Happy Erev Shabbat & Advanced Wishes for a Happy Shavuot! đ
This is Episode 5.2 of 10 of XL on the Soul. I hope you enjoy it!
If you want to go back to the very beginning, hereâs a link to the Intro to the Series and Episode 1.
If you enjoy it please share it with family and friends, and if you have a question, please include it in a comment or email me directly ( rabbijackcohen@gmail.com )!
The problem weâre trying to solve is the problem of being stuck.
Stuck in rigid mindsets, hard-wired emotional patterns, and knee-jerk, reactive behaviors.
You already possess two spiritual gifts to help you with this. The first is called âDaâat,â which we described as the âyou within you.â It is the part of you which is most you. It is your very awareness, conscience and consciousness from which you observe the world and the rest of yourself from a calm, removed perspective.
If this sounds absurdly hard to achieve in your frenetic, stressful, modern life, I agree with you.
At least, in part.
While we certainly can and should work on our ability to step back and observe what weâre thinking and feeling from this inner eye of our minds, we might often find ourselves frustrated that we canât go to that place of calm because weâre so stressed out. Hence, the catch-22 of feeling stuck in feeling stuck.
There is another way to to short-circuit the stimulus-response trap, which is in some ways easier â not to mention more fun.
It demands using a related part of your soul called your âRuâach.â
ÂWhile your Daâat is the lucid birds-eye view of your mind, your Ruâach is the energetic
U P L I F T
of your whole spirit beyond your more instinctive perceptions and reactions, which connects you to your higher self, and aligning the different parts of you in that upwards direction.Â
Letâs explain:
We mentioned before that the word âNefeshâ means to âcome to rest.âÂ
âRuâach,â by contrast, means âspiritâ or âwind,â which is really the complete opposite.Â
If you picture the wind blowing, you might imagine clouds gliding through the sky or mist flowing through a valley. While you canât see wind directly, when you see movement, you know that thereâs wind blowing, which is causing the movement.Â
In the same way, we canât see emotions, but we know that if we see someone walking with a certain bounce in her step, and with a genuine smile on her face, thereâs clearly an energy that is happily moving through her.Â
On the other hand, if we see someone slouching, head down, and face with a frown, we know that the spiritual wind is not blowing in him right now. His inner world has come to halt.Â
This idea is so intuitive that even the English language, which doesnât specialize in spiritual nuance, captures it as well:Â Â
âEmotionâ comes from the word âmotion.â Â Â
âMotivationâ has the same etymology as a locomotive. Â
We speak about a poignant dramatic performance as âMovingâ or âStirring.â
Your Ruâach is your dynamic inner world of emotions, motivations and desires.
How can we harness our Ruâach, our inner movement, to short-circuit otherwise toxic, cyclical emotional patterns?Â
Well, the most common strategy across humanity is listening, playing, and dancing to music. It isnât surprising that the use of uplifting music and dance to achieve joy is found in ancient spiritual practices in Judaism and in just about every other culture in the world.
When we are open to it, musicâs external movements awakens our internal motion.
The Torah records that young people training to achieve prophetic states would hire musicians early on to help them orient their energies upwards â to align their minds to experience something otherworldly.
King David, whose âside hustleâ at night was poetry and music, would sometimes play music to awaken the holy spirit to compose Divinely inspired poetry, and other times would do the opposite â he would have to immerse himself in Torah study and poetry to awaken the inspiration for composing music with those âsecret chords that David played and pleased the Lord.â
ÂHarnessing this spirit that we all have within us can lift us out and above the muck in which we all get stuck from time to time.
Whether itâs through music, dance, exercise, hiking, art, acting, vibrant Torah learning and teaching or just really good conversation â getting our inner world moving in the upwards direction has a magical effect on our moods and whisks us away to that place within us where everything is clearer.
How High Does the Soul Go?
As you start to recognize your Daâat and Ruâach and hopefully feel them awaken inside of you, and you turn spiritually upwards, you may start to wonder: how much higher does my soul go?
Good question đ
Much, much higher.
The Daâat (ŚŚąŚȘ) is schematically thought of as crown of a much larger structure in our consciousness i.e. the Ruâach (ŚšŚŚ). The hallmark of the Ruâach is spiritual motion, while the hallmark of the Daâat is stillness.
The Talmud tells us that this is encoded in the opening lines of certain chapters of Psalms:
ŚŚŚŚŚš ŚŚŚŚ means that David played music (ŚŚŚŚŚš) until he awaked the Divine spirit within him (ŚšŚŚ ŚŚ§ŚŚŚ©).
ŚŚŚŚ ŚŚŚŚŚš, by contrast, means that his inspired study moved him to compose music.