In the previous section we learned the Alter Rebbe's advice to a person who finds evil thoughts rising up in his mind: he should not be looking for a way to "shut off the engine" so that such thoughts never arise at all. Just the opposite: once the thoughts have come, his task is to confront them and push them away, and in that very act lies his joy.
The first piece of advice: joy in fulfilling a mitzvas lo saaseh
Here the Alter Rebbe teaches something new: a person should rejoice in fulfilling the mitzvah of "v'lo sasuru acharei levavchem" ("do not stray after your heart") exactly as he would rejoice in fulfilling an actual positive commandment. Just as a mitzvas aseh is performed with "ivdu es Hashem b'simcha," serving Hashem with joy, so too a prohibition calls for joy, because in this case the mitzvas lo saaseh is precisely like a mitzvas aseh.
From here comes the Alter Rebbe's first answer to a Jew: evil thoughts fall into your mind in the middle of your affairs? Do not become depressed over it. Rejoice instead over the opportunity you have been given to push them away. A person should certainly not go looking for evil thoughts; after all, we ask "v'al tevi'einu lidei nisayon," do not bring us to a test. But once they have come, let him reject them and be glad for the opportunity. And the rejection itself is accomplished, of course, by bringing a different, good thought into their place.
The second argument: "sadness comes from coarseness of spirit"
The second argument is addressed to the person who is sad about his situation, and the Alter Rebbe says something sharp to him: your sadness grows out of coarseness of spirit, out of a pride you do not even recognize in yourself.
Let us begin with a parable. Imagine we meet a man who is sad, and when we ask him why, he answers that he is distressed over not having ruach hakodesh. Such a person needs help, because ruach hakodesh belongs to people of true stature and level, and he has no connection to it whatsoever. Sadness over something that was never his to begin with shows that he does not know his place and has no idea what he is actually connected to.
The same applies to our case. What are you sad about? That you have to wrestle with foreign thoughts? And what exactly did you expect, that you would have none at all? In other words, you imagine you are a tzaddik, and since a tzaddik has no foreign thoughts, you are pained at not being like him. That is coarseness of spirit. Know your place: your aspiration should be to be a beinoni, whose avodah is precisely to push away foreign thoughts as they come, and not to be a tzaddik, a level you have no connection to at all.
The words of the Alter Rebbe:
"ועוד זאת, העצבות היא מגסות הרוח שאינו מכיר מקומו" ("And furthermore, the sadness comes from coarseness of spirit, for he does not recognize his place"). This person's sadness stems from the fact that he is coarse of spirit and arrogant, and does not recognize his own place.
In the sixth chapter of Pirkei Avos, forty eight things are listed through which Torah is acquired, the ways in which a person acquires an inner bond with Torah, and one of them is "makir es mekomo," one who recognizes his place. A person who does not recognize his place cannot move forward in anything: whatever he learns, he will not know where it belongs or how to translate it properly, and he will start busying himself with matters that are not his.
What is this like? Like the Jew who read in one of the sefarim that whoever keeps a fast of silence for forty days merits a revelation of Eliyahu Hanavi. He did so, and when the forty days passed and nothing happened, he came to the tzaddik with a complaint: "It says so and so in the sefer, how can it be that I did not merit it?" The tzaddik sent him off to the horse in the stable, which has also been silent for forty days and has also not merited a revelation of Eliyahu Hanavi. When a person does not recognize his place, he does not know what he is connected to, and that is exactly the problem afflicting our sad fellow as well.
"ועל כן ירע לבבו על שאינו במדרגת צדיק, שלצדיקים בוודאי אין נופלים להם הרהורי שטות כאלו" ("and therefore it grieves his heart that he is not on the level of a tzaddik, for tzaddikim certainly do not have such foolish thoughts falling into their minds"). He is pained: why am I not like a tzaddik? Tzaddikim do not struggle with such problems, and I have thoughts like these. But "אילו היה מכיר מקומו, שהוא רחוק מאוד ממדרגת צדיק" ("if he recognized his place, that he is very far from the level of a tzaddik"). The word "me'od," "very," is an expression of the unbounded, as in "b'chol me'odecha": not merely far from the level of a tzaddik, but infinitely far, not reaching even the very edge of it.
And what should his aspiration and yearning be? "והלוואי היה בינוני ולא רשע כל ימיו אפילו שעה אחת" ("if only he were a beinoni and not a rasha all his days, even for a single hour"). The goal should be to reach the level of beinoni, and not, G-d forbid, to be a rasha.
The avodah of the beinoni
"הרי זאת היא מידת הבינונים ועבודתם - לכבוש היצר וההרהור העולה מהלב אל המוח, ולהסיח דעתו לגמרי ממנו ולדחותו בשתי ידיים כנ"ל" ("this is the very quality of the beinonim and their avodah: to conquer the yetzer and the thought that rises from the heart to the brain, to divert his mind from it entirely and push it away with both hands, as explained above"). This is his work all his life: he is guaranteed to have thoughts coming constantly for a hundred and twenty years, and his avodah is to contend with them without letup. And as we learned in the previous chapters, the beinoni has a "she'as ratzon," an hour of favor, during davening, when the Almighty grants him a measure of rest, but once davening is over he returns to his former state.
