Esteem is based on true identity and effort
Getting choice over unconscious and subconscious mind
Part of the potential of every person is hidden like a raw strength, like an un-mined natural resource, in the unconscious or subconscious. The Creator buries in human nature a certain potential for us to accomplish our “mission” when we are able to redeem its strengths by leading the Creator’s 13 attributes of mercy into our actions energized with those strengths that we, through prayer and choice, extract from the grip of deception.
These unconscious strengths feel overwhelming to us. Understanding the map of our soul helps us to believe that there is hope and to develop the powers of the soul - will, pleasure and emunah - we CAN choose and through these choices ask the Creator to lead us in the path we wish to go. The area that we have choice is what we will now clarify.
When we experience an urge from the unconscious or subconscious, we do not have choice about that in the moment. What comes to mind is sent to us with the full knowledge of the Creator. Yet understanding that the Creator does have full control over nature, including human nature, and that He gives us the unique gifts of free will and speech that distinguish a person from other life forms, we begin to see a pocket of air above our experience and the opening of a doorway to our true identity.
Our esteem is our effort to use free will and speech to triumph the intellect of Torah over our native intellect. The effort that we are empowered to make is totally within our choice and ability, because it is simply to speak earnest words of prayer beseeching the Creator to shift the life force challenging us with negative urges to life force flowing through us to reflect His 13 attributes into the world. The task of speaking using free will can accomplish a shift in our nature because when we speak, we create a spiritual being that leads us in the path we want to go. The next time we are faced with the challenging negative urge, that spiritual being that we created will be with us and we will have more consciousness and more insight and more ability to make a better choice. It may take time, but each time we beseech the Creator to help us in this way, we form more and more spiritual beings that are there for us and help us at our free will point in the moment. As we move our identity into basing our esteem on our effort to do this, we form an image of our true identity as made in the image of the Creator’s 13 attributes of mercy and a sense of the clarity and pleasure we experience for every step we take towards that identity. Eventually, the pleasure we can experience by identifying ourselves as made in the image of the Creator’s 13 attributes of mercy will enable us to not be attracted to whatever pleasures the previous unconscious or subconscious deceptions of native intellect whisper. And we can toss away that native intellect, just as we discard the foreskin at a briss. In this way we circumcise our hearts to consciously choose to lead the 13 Attributes of mercy into time and space through our speech and deeds.
Humiliation is one of the biggest tests. Our unconscious and subconscious minds fear abandonment and annihilation. When others humiliate us, our neuro-circuitry for both of these fears is triggered and our sense of entitlement causes us to react in accordance with native intellect, trying to take back love and value. Instead, we do damage to others and to ourselves. Why?
No one take take away our love and value. The love of the Creator for the image of His 13 attributes of mercy that He gives to us that gives us life and vitality does not stop during this life time or the next. And the very fact that the Creator has given us life through a soul that is empowered to emulate His 13 attributes of mercy give us value. These truths must be understood, for they are the key to seeing our true identity and the purpose for which the Creator has made a world and mankind. When we are challenged, we must realize we have confusion of mind! For the steps, please see affirmations for emunah from Torah which is designed to help Build Emunah - Reorganize light within based on love and awe of Hashem |
We can no longer afford to define mankind as a living being in time and space alone, for the basis of happiness and pleasure on those terms is being taken out of the world. In order to experience the material pleasures of the world, we must shift to seeing material pleasure as only that which helps us fulfill our purpose. The attainment of any goal in time and space, once obtained, does not provide lasting pleasure or happiness. A week after we get a new car or a month after we get a new job, the initial happiness fades and life resumes.
In order to have true pleasure and happiness in time and space, we exercise our free will and speech to be a vessel flowing the 13 attributes of mercy into the world. Touching the Creator in this way is what is sustaining and lasting, not only for this world but for all eternity. Our determination and will power to cling to emulating 13 attributes of mercy is the basis for esteem and for happiness and pleasure. Releasing our yearning for happiness and pleasure from the deceiving arguments of native intellect requires us to accept that mankind is made in the image of the 13 attributes of mercy. in order to reflect them into time and space. |