Day 6 of 60

Tuesday, August 25Elul 5
DEVELOPING SENSITIVITY

Ask yourself: How sensitive are you to the world around you? Do you have a plan for developing/increasing your sensitivity?

Exercise for the day: - Make a special effort to increase your charitable giving, beyond your natural tendency.- Place a charity box in your home, office and car. Teach your children to give of their money and time to others. - Before you eat focus on making a blessing, with added intention, thanking G-d and concentrating on the spiritual energy contained within the food that you are about to consume.

I try to be sensitive to the world around me; sometimes I am more so than others. Of course, there is a level way beyond the one that even my best self of today has achieved.

I will try to concentrate on infusing more awareness of the spiritual energy inherent in the food I am about to consume, in addition to being thankful to HaShem for it.

I do not know that I will be putting more charity boxes out around me and my environment. I will try to do charity by stopping throughout my day to have in mind others around me and to pray for their welfare. Perhaps, putting out charity boxes will help me as a visual reminder of my goal.

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When the Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak was a child, he was walking in a garden one day and he ripped off a leaf and began rubbing it with his finger. His father rebuked him, "What right do you have to rip a leaf from a tree and mistreat it for no purpose at all?" When the Rebbe grew up he said that this incident had a deep impact on his life. It taught him to be sensitive to everything.

If a person is sensitive to a leaf on a tree, he will, without a doubt, be sensitive to all life forms—most of all to his fellow human beings. This is the essence of tzedakah ("charity"), one of the three pillars upon which the world stands (Torah and prayer being the other two). Tzedakah is sensitivity in action.

Sensitivity to life is the goal of many of the practices of the Torah. Some of them appear deceptively simple—for example, take the act of making a blessing before eating.

On a basic level, a blessing on food is saying thank you to God. That makes sense—whenever anyone gives you something, you say thank you. And if you can thank the waiter who brought you the food, you can definitely thank the Creator who created it.

But on a deeper level, the blessing has a profound meaning. When you are hungry, you want to put that food in your mouth immediately. But the Torah says, "No, you can't." First, you must be sensitive to the environment, to every fiber of grass, every cell of life, because everything that God created has sanctity to it. You have no right consume a part of creation unless you are sanctifying it.

It's true that many people just make blessings by rote, without sensitivity. That is mechanical Judaism. But if you understand and appreciate the concept of a blessing, you know that little daily acts like it can sensitize your life.

Day 5 of 60

Monday, August 24
Elul 4

THE TRUTH WITHIN

Ask yourself: To what extent do you see religion as oppressive? To what extent is the religion in your life man-made or self-made? Have you gone to the source? Have you had the experience of hearing the truth resonate in your heart? Did you embrace it or reject it?

Exercise for the day:
Commit to regularly attend a Torah class that will help you in at least one area of your life (which you identified yesterday) where you have not made been able to make meaningful progress on your own.

I understand the concept of religion as freeing, rather than oppressing. I do not see it as imposed by any other human. My problem comes in when my yetzer hara plays up my desires that will keep me from realizing the freedom of constantly doing HaShem's will and makes me feel like "I" want something else and if a I submit to HaShem's will I am forfeiting something more enjoyable!

Isn't it amazing that I can "know" something very clearly and yet am so able to convince myself of the total opposite.

That is where the idea of Torah classes comes in to play. It helps me visualize and clarify the beauty of the path I know is the better one for me and to strengthen my desire to follow it and to reinforce my resolve not to be swayed from it.

Again, I am having a bit of a hard time relating the exercise to my chosen area for improvement. True to the influences of "my land", my father's home", and "my birthplace", I am beginning to doubt whether I chose a "good" area. I am beginning to doubt whether I am doing this "right". But I am travelling here on a journey, and I will continue along as I originally set forth. Every area of my life is important and impacts on myself and others around me. And, every area that needs improvement can be used in the service of HaShem and to improve my service of HaShem. This is what I must keep in mind.

As to how to find Torah classes that relate to my area, I will have to keep my eyes and ears open; I will have to relate the classes I do find to my area. And, most importantly, I will have to turn to HaShem to help me out.