The greatness of the rejection: "iskafya sitra achra"
"ובכל דחייה ודחייה שמדחה אותו ממחשבתו, אתכפיא סטרא אחרא לתתא" ("and with each and every rejection, as he pushes it out of his mind, the sitra achra is subdued below"). Every time the beinoni pushes away the evil thought that entered his mind, he bends and subdues the sitra achra, the yetzer hara that plants those very thoughts in him, here below in his own soul. "ובאתערותא דלתתא אתערותא דלעילא, ואתכפיא סטרא אחרא לעילא" ("and through an arousal from below comes an arousal from above, and the sitra achra is subdued above as well"). As is known, every arousal that comes from below immediately draws a corresponding arousal above. It follows that one who weakens his yetzer hara below causes a weakening of the forces of impurity and evil above as well, and in doing so he helps the entire Jewish people.
And what is the strength of the sitra achra above? Many maamarim of chassidus explain that the forces of the sitra achra are enormously brazen, attempting to draw power from the very highest sources, "שמגביה עצמה כנשר, לקיים מה שנאמר: אם תגביה כנשר וגו' משם אורידך נאום ה'" ("which raises itself up like an eagle, so as to fulfill what is said: 'If you raise yourself like an eagle... from there I will bring you down, says Hashem'"). It is worth noting that the image of the eagle appears in a most positive context as well, "k'nesher ya'ir kino al gozalav yerachef," which refers to a wondrous divine revelation, and that very same image is used here for the sitra achra.
It is interesting that this verse appears in the haftarah read in the week when we read "vayigdelu hane'arim," about Yaakov and Esav who struggled with one another. That struggle is, at its root, the struggle between a Jew and the forces of evil, and when Yaakov overcomes and prevails, "ki sarisa im Elokim v'im anashim vatuchal," it symbolizes the bringing down and subduing of the sitra achra above, which brazenly raises itself up like an eagle.
From here emerges the great lesson: first, that a person should not be coarse of spirit and should not imagine himself on levels he has no connection to, and consequently he will not fall in spirit when he finds himself with a constant stream of evil thoughts. On the contrary, not only should he not be saddened by it, he should rejoice at the opportunity given to him again and again, at every single moment, to bring about the greatest divine revelation.
And what about aspiring to a higher level? A person should aspire to be a beinoni on a higher level. Within the category of beinoni itself there are many levels, hundreds of levels, and he should always aspire to rise within them. But he cannot aspire to what is not asked of him and what he is not capable of, since the level of tzaddik is a divine choice, as will be brought shortly in the continuation.
And when a person wants to draw close to the Almighty, the path is precisely through pushing away the sitra achra and pushing away the foreign thought, and through that he becomes close. He should not go looking for an easy route, but for what is being asked of him, and of each and every person something different is asked. Growth must come step by step and not in leaps; and even so, even with gradual growth, a person does not become an angel, and even the tzaddik does not turn into an angel.
The words of the Zohar: the greatness of "iskafya"
"וכמו שהפליג בזוהר פרשת תרומה (דף קכ"ח) בגודל נחת רוח לפניו יתברך כד אתכפיא סטרא אחרא לתתא" ("as the Zohar, Parshas Terumah p. 128, speaks at length about the greatness of the nachas ruach before Him when the sitra achra is subdued below"). When a Jew subdues the sitra achra here below, a nachas ruach is created before the Almighty, and it may well be far greater than the nachas ruach that comes from the tzaddik, whose avodah is of a different kind. Precisely the one who struggles and succeeds brings about a wondrous and immense nachas ruach. The concept of "iskafya" is a broad one, and it is mentioned constantly in maamarei chassidus.
And what is the Zohar's language there? "דאסתלק יקרא דקודשא בריך הוא" ("that the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He, is elevated"). "Istalek" here does not mean disappearance. Quite the opposite: it means a great, mighty, overpowering drawing down, one that nothing can hold back. So it is explained in Likkutei Torah as well, that "istalek" means a greater revelation, a revelation that cannot be held back. A revelation that comes in a limited measure can be interfered with by some other force, which will not let it be revealed; whereas a revelation that nothing can stop is revealed in a manner of "histalkus," it rises and towers above all obstacles and hindrances and shines without interference.
So it emerges that precisely when a Jew subdues the sitra achra below, "istalek yekara d'Kudsha Brich Hu": the divine preciousness, power and holiness are revealed without any interference at all, "לעילא על כולא" ("above everything"), "יתיר משבחא אחרא" ("more than any other praise"). One Jew stands and praises the Almighty with a wondrous davening, and another Jew stands facing a test and overcomes it, and the Almighty receives greater nachas ruach from the one who struggled. "ואסתלקותא דא יתיר מכולא" ("and this elevation is greater than all"). The wondrous divine revelation brought about by a Jew's struggle is greater than anything else.
To summarize: in this section we learned two answers for a person who finds evil thoughts arising in his mind. First, that he should rejoice in fulfilling "v'lo sasuru" exactly as he would in fulfilling an actual positive mitzvah, seeing in every such thought an opportunity to push it away. Second, that the sadness itself comes from coarseness of spirit, from a person who does not recognize his place and is pained that he is not on the level of a tzaddik, when in truth he is very far, infinitely far, from that level, and his aspiration should be "if only he were a beinoni." We saw that the avodah of the beinoni is to conquer the yetzer and push the thought away with both hands, and that every single rejection carries an immense greatness: iskafya sitra achra below, and through an arousal from below also above, and in the words of the Zohar in Parshas Terumah, "istalek yekara d'Kudsha Brich Hu l'eila al kola, yasir mishvacha achara, v'istalkusa da yasir mikola."
In the next section we will take up the continuation of the Alter Rebbe's words in this chapter, and the point that the level of tzaddik is a divine choice, not something available to every person.