Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. I heard a beautiful thought from Rav Wolbe: A person is like a building. In a building, there is the ground level, and then the below-ground level, the basement, and possibly even deeper levels. In large buildings, there might be three or four stories below, and then there higher and higher levels in the building- the 12, 13, 14th or 100th floor, depending on how high the building is. A human being is much larger than he thinks. He says there are people who live in their basement. He said Freud lived in the basement, where he only found negative, lustful desires as where the person really is. That's what he was busy analyzing.
But a person has higher and higher levels within themselves. As we said, a person’s neshama is huge. And that is what the Nefesh HaChaim describes in Yaakov Avinu’s dream of the ladder's feet on ground, but the head going up to the heavens, and that's the human soul. We can go up and down that ladder, and we can decide, as we said, to identify ourselves with different parts of us.
What is it that gives us the ability to go up and down? Man is like an elevator cabin or car. We'll call that your awareness. Which floor are you going go? Your Ratzon/ will to get higher (or lower) is what takes you up and down. That's why it's so important to cultivate your will.
The Hovot Halevavot, in the section of Introspection and Self Accounting, which is called Shaar Heshbon HaNefesh, talks about a person having levels that he's not quite ready for, but if he wants those levels, then eventually he's going to get there. This is an important concept. We can move ourselves up the ladder based on our willpower. That's going get us to where we want to go- by wanting, by yearning, and by hoping. That's why we're supposed to have aspirations. We read stories about great people and we want to emulate them. That is what pushes the button to go up the ladder or elevator shaft of man.
We can see how powerful this from what Rambam writes in a letter in the section Perkei Hatzlacha ,
“Every person in the world, if you wanted perfection, you'd be closer than Moshe Rabbenu, and if you wanted lacking, you would be like Yeravam Ben Nevat. That is the button that gets you places.
Rav Yehezkiel Levenstein, in his sefer Torah V’Da’at, talks about this concept, in the chapter called, If you want perfection, you'd be closer than Moshe Rabbenu. He points out that it doesn't say exactly what you want to get to. It says, If you want perfection. So you have to want perfection. And the opposite is true. No one wants to be horrific like Yeravam Ben Nevat, but if you're not looking for good, you're going to end up getting to that point.
Rav Hatzkel says that if we really believe this, we’ll get further in life. The reason we don't get better is because we don't believe that we can get better. But if we believe in this concept that if we just want, it has the power to bring us to higher levels, there's nothing stopping us.
Again, as we read from the Rambam, if you want perfection you can be closer than Moshe Rabbenu a’h.