And the man Moshe was very humble, more than any person on earth. (Bemidbar 12:3)
One of the rungs in R. Pinchas ben Yair’s ascending ladder of spiritual growth, leading to ruach hakodesh, is anavah. Humility. Sefer Mesilas Yesharim elaborates on the meaning and significance of this trait, and on how to acquire it.
There is an amazing story about anavah in Sefer Me’iras Einayim, authored by R. Yitzchak of Acco (from the period of the Rishonim), and the story goes like this:
A certain elderly man met a member of the Chaburas Misbodedim (literally, “those who seclude themselves,” a society of pious men who practiced a very high level of avodas Hashem) and asked if he could join them.
The member responded: May Hashem bless you! You surely have good intentions. But please tell me, have you attained the level of hishtavus (equality)?
The elderly man asked: What is hishtavus?
The member explained: It means that someone who praises you and someone who puts you down are equal in your eyes. They are the same to you.
The elderly man replied: No, I cannot say such a thing about myself. When people praise me, I enjoy hearing it. And when I am insulted, although I never take revenge and I don’t bear any resentment in my heart, I must admit that it hurts me.
The member then told him: If that’s the case, I wish you all the best, but the answer is no. If you haven’t attained the madreigah of hishtavus, meaning that you don’t feel anything when you are praised or insulted, then you can’t connect your thoughts to Above, and you should not practice hisbodedus. Go acquire the trait of humility, and come to the level of histavus, and then you can join our chaburah.
That’s the story, and the idea behind it is as follows.
Chazal teach us that there is a certain process and order by which one arrives at the level of ruach hakodesh. One of the stages on the way is the madreigah of anavah, humility. This means hisbatlus. Making yourself to be nothing, literally. It makes no impression on you what people say about you. It’s all “equal,” it makes no difference to you. It’s the same to you if someone says that you are a genius and a holy man, or whether someone says you are an idiot and a lowlife.
This trait is not just one of the stops on the way to ruach hakodesh; it is actually one of the most crucial conditions for attaining ruach hakodesh. Because what is ruach hakodesh? It is when a person’s personality fades away to nothing. You can’t be both “Mr. Goldstein” and a holy person. It’s a total contradiction. A person’s own personality and self has to dissipate completely, to the point that what people say about him is absolutely meaningless to him.
This was what the members of the Misbodedim society worked on. It is along the lines of the description that the Tur provides in Hilchos Tefilah:
Chassidim and Anshei Maaseh
Pious people and those who perfected their deeds, would seclude themselves (misbodedim) and focus on their prayers to the point that they divested themselves of physicality, and the spirituality of the intellect gathered strength, until they came close to the level of prophecy.
The elderly man in the above-quoted story, who apparently was a great man, said that he wants to practice hisbodedus with them, which was their means of connecting their thoughts to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and attaining a state of kedushah.
But the member of the chaburah told him that it won’t work. A person can’t even approach the subject of ruach hakodesh if, when he says, “I want,” he is talking about himself. Ruach hakodesh for such a person is simply out of the question. If it makes any difference to a person whether he is praised or put down, Chaburas Misbodedim is not for him.
It is worth noting that it doesn’t say in the story that the member of the chaburah told the elderly man, “Come to us, and we will teach you.” Because without humility, it is a non-starter. Anavah is one of the basics, so he needs to acquire it on his own, before he even comes to the chaburah.
