are exempt due to your inability to fulfill a duty because of circumstances beyond your control; if it was your own will, you would have fulfilled it any way possible. Rather, you must fulfill His will just as you fulfill your own at all costs. Then, even if there are prosecuting forces against you in the heavenly realms working to prevent your needs from being granted — and you did not even pray for them — HaKadosh Baruch Hu will fulfill your will in accordance with His, and your needs will be met without hindrance, for He accomplishes His will without obstruction.
This Mishnah may also be explained in a different way: the Tanna may be referring to someone who has already sinned, having followed his desires and impulses, and thus accumulated many transgressions. The path to repairing this is to counterbalance those sins with an abundance of merits, as it says in Vayikra Rabbah 21:5: “Through teshuvah (repentance), a person can transform their transgressions into merits.” To achieve this, one must “do His will” — that is, observe the mitzvot, which are the will of Hashem — “as your own will,” with the same passion and dedication that one previously committed transgressions in pursuit of one’s personal desires. Then Hashem will “make your will like His own,” and even the sins that once expressed your personal will shall be transformed into merits, which are in line with His will. But this is only possible through teshuvah meh’ahavah (repentance out of love), for only this form of repentance has the power to turn sins into merits, as taught in Yoma 86b. Thus, “nullify your will before His will”: repent and return out of love, so that He will “nullify the will of others” — namely, the accusatory forces created by your sins — “before your will,” now reoriented toward transforming those transgressions into merits.
