BS’D
I would like to take this opportunity to wish the community of the Daily Dose of Emuna and Klal Yisrael an amazing Chag Samaech. We will stand at Har Sinai and receive the Torah as though for the first time. May Hashem stir our hearts and flood our minds with emuna, clarity, simcha and acceptance of all life’s circumstances no matter what we currently face.
My emuna pathway is continuously paved with the teachings of our Chassidic Masters; at the forefront the Holy Ba’al Shem Tov HaKadosh ztk’l. In honor and memory of his upcoming yahrtzeit, the first day of Shavuot together with Dovid HaMelech ztk’l, today’s daily dose brings to light a most profound teaching on the elevation and repair of our thoughts.
From the Baal Shem Tov:
“Someone who engages in Torah and prayer without love and awe will not soar heavenward” (Tikkunei Zohar 10). How much more so if he has “strange” thoughts, which are called kedoshim pesulim (unusable holy things) and are handed over to the outside forces! But when he returns in teshuva, then he raises the holy sparks that have been handed over to the outside forces. So when he stands in prayer or engages in Torah study, then the strange thoughts rise up to confuse his Torah study or prayer, for these strange thoughts are his sins, and they stand before him as in war – but their true intent is that he correct them and bring them out from the depths of their profane coverings.
The Baal Shem Tov taught us extraneous thoughts are a gift. Hashem sends to some of us ‘strange’ thoughts while studying Torah or praying; He trust that they have the power to fix them. These thoughts have been waiting thousands of years to be elevated and corrected. But to the person on the receiving end it seems like a fall; as though he has spiritually drifted away.
This idea is infinitely grand and complex – beyond the scope of what can be taught here. A person is always tested in a way that attempts to break him. One thought takes hold of him, he gets entangled in it, and then it becomes his whole reality – despair. He tries to ‘run away’ and feels he cannot succeed.
