Question:
Is fear ever a good thing? For example, I live in a place in Eretz Yisrael where we need to protect our cars from rocks that Arabs sometimes throw at our cars, and sometimes there are life-endangering situations here which cause us to have real fear. Is this a constructive kind of fear to have?
Answer:
The only thing a person must ever be afraid of is the fact that he fears anything besides Hashem. That is something to be truly afraid of, and it is the only pure fear which exists. Either we fear Hashem Himself, or we fear anything that is besides for Hashem – which essentially causes us to have the fears. Whenever we experience a fear, like when we feel fear from the Arabs, we should view it as an awakening to remind us that we are not afraid enough of Hashem, and that is why we have become afraid of something. It is an awakening to us that we are not close enough to Hashem; because if we would really feel close with Hashem, there would be no reason to fear anything.
Again, let me emphasize that this is not a mere intellectual definition. If a person would really believe that Hashem is close to him, he would not be afraid. When you are found with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, there is no fear there. So if a person experiences a fear, it is a reminder to the person that he needs to be afraid of the fact that he is not close enough to Hashem. That is why a person becomes afraid of the Arabs!
Question:
So if it is not a good kind of fear to have, is the fear showing us that something in ourselves needs to be fixed?
Answer:
Correct. Every situation can be used for good. When someone is afraid and he needs to be calmed, either we can tell him, “Don’t be afraid” [which is a superficial approach], or, we can tell him, “This fear that you are having – use it to awaken in yourself a holy kind of fear, the fact that you don’t feel close enough to Hashem.” However, this only calms a person when he is in fact upset at the fact that he is not close to Hashem. If he doesn’t care, then telling him to be afraid of his lack of closeness to Hashem will not do anything for him, because he doesn’t fear it. Only if a person is afraid of not feeling close to Hashem, can he be calmed when he is afraid of the Arabs, that the source of his fear is just a reminder to him, that he is not close enough to Hashem.
Question:
When using the power of imagination to relive the past fearful experience, won’t this cause the fear to happen? Isn’t there a concept that thinking and imagining about the fear cause the fear to actually happen in reality?
Answer:
That is a very good question! Indeed, it is possible for a person to “cause” bad things to happen when he imagines about them; the Sages say that if a person worries obsessively about poverty or other forms of suffering, the poverty or the suffering will chase after him. Therefore, we don’t try to deliberately imagine bad things.
Our intention here is that if a person is in any case experiencing fears in his imagination, we need to face this imaginary fear by bringing out into the open and then uprooting it with thoughts of emunah in Hashem and Hashem’s love for us. If a person is not having a problem with fears, we are not encouraging him to use these ideas; we are only discussing here a person who is afraid of something in his imagination, and since this is the case, we need to get him to redirect his thoughts. When a person is afraid, he is suffering from his imagination, which means that he is lacking in emunah and in a feeling of Hashem’s love, and it is the kind of person who needs to attack the imagination in the way we have described here.
So we are not encouraging a person to deliberately imagine something fearful and to increase his emunah. Why should he, if he doesn’t have the fears? We are only addressing here someone who already has fears and we want to help such a person face those fears that he is in any case having. So you have asked a very good question.
Question:
We see that when the people were making the Golden Calf, they came to Aharon HaKohen about what they should to do, and he was afraid of what would happen, so he gave them the idea of bringing together all the jewelry and make the Calf, to stall for time, because he feared for his life. So even Aharon HaKohen had fears of possibly getting killed. Why didn’t he just use the method of dealing with fears, as described in this class?
Answer:
Aharon HaKohen was afraid because he saw them kill Chur for opposing them, and he feared that they would do the same to him. Are you asking how it is possible that even our Gedolim and the biggest tzaddikim can become afraid? Is that what you mean to ask?
Question:
What I mean to ask is, why didn’t Aharon HaKohen just use the method that the Rav has explained here, in order to solve his fear of getting killed.
Answer:
The answer to this is because even the greatest tzaddik is not always completely attached to Hashem in total d’veykus, and for this reason, there is room for fear even in the biggest tzaddikim. This is known as the concept of “tzeil haguf” (“body shadow”) – since even the greatest tzaddikim ultimately have physical body, there is always some part of a tzaddik that is not attached completely to Hashem, and this is why there is no tzaddik who is perfect.
