When we forget the individual soul, when we stop paying attention to the inner life of the person, everything becomes confusing and unclear. Therefore, the beginning of teshuva (spiritual growth)...is the return to oneself, to the Source of one’s soul.
—Rav Kook SK 8:213
There is a person who sings the song of the Self. He finds everything, his complete spiritual satisfaction, within himself.
And there is a person who sings the song of the Nation. He steps forward from his private self, which he finds narrow and insufficiently developed. He yearns for the heights. He clings with a sensitive love to the entirety of the Jewish nation and sings with it its song. He shares in its pains, is joyful in its hopes, speaks with exalted and pure thoughts regarding its past and its future, investigates its inner spiritual nature with love and a wise heart.
There is a person whose soul is so broad that it expands beyond the border of Israel. It sings the song of humanity. This soul constantly grows broader with the exalted totality of humanity and its glorious image. He yearns for humanity’s general enlightenment. He looks forward to its supernal perfection. From this source of life, he draws all of his thoughts and insights, his ideals and visions.
And there is a person who rises even higher until he unites with all existence, with all creatures, and with all worlds. And with all of them, he sings. This is the person who, engaged in the Chapter of Song every day, is assured that he is a child of the World-to-Come.
And there is a person who rises with all these songs together in one ensemble so that they all give forth their voices, they all sing their songs sweetly, each supplies its fellow with fullness and life: the voice of happiness and joy, the voice of rejoicing and tunefulness, the voice of merriment and the voice of holiness.
The song of the soul, the song of the nation, the song of humanity, the song of the world-they all mix together with this person at every moment and at all times.
—Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook (1865-1935); OK 2, pp.444-445
(ב) ואתה יודע שתיקון המדות הוא רפואת הנפש וכחותיה, וכמו שהרופא אשר ירפא הגופות צריך שידע תחילה הגוף אשר ירפאהו כלו וחלקיו מה הם, ר"ל גוף האדם, וצריך שידע איזה דברים יחלוהו וישמר מהם, ואיזה דברים יבריאוהו ויכון אליהם, כן רופא הנפש והרוצה לתקן המדות צריך שידע הנפש בכללה וחלקיה ומה יחלה אותה ומה יבריאה:
(2) You know that the improvement of the moral qualities is brought about by the healing of the soul and its activities. Therefore, just as the physician, who endeavors to cure the human body, must have a perfect knowledge of it in its entirety and its individual parts, just as he must know what causes sickness that it may be avoided, and must also be acquainted with the means by which a patient may be cured, so, likewise, he who tries to cure the soul, wishing to improve the moral qualities, must have a knowledge of the soul in its totality and its parts, must know how to prevent it from becoming diseased, and how to maintain its health.
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself #1 (excerpt)