Setting your Soul on Fire: How to Believe in Yourself

I decided on this topic largely because of how much of an impact it has made in my personal life.
If you think about it, the potential of tefillah is astounding. Even if you only go to shul on Shabbat, you spend hundreds of hours each year talking to Hashem.
Myself, I used to hate davening. Once I got to Cornell, I started dragging myself to services every day, but it was really just boring and uninspiring.
I had already made my decision to daven three times a day, so I started digging for resources that could help inspire a sense of awe and the genuine connection that I wanted.
The following is a collection of the parts of shiurim and seforim that have helped me, and I hope they can help you guys too.

Start with Yichud Room story:
Chatan and kallah walk into the yichud room and lock the door...
Inside, they see the chatan's butler. The kallah gets very upset, and explains that there shouldn't be anyone in the yichud room with them. After all, it's the yichud room!
"Don't worry, I won't talk to him" he replies
"But it's the yichud room!" the kallah cries
"I won't even do anything, I'll just make gestures..." the chatan assures her.

This sounds like a crazy story, like it could never take place. But it does. Where does this story happen? Every day in the beit medrish
When you bring your phone into shul, into davening, and into learning.

R' Birk: Tefillah is often the first thing people stop doing as they become less observant. Why is this? Most other aspects of Judaism can be done socially. Shabbat means a nice meal with your friends, it's fun to celebrate Yom Tov with your family, you keep kosher because all your friends eat at 104. But when it comes to Tefillah, there's nobody else. It's just you and the Ribbono shel Olam

Another large barrier is in the phrasing itself. There are a lot of misconceptions about what prayer is.
What does the word for prayer in Hebrew mean?
לְהִתְפַּלֵל = To judge oneself
Ultimately, we're not praising Hashem to get on his good side. We're there to judge ourselves, to make ourselves better people.

Baal Shem Tov: If I’m them same person when I take three steps back as when I took three steps forwards, I haven’t really davened. This effect does not last forever, which is why we must daven three times a day. This gives the right amount to balance living and recognizing the good Hashem does for us.

It's important to stress that tefillah doesn't need to be Shacharit, Mincha, and Maariv. The willingness alone to stand before Hashem in sincere petition is very precious, and is in fact more true to the biblical conception of prayer.

In order to help recognize how powerful tefillah can be, I'd like to look at a few sources.

Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, rosh yeshiva at the Mir, gave over the following story:
There was a Jewish man who was a moser: He would go to the secular government and tell on Jews, causing them to face terrible punishments. A horrible rasha who caused terrible problems for the Jewish people.
The gedolim came together and decided they would put him up as the chazzan and, while he was in the middle of the Shemoneh Esrei, they were going to grab him, tie him up, and throw him into the river to drown him. That was the psak.
This is exactly what they did: they got rid of him, and it seems like the end of the story, shalom al yisrael.
A few days later, however, he came in a dream to one of the rabbis who paskened he was chiyuv misah.
He said "I want to tell you something: I'm up in Shamayim, and I want you know know you paskened correctly. I was chiyuv misah; I was putting the lives of Jews in danger. But I have just one problem: Why didn't you at least let me finish the Shemoneh Esrei? At least you could have let me finish the words 'Shema koleinu, Slach Lanu, refaeinu'! You don't realize what every one of those words mean in Shamayim!"
That is the koach of tefillah

What's the difference between these two cases?
In the first case...
Rabbi Shimshon Pinkas comments on this Rambam saying that Hashem acts the same way to us with tefillah.
When someone needs something badly, if someone runs to boss, and to his friends, and to this one, and that one, and finally at the end thinks "Oh, I should probably ask Hashem too," and davens, then Hashem gives him a little something. He doesn't send him away empty-handed.
But if you come to the Ribbono shel Olam and say "You're the only one! There's nobody else!" then you will get everything.

A big problem is that we don't have the kavanah to ask like that. I'd like to look at two quick texts everyone here is probably very familiar with.

Ma Tovu helps me remember how fortunate I am to have the unbelievable merit of being able to walk into the "tents of Yaakov," the Batei Kenesset of the Jewish People.
If you wanted to have an appointment with any world leader, lehavdil, you would need background checks, security clearance, metal detectors, the whole thing. But with Hashem, who holds all the power to give you everything you want, you can just stroll in and immediately speak to Him. All that He asks is the basic yirah, that awe and trepidation, that comes from recognizing that you're standing before the Melech Malchei haMelachim.

There's a medrish in Eichah Rabbah:
R. Abba bar Kahana tells the story of a king who then went away and did not communicate with her for a long time, but told her not to worry, he would be back. Soon, her neighbors came and tried to persuade her to just forget the King having a fun night in town. The Queen refused, and she ran into the inner chamber of the King, took out the ketuba, and read that he had promised to remain faithful to her and to support her, and this gave her the resolve to stay faithful.
The next day, the neighbors came back again and insisted that the king had left for good. They said "Come on, just come and have some fun, he's not going to return to you."
Again she ran into the room, read the ketubah, and was once again assured her husband would return.
A few weeks later, the king returned. He asked "I know what the neighbors are like, and I know what they probably tried to get you to do. Tell me, how was it that you remained faithful?"
So she responded "I went into the inner chamber and took out the ketubah, and read that it said you would always support me, and I said 'Don't worry, I trust that.'"
When we go out into the world, there are a lot of influences. A lot of things that drag us in a lot of different directions. The one thing that allows us to stay faithful to Hashem is when we run into a shul and take out the Torah, the ketubah between us and the Ribbono Shel Olam, and we can be sure that he will uphold his promise to support us through any difficulties we have.

