With Heart in Mind

THE LAST CHAPTER focused on the necessity of teaching others. Now we are being told that our own spiritual progress requires that we not only teach but also “do” ourselves. What path are we to follow to bring our learning into action in this way?

The study of Jewish sources can engage the mind just like the study of science or mathematics or art history. Intellectual accomplishments can be very satisfying, and brilliant scholars have always been stars in the Jewish world; but we are cautioned not to fall prey to thinking that cerebral learning is the goal of our spiritual activities. As students of Mussar, our goal is shleimut—wholeness or completeness—and kedusha, holiness. If we satisfy the mind and even impress others with our brilliance but don’t engage in actions that reflect and embody what we have been learning, we move no closer to the wholeness and holiness we seek.

The Mussar teachers have been hardheaded in evaluating what does and does not work to bring about personal transformation, and their conclusion is that the mind is generally a weak tool for effecting spiritual growth. In the words of the Alter of Novarodok:¹

But if one knows . . . only with his mind and not with his senses, he will find that his mental effort yields only a mental [i.e., intellectual] result, not a sensory [i.e., actual] one. As the Sages said, “The wicked know that their fate is evil and bitter, but it is too hard for them to change.” Even though the mental effort enables him to quiet the ferment of human nature and evil attributes while he is speaking of moral ideals, he cannot at all master his predilections and forego his passions and rejoice in the verdict of God, because his effort was not to educate himself to put things into actual practice, but only to comprehend mentally the proper world-view, the whole way of life, the “how, what and when.” . . .

At the moment of trial, he is like a blind person who never saw the light, because then the cloud covers the sun and he can see nothing. His whole exalted knowledge exists either before the fact or after the fact, but when the situation is at hand, the distraction of the trial makes him like a different person. Looking back he will say, “At the time of the trial, I was not the same person that I am now, after the trial.”

These ideas reflect the general Mussar approach, which credits experience and not ideas alone with the power to transform. Of course, ideas are the starting point, because we need to form mental intentions and to identify the ideals we seek, but only when we enact those ideas in reality will the heart be touched and change brought about. It’s with this exact process in mind that Rabbi Elya Lopian defined Mussar as “making the heart feel what the mind understands.”²

Learning is just not enough if what you learn remains lodged between your ears, because if that is as far as the learning goes, it is not likely to have the strength to govern your actual behavior when “the cloud covers the sun and [you] can see nothing,” as happens when emotions flare in real-life situations, obscuring the intellect. Real change requires that we activate our learning with doing.

There are two distinct ways to understand how to put “learning in order to do” into practice. The simplest to appreciate is that when a person combines study with actual practice, putting the concept studied directly into action, then that idea is bound to become engrained more deeply within his or her essence.

As an example we have a law taught in the Torah: “If you see your enemy’s donkey lying under its burden would you refrain from helping him? You shall surely help along with him.”³ The Talmud expands and gives the rationale for this law: “If a friend requires help unloading, and an enemy loading, one’s [first] obligation is toward his enemy in order to subdue his evil inclination [yetzer ha’ra].”⁴ Helping your enemy is the priority, because that will bring you into encounter with your own inner spiritual adversary, which can only be vanquished through real-life encounters.

Well and good to know this, and quite another thing to do it. The text says “enemy,” and that word falls so far short of capturing the explosive and hateful emotions we feel just seeing that person who has done us harm or undermined our just aspirations. In the face of the seething and powerful feelings, we are supposed to help him or her deal with a burden? Without learning, we would not have known that. Without doing it, we’d have no real experience of the effective spiritual stretch that is embedded in this law. By learning it, we know what is expected. By doing it, we encounter the transformative experience that renders us more whole.

The second idea is that when one studies with the intention of applying what one learns—even when that study is not accompanied by any concrete action—the study itself can be qualitatively different than when one studies without that intention. Activating the imagination with specific details and bringing the desire for change into the process of study can itself be a transformative process. This is a novel insight and one of the innovative concepts of the Mussar masters.

For example, v’ahavta l’reacha kamocha—“love your neighbor as yourself”⁵—is a sublime idea that is fundamental to Judaism. How can we “learn in order to do” that according to the second approach? The Mussar teachers tell us that just firming our intentions to implement the concept by envisioning the face of someone you intend to love and invoking the imagination to see that happening can have a real impact. Through strong intention and conjuring vivid mental images, modes of behavior will come alive, and we can count on being affected inwardly in the real way that is intended.

If your spiritual knowledge is theoretical and intellectual, you can’t expect much good to come of it. When you put it into practice—whether in reality or in an exercise of imagination—you trigger experiences, and it is these that are the real agents of transformation. As the neurobiologists say, the neurons that fire together wire together. As we stimulate direct experience, so do we change the fundamental structure of our brains, and we become different people. Intellectual learning on its own does not have this potential.

Obviously, these two basic approaches are not mutually exclusive; they complement each other, and one should endeavor to practice both. The changes we will see may not be instantaneous, but they are assured. Slowly, over time, as Rav Yisrael promises, a new person will appear:⁶

Let a person’s heart not despair if he studies Mussar and is not awakened, or if he feels no impression on his soul motivating him to change his path. Through an abundance of [Mussar] study over an extended period of time, the impressions will accumulate, and he will be transformed into a different person.

PRACTICE

Rambam states that comforting mourners is a rabbinic commandment that fulfills the biblical injunction that we encountered in this discussion: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”⁷

If you didn’t know that before, you have now learned the biblical source for the requirement to give comfort to those who are bereaved.

To get the spiritual benefit of that mitzvah and to internalize its teaching, however, you have to do it. Do you know someone who is mourning a loss? Reach out to comfort that person in deed. Pick up the phone, send an e-mail, or better still, pay a visit to comfort the mourner.