Welcome to our series on humility. Some people like practical advice. They say, What can I actually do to work on myself to become humble? It's nice to have the thoughts that we mentioned, but is there anything I can do?
Rav Wolbe in his sefer Aleh Shor ( vol 2, page 310) says, "In a person's day-to-day life, there are two fundamental areas that help us work on our arrogance. One of them is prayer, and the second one is learning."
We'll talk about prayer first. Prayer in its essence is humbling oneself to the Creator, just by praying to Hashem from the depths of your heart. While you're praying, don't just pray, but train yourself, so to say, that I'm humbling myself in front of my Creator. This is good advice to make what he calls an Esek Rav/ a big deal out of prayer.
Of course, prayer is not that easy. As we mentioned, one of the fundamental impediments to prayer is arrogance. Arrogance interferes with prayer, but conversely, prayer helps your arrogance.
To quote Mesilat Yeshayim (chapter 19, Artscroll edition): "There are three things that a person must look at and contemplate well in order to arrive at the necessary fear of Hashem that is a prerequisite to prayer.
-The first is that while praying, he's actually standing before the Creator and communicating with Him, even though man's eye does not see Him. Now, he realizes that this is a most difficult thing to visualize in one's heart without an accurate picture- being that the physical senses do not assist him in this endeavor at all. Nevertheless, despite the difficulty, one who is of sound intellect, with a little bit of contemplation and focus can etch into his heart the truth of this matter. That is how when he prays, he comes before Hashem and literally communicates with Him, blessed be He. And before Him he beseeches. And from Him he implores, and He, blessed be His name, in turn, listens to him and pays attention to his words in the same way that a person speaks to his friend and his friend pays attention and listens to him.
After a person has etched his truth in his mind, he must meditate upon Hashem's exaltedness, namely that He's exalted and lofty beyond all blessings and praise.
And additionally, one must meditate upon the lowliness of man and his inferiority on account of his innate physicality and coarseness and certainly on account of all the sins he has committed since has come into existence.
So this is the definition of prayer:
-I'm standing in front of Hashem and I'm talking to Him.
-He's all powerful,
-and I'm a little creature.
That's the 1, 2, 3 punch of prayer.
The Mesilat Yesharim applies this approach to fear of Hashem, but we're applying it to humility.
(We mentioned previously that humility brings about fear of Hashem-they're one and the same)
The Mesilat Yesharim cites sources for the fear of Hashem that was upon great people- and two of them are in connection to Tefila. One is a pasuk in Tehilim 5,8
וַאֲנִ֗י בְּרֹ֣ב חַ֭סְדְּךָ אָב֣וֹא בֵיתֶ֑ך
(I, through your abundant kindness will enter your house)- that is the first part of the pasuk,
And the quote is:
אֶשְׁתַּחֲוֶ֥ה אֶל־הֵֽיכַל־קׇ֝דְשְׁךָ֗ בְּיִרְאָתֶֽךָ׃
I will bow myself towards Your holy sanctuary, in Your fear. The Arizal says we are supposed to say this pasuk as we walk into a shul. He says, ideally one is supposed to be wearing Talet and Tefilin, and bow down towards the Aron Hakodesh with fear.
So the Alef Bet of prayer is humility. It starts even before you beginpraying. As you walk into the shul, you bow your head down.
Additionally, a pasuk in Malachi 2:5 is quoted in the Gemara in Berachot 12A as a source that you have to bow during the Amida, וּמִפְּנֵ֥י שְׁמִ֖י נִחַ֥ת הֽוּא׃ /he was humbled before My name,
Which means you bow before you mention Hashem's name in the Amida.
The Mesilat Yesharim cites this when he discusses the fundamentals of prayer. The fundamentals of prayer surround humility. We mentioned this in previous classes. If the essence of prayer is humility, one can't pray without humility, and prayer brings one to humility, as Rav Wolbe said.
So that's our first practical advice -to put some work into praying, not just the words of the prayers, but the humbling experience of prayer. That is the introduction to prayer. You can't even start praying if you don't have this in mind. Rav Chaim Brisker, in his first piece in his Sefer when he talks about Tefilah, says, there are two kinds of kavana. One kavana is what the words are saying, and that is only essential in the first blessing of the Amida. The second kavana is that I'm standing in front of Hashem and that is a necessary intention. He says without that, we don't have the essence of prayer. He uses the term mitasek which means busy with something else, not focused.
For example, if a person turns on a light by mistake on Shabbat (either he forgot it was Shabbat, or he forgot that you're not allowed turn on lights), he has to bring a korban chatat/a sin offering because he made a mistake. But if he was yawning and he touched the light switch and he turned it off, he doesn't bring any korban because he was mitasek/he was busy with something else, it's like he wasn't present in the action.
Rav Chaim Brisker says, If, when you're praying you don't realize you're standing in front of God, that's not even defined as prayer. At that moment, you're not praying. The essence of prayer is I'm standing in front of God. That's number one. I'm standing and talking to God. And we have to add the other nuances- in front of God Who's great and exalted and, I am this humble little being.
That is the story of prayer. And as we said, the most difficult step is just realizing that Hashem is there for you to talk to.
One of the reasons why it's so hard for us to realize that Hashem there for us to talk to, is because we think, "Little me? I'm gonna talk to Him-Big Hashem? He's here to listen to me?"
But this train of thought was the source for idol worship! The ancient people said, "I'm going to talk to God? I'm going to serve God? I'm going to deal with God? He's too high, and lofty. Ram Al kol Goyim/Hashem is high and above all the goyim.
But we say, Hamashpili Lirot B'Shamayim Ub'Aaretz Hashem humbles Himself. He comes down and looks at us. So originally the nations said, God is too high and lofty, and therefore they didn't feel they could deal with Him. They didn't understand Hashem's humility. They didn't understand how where you find His greatness, you find His humility and therefore they couldn't pray to Him. So what really stops us from praying (which we said is the realization that Hashem is standing here), is that we don't fathom His humility. We don't fathom Hashem's humility because we're far from humility. We can't perceive humility.
So the first step is to realize that Hashem is so humble that He comes down to listen to little me, but I have to realize it's little me and big Him. If we don't have that realization, we can't start the relationship.
And that's why working on Tefilah, and making an issue out of Tefilah, making a big deal about prayer, is one of the ways to bring ourselves to humility.