The key line from the following source should also be very familliar:

Why was this line so important that we inserted it between the end of Kriyat Shema and the beginning of Shemoneh Esrei? When we say it, we recognize that in the past few hours since we have said these words, we have erred. We have allowed ourselves to forget Hashem, but now we beg Him to allow us back into his presence and to serve him.

[9:22 believing in yourself]
R' Hillel Paritcher
There's a person who once heard a niggun that was so magnificent that it was able to let him forget all his troubles, all of his tzaraas: that there were people he knew who had died, that he didn't have parnassah, that his kids weren't doing well. While he was listening to the niggun, he was able to rise above all of that. But then, he returned to his day-to-day life and he couldn't remember the niggun. He couldn't remember the song. And he wanted depserately to hear this niggun because it took him higher than life itself. After struggling to remember it, he went to musicians, he went to weddings and music halls, asking "You're a musician? There's this niggun I heard, maybe I can give a bar or something..." but he couldn't find anybody who knew the niggun.
So what did he do? The niggun left him, he couldn't remember it, there was something on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't quite get it, and every time he heard a song he thought "maybe this is it," but it wasn't.
The nimshal should be clear: When the neshama of a Jew is in Shamayim, it is experienceing unbelievable pleasure and delight, being in the presence of HKBH, immersed in attachment to Hashem. But then the neshama is sent into this world, and it meets up with the practical reality of the world below, and this world is so different than the one above, and all the neshama is left with is some vague recollection, a sense, a feeling, that there's something greater. Something engraved in his being, woven into the fabric of his existence, but he can't get it, he can't recapture it.
So the Jew spends the rest of his life running around to other menagnim. Whether the it's sports or work, whether it's searching for romance or something else, he runs around the rest of his life looking for anyone who has something to offer, something of substance, and he listens to them and hopes "Maybe this is the niggun! Maybe this will give me that ahava, that pleasure, that feeling of 'This is it! This is the niggun!'"
And because of this frantic search of a person in the world, he gets caught up in many troubles and complications. Our lives are filled with disappointments and pain
And here is the beginning of davening and tefillah. It's the beginning of belief in yourself.

The Perpetual Prayer of the Soul (Olat Reyiah, vol I, p. 11, Rabbi Kook)
We can only pray the way prayer is supposed to be when we recognize that in fact the soul is always praying.
Without stop, the soul soars and yearns for its Beloved. It is at the time of outward prayer, that the perpetual prayer of the soul reveals itself in the realm of action.

R' Kook in his introduction to the siddur says the following.
A Jew must believe fully that every second of his life, his neshama is constantly davening. That in the essence of who I am, in that part that's beyond my body, deeper than all physicality, I have a neshama that is davening every second. The soul is longing for its Creator without any interruption at all. What is davening? What is the act of tefillah? Tefillah is one thing: To come into contact with that part of myself that is always davening. To reveal to myself, to uncover, to excavate deep within myself the tefillah haTemidit, that constant prayer. That means that emunah beAtzmach, believing in oneself cannot be taught in a shiur. It won't work. It's not a matter of philosophy, it's not a shita, it's not even a mesora from your parents! You can get a mesora to daven Ashkenaz or Sepharad. To shuckle or not so shuckle. You can get the framework of tefillah from your parents, but it can't get you to cry by tehillim. It can't get you to have kavanah. Unless you, as an individual, can tap into that emunah peshuta, that simple faith in yourself, your tefillahs will be empty. You know the whole Otzer haTefillos, you read all the Chassidus, you did Nefesh haChayim, you leared Tanya, so you ended up a big genius, but to daven?

The Baal haTanya says in a maimar to parshas Ki Tisa:
Believing in oneself means belief in Hashem. Every single Jew is a believer and the children of believers in Hashem Echad with emunah peshuta. Without any reason or explanation in your sechel.
That which all the great philosophers can't figure it out, questions about what is the true nature of G-d, is the simple foundation embedded in the heart of every person of Yisrael. From where does a Jew get this emunah that's higher than anything that can be understood with sechel? Even though we don't see it with our eyes, it comes from the spark of G-d in every Jew. This is essence, the root, of everything we are, something the human mind cannot possibly understand.
This means that real davening isn't something you can force yourself to do. You can make yourself show up at shacharit, mincha, maariv; you can make yourself say the words; you can imitate and you can impersonate, but the emet of what davening is is the niggun we were talking about with the story from Rav Hillel Paritcher: It's the way the soul expresses its simple faith. The soul that knows in the clearest way, without any proofs, that Hashem hu haElokim.

