Rabbi David Sutton and Dr. David Katzenstein, LCSW-R
How do we separate ourselves from our desires? How do we show ourselves that we are not our desires? It sounds easy to say: Just let your desires float, just let them be.
But how do we carry that out?
Acting Against Our Will
As a young man, Rav Yerucham Levovitz described his struggles and his subsequent kabbalah before Yom Kippur (cited in Alei Shur, Vol. II, p. 248). “I see that I’m not controlling myself. I’m in someone else’s hands. And that someone else is the materialistic forces inside of me that are controlling me. And not only that, they are also bribing my intellect – to fool it into doing improper things just to get me away from goodness. And therefore, I accept upon myself to make my daat, my awareness, the one in control. Hashem should help me. I have accepted upon myself, bli neder, to do things against my will five times a day.”
How do we do something against our will? If we have an urge for a coffee, for a caffeine fix, we can tell ourselves, “No, not now. I don’t need that coffee. I will manage for another hour without it.” That’s going against our will, breaking our ratzon. Or, let’s say we go to our car and then realize we forgot to bring an item we planned to return to the store. At first, we may say to ourselves, “The return can wait until tomorrow. I don’t need to go back into the house.” But if we think about it, we are just being lazy. If we force ourselves to schlep back to get that item, we are breaking our ratzon, just like the great baalei mussar.
To enable us to overcome certain desires, we use a technique called “thought diffusion.” This refers to the process in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) where individuals learn to disengage from their thoughts and see them as mental events, rather than absolute truth. The goal is to help people become less attached to their thoughts and more focused on the present moment, leading to greater psychological flexibility. In the example with the coffee, it would be to amend the thought of I need this coffee, to I’m having a thought that I need this coffee.
Rav Yisrael Salanter, the father of the Mussar Movement, once woke up in middle of the night because he was thirsty. In those days, before indoor plumbing, if you were thirsty, you’d have to go to the well. His first reaction was, “Maybe this isn’t genuine thirst; maybe it’s just unnecessary taavah, desire.” (Of course, this is beyond our level.) He decided it was unnecessary, because he didn’t need it. But then he said to himself, “Hold on, maybe it’s laziness stopping me from going to the well.”
So what did Rav Yisrael do? He got out of bed, walked to the well, drew the water from the well, came back home, and spilled it out.
That way, it was clearly not desire and clearly not laziness. That’s a very high level.
Forces That Control Us
In his personal notes cited above, Rav Yerucham mentioned that he felt materialistic forces inside of him gaining control over him, with avot, fathers, and toldot, children. Rav Wolbe asks: What are these forces?
As discussed earlier, after Adam HaRishon sinned, the forces of evil entered us. These are the fathers, and they create children, what Rav Wolbe calls “ribuy retzonot she’b’lev,” an abundance of desires in the heart. But these desires are not us; they’re foreigners. Yet it can be difficult to recognize that these constant urges, wills, or desires, which are constantly popping up in our hearts, are all outsiders.
We think desire is our self. And we think that spirituality and intellect and knowledge are something strange. Desire for delicacies, for honor, and for money seem natural to us, while spiritual concepts seem unnatural, something we have to force ourselves to delve into.
TAKEAWAY
Step one is to start separating our selves from our desires. And the only way to do that is by not feeding our desire, not giving into it. When we control our desire, we can see that we are not our desire.
If you accepted upon yourself to refrain from X, Y, or Z, and then a day or two later you suddenly feel a strong urge to do X, Y, or Z, remind yourself, “I certainly don’t need to do this. I am just having a thought that I need to.”