So the Pasuk (verse) says that God blessed Abraham with everything. Now, that's some sort of beracha (blessing). We have certain people who have selective berachot. They'll have a beracha in one area or two areas in their lives. But for Avraham Avinu, his beracha was everywhere. It was universal. It's a blessing of bakol. And my question was: What was the merit of Abraham? What did he do to get the bakol blessing? More importantly, is there something that we could do to get the complete universal beracha? Beracha with children, beracha with parnasa (livelihood), beracha on health, beracha on everything?
There's a Pasuk in Iyov. It's not so well known. The Pasuk says, “Berit karati le'enai. I made a treaty and a covenant with my eyes.” You know, the eyes are like an enemy. A person has to make peace with the enemy, and he has to make a deal with the enemy. Otherwise, the enemy will kill him. And Rav Chida writes, and Rabbeinu Bachya echoes these words. He says that you must treat the eyes like a combatant, somebody who's coming after you to hurt you. And therefore, you need to make a truce. And Iyov says, “I made a truce. I made a deal with him.” And the deal is that you're not going to look. You're going to control, and you're not going to let the eyes, which could be the most dangerous enemy of man, bring you down and destroy you. Berit karati le'enai.
And Rav Chida writes, if you take the rashei teivot (initial letters) of berit karati le'enai, it's the rashei teivot bakol. Hey, guess what? That's the blessing of Avraham. VaHashem berach et Avraham bakol (That God blessed Abraham with everything). You know what the source of Avraham's blessing was? Shemirat einayim (guarding the eyes). Now, Avraham's shemirat einayim was extreme. He didn't even know what his wife looked like. It says at a certain point, he said, “Behold, I see that you're beautiful.” Now, if Avraham was careful even when it came to looking at his wife—which I don't think we're suggesting—but clearly he wasn't looking outside. And therefore, Avraham's success was bakol. Berit karati le'enai. I think that's something that we could do. Also, make a truce and make a treaty with your eyes and set the parameters. And then, Be'ezrat Hashem (with God's help), if we fulfill berit karati le'enai, we connect to bakol. We connect to the universal blessing.