סוד החסידות ושורש העבודה התמימה היא שיתברר ויתאמת אצל האדם מה חובתו בעולמו.
What does it mean be'olamo? What does it mean in his world? Don't we all inhabit the same world? Don't we share the same world? Don't we all when we leave tonight have the pleasure of going out onto Amsterdam Avenue? And what does it mean be'olamo? So clearly the olam hachitzon that a person inhabits is not olamo. He shares that with everyone else. We all inhabit the same olam hachitzon. But the olam hapnimi of a person is olamo. It's his world. Let's a little bit try to flesh that out. דעות הרבה יש לכל אחד ואחד מבני אדם וזו משונה מזו ורחוקה ממנה ביותר יש אדם שהוא בעל חמה כועס תמיד ויש אדם שדעתו מיושבת עליו ואינו כועס כלל יש אדם שהוא גבה לב ביותר ויש שהוא שפל רוח עד מאוד יש שהוא בעל תאוה לא תשבע נפשו מהלוך בתאוותו ויש שהוא טהור גוף ביותר לא יתאוה אפילו לדברים מעט שהגוף צריך להם ויש בעל נפש רחבה שלא תשבע נפשו מכל ממון העולם ויש מקצר שדיו אפילו דבר מועט שלא יספיק לו ולא ירדוף להשיג כל צורכו.
And then the Rambam goes on to say that this variety of types, this diversity of people is that יש מהם דעה שהיא לאדם מתחילת ברייתו לפי טבע גופו.
Some of them are innate. Some of those predispositions, not predeterminations, but predispositions are encoded in the DNA. And then ויש מהם דעה שטבעו של אדם זה מכוון ומוכן לה ויהיה עשוי לקבלה מהרה יתר משאר הדעות.
Other temperaments, other dispositions, it's not that the dispositions themselves are innate, but the tendency to develop those dispositions is innate. Everyone is charged with the task of tikkun hamiddot. But everyone begins in a different spot. Everyone is inhabiting olamo, his own personal olam hapnimi. Everyone has their own familial situation with its own dynamics. Everyone has his own personal set and constellation of life circumstances, all of which contribute to the challenges that a person confronts in life. So it's taka olamo, a person inhabits his own world. The emphasis of Ramchal at the end of Mesillat... returns somewhat explicitly to this theme. ואתה כעיניים ידעתי שכמוני תדע שלא כליתי בספרי זה כל חוקי החסידות ולא אמרתי כל מה שיש לומר בעניין זה כי אין לדבר סוף.
Skipping. Vezeh pashut. This is self-evident, כי כל אדם לפי האומנות אשר בידו והעסק אשר הוא עוסק כך צריך לו הישרה והדרכה.
The hadrachah that each of us needs has to be individualized. And then he gives just a partial example of that. כי דרך החסידות הראוי במי שתורתו אומנותו אינו דרך החסידות הראוי למי שצריך להשכיר עצמו למלאכת חברו ולא זה וזה דרך החסידות הראוי למי שעוסק במסחרו וכן כל שאר הפרטים אשר בעסקי האדם בעולם כל אחד ואחד לפי מה שהוא ראויים לו דרכי החסידות.
One of the sharpest and most profound expressions of this idea the Ba'al HaTanya writes in his hakdamah why one would think that perhaps what he sets out to do in Tanya can't be achieved. How can you record bichsav and communicate, and by definition what's bichsav is impersonal, and communicate impersonally hadrachah to people? הנה מודע זאת כי מורגל בפומא דאינשי בכל אנשי שלומנו לומר כי אינו דומה שמיעת דברי מוסר לראיה וקריאה בספרים. אין כל השכלים והדעות שוות. אפילו בספרי היראה שיסודותם בהררי קודש ממדרשי חז"ל שרוח ה' דיבר בם ומילתם על לשונם ואורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא כולא חד וכל שישים ריבוא כללות ישראל ופרטיהם הניצוץ קל שבקלים ופחות הערך שבעמנו בני ישראל כולהו מתקשרן באורייתא ואורייתא היא המקשרת אותם להקדוש ברוך הוא כנודע בזוהר הקודש הרי זה דרך כללות לכללות ישראל.
And now here come the next two lines is where he expresses our theme. ואף שניתנה התורה להידרש בכלל ופרט ופרטי פרטות לכל נפש פרטית מישראל המושרשת בה.
Torah can and needs to be darshened in protei paratiyos for each nefesh pratis miYisrael. That individualized hadrachah, that individualized hayasharah that Ramchal speaks of, says the Ba'al HaTanya is takeh is necessary. It's latent within Torah, but he says it's not so pashut. הרי אין כל אדם זוכה להיות מכיר מקומו הפרטי שבתורה.
