Bitachon - 5784
[The first two letters of a word tell us about the essence of the word.] The word bitachon (trust in Hashem) starts with beis and tes, which is the root of the word habatah – to look at or to have a certain perspective.
When we look at the world today, the world is filled with impurity, with arayos (immorality) everywhere, and it is known from Chazal that a time of war arouses the evil inclination for the three cardinal sins of idol worship, murder, and promiscuity (arayos) – and especially the latter (arayos). Today, when a person looks at the world he ruins his spiritual sense of sight and that is why it is very hard for a person to guard his eyes today from seeing what he shouldn’t. The world always was a place that is mostly evil with little good, but in the end of days where all the evil is unleashed, in particular the evil of immorality (because the word “evil” is ra, which is the root letters of arayos (promiscuity), the letters ayin and reish.)
But the root letters of the word bitachon are beis and tes, the root letters of the world habatah – which means to see into the internal dimension behind our external dimension. At the internal dimension, everything is the “world that is entirely good”. We need to keep our internal focus on the good that is behind everything.
No one knows what this year will bring, no one knows what’s going to happen soon and certainly no one can know what’s going to happen in a while from now. There are certainly going to be things happening this year in which Hashem is arousing everyone to teshuvah. That is true, but there is more to it. We have to keep focusing on the good that is behind this all, on the fact that the inner dimension behind it all is “the world that is entirely good”.
This is the root of having bitachon. Externally, bitachon means I trust that Hashem will give me everything I need, but the internal root of bitachon is to be focused on how everything is good, since at the inner dimension the world is entirely good.
The transition from this world to the next world will be that we are transitioning from a world that is mostly and almost entirely evil, into the world that is entirely good. Therefore we need to be preparing for the next world already now, by having the perspective of being connected to the world that is entirely good, to see the good in everything, to see that behind all of the evil is a world that is entirely good.
This is a delicate concept because we cannot allow ourselves to connect with the world today that is evil, but we have to be aware that behind it is all is a world that is entirely good, and the more we connect to this perspective the more we are preparing for the new stage that will be the next world.
As a hint that our soul needs to be connected to this perspective of the world that is entirely good, the word “Nefesh” (soul) in the system of Atbas”h (where Aleph equals Tav, and Beis equals Shin, and so forth) the letter Nun equals Tes, the letter Pei equals Vov, and the letter Shin equals Beis – spelling the word “Tov” (good) so it is נ = ט פ = ו ש = ב Thus the word soul (Nefesh) in the system of Atbas”h is equal to Tov, “good”, meaning that even though know in our minds that the world is evil, we are able to connect our soul to a realm where everything is good – the world that is entirely good, to the perspective of the Next World.
[בלבביפדיה עבודת ה’ ב-ט בטח]
1 “When one learns Torah, during that time, he is removed from this lowly, depraved world, and it is a time where he can “see” the World To Come, even as he lives in This World, as the Sages describe: “Your world [to come] can be seen in your life.” (Bilvavi On The Parsha, parshas Balak)