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The Ethics of the Fathers teach, "No one is free except the one who is immersed in Torah study," in effect identifying the practice of religion—the study and observance of Torah—with freedom.

Yet many people don't think of religion as freeing. They think of it as limiting, dogmatic, oppressive.

This is because the religion they have been exposed to is an invention of human beings. The religion they know is not the religion of G-d; it is not the religion of the Torah.

If your experience of religion is not freeing, then you have fallen into a man-made trap.

Freedom is Divine; it cannot be human. As soon as it's human, then there's someone who's in control of it, someone who wants to sell it to you and own it. That is when religion becomes another form of slavery; it becomes oppressive because it has lost its Divine nature.

That's why the Torah was given—so that there would be a permanent record, a source that everyone could refer to. As a result, Judaism has remained a religion of uncommon strength, one that over and over again has defied being hijacked by people.

The Talmud teaches that every one of us is taught the Torah before we are born. Its meaning is ingrained in our psyches, and upon birth we're made to consciously forget. But the truth resonates. So when we hear it, we know. Great masters or teachers can't give us anything we don't already possess; they can help us in one thing only—to open our own pathway to the truth within.

Ask yourself: To what extent do you see religion as oppressive? To what extent is the religion in your life man-made or self-made? Have you gone to the source? Have you had the experience of hearing the truth resonate in your heart? Did you embrace it or reject it?
Exercise for the day:

Commit to regularly attend a Torah class that will help you in at least one area of your life (which you identified yesterday) where you have not made been able to make meaningful progress on your own.

Day 4 of 60

Sunday, August 23Elul 3
LEARNING TO BE FREE

This is where you need the guidance of the Divine Torah blueprint. It tells you how to access your soul, how to achieve freedom in every part of your life, from the moment you wake to the moment you go to sleep, and even while you're asleep.
Ask yourself: To what extent have you used the guidance of the Torah to access your soul? To what extent are you familiar with what the Torah teaches in this regard?
Exercise for the day:Identify one area in your life where you badly need the objective guidance of Torah because you have not been able to make meaningful progress on your own.

I will continue to use the same area that I have chosen from day 1. Honestly, I never even considered that this area can be helped by Torah guidance, but I am totally willing to consider that it can be because, after all, as the writing states: the Torah is our guide in all matters of life. For sure, nothing I've tried so far has worked. For sure, other areas where I called HaShem for help have been successful...and many proofs and guidelines came to me right from the Torah in those areas. So I am willing.....

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Identifying damaging patterns and personal bias is an essential step on a journey to freedom from our personal bondage.

In one way or another, we're all enslaved—by our psychological demons, or by social standards, by our parents' words and attitudes, or by our responsibilities, by the consequences of the mistakes we've made, or by our careers, employers, or employees.

Learning how to be free is what is called in the Torah "leaving Egypt."

The Hebrew word for Egypt is Mitzrayim, which literally means "narrow" and which represents all forms of enslavement, be it dependency, conformity, subjectivity—whatever it may be in your life that sets up obstacles, limits, or constraints.

To be free, you must leave your personal Mitzrayim. But freedom is not enough. You can be free for a while and then be enslaved again. This is why forty days after the Israelites left Egypt and tasted freedom for the first time, they received a guidebook—the Torah—on how to maintain freedom.

Look at your own life. There were undoubtedly many times you felt free, you felt inspired, you felt you could do anything, but then old patterns and biases took over. You couldn't maintain that inspiration. The resolve to change was there for a moment, but you couldn't sustain it.

This is where you need the guidance of the Divine Torah blueprint. It tells you how to access your soul, how to achieve freedom in every part of your life, from the moment you wake to the moment you go to sleep, and even while you're asleep.
Ask yourself: To what extent have you used the guidance of the Torah to access your soul? To what extent are you familiar with what the Torah teaches in this regard?
Exercise for the day:Identify one area in your life where you badly need the objective guidance of Torah because you have not been able to make meaningful progress on your own.