Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. Rav Wolbe’s sefer Alei Shor
(Vol 2, page 276) talks about the importance of getting to know yourself. As we’ve said, there's a concept called Da’at HaDa’at, which we’ll call self-awareness. In order to be self-aware, he says you have to use Hitbonenut. You have to start analyzing and delving and listening to yourself, listening to what's going on inside of you, paying attention to yourself.
He quotes Rav Hutner, who quotes the Elder of Slabodka, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, who was once sitting with his students when he began to think out loud. He said, “The soul is greater than angels. If a person has a revelation of himself, he has had a revelation that's greater than the revelation of Eliyahu HaNavi.”
People say, wow, Gilui Eliyahu! but a bigger gilui is realizing who you are. He says, it's very hard to really get to know yourself.
We like to fool ourselves and not delve into who we really are. That's another job- to be able to go through the difficulty of finding out who you really are, to see what's going on under the hood, as we say.
The only way to get to know yourself is by spending some time alone, which he calls Sha’ah shel Hitbodedut, to spend some time alone, listening to those
רַבּ֣וֹת מַחֲשָׁב֣וֹת בְּלֶב־אִ֑ישׁ
Many thoughts of man,
And to listen to
וַעֲצַ֥ת ה׳ הִ֣יא תָקֽוּם
the Will of God that's inside of you
To be aware of what's going on inside of yourself.
Rav Wolbe said most people avoid being alone because when they're alone, they get bored. But he says a very powerful line: When someone is bored when he is alone, that's a sign that he's entirely distanced from himself.
Rav Wolbe said it’s one of the dangers of Yeshiva dormitory, where a person is always with people. But it's not only then. It’s throughout life, he says, that we try to avoid being alone. We want to create background noise so that we don't listen to our own voices in our mind.
You see people wearing headphones when they run- they're listening to music or a shiur, or whatever they're doing, they're not listening to themselves.When they're driving in the car, they want to have something else going on. They can't be alone. They're bored to be alone.
Or maybe it’s a little bit more than that…
Rav Wolbe used to encourage his Talmidim in Yeshiva to take walks.
Taking walks is a very therapeutic exercise. It's healthy because you're exercising, but it's also good to air your mind out. When you take a walk, you're alone.
Be’er Yaakov was where Rav Wolbe was Mashgiach, and there wasn’t much going on near there. There were orange orchards and there was a mental hospital nearby.
One day a boy took a walk and after a few minutes, he came running back. Rav Wolbe said, “You know why you came running back?
Because you met somebody and you got scared.”
The boy said, “No, I didn't meet anybody.”
And the Rabbi repeated, “You met someone, you got scared and you came back.״
They went back and forth like that until finally, Rav Wolbe said, “You met yourself and you've never met yourself before. You got so scared from this stranger called yourself, that you came running home.”
So this is important. We have to be able to spend some time alone and get to know ourselves.
All this discussion that we're talking about doesn't even begin unless you start to know yourself.
What's going on inside of you? Who are you? What are your thoughts? What are your desires? What are your emotions?
That's called Da’at HaDa’at. You have to start to get know what's going on inside of you.
And the job of someone that wants to get to know himself is to spend some time alone.
Have a wonderful day.