Mindfulness in Tefilla

(3) One should place one's hands over one's heart, as if bound (i.e. as if connected), the right [hand] over the left, and stand like a servant before one's teacher with terror, awe, and fear. And one should not place one's hands on one's hips, because that is the way of haughtiness (and see below in the beginning of Orach Chayim 97).

(1) The Position of One's Limbs at the Time of Prayer, containing 4 s'ifim
One should position one's feet next to each other as though they are one, in order to imitate angels, as it written regarding them: “their feet were a straight foot” [(Ezekiel 1:7)], which is to say their feet appeared as one foot. (Some say when one stands to pray one should take three steps forward in the way of coming close and approaching a matter that must be done.) (Rokeach)

(2) One should bend one's head a little so that one's eyes will be downwards to the ground and one should consider oneself as if one is standing in the Beit Hamikdash, and in one's heart, one should direct [oneself] upward towards the heavens.

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And those who are exacting have practiced to shake at the time that we read the Torah as an illustration of the Torah that was given with trembling, and so too at the time that we pray, because of "all my bones will say to you, Lord who is like You?" (Abudarham)

(3) We do not stand to pray in the midst of (ie. immediately after) judging a case, or in the midst of [studying] Jewish law, so that one's heart will not be troubled with it (ie. he will be distracted by it), rather [we stand to pray] in the midst of [studying] conclusive Jewish law. Rem"a: For this is also like being in the "midst of joy", because of [the verse] "the precepts of Hashem are upright, delighting the heart" [Psalms 19:9] (Tur, Orach Chaim 93:1)

....“A broken heart, a broken spirit”—this is the sitra achara, which is the very man himself in benonim (intermediates), in whose heart the vital soul which animates the body is in its native strength; hence it is the very man himself.

(7) Whereas with regard to the divine soul within him it is said, “The soul which You have given within me is pure.” Note the words “which You have given within me,” implying that man himself is not [identified with] the pure soul—except in the case of tzaddikim...With a benoni, however, since the substance and essence of the vitalizing animal soul, which is derived from the sitra achara and pervades his blood and flesh, has not been transformed into good, it surely constitutes the man himself.

....in the service of prayer with kavanah (devotion), pouring out his soul before G–d with his entire strength, to the point of exhaustion of the soul, while waging war against his body and animal soul within it which impede his devotion, a strenuous war to beat and grind them like dust, each day before the morning and evening prayers. Also during prayer he needs to exert himself, with the exertion of the spirit and of the flesh, as will be explained later at length.

... when he will reflect in his heart with knowledge and understanding to console himself from his distress and sorrow, saying, as above: “Truly and without a doubt…”—“but it was not I who created myself. Why, then, has G–d done such a thing, to cause a portion of His light, blessed be He, which fills and encompasses all worlds, and before Whom everything is of no account, to descend and to be clothed in a ‘serpent’s skin’ and in a fetid drop? It cannot be otherwise than that this descent is for the purpose of an ascent—to raise up to G–d the whole vital animal soul, which is of the kelipat nogah and all her ‘garments,’ namely her faculties of thought, speech, and action, through their being enclothed in the act, speech, and thought of the Torah.”...If this is so, there is one thing for me to do, and this will be my sole aim all the days of my earthly life, to fully occupy therein the life of my spirit and soul, as is written, ‘To You, L–rd, I lift my soul,’ that is to say, to bind my thought and speech with His thought and speech, blessed be He, which are the very laws which have been set before us, and likewise my action—in the performance of the commandments.”

(18) For this reason the Torah is described as “restoring the soul,” i.e., [restoring it] to its source and root. Concerning this it is written, “The precepts of the L–rd are right, rejoicing the heart.”

