Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. We've been talking about the different voices inside of you and who you are. In the book Brain Lock by Dr. Jonathan Schwartz on OCD, he uses a concept developed by the 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith called the impartial spectator. This means we carry an impartial spectator with us, someone who's watching us from afar. And we're able to describe our feelings: “I'm feeling lazy.” If you listen and give in to that feeling, is that you? Then who's talking? What are these two forces?
Imagine projecting your consciousness upward into a corner of the room and watching yourself as if you were somebody else. See yourself in your mind's eye. Then identify your mood. What are you feeling? What's your current mental state? This ability is called self-awareness. That means you're aware of yourself. That means it's yourself, and you're aware of you. This is something that only humans have. Being able to think objectively about our thought process means we know we're thinking. So we're really not our feelings, our thoughts, or our moods, because we're aware of them. And this concept, like all concepts of the psyche, is found in our Torah years before anything that shows up in modern-day psychology.
The Sefer HaYashar, written 800 years ago by Rabbeinu Tam, says that a person normally can't be the doer and the receiver, the object and the subject. You can't hit and be hit simultaneously. Of course, you hit someone, and then he hits you back. But you can't hit and be hit. You can't eat and be eaten. You can't see and be seen. The only thing that can do both is the soul. It can know everything and know itself. The Sefer HaYashar says that this is the highest level of knowledge. He calls it da'at ha-da'at, the knowledge of knowledge, what we call self-awareness.
And this is one of the integral parts of a person's self. We're going to see there's more than one part, but one of the integral parts is da'at. The da'at is that awareness, that conscious that is watching everything and knows what's going on. And Rav Wolbe says that the concept of da'at is necessary for any acquisition. Acquiring something also involves gemirat ha-da'at, which is a finalization of your da'at, that awareness. You only have something if you're aware of it. And that's why we need our da'at for anything that we're going to acquire in our lives, in our emotions, in our psyche. We need to know about it.
There's a mashal (parable) by Kreiswirth. Kreiswirth says that during World War Two, a wealthy man knew he wouldn't survive, and he gave a friend—actually, he gave this Rabbi Kreiswirth—the numbers for his Swiss bank accounts. Rabbi Kreiswirth had an amazing memory, and he kept the numbers, eventually writing them down, of course. Thirty years later, he was in America and saw someone. He said, “You look familiar to me. You look like so-and-so.” And this man said, “That was my father. He was killed in the war.” This man was a beggar, but he became a millionaire overnight. In reality, he was always a millionaire, but he didn't know it.
When you're aware of or know yourself, then you actually have yourself. And we will continue on this concept of who you really are. And you really are as much as your da'at, as much as your knowledge is aware. So that awareness, that's the screen that everything's shown on. That awareness, that's the microphone that everything is projected from. But you hold the microphone in your hand.
Picture all the forces inside of us as if you're holding a jackhammer. The jackhammer is very powerful, and you have the ability to hold on to it and focus it where you want it to go. When a person is daydreaming, what does that mean? That means he's just sitting there and allowing the voices to just go. Your mind doesn't stop. There's a constant narrative. When you take hold of that jackhammer and start drilling with it, that's when your da'at is in control. And that's what we have to start being aware of: that there are things inside of us, and we have the ability to control them. And that's the da'at. That's our self-awareness. That's our impartial spectator who's watching everything happen. But all those feelings are not us. Of course, we'll see there are some parts that are us, certain inherent qualities that are us. But most of the thoughts going on in our heads are just fleeting thoughts. That's all they are. And don't take them so seriously. An urge, a want, a desire, an emotion. Let it go. Your da'at has to decide what it wants to hold on to and what it wants to let go of.