In order to stay tuned in to how we, as individuals, need to move in accordance with the will of our Maker, our hearts must stay open.  Not so simple,though, is it?

Binah is how we apply everything we learn to our own lives; how the ladder meets the ground

The Torah life is the latticework upon which our lives grow.  It is our job to do the work of allowing the Torah to circumscribe that life for us.  Please note that this class cuts off at the end, and you’ll never ever know the all-important secret that was revealed at the end.

Yir’ah – the cherishing of the opportunity of a moment – can be and has to be learned.  We can learn the bullet-points but we have to take them home.  And now we start looking at building blocks of yir’ah. 

Gravity is keeping us ON the wagon, and not off.  This changes the nature of the fight entirely.

We carry out midot with us all the time – love, fear, attachment.  But they latch on to what we prioritize.  So if we are all into food, or the Phillies, then our midot will show up around those things.  So we need to work on focusing our intentions properly, and then our midot can [...]

we experience love all the time.  we therefore have a constant meditation on what love is and how it works, and can tweak ‘love’ at any point within the continuum with effect on the whole.

but we have to refine them.  We already know how to love – but we need to learn how to love well, fear well, apply these emotions correctly in the right direction.

Rav Kook quotes RaMChaL who says all this stuff is really obvious, and yet no one gets it.  It is the same reason people can read well-written, brilliant guides of how to succeed in business as written by successful business people and still not succeed.  Because it’s not about the brain and understanding, it’s about [...]

Rav Kook’s anti-mussar is not a system of self-improvement but a system of orientation and navigation within a world where important things happen, where powerful people roam the world, either conscious or not of the power they have and therefore either furthering the project or hindering it.