A person's first avoda in life is to make sure he knows that there's a Ribono Shel Olam, a Ribono Shel Olam who gave us a Torah that we live by. And his next avoda in life is to know himself. Self-knowledge, self-awareness. להיות מכיר מקומו הפרטי שבתורה. How within the Torah, all within the Torah, of course, how a person can, should be oved Hashem to the best of his ability. So obviously this is a very big topic, but maybe just for tonight to try to identify a few guidelines, not an exhaustive list, but to mention a few guidelines that can help us in that search for accurate self-knowledge and self-awareness. In looking for that self-knowledge and self-awareness, so there's bal tosif and there's bal tigra. A person is not supposed to overestimate himself, but neither is he supposed to underestimate himself. So let's begin with some of the pitfalls that can cause a person to underestimate, underestimate himself. First of all, we have to be very careful not to confuse difficulty with impossibility. Often we blur the line between something that's very difficult, that's very challenging, we blur the line between that and what's impossible. Closely related to that is the idea that adam l'amal yulad, that to achieve what one can in avodas Hashem, to be oved Hashem to the best of one's ability requires amala. And regardless of who one is, what one is, the contours and parameters of olamo, of his personal olam hapnimi, but that's a constant for all of us. That to be oved Hashem to the best of our ability, it's only going to happen through amala. When there isn't Amal. That's when the difference between difficulty, formidability on the one hand and impossibility on the other hand gets lost. Another pitfall, another nisayon that we need to be aware of in trying to ensure that we don't underestimate ourselves is not to make judgments prematurely, not to expect immediate results and instant gratification. Chazal remarkably tell us that when Moshe Rabbeinu was on Har Sinai, כל מ"ם יום היה לומד תורה ומשכחה, lomed Torah umeshakecha. Every day Moshe Rabbeinu learned and then he couldn't remember anything, couldn't remember anything day after day after day after day. So by day 30, he should have left Yeshiva, he should have found something else to do. Finally on the 40th day, so Torah, HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave him Torah matana. A person can seriously, seriously underestimate what he can and should be doing in Avodas Hashem and we're not talking only about Talmud Torah. That example is from Talmud Torah but we're not talking only about Talmud Torah. We're talking broadly. A person can seriously underestimate if on day 20, on day 30, he forms his judgment and he reaches his conclusions of what it is he can and should be doing in Avodas Hashem, what it is that he can and should be contributing to the klal. שלח לחמך על פני המים כי ברוב הימים תמצאנו. A person can't accurately gauge his potential in what he can and should be doing in Avodas Hashem if he doesn't have she'ifos, if he doesn't have aspirations. Chazal said it, חייב אדם לומר מתי יגיעו מעשי למעשי אבותי אברהם יצחק ויעקב.
If a person doesn't have she'ifos, if a person doesn't, doesn't set goals that are ambitiously, realistically ambitious but ambitious, highly ambitious, so then he undercuts his potential, he underestimates himself. A person has to have she'ifos, he has to have she'ifos in tikkun hamidos, he has to have she'ifos in learning, he has to have she'ifos in davening. For him, ba'olamo, in in his personal olam hapnimi. Sometimes a person aborts those she'ifos. Sometimes we tell ourselves, living in the world we do, coming from the background that we do, so what what can what can we really expect of ourselves? That ein hachi nami, maybe maybe if I had lived in a dor de'ah, so maybe then, maybe then circumstances would have been such that I could have achieved more of my potential. But in this crazy, crazy, immoral world that we live in that gets crazier and more confused almost on a daily basis, so how can how can if it's supposed to be realistic, so how can I realistically expect to achieve my potential? So there's a gevaldig vort from Rav Kook in in Yom Kippur at the conclusion of the vidui. It's from one of the tefillos that that some of the Amora'im used to say daily in the slot where we say Elokai netzor leshoni. So we say אלוקי עד שלא נוצרתי איני כדאי. ועכשיו שנוצרתי כאילו לא נוצרתי.
So Rav Kook says what does it mean that עד שלא נוצרתי איני כדאי? That Ribbono Shel Olam, until you created me, it wasn't the right time. I wasn't it it wasn't pas. It wasn't appropriate. It wasn't right that I be created. There's no such thing as we can't achieve our potential because we were born at the wrong time. No. עד שלא נוצרתי איני כדאי. It was eini kedai lehivatzer earlier. Wouldn't it have been better off if only if only if only we could have learned in Volozhin in in 1860? If that's what we needed to achieve our potential, so then we would have been born in in Lita in 1840, in 1845, and we would have been learning in Volozhin in 1860. A person is not born it's not accidental, it's not happenstance. A person is born in the time and place that is supposed to constitute olamo, that is supposed to constitute his olam hapnimi. And therefore within that world he certainly does have the potential to be Oved Hashem again to the maximum be'olamo. He has to have the she'ifos to do that. He has to define what those she'ifos are in personal individual terms in Torah, in tefillah, in middos, bein adam lachaveiro, bein adam l'Makom. He has to realize that that it's the avodah of of a lifetime that it requires amal, but he has to know that הבא ליטהר מסייעין לו.