Yet it is always possible for a person to minimize his fears, using the method described here in this class. Although we can never totally uproot all of our fears, there is a very big difference between someone who has is consumed by fears with someone who has greatly minimized his fears.
There is also one more kind of fear which we did not speak about in this class: fears caused by sinning. We find that Yaakov Avinu was afraid of Esav, even though Hashem promised him that he would not be harmed, because he was afraid that perhaps he had sinned in the interim and that he was no longer worthy of Hashem’s protection. However, in order for this kind of fear to be holy, a person needs to be balanced out with feeling Hashem’s closeness. If one feels that Hashem is close by, then it is valid for him to fear the effects of sin. But if one does not feel this closeness, then fearing the effects of the sin is not a holy kind of fear.
Question:
So is this something else we need to fear (to fear the effects of sin)?
Answer:
Yaakov Avinu had this fear, of being afraid of the effects of a possible sin. But even this fear that he had was ultimately stemming from the “tzeil haguf” (“body shadow”), from the physical body of a tzaddik, the part which is not completely and perfectly attached with Hashem. But Yaakov Avinu had a balance between the inner layer of the soul (which contains no fear, for it is part and parcel with Hashem), and the outer layers of the soul, which fears sin. If a person does not feel enough closeness with Hashem, he will be dominated by more fears, fear of sin included. If a person becomes more connected to Hashem and he feels closer to Him, he is calmed on the inside, and the outer part of the self which feels the effects of fear will stay in balanced proportion. This is the kind of fear which our tzaddikim had. They had a fear of sin, which was equally balanced with a great feeling of closeness to Hashem.
Question:
When a person fears the effects of a sin, does this fear exist even in the inner part of the soul which only feels closeness to Hashem? Or does it exist only on the outer layers of the soul that experiences fear?
Answer:
The inner part of the soul feels a complete closeness with Hashem, so it is not possible in that point to feel any fear of sin, because the inner part of the soul is above the point of sin. Therefore, when a person feels this part of the soul where he is completely attached with Hashem, there is no fear of sin, because there is no possibility of sin there.
Question:
So whenever a person feels a fear, it is a sign that something is wrong and that he needs to improve in some area? Does it mean that he has sinned, or that he is not close enough yet to Hashem? Fear is thus entirely a symptom that something is wrong?
Answer:
You have defined it correctly. If a person is feeling a very intense fear, it is a sign that something is amiss. But if you keep feeling an alternation between fear and feeling close to Hashem – in other words, at the same time that you feel calmed by the knowledge that Hashem is near you, you are stilling experiencing a fear – this is called pachad d’kedushah, “holy fear”. If you do not feel that you are moving back and forth between these two feelings, it is a sign though that something is wrong [and that you need to work on your relationship with Hashem].
Question:
Is it possible for one to have fears that come from his previous gilgul (soul reincarnation)? And if it is possible, is a person allowed to take away his fears by going to a hypnotizer?
Answer:
Yes, it is possible that one’s fears come from a previous gilgul. Rav Chaim Vital said that his Rebbi, the Arizal, said that some of his fears came from his previous lifetime. Whenever the Arizal heard that someone had been killed, he felt fear, and he said that this was because in a previous gilgul, he had been one of the Ten Martyrs who were killed by the Romans.
As for going to a hypnotizer, this is not the ideal solution to solve our fears. First of all, you have to do your research on the hypnotizer in question and find out if he is a real ben Torah, who genuinely observes Torah and mitzvos. But even if he is a frum hypnotizer, there is a more inner issue involved with turning to hypnosis in order to deal with our fears: it would only be removing the outer garments of our fears, and it would not be uprooting the fear at its root. We want to get to the root of the fear and uproot it totally, as opposed to just removing its symptoms. The inner solution to fears which we have said here, which gets to the root of fear, is: that there is a deep place in our soul where we can feel close to Hashem and that we are with Him. This soothes our soul from all fears.
Categories
