QUESTION:
I feel deeply connected to ruchniyus whenever I focus on how much I love Hashem or fear Hashem or on my emunah in Hashem, in all the different levels – and that’s when I feel ohr (the light). But when I do mitzvos, all I feel is my kavanah when doing the mitzvah but I don’t feel anything about the actual mitzvah I’m doing. Just to give an example of how far this goes, when I’m putting on tefillin, I feel that I’m doing something so special and holy, but I also know that if someone were to come and remove the parshiyos from my tefillin, I would still feel the same that I’m doing something holy! My feelings of kavanah and feeling connected to Hashem through the mitzvah of tefillin would stay the same! In other words, I’m not really feeling the actual ohr of doing the mitzvah, because it’s not the mitzvah I’m concerned about, it’s my own feelings of ruchniyus that have nothing to do with the mitzvah. I can shake arba minim and feel so connected to them, but if someone were to switch my beautiful kosher esrog for an esrog that’s not kosher, I wouldn’t feel anything has changed ! I daven and I feel connected to Hashem, but if I were to say the wrong words, like if I would say Baruch Agid instead of Baruch Atah, I would feel the same connected when I daven - I would feel like I still have the same deep kavanah when I daven and that I’ve merely switched around the order of the words. Why am I like this and how can I change this?
ANSWER:
You have the ohr, but you don’t have the kli – you aren’t building a container to house all of the ruchniyus that you are feeling. You should learn halachah l’maaseh (the practical halachah), and you should be careful to follow every halachah you learn, with the clear recognition that this is what Hashem wants from you, and you should do this with every detail of halachah you learn, even the smallest detail of a halachah, that this is all the ratzon Hashem. This is you should connect yourself to the power of maaseh (action) in general, and to being careful with every detail of halachah specifically, to become deeply connected to each mitzvah act with all of your nefesh.
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