(1) The meaning of the words - like the Rabbis say (Berakhot 47) that one should not "throw" a blessing from his mouth, rather he should concentrate when saying it and make the blessing calmly. And this is the language used in the Sefer HaChinuch siman (chapter) 46: When one washes his hands, or recites a blessing on a fruit or on [any of the] mitzvot which are constantly in the mouth of people (ie. which they are accustomed to say), he should direct his heart towards his Creator, Who does wondrous kindness to him, and gave him the fruit or bread to benefit from, and commanded him to perform the mitzvot. And he should not act like an individual who does things out of habit

(1) One Needs to Have Concentration While Praying, containing 5 s'ifim:
One who prays needs to concentrate on the meaning of the words which one brings forth from one's mouth. One should consider [it] as if the Divine Presence is opposite one, and remove all distracting thoughts from one, until one's thought and intention remain purely about one's prayer.... And so did the pious ones and the men of action, who would seclude themselves and concentrate on their prayers until they would transcend [their] corporeality and strengthen [their] mental power, until nearly arriving at the level of prophecy....

(1) Even if there occur to him lustful imaginations or other extraneous thoughts during Divine service, in Torah or in devout prayer, he must not let his heart dwell on them but must immediately avert his mind from them....

(4) For it is known that the way of combatants, as of wrestlers, is that when one is gaining the upper hand, the other likewise strives to prevail with all the resources of his strength. Therefore, when the divine soul exerts itself and summons its strength for prayer, the kelipah also gathers strength at such time to confuse her and topple her by means of a foreign thought of its own....

(7) This is like the example of a person praying with devotion, while facing him there stands a wicked heathen who chats and speaks to him in order to confuse him. Surely the thing to do in such a case would be not to answer him good or evil, but rather to pretend to be deaf without hearing and to comply with the verse, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest even you become like him.”

(8) Similarly, he must answer nothing, nor engage in any argument and counterargument with the foreign thought, for he who wrestles with a filthy person is bound to become soiled himself. Rather should he adopt an attitude as if he neither knows nor hears the thoughts that have befallen him; he must remove them from his mind and strengthen still more the power of his concentration...

(1) Hisragshus and The Ability to Feel Hisragshus

(2) It has been established that the soul is not only revealed by reaching the state of hislahavus, but can be started even through mere hisragshus, and by means of animated avodas Hashem the heavenly light will appear upon man. The feelings of delight that accompany a man’s holy hisragshus during prayer, avodah, or Torah study are the flashes of the sparks of delight and flames of holiness from his own portion in Gan Eden....The Chassidic Masters found this concept hinted at in the Gemara (Berachos 17) which says, “olameicha tiray be’chayeicha - You will see your world in you lifetime.”

...a person cannot have a taste of the world to come if he does not taste such light in this world through the hidden light of the mitzvos.”

(4) Often a person wants to pray and serve God, but his prayer and his avodah does not ascend in burning flames of kedushah. ...At such a time, he is advised against being stubborn in his resolve to feel the hisragshus. It is an oddity of human nature that when a person demands something from himself, for instance, to push away a disturbing thought, or even to keep a good thought in mind, that he actually brings about the opposite of what he wants. The disturbing thought will chase him, and the good thought that he wants to seize upon will run away from him, or at best will only stay with him for a short while. In particular, when he insists upon waking up to hisragshus or hislahavus at times of prayer or avodah, more often than not he will find his heart closed.... So it will be according to human nature if you do not resort to tricks or innovative techniques.

(5) Simple Avodah that man employs at times when he is serving God must be done with simple intention. He shall think, “I am a servant of God, and the davening, Torah, and mitzvos that I use to serve God are my Godly portion. I do not only cleave to God through an intellectual understanding of the Torah... Even the words and letters of the Torah and the tefillah, the names of God, the Sefiros, and the holy angels all come from supernal kedushah. And when I pronounce them, God and His holy myriads of angels come and pass through me... A person is able to draw his very vitality from this intention when he believes in it with simple faith and steadfast resolve...These sefarim tell us, “Do not ask for hislahavus in prayer. One should rather enter himself into the words of the prayer and the avodah, and the hislahavus will come by itself.”

(1) Working Towards Hisragshus.

(2) A person who desires to enter his entire being into avodas Hashem, and in particular, a person who yearns to prepare himself to serve God in the path of Chassidus, needs to strive for excitement in his avodah, in his fear and love of God, in his mitzvos, and in his prayer. Towards this purpose, he needs to develop himself into a complete, “man of hisragshus.”... Holy sefarim teach us that even the love of God is a natural characteristic of the Jew, but that it is more hidden and not felt on its own.

