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.
==========================================================================
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.
