[Avodah] Raising Nitzotzos

[Micha Berger]

On Areivim, at Thu, Jul 19 1:16pm EDT, R Yosef Skolnick posted in a
discussion of R' Manis Friedman's (who is L) recording about living
biqedushah in a world that has the internet. He wrote:

:> A chosid is not afraid of klipa

: Yeah that seems to be the chabad approach -- from discussions with chabad
: semicha students.  There are a few differences in approach to dealing with
: the yetzer hara -- one is to say "ah Mr. Yetzer, your a nothing, a gornisht
: compared to us.  We will defeat you as we always do" and the other is "Wow,
: you are so hard to get around, I am too afraid to even go anywhere near
: you."  He is advocating the first approach (which is consistent with the
: lubavitch approach)

And I wonder how many times we fail to overcome the yeitzer because we
begin the battle convinced we couldn't possibly win.

In certain martial arts (Judo, Aikido) one uses circular motion to
harness the opponent's momentum against them. If they throw a punch,
don't block the punch, pull the arm in the direction it's already moving,
and thereby use their own energy to throw them.

One can play a parallel trick on the yeitzer. The person who taught it
to me (1) said it was Lub in origin and (2) associated it with the Ari's
notion of raising nitzotzos. (Although the above mashal is mine.)

Say in the middle of Shemoneh Esrei I have an irrelevent thought.
The "karate" way of dealing with it is to resist the thought by dropping
it, looking back into the siddur, paying attention to what the word
means.

Or, one can elevate the thought. A worry about parnasah crosses the mind?
Instead of forcibly dropping it, I can remember that parnasah comes from
HQBH, and turn that worry itself into a tefillah before moving back to
what I should have been focusing on.

Even a passing memory of a woman I shouldn't have noticed on the bus that
morning. (It /is/ summer in NY, after all.) One can recall Who designed
that woman, both the appearance which hooked her image into my memory and
everything more substansive I can assume exists behind it. Do a little
mental "barukh shakakhah Lo be'olamo" and thereby give a degree of sanctity
to the thought.

I find it's much more effective than trying to abruptly switch tracks.

(My apologies to anyone thrown by my confessing to foibles we all share,
I presume, but never discuss.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You will never "find" time for anything.
micha at aishdas.org        If you want time, you must make it.
http://www.aishdas.org                     - Charles Buxton
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