(3) This is the entire matter. When that which transpires within man is hidden and not felt, it serves create a chasm between man and himself. He does not know himself and is not aware of what is going on inside of him. The soul of the ordinary man does not cease to shake, quiver, and cry out over its lowly status, its wounds, and its pains that it suffers due to man’s foolish actions and thoughts. And man does not feel the pain of his own soul because he does not stop to listen to its painful cries that resound within him, because it is the way of man to constantly be drawn to that which is external to him, perceiving things form the outside world, whether necessary or useless. Though man will easily take interest at something that takes place on the other side of the world, he barely pays attention to the uproar within his own soul. It could be that he even feels the pain of his soul, it is just that at the time that he feels it his desires and thoughts are sunk in the rubbish of worldly matters, and therefore the sobbing of his soul is mixed together with the sounds of worldly vanity. This may be compared to a man who is sleeping, and a mosquito comes and bites him on the forehead. If he is a merchant, he will dream that a bundle of merchandise fell on his forehead and wounded him. If he is a tailor, he will dream that his needle pierced his forehead. Everyone sees his dream in the garment of his own thoughts.

(4) We find in holy sefarim that it sometimes happens with the soul of a Jew, that when he becomes excited in the midst of regret, teshuvah, submission, fear of God, and the like, he may feel an uncomfortable stirring within him, and he does not know what to attribute this feeling. He may think he is hungry, thirsty, or perhaps needs a shot of vodka. He may think that depression has taken hold of him, so in order to entertain himself he banters playfully or childishly with other people in his house. Or perhaps he goes to his friends and entertains himself with lashon ha’rah, tale-bearing, or frivolity. And sometimes, if he still feels the discomfort within him even after all of this activity, it is because all of his remedies were actually damaging. It is not enough that he didn’t heal the wounds of his soul or even console it in its pain, but he actually afflicted and wounded his soul even more. It could also be that after all of these deceptive actions he actually feels better, and his soul is calmed within him. This is because either his soul fainted from all of the beatings and wounds that his actions inflicted upon it, or it was so harmed that it because completely covered up with the rubbish of his actions that the man cannot hear the cries of his soul and he is not disturbed.

(5) A person does not only neglect to hear the cries and groans of his soul, so stifled that he is unable to recognize them for what they are, but he even neglects to feel the delight and joy that the soul takes in God. Sometimes he just feels something and cannot identify it. If a man only felt the joy that the soul takes in God, and the pleasantness that it feels when it ascends to the Eternal with love and fear, through Torah, prayer, and mitzvos, and in particular on the delight that the soul feels on Shabbos and Yom Tov, then the prevalence of the supernal delight would make it quite difficult for the evil inclination to rise up and seduce him. If man could only hear the song his nefesh sings to God at a time when he recites songs and praises while davening, the song of his ruach, neshama, chayah and yechida who stand at the song of the nefesh and sing in one voice to the Glorious King who has chosen song and praises. They are all united in one flame of love and joy together with all the souls of Israel both on earth and in Gan Eden, and because of them the supernal angels sing to the Almighty together with all of the creations in heaven and on earth and below the earth. They all sing as one, lauding and sanctifying the name of the Holy One, the Great, the Powerful, and the Awesome One! If only man could hear the faintest whisper of such heavenly devotion. In hearing it he would readily dedicate his entire being together with all of his desires, thoughts, words, and actions to God and to nothing else. But it is all closed from him and hidden from his view.

(6) And now, my dear young scholar, my dear Avreich, who desires to serve God and ascend in the ways of Chassidus, be happy with what we have told you, namely that you need not ask for any new hisragshus, nor do you require hisragshus to be sent to you from heaven. First and foremost, you have only to continue with your avodas Hashem, for it is all within you. The hisragshus is within you, and you are a man with the capacity to become excited in serving God. You just need to strive to know yourself, and all that goes on inside yourself. Your soul is filled with hisragshus, shouts and supplications, you just have to make a kind of vessel within yourself which you can access, and thereby strengthen yourself. Then you will know and feel your inner capacity for hisragshus, without the outer trappings of your self and your needs. Your feelings will discard the sack which hides it from its pure aspirations....

