Thus, when one forgets “Yosef,” the proper intention to bring additional pleasure to Hashem through his service, he could come to end his “two years” of Torah study, he might stop learning the Written Torah and the Oral Torah.
Because since his intention is only for his own spiritual benefit, he is not concerned with “investing the Light in the vessels” of the letters of the Torah, and he is satisfied with just experiencing the Divine Light during prayer.
However, after some time, this turns into “and Pharoh was dreaming...” Meaning, that even his experience of the love of Hashem called “the wine that make people happy” mentioned above is not real, rather it becomes like imagination or a dream, since through his lack of Torah study he causes the Divine Light to depart, and even in prayer he is not actually experiencing Divine Light, rather just his own feelings.
Because of this lack of Divine Light, he “falls” to the lower level of experiencing his own emotions, instead of experiencing Hashem’s Light, that his emotions become strongly felt in his consciousness, which are represented by the “seven good [healthy] cows” of Pharoh’s dream.
The Seven Emotional Aspects
A person has seven emotional aspects, known in Hebrew as Chesed, Gevura, Tiferes, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, Malchus. The seven cows that Pharoh saw in the dream represent the seven emotional aspects.
In this context, we are using Pharoh’s dream as an analogy to understand the affect of “forgetting Yosef,” of forgetting to serve Hashem through Torah study. The result of this is brought out in three aspects of Pharoh’s dream: 1-it was a dream, not reality, 2-he saw seven good and healthy cows, 3-he saw seven unhealthy and bad cows. This represents 1-the person’s experience of Hashem’s Light in prayer becomes not real, 2-he “sees” and becomes aware of his own emotions, “good cows,” instead of experiencing Hashem’s Light, 3-he sees and experiences unhealthy emotions, “bad cows,” as will be mentioned next in the maamar.
Immediately afterwards, there comes up a different set of “seven cows” (that are bad and unhealthy), and “they ate [the seven good cows,] but it wasn’t noticeable that they swallowed them, [since their appearance was just as bad as before they ate the good cows.]”
In other words, after a person becomes aware of himself and his emotions instead of Hashem and His Light, his good and healthy emotions of love and fear of Hashem become “swallowed up” by bad and unhealthy feelings of love and fear for physicality, until his previous level of love and fear of Hashem is noticeable in him at all.
Meaning, that he becomes so removed from the experience of Hashem’s Light until it appears as though he never experienced Hashem’s Light when he prayed at all.
This is not the case when he has the aspect of “remembering Yosef-Increase,” that he remembers to focus on increasing pleasure and delight for Hashem, by becoming a “dwelling place for Him,” and “a home for Hashem in the lowest world,” through increasing in Torah study and the action of mitzvos, then his emotions do not fill his consciousness at all, not in a manner of “seven good cows” (good emotions), and how much more so not the “seven bad cows” of unhealthy emotions, since “no bad comes from Above,” unless there is something good hidden in it, but something truly unholy and bad cannot result from experiencing Hashem’s Light in prayer, which shines in him as a result of his increase in Torah study with the intention to make Hashem happy.
Translator’s Note
This concept, that when we experience Hashem’ Light we stop being aware of our emotions as strongly, can be difficult to grasp. Seemingly, there is nothing wrong for a person to be aware of their own emotions, especially holy emotions of love and fear of Hashem. In fact, a person not being in touch with their emotions is usually considered a negative thing. However, the maamar is discussing this in the context of davening-prayer. During davening, a person can experience something outside of himself, which is Hashem’s Light. This is a real thing, not something imaginary (when done properly).
Imagine you are sitting with your close friend, or your spouse, and instead of being aware of the other person and their feelings, you only feel yourself, as though, emotionally, you are the only one in the room. This is a very negative experience, since in that situation a person should want to experience a connection to something outside of himself.
The same thing is with davening. If a person is talking to Hashem and thinking about Hashem etc., and he only experiences his own emotions, instead of the Presence of Hashem, or the Light of Hashem, at least on some subtle level, then something is definitely missing. Davening is (mainly) not about getting in touch with your own emotions, its about getting in touch with the reality of Hashem’s existence and presence. When a person experiences Hashem’s presence, His Light, then he is so busy experiencing Hashem that he isn’t focused and conscious as much of his own feelings, even his holy and good feelings.
Once a person loses touch of the experience of Hashem’s reality, and is only conscious of his own feelings, even good and holy feelings, this will easily turn into being conscious of unhealthy (or unholy) feelings.
So, in conclusion, is it good to be aware of your own feelings? The answer in general is yes, but it is even more important to be aware of Hashem’s existence and presence in your life, and especially during davening. When your emotions will be centered around your awareness of Hashem, then good things will come from them.