Imagine a family who has their child taken from them in the hospital. This used to happen in Israel, a terrible tragedy, a stain on the Jewish People, with the Temanim having their children taken from them in the hospitals. Rabbi Schwartz writes in Da Et Middotecha: imagine one of these children somehow found out that the people raising him were not his parents. True stories like this happened in Eretz Yisrael. So he set out on a journey to find his real parents. He looked, searching through all the records and taking DNA tests, he did everything you could do. He didn't rest until he discovered the true identity of his parents and lo and behold: They lived a few streets away from him. A miracle! They didn't know they were related, even though they passed each other on the street hundreds of times. But today is different. Today the boy comes with the conclusive proof, he walks up with all the documents and the professors and he knocks on the door. And the couple recognize him as a nice boy from the neighborhood, but surprise, he shows them all the documents and the professors say "We have good news for you... this is your child, the one who was taken from you." and they start crying and hugging each other and pouring their hearts out, and we know that for the rest of their lives they will never be separated.
So Shwartz asks a simple question. We know that to develop a relationship, it takes time. It takes time to develop a relationship; a husband and wife, they spend their lives making that relationship. But here the parents and the son haven't sat down to share any ideas, any philosophies. "Do you support the mehadrin or the rabbanut? Do you support keeping the territories or giving them away?" They didn't talk about anything! They didn't develop a relationship! "How do you feel, what do you like...?" All they have is one thing: The information that is absolutely true: You are my father and I am your son, and they hold each other with a devekus to never let go.
How could this be? The answer is obvious. We think we need to build up kavanah in davening. We have to read new perushim to come up with new ideas to get new tricks, new games, how do we get people to stop talking? We need to assign ushers, we need to put up signs that say if you talk during davening you go to Gehinnom. So they need to think up all kinds of external things to develop a relationship with tefillah, just like these people would have had to do if they tried to develop a relationship with that boy.
What happened that day was the following: The absolute truth of who he was and who they were was revealed on that day, and when that absolute truth was revealed, the longing of the heart of Jewish parents who were crying for their child for thirty, forty years, in their hearts loving a child they never knew, the heart of a child who knew that these parents were nice, but it wasn't the niggun! It's not me! And when the truth was made known, and the parents and the child were introduced, "this is the truth, this is the nature of who I am," in one second the big wall fell down. And now we understand.
Rav Kook says:
The avodah of all of Yiddishkheit, all the learning, the mitzvot, the maasim tovim, everything we do as Jews has one single purpose: To get to that niggun. To get to that song of who we are, to get to the essence of who we are, to get to the hidden tefillah, the constant, perpetual tefillah of the neshama. Nishmas kol chai, the soul of all that exists, is constantly davening to Hashem, constantly speaking to Hashem.
So we're making a big mistake. We focus on how to daven, how to have some connection, when the truth is we never learned the loshen of who we are, so the more convoluted it becomes, the less time we spend learning simple emunah, the less you know about your first language, the loshen of your soul.
We have stopped talking to G-d. We hide behind the tefillahs in the siddur. Every word is holy, but we need to tap into the simple language of recognizing "I'm your son, He's my Father," to speak to Hashem in the loshen of who I am.
Nowadays, life in incredibly complicated. In the Old Country it was hard, but life was simple. Rav Moshe Weinberger said people were constantly in a dialogue with the Ribbono shel Olam, talking to Hashem every minute. When he was growing up, he would always hear his mother saying "Nu, Hashem, do you see what Moishe is doing to me? Have rachmanus on me." Every second of her life in a dialogue with the Borei Olam.

I'm begging you Hashem, don't take away the tefillah inside of me! I know it's there, I know there's that part of myself that yearns for you! I know that deep inside, that niggun is there! I've tried to find that niggun in the Gemara. I've tried to find it in secular studies. I've tried to find it in romance, and it doesn't work! Don't take it away from me! I want to remember it. I'll know when I hear it; that it's the real thing!

Rabbi Moshe Weinberger concludes with the following story:
There was a little girl, Rivkah, who became separated from the rest of her friends and got lost in the forest.
Everyone was terrified, they didn't know where she went, and she was walking and walking but didn't know where she was.
All the men from the town tried to find her as the sun set, but as Rivkeh walked and walked, she became too tired to continue. She sat down by a tree and began to cry, and eventually fell asleep.
The darkness settled on the forest, and all the men gave up, they would have to wait until the morning. The one person who was still looking, going around with a candle, was Rivkah's father.
As he came close, Rivkah heard rustling leaves and woke up. She looked up to see the face of her father coming through the woods and she gave out a cry, a scream: "Abba, I found you! I found you."
This is the story of our lives. We spend our lives searching for Hashem, but we don't know what to do. We're lost, begging Hashem not to give up on us.
Hashem is coming after us, and when we open our eyes, we will cry out "Avinu sheba Shamayim, I found you!" All along, it was Hashem who was looking for us.
I give everyone here a bracha: That Hashem should help each one of us to recognize the niggun. To speak simply, to speak the lashon of our neshama; to come to that realization of who we are.