(8) If you start with small stimulations that you feel within in order to bring them out and recognize them the way they are revealed in your soul, and not dressed in physical garments, and they are so small that you cannot recognize them at all, then in feeling them you will not be able to distinguish between the shout of victory and a whimper, or between hisragshus from the sound of the soul crying out to God, or from the physical desire for food and wine. It will be hard for you to manage such feelings, since you are not familiar with them, and then when you actually feel something transpiring within you, the feeling that you are experiencing has already dressed itself in sackcloth. Therefore, begin with greater and more powerful feelings where you recognize that the feeling of the nefesh is that of yearning and crying out to God. Yet since the vessel for the soul’s yearning is limited, the feeling does not spread throughout you and dress in some concrete thought. That is why the feeling is not absorbed in your limbs. There are also feelings that are not seen by you at all, but by touching them in the slightest and shaking them they pass and fly away. Stretch the vessel before your soul and spread its actions within you. Try to attach these feelings of hisragshus to tangible ideas. It is recommended not to begin with difficult feelings where the soul cries out from its pains and blemishes, but rather to begin with feelings of simchah that thrill and delight the soul.

(9) What is the vessel for the hisragshus of the nefesh? The beginning of the vessel that contains the hisragshus of the soul is a strong thought. Through it, you will see yourself, endure, and yet grow in the strength of your awakenings. The sefer Imrei Elimelech (Parshas Bechukosai) tells us, “certainly everyone has thoughts of teshuvah from time to time … but only because our thoughts turn away and we become concerned with other things that the thoughts of teshuvah depart … therefore a person is well advised to pay attention to these good thoughts.”

(10) Also in worldly matters we often find that if a man has a thought that disturbs him, if he occupies himself with a different matter then he will not be free to ponder that which disturbed him. His anger will not be aroused and the attribute of Gevurah (strength) will not be revealed within him. His disturbing thoughts will spread and excite him only if he provides them with a vessel of Gevurah and he then is able to fixate upon the man who wronged him. This will even cause his anger to flare up commensurate to the vessel that he makes for it, and it will be so overwhelming that he will not be able to hold it back. The attribute will not only cleave to his mind at the time when it wakes up, but he will find every stimulation waking up this feeling, and he will not be able to endure without having it spread throughout his mind. The thought will make an impression on his behavior, and the thought of how he was wronged will take over and grow even at a time when he is not wroth with his adversary. The same is true for feelings of love and all other forms of excitement.

(11) It is also true with the excitement of animals. Whether they are consumed with love or fear, even thought their minds are greatly limited, still their feelings will cease if they are distracted by being forced into a different activity not connected with the previous excitement. For instance, if the excited animal is beaten repeatedly and then immediately given to eat or even taken for a brisk walk to a different place, it will no longer be excited by its anger because it has been distracted from the small amount of thought necessary for the excitement. It could be that a man did not have time to get angry during a certain incident, but upon remembering the incident at a later time he could wake up the anger that he did not have time for earlier. Not so with an animal, for in lacking such thoughts and desires, the animal can only get excited at the time of the incident and not after. This is true whether the animal got excited at the time of the incident, or whether it was distracted and never became excited. Once the incident that excited it passes, the animal will quiet down on its own.

(12) We learn that the sefirah of Binah (understanding) gives birth to the lower middos. The source of the middos is not actually Binah itself, but rather the attribute of Tevunah, which is the lower half of Binah, and is therefore called the mother of children (as it nurtures the lower sefiros). Even after the middos (the seven lower sefiros) are born and revealed in the world of spirit, they continue to receive additional power from the mochin of Chochmah and Binah that flows down to them through Tevunah, as is explained in the Eyts Chaiim. Our intention is not to dwell on the heavenly engineering of Kabbalah, but rather how these spiritual forces are manifest in man, and pertain to the service of God. In A Student’s Obligation we discussed the teaching of the Ari z”l that mans very thoughts are the manifestation of Malchus of Tevunah within him. The birth and revelation of a sefirah comes through the level of Malchus within it, which is the last of its ten sefiros. Considering how the seven lower middos (the spiritual roots of our behavior) are born through the medium of the attribute of Malchus of Tevunah (the roots of man’s thoughts) and also considering how Tevunah (understanding) brings an additional flow of power to the middos in the form of mochin drawn from Chochmah and Binah, we can plainly see the inseparable bond between thought (Tevunah) and behavior (middos). This behavior is strengthened and can grow only when it is given a vessel in the form of a thought in which to expand. Without this thought the behavior looses power and passes away.

