Question:
I understand from the Rav’s approach that emunah must be coming from our heart, that we must be able to feel our awareness of Hashem, as opposed to merely knowing of Him in our intellect, because we cannot base our emunah in Hashem on our intellect, since our intellect is limited and we can become mistaken through it. So how indeed do we reach emunah of the heart? I don’t mean to ask about how to internalize our intellectual emunah into our heart, rather I mean to ask: How do we start directly with emunah in our heart?
Answer:
The depth of our soul’s power to have emunah is from the same place in you where you recognize your own existence, the truth of your havayah. It is from your own havayah that you can recognize the absolute havayah, which is the truth of His infinite existence. For a Jew is an actual “portion of G-d from above”. Understand that well. When a person penetrates into the depth of the truth of his soul, after he has purified the soul’s outer layers, he then reaches his very havayah, and then he can recognize the absolute havayah, the truth of the Infinite. This is the root way of recognizing our Creator, by recognizing our own existence and from that very same place of self-recognition we can recognize that the existence of all creations is only allowed due to the truth of His havayah, His infinite existence.
When one is beginning to surround this perception, it is called ohr makif, where his awareness of Hashem is called emunah (belief in Hashem). When one internalizes it, it is ohr pnimi, and it is called hakarah (recognition). In these short lines, we have written the pnimiyus, the inner depth and the truth, of all of life!!!
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