Welcome to the SIMHA Emotional Wellness Minute. We’ve been talking about the topic of focus. In the Rambam’s sefer Morei Nevuchim/Guide for the Perplexed (section 3, chapter 51), he says that for all of our service to God, whether it's learning Torah, praying, or any Mitzvah, the goal is to practice and train to be involved with God and remove ourselves from worldly matters. In his words, “As if you are dealing with Him, busy with Him and have annulled anything else.”
That's the essence of Torah, Tefila and Mitzvot- to be involved with Him. However, he says, if you're praying with your lips and your face is to the wall, but you're thinking about your business, or if you're reading the Torah and you're thinking about building your house without paying attention to what you're doing, and you're doing the mitzvah (only) with your limbs, it's like you're digging in the ground or chopping wood, but you don't know what you're doing.”
“Therefore,” he says, “I'm going to train you to get used to it, and then you'll reach the goal.”
Initially, I didn't have this Rambam in my mind when we started this topic. We discussed working on the first beracha of the Amida (the Elder of Kelm says to work on all berachot) and the beracha of Shekahol. But the Rambam says, the first thing to do is, when you say Keriat Shema, put full focus in the first pasuk.
This is something Rav Wolbe used to say every Elul- The way to get ready for Rosh Hashana is to spend a month focusing on this one pasuk of Kabalat Ohl
Malchut Shamayim/ Accepting the yoke of Hashem’s Kingship (we gave a few class on this in our Bitachon series, if you’d like, email me for the transcripts at rabbisutton@gmail.com)
Rav Wolbe makes a big deal of this. He says, “When you get used to this and you've strengthened yourself in this for many years (which means it's a many- year job- just to train yourself to focus on the first pasuk of Keriat Shema), this is going to give you those grounding abilities. And, as we spoke about yesterday, What is our focus? What's our goal? The Rambam says that when a person is alone, he should be very careful not to waste that time (as we previously discussed in the topic of being alone with yourself), and to focus on what our job is- to come close to God, to stand in front of Him. That's the goal, and the only way to reach that, he says, is through training.
In order to become a focused person, you have to train yourself to focus.
Of course, you could be mindful about a flower (like we spoke about last week) which is nice, but we're praying anyway, and it’s a Halacha to have kavana in the Amida and Keriat Shema. So why don't we use that as our training ground in focus?
Not only will we have the benefit of praying better or learning better, but we’ll have the benefit of becoming more focused people in general. You will become more grounded, less frazzled and more “with yourself.”
Once you’re focused, everything becomes enhanced. If you can talk to someone and focus on them, it enhances the relationship. Your relationships with your spouse and children will become better. Everything is better if you train yourself in focus.
This is counter to the entire society we live in. We're living in a world where there is no such thing as focus. Everything is frazzled. Everything is is all over the place. So it's a big, uphill battle.
I was careful the entire week, not to mention the word multitasking, because I don't want get into any debates about it, but an understanding person will understand how multitasking is the antithesis of what we're trying to work on, which is focus.
Have a wonderful day and a wonderful week.