The deep connection between happiness and serving Gd.
People think happiness is the goal of life. They try really hard to find happiness. ‘The pursuit of happiness.’ Other people think maybe it’s not that important. Let’s rather focus on being productive, on being very good, on doing the right thing..So what is the correct approach?
According to the Tanya. Happiness is not the goal of life, serving Hashem is, but it’s an important component.
In fact it’s THE most important thing in avodat Hashem.
What does it mean to serve Hashem?
According to the Tanya, we were created with two souls. The Gdly soul, which is a piece of the creator that HaShem put inside every Jew, and the animal soul, which is our desires, our negative character traits.
Our purpose is to overcome the animal soul.
How?
By controlling our thoughts,speech and actions and connecting to our Gdly soul through Torah and mitsvot.
According to Tanya, everything we do is either a mitsva, something holy, or a sin.
Either we’re connecting to or we’re disconnecting from Hashem. Some things are obviously a mitsva like keeping Shabbat and some obviously on the side of impurity, like doing something forbidden according to the Torah.
The activities in between like sleeping, eating or talking to a friend all depends on your intentions.
But in order to do this effectively we have to be happy.
Why….?
Take an allegory of two people wrestling. It’s not the stronger one that wins but the quicker one. Happiness brings quickness, lightness, sadness is associated heaviness and laziness which makes it much harder to win the fight.
When you’re happy, you’re positive, you’re energetic.
Now sadness also has a place. A healthy person allows himself to feel a wide range of emotions. We need to feel pain before we can work our way up to a point of simcha. If we just block the pain, we won’t feel joy either. Sometimes our heart is blocked and we need to cry to open it, but the sadness is only there to bring you to a higher level of happiness.
So how do we get to happiness?
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov writes: “A person should find in himself the tiniest amount of good and be joyful from it. Furthermore, a person should find joy even through seemingly pointless or physical activities (but obviously not sinful ones) such as dancing and it will bring him to simcha. Once a person is in a state of simcha, he will be able to draw himself towards joy of mitsvot.”
So there are two points here:
1. Finding the good: connecting to your Gdly soul. Notice a tiny good deed you’ve done or good quality in yourself and build yourself up from there.
In essence, this means finding joy by connecting to your spiritual side, the Gdly part of you.
HaShem Himself is in the Torah so when we learn Torah or do its mitsvot, we should be extremely happy because we’re connecting to our source. There is joy in doing good.
We don’t naturally always feel this of course, but just knowing it can help. Knowing that our soul is more important than our body. That even if physically were not doing so great, maybe we feel sad or depressed, still just knowing that the soul is the main thing can help us- we can find happiness from a spiritual place.
We can tell ourselves when we’re sad: “Yes I have an animal soul, and am often weighed down with problems, butI also have a soul which also needs to be fed…
Our soul is in exile. Like a prince taken away from the palace. And every time we do a mitsva we’re feeding that soul, we’re taking it out of exile a bit and visiting the palace of the King.
And this is also where emuna comes in:
Sometimes things are really really hard.
We go through very real challenges.
We need emunah to rise above the pain, to see beyond. Trust, that this is really the best thing for us- for our souls.This is not always easy of course.
If HaShem is always in the background , then even in pain, you will be able to have joy. Emuna. Emuna brings happiness.
How to build emuna? If you feel joy in the good times and try connect to Hashem and see Hashem in everything, focus on gratitude (and we’ve all had times when we’ve felt hashgacha in our life), then in the hard times you will know it’s also from Hashem.
Every Jew has a natural love for Hashem which we can access.
(As we said before we have a piece of Hashem in us- so we are intrinsically connected to Him.)
We should just take a few minutes every day to think of all the times when we’ve really felt Hashem in our life, or just thinking about how great He is.
Also just remembering that HaShem loves us helps. Often when we have troubles, it shows that H loves us. He wants to challenge and test us. He’s close to us. He rebukes those He loves.
It may hurt but like a father giving medicine to a child, He knows what’s best for us. It’s hard and it’s painful. But we know with such certainty that everything is for our best. That’s whatever Hashem send us is the absolute best thing that can happen to us.
Happiness is something we can choose. We won’t always manage. But it’s definitely an avoda.
The second point: making yourself happy using physical pleasure.
The first reason was more about connecting to your soul, finding meaning in your life (joy through growing and giving) but it seems that sometimes there’s a more basic way of finding simcha. This is addressing the animal soul. As quoted above. “A person should find joy even through seemingly pointless or physical activities”
We need to feel pleasure…yes we are a neshama and we must find that good in ourselves and connect to spiritual joy, but we’re also a body and Hashem gave us this body.
We can find joy using the material to serve Hashem. We don’t have to run away from the body but rather put holiness into the gashmiut, the physical.
And on a more fundamental level, it simply means taking care of ourselves. We can’t do our service effectively if we’re tired and haven’t eaten properly.
Maran Rabbeinu Ovadia Yosef zt”l said that any action one performs for the sake of Heaven and intends for this to be for one’s own benefit as well, for instance, one who eats on Shabbat in honor of Shabbat and in order to make the holy Shabbat enjoyable as per Hashem’s command while also having in mind one’s own personal enjoyment, we do not say that one is performing the Mitzvah not for the sake of Heaven; rather, since one’s intentions include doing so for the sake of Heaven as well, it is indeed considered that one is doing so for the sake of Heaven and one’s reward shall be great. Many other great Poskim write accordingly.
Lastly there’s another type of unhappiness. The kind that comes from a spiritual place. You worry you did something wrong. You did do something wrong. You really harmed someone or
you caused harm to yourself. Or you’re just not happy with where you’re holding, you don’t feel like you’re doing enough.
Firstly you must know your Yetzer hara wants you to be sad! So if these thoughts come and bother you while you’re busy, while you’re taking care of your family or you’re working, ignore those thoughts!
Set aside a time when you can think about how you want to improve. A quiet moment. Do ‘cheshbon hanefesh’ (a personal account). That kind of sadness shouldn’t drag you down but propel you forward- and that’s how you can tell if it’s coming from the right place. Do Teshuva and move on. Feel sad, regret it, and then you’ll feel even happier afterwards. Often by the time you sit down to that, the thoughts won’t be relevant anymore proving they weren’t real in the first place. You have to be strong and aware to fight these thoughts. Don’t feel guilty or small for having these battles – this is our job. To work with this challenge. We give HaShem great pleasure when we overcome these very personal battles.
May we never be tested through suffering and may we always be able to appreciate Hashem through good and happy times. And enjoy pure happiness in the final redemption very very soon.
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