We are discussing the power of will, which we can call will power. Rav Wolbe writes that we all have a Ratzon Rishon/ a deep real want. We all have real good deep wants and real bad deep wants. As we said yesterday, a person has four basic components inside:
self-awareness,
the will to do your will,
your sense of pleasure and pain,
and freedom of choice.
People usually want to do what's pleasurable. We have inside of us some very strong wills- some of them positive, some of them are negative. The Ratzon Rishon is the deepest, most basic Ratzon. We have to have the want for goodness, and make that our Ratzon Rishon, because ultimately we're going to end up following that want.
The example given is Lot.
Lot was, on the outside, a student of Abraham Avinu. But he went to Sedom. If you asked him why he went there, maybe he’d say he went there for kiruv purposes, and that might have been partly true. He was a devout student. He was willing to give up his daughter to the people of Sedom rather than have them take away the guests. It says that the girl that was stung to death by the bees was none other than Lot’s daughter. So they were literally sacrificing themselves for acts of kindness. And that was a want of Lot’s.
But deeper than that was his desire for a lust, which is deeply connected to the desire to do kindness. A person that is having a sinful, lustful relationship is seemingly involved in an act of love.
We would call that kindness. Lot was a little off in his kindness, and deeper than that, there was a lust. The reason Lot ended up sinning with his own daughters, Rashi tells us, is because deep down, he wanted lust. And that's what he ended up getting. He might not have wanted what ended up happening, but he wanted lust and pleasure, and that's what he got.
What you get in life is what you want deeply. And if that's the case, we're in trouble.
We don't even know what these deep wants are. If you gave Lot a lie detector test, he might have said, “I'm going to Sedom for kiruv.”
What are we supposed to do with these deep these Retzonot/deep wants and desires?
And like we said,
בדרך שאדם רוצה לילך בה מוליכין אותו
The way a man wants to go, he is led.
If you have a deep desire for good, God takes you for good.
If you have a deep desire for bad, you'll end up in bad.
Rav Wolbe says Where you end up in life is where you wanted to be.
If you end up running a Yeshiva, it’s because that's what you really wanted to do. And if you end up doing something negative, although you may not have wanted that specifically, you wanted lust, and that's how it played itself out.
So what do I do? I'm seemingly programmed with this Ratzon that I no longer have control over.
But Rav Wolbe says in Aleh Shor (volume two, page 436), that a person's Hakara/strong cognition, or recognition can change the person's Ratzon.
That means if I keep learning about a topic, it can change my Ratzon. For example, I like to speak Lashon Hara, but if I learn enough Chafetz Chaim, I won't want to anymore. Because, as we said, Ratzon is strongly connected to pleasure and pain. You want what's pleasurable and don't want what's painful. That's why Mesilat Yesharim starts off saying, “Man was created to delight in God, but the place to delight is Olam Haba.”
So yes, I want to have enjoyment, and yes, I want pleasure, but I want spiritual enjoyment and pleasure, and that's going to be my Ratzon.
If I learn about something enough, it's going to change me.
I heard Rav Wolbe explain what Rav Chaim Volozhin says in Nefesh HaChaim (Shaar א chapter 17), Accepting upon yourself the the yoke of God's kingdom to uplift your deeds, your speech and your thoughts, taking Torah and Mitzvot to a higher level, creates a new inner want. That means it's possible to create a new want for good, through your mind.
We can't just blame our nature and say, “I'm stuck. What am I supposed to do? I want it.”
No, you don't. You don't really want that. You can change your want. It's up to us to change our want.
Rav Wolbe says that if a person wants to change, “Don't blame anybody. Don't excuse yourself and make other people responsible.”
It's all up to us.
What do you mean it's up to me?
He says, what you need to do is be a Baal L’Taher.
You have to keep on strengthening in yourself, “ I want to be better, I want to be pure.”
That's something that is all powerful.
In the words of Rav Wolbe
(Aleh Shor volume 1, page 120), “If someone is successful in putting all of his drive into coming close to Hashem and serving Him, and it fills him totally that doing what’s right is the only thing that he wants to do, that is going to bring him to where he's supposed to get to.”
He says Ratzon is like a button that you hit, that suddenly lights the way, taking you to where you want to get to.