(13) Therefore, if you want to reveal and strengthen the wondrous hisragshus of your soul, you have to make them a vessel. Strengthen your holy thought by thinking about the kedushah of the matter that brought about the excitement. Do not dwell on the intellectual aspects or on the depth, but only on the pure, expansive thought. When you are starting your avodah, it is difficult to take a mitzvah that does not change over time, like prayer, for example, which you accustom yourself to every day, and be able to expand and strengthen your power of thought during its performance. It is better to begin this practice with a mitzvah that has some variability, like Shabbos, as it only takes place one day a week. Furthermore, you change into Shabbos clothing, you see all those around you also changed into Shabbos clothing, and the feel of the house is different after being straightened up for Shabbos. This is even more pronounced on Festivals like Pesach, so on Festivals it is even easier to strengthen and expand your thoughts. After you have succeeded in revealing and strengthening your thoughts through these kinds of mitzvos, then you can go and try to increase your thoughts of waking up your soul in every mitzvah.

(14) You will ascend to two levels through the expansion and strengthening of your holy thoughts. First, your soul’s many experiences of holy hisragshus will not be in vain due to not seeing or feeling them. Rather they will go up within you and you will see and feel them as they expand and increase up to the point where they have spread forth throughout your whole body. And second, even at times when your soul is not excited on its own you will be able to arouse it simply by the force of your powerful and expanded thoughts. This will be true in particular with the awakenings that you have already experienced, for you will see that you can easily go back and rekindle them within you. Throughout the year you will rekindle the yiras Hashem that you felt on Rosh Hashanah and Neilah of Yom Kippur when you heard the sound of the Shofar. Every day you will be able to love you felt for God, His Torah, and avodas Hashem on Succos, Shmini Atseres, Simchas Torah, Pesach, and Shevuos....

(16) My saintly father, Rav Elimelech of Grodzisk explained in his sefer, the Imrei Elimelech, that a holy thought that only occasionally enters one’s mind and only for a moment is not yet called a, “thought,” and cannot be used to sanctify man and bring him close to God. This can only be done with a thought that a person holds onto for an extended period of time. We see throughout the whole sefer Noam Elimelech that when he tells the reader to exercise his power of thought, he usually does not say, “he shall think,” but rather says, “he shall imagine,” or, “he shall picture in his mind.” In the first article of the “Tsetil haKatan,” (a short collection of advice on avodas Hashem) Rebbe Elimelech writes, “He shall imagine and picture in his mind a great and awesome fire burning before him and reaching the heavens. Then, for the sake of God’s kedushah, he breaks his nature and throws himself into the fire as an act of sanctifying God.” He uses similar language in the second article. Also in Rebbe Elimelech’s, “Prayer before Davening,” he writes, “let our thoughts be refined, clear, pure, and strong.” This is indeed a great principle. Our thoughts should be refined, clear, pure, and strong.

(17) It is impossible to have mental strength that does not contain mental images. In chapter 70 of the Tikkunei Zohar we find, “nefesh hametsuyar (the soul of the image pictured in the mind)” enumerated right after, “nefesh hamachshavah (the soul of the thought).” The first chapter of the Shemonah Perakim of the Rambam tells us that when you divide the nefesh into sections, you only end up dividing the revelation of its actions, but the nefesh in its essence and in it self is still one (complete unity). We explained in A Student’s Obligation (Chapter One, Section One) that just because the terminology of the Kabbalah divides the soul into five parts – nefesh, ruach, neshama, chaya, yechida – this does not mean that there are five different holy souls in man. Really there is only one. It is just that whenever a higher portion or greater light from that soul is revealed, we see it as a higher soul and call it by a higher name. This is similar to how the “Patach Elyahu” section of the Zohar, describes the sefiros - “one is long, one is short, one is intermediate” – and by this it is saying that difference between the sefiros is only a difference in degree of revelation and degree of influence below.

