Lessons in the Service of Hashem from the Maamar

Lessons in the service of Hashem from the Maamar

1. The Divine soul descends into this world to refine and transform the animal soul. It does this in a few steps:
   1. It teaches the animal soul to control itself in its thoughts, speech, and actions, to behave the way that Hashem wants.
   2. It teaches the animal soul that it came from a high spiritual level, the level of the angels, as described in the blessings before Shema. In its source in the angels, it had a great passion and awe for Hashem. The reason it doesn't feel that way at present is that it came down into the course, physical world. By realizing that there is a beautiful spiritual reality that is aware of Hashem, the animal soul reconnects to the concept of caring about Hashem. This makes it receptive to be willing to dedicate itself to Hashem.
   3. It teaches the animal soul that the real truth is that there is nothing besides Hashem whatsoever. By contemplating the true Oneness of Hashem during Shema, even the animal soul can come to lose his ego and sincerely give himself over to Hashem with all of his heart and soul.
2. When a person puts in his own effort to awaken a love for Hashem during prayer, then Hashem will reciprocate with a revelation from Above that will be internalized in the person’s soul.

However, sometimes Hashem initiates the process by waking up the person's soul without the person’s own effort. When that happens, he needs to take advantage of that inspiration by putting in his own effort to connect to Hashem. If he doesn't do that, then this inspiration will be short-lived, since its entire purpose was just to get the person to put in his own effort.

1. Part of the process of refining the animal soul is to change over a person's natural negative character traits. These inborn traits are different in each person. Some people are angrier and more argumentative by nature and need to work on themselves to be sensitive to other people's feelings and to put aside their own ego and opinion. Some people are more laidback and pleasure-seeking by nature, and need to focus more on being dedicated to putting in the effort to learn Torah and fulfill Mitzvos, and to restrain from overindulgence in physicality. Each person needs to work on his own unique combination of character traits, whether they are natural or have developed over time.
2. When a person is uninspired and doesn't feel motivated to work on himself, he needs Hashem to help pick him up. The way to do that is to learn Torah. Since the highest levels of the Torah are embedded deep in the subconscious of every Jew from before he was born, when he learns Torah, his Divine soul reconnects to the Torah that he learned Above. This creates an "awakening" in the deeper part of his soul, which reflects back into his consciousness as a greater desire to reconnect to Hashem through prayer.
3. In addition, by performing mitzvos, like charity or kindness, for example, this refines the animal soul and makes it receptive to being affected by prayer.
4. When we put in the effort to work on awakening a feeling for Hashem during prayer, this enables us to connect to Hashem more deeply in the Torah we learn after prayer. We connect to a deeper level of Hashem, and it permeates into a deeper level of us.

The main instruction coming from this is that we need to have two types of learning. The first type of learning is before prayer, like Chassidus, which wakes up our Divine soul and gives us the power to awaken a love for Hashem in prayer. The second type of learning after prayer, when we take our newfound appreciation for Hashem and apply it in order to fully internalize His Will and Wisdom in the Torah, which He gives us to unite with Him.

This daily process of prayer and the learning that precedes and follows it needs to be emphasized in the time between Pesach and Shavuos. Pesach is a time of Awakening from Above, when Hashem wakes up our Divine soul. After Pesach, we need to put in extra effort to use the inspiration from Pesach to work on ourselves in self-refinement and contemplative prayer. When we put in that effort during the days of Sefiras Haomer, we come to a totally new ability to connect to Hashem through Torah on Shavuos.