Questions and Answers About the Heart and Spiritual Growth

What is the Heart?

QUESTION: 1) What is the “heart”? 2) Where can I learn about the “70 soul faculties”?
ANSWER: (1) The heart is the product of the extension of Binah. The Binah faculty of the mind extends into the body, where it becomes a new creation: the heart. This is explained by the Arizal. The concept of the heart is hakarah (recognizing), and a more external level of the heart is hargashah (feelings), and the most external level of the heart is hispaalus (reactiveness). You may learn about this in the series “Getting To Know Your Heart”. Refer to the Arizal’s words in Eitz Chaim, shaar 31:4. (2) Refer to the series “Getting To Know Your 70 Soul Faculties” and also the sefer Shivim Kochos HaNefesh L’Gra by Rav Greenwald zt”l who was a student of the Steipler zt”l, which explains the 70 soul faculties listed by the Gra.

How Do I Open My Heart?

QUESTION: How can I open my heart more?
ANSWER: You can try to do so by learning and working on the steps laid out in sefer “Bilvavi”, Part One.

Reaching Heart Recognition of Hashem

QUESTION: I understand from the Rav’s approach that emunah must be coming from our heart, that we must be able to feel our awareness of Hashem, as opposed to merely knowing of Him in our intellect, because we cannot base our emunah in Hashem on our intellect, since our intellect is limited and we can become mistaken through it. So how indeed do we reach emunah of the heart? I don’t mean to ask about how to internalize our intellectual emunah into our heart, rather I mean to ask: How do we start directly with emunah in our heart?
ANSWER: The depth of our soul’s power to have emunah is from the same place in you where you recognize your own existence, the truth of your havayah. It is from your own havayah that you can recognize the absolute havayah, which is the truth of His infinite existence. For a Jew is an actual “portion of G-d from above”. Understand that well. When a person penetrates into the depth of the truth of his soul, after he has purified the soul’s outer layers, he then reaches his very havayah, and then he can recognize the absolute havayah, the truth of the Infinite. This is the root way of recognizing our Creator, by recognizing our own existence and from that very same place of self-recognition we can recognize that the existence of all creations is only allowed due to the truth of His havayah, His infinite existence.
When one is beginning to surround this perception, it is called ohr makif, where his awareness of Hashem is called emunah (belief in Hashem). When one internalizes it, it is ohr pnimi, and it is called hakarah (recognition). In these short lines, we have written the pnimiyus, the inner depth and the truth, of all of life!!!

Easily Heartbroken

QUESTION: I easily feel others’ pain, every painful event that happens in the world bothers me to no end and I can’t think straight from it. Is this a good middah or a bad middah?
ANSWER: Feeling another’s pain is a good middah, mainly when it stems from your nefesh Elokis (G-dly soul). However, if feeling others’ pain makes you unable to function afterwards meaning that you can’t return to being happy afterwards, and slowly your pain for others is controlling you, then it is not feeling another’s pain anymore because now it has turned into depression and it is a sign of being emotionally imbalanced.

The Joy of Dancing

QUESTION: I didn’t understand a concept that the Rav said in a shiur about how dancing with the feet, which the Rav explained as the joy called alitzah (rejoicing), how this repairs the sadness that is caused by the impaired element of earth in the soul which is caused by Amalek. The verse which the Rav quotes “My heart rejoices within me” is referring to a joy that comes from the heart, not by dancing with the feet. I didn’t find any of the commentaries explain this verse as referring to joy that comes from dancing, what does this joy of alitzah have to do with dancing?
ANSWER: There are 2 aspects to how dancing causes joy. The lower, physical aspect of dancing comes from the act of the dancing, which brings on joy, because “The heart is pulled after the actions.” The higher, more spiritual part of dancing comes from the heart.

How to Relate to Our Son Who Gave Up Yiddishkeit

QUESTION: About 10 years ago, for various reasons our son left yeshiva. He was a very emotional and good-hearted type of child and he had been very talented. His ruchniyus began to spiral downward until he left Yiddishkeit totally. He had kept up with us though very minimally. About 3 years ago, though, he totally severed his connection with us. He says that no one understands or feels him (as a mother would to her child). Recently he has severed himself completely from Yiddishkeit and from the Creator, Rachmana Litzlan (may Hashem save him). As his parents, what should be our relationship with him? And how can I, as his mother, give him the mother-to-child bond that he feels I’ve let him down in?
ANSWER: Give him genuine love and help whenever he needs it, without thinking about how he acts. Help him in anything he needs, except if it’s for something that’s forbidden to help him with. Having pure motivations to help him and with being open towards him will, with assistance from Above, touch his heart. And if there is a zechus, this will even become the path for him to return to his root.

Chronic Sadness

QUESTION: Ever since I was a child I have had such difficult emotional suffering. I never felt serene in my mind for even one day of my life. I had it very well though from others and pretend that I’m not suffering inside, because my life is enough of a Gehinom (purgatory) and I don’t need to add to it but turning off other people with my negativity which would make then avoid me and then I would be living a double Gehinom on this world. So many times I feel so discouraged that even when I daven it’s all just on autopilot. I can’t find the calmness to just sit down and learn. It’s also very hard for me to separate even a bit from permitted taavah (physical desires). My life is basically on autopilot, I live like a robot. Yet my heart is sick inside me because I know all that’s bothering me is all worthless and imaginary, and still even though I know this, I can’t find any inner peace.
ANSWER: Every day, do at least one thing amidst a feeling of simchah (joy) and chiyus (energy), and from being deeply connected to what you are doing. And, with any moment of the day when you do feel serenity in your mind, be happy with each of these serene moments.

Getting Past Our Guf & Revealing Our Neshamah

QUESTION: What should a person do if he has already tasted some ruchniyus, he feels a tremendous burning desire to grow higher in ruchniyus, as if he’s found the light, and he connected to his neshamah – but afterwards he finds that this experience is gone, because his guf (body) has taken over again? How do we get past our guf and subjugate it to our neshamah?
ANSWER: The sefarim hakedoshim say, “Smash the body”. This is by (1) Developing pure, unquestioning emunah in Hashem. (2) Connecting to the depth of the Torah’s wisdom. (3) Crying out to Hashem for help, both externally and internally (“their hearts cried out to Hashem”). (4) Through hisbodedus (solitude and reflection), until a person reaches a place of inner silence in his soul. (5) And finally, it entails improving one’s middos.