(18) With this we can say that it is not the intention of the Tikkunei Zohar to say that there is a soul that thinks and a separate soul that forms mental images. It is rather that from the outset, when a man effects a weak action of the soul, then only a small portion of the soul is revealed in thought, and when he is activates his soul in a stronger way, then a greater portion of the soul is revealed that goes as far as to draw an image of the revelation. We mentioned in A Student’s Obligation that when a person has a small thought about an adversary who shamed him, the image of the adversary is not conjured up in his mind. Yet when he has a stronger thought, then he clearly sees the image of the adversary in his mind’s eye. With the stronger thought, the image will not just be a picture of the adversary, but the image will also contain things the adversary said and entire scenes involving the adversary. There we said that a strong thought and a mental image are of the same variety. It is just that whatever he can see picture in his mind, such as the form of a house or the form of a man, are visualized in the imagination. Yet things that do not take a visual form, such as words, are only conceived in a strong thought. We see evidence of this in the way people express themselves. This is as people sometimes say, “I pictured the whole scene in my mind, I pictured every detail, even what my adversary thinks of me, even what he plans on doing to me know.” Everything is, “pictured” in his mind...

(20) One needs a mental storage of different mental images in particular. Besides the fact that thought and the ability to imagine cannot expand based on a single thought or mental image, it is also the nature of thought and imagination that they cannot tarry for a long period of time on one thought or mental image unless other thoughts and images are added to the mind....

(21) Now we can say that when you want to reveal your holy hisragshus which passes through you on a festival or Shabbos, you need to strengthen your holy thoughts concerning that festival or Shabbos. And it is impossible to strengthen your thoughts in this context with just the simple thought that the festival and the Shabbos are holy, because you will not be able to dwell on this thought for very long or strengthen it. Rather you need to fill them with pictures and images and think on them with strength.... The holy sefer Noam Elimelich tells us that if a man wants to arouse himself by his thoughts that he should visualize himself standing before the Beis HaMikdash fully built with the altar and the chambers all in order … and by means of this he will come to complete clarity and deveikus and be able to pray with total concentration, with fear and love, just as if he were standing in the holy of holies. He further tells us that not just visualize it as a strong thought, but should strive to see it as a vision.

(22) ...An image will only be seized by the soul through a form that is stamped with physical matter. This being so, if you meditate upon this image, then the very image will wake up your neshama, and you will attain wisdom that you otherwise would not have attained.” Study this passage carefully and you will find that through the intensity of thought accompanied with concrete images, you will bond together with the holiness that you envision in your mind, and this will in turn connect you to higher levels of kedushah and a depth of Torah understanding that was hitherto inaccessible....

(31) ... Our intention is not only to reveal the pictures themselves, but to reveal the ‘nefesh hametsayeret” – the soul which forms mental pictures, as mentioned in the Zohar. Everyone has a nefesh that draws mental images based on everything it feels and everything that fascinates it. This is the source of dreams at night and fantasies during the day. The nefesh hametsayeret reveals man’s soul based on the input it is fed according to the dreamer’s life activities. If two elderly men who have been retired for many years see something new which fascinates their mind and excites their soul, then each one will spin and weave a different fantasy according to the life activities and thoughts that each one was once immersed in. Why should this be? Hasn’t it been a long time since each was involved in this work or business? It is because their activities reached their souls, and the soul was excited and transformed by the activity to the extent that each one’s nefesh hametsayeret revealed something within him so that even now it continues on its own to create fantasies and visions from everything that stimulates it. This is our demand, that this nefesh which draws images on its own will not only reveal images to us based on ordinary commonplace existence, but it will create holy images, and visions of kedushah will be revealed within us effortlessly, with no need for us to ask for thoughts and visions.