[Avodah] Raising Nitzotzos

[Poppers, Michael]

In Avodah V30n98, R'Micha wrote:
> 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.
...
> I find it's much more effective than trying to abruptly switch tracks. <
I try to have H' w/ me all the time.  If something foreign to that level of awareness gets in the way, I tend to work on regaining awareness (not so much "karate" against the Bad Guy as much as resuming my duet with the Good, but certainly not dancing w/ the Bad, turning it into another Good Guy).  That's at a micro level.  OTOH, at a macro level, I'm looking to utilize and be m'qadeish chomer, which in a way _is_ trying to work with what could potentially be Bad and turning it into Good, but I don't think we're discussing hashqafah as much as deaiing with deviation from the derech, so don't call me a MMA fighter -- I'm more like an artist :). 

All the best from 
-- Michael Poppers via BB pager