QUESTION:
Before I ask my question I would like to express my hakaros hatov to the Rav. With the help of the Rav’s talmidim and through the Rav’s, teachings I have B”H been zoche to begin building my inner world for the past year. I literally feel like I have converted to Judaism and have never had such a year of spiritual growth. My dilemma is as follows. I am someone who by nature has a very outgoing personality and I love schmoozing with people and enjoy their company. However, since I’ve been a child, when I meet people who are wealthier, better looking, funnier, cooler, etc… I begin to feel terrified and totally shut down. I am unable to talk and my heart pounds away. These people I think awaken a feeling of shiflus (unworthiness) in me, and I feel unworthy to talk to them and to be their friend. I know this is wrong to think and I have learnt all the mussar about how people are nothing in terms of impressing them and have tried setting it in my heart literally thousands of times, but to no avail. This causes me tremendous emotional pain, and my parents have spent thousands of dollars on therapist and medications for me. At the same time, when I am feeling “myself” and am not nervous around people I am the center of attention and the funniest, quickest guy in the group. When I am in that zone I develop a tremendous amount of gaavah (conceit) and have a very hard time connecting to Hashem and my Torah learning, because of the gaavah which blocks the connection. This problem was so bad that for a couple of months the psychiatrists thought I was “bipolar” because I would go from being the loudest guy to being withdrawn, quiet, and depressed. B”H that diagnosis was wrong but I am still struggling immensely to stay afloat emotionally and mentally. So I would like to ask the Rav: Should I be working on fixing my middah of shiflus (feelings of unworthiness), or should I be working on my middah of yirah (awareness of Hashem)? And what should I be doing about the gaavah I have when I am feeling good [about myself]? Also how should I go about practically working on this?
ANSWER:
You should set aside some time alone to yourself (making sure you are also balanced by having friends and enjoying being around them), and build for yourself a world of your “self”, your own internal world, an internal space where there is just you, alone, and which only you can enter. It is the internal world of connection to yourself, to the good that is in you, to your very “I”. Thereafter, whenever you meet other people who awaken feelings of unworthiness in you, you can enter within, into your very existence, and from there, you can receive strength and inspiration. For now, don’t bust yourself trying to fix the trait of gaavah, until after you have solidly built for yourself an inner world of your own.
The foundation of repairing all problems is when you have built your own inner world, with a strong and powerful connection to your inner self. It is a pure and subtle connection to who you are: to your true self. In order to do it, you should identify the most positive aspect of your personality and connect to it - on the intellectual level, on the emotional level, and on a “soul” level. And you should actively connect to that positive aspect of your personality. You should accustom yourself to sitting with yourself alone at times, in silence, and slowly you can gain a love for this silence. It is recommended that you listen to the series of ארבעת היסודות – הכרת הנפש (Four Elements – Self-Recognition), and to practically act upon those lessons.
It is for you to reflect upon and understand that a person has an “inner world” – a complete world, in and of itself. In contrast to this inner space in yourself, there is also the outer part of your existence, which turns outward to others. As long as a person isn’t strongly connected to his own inner world, his encounters with others will cause him to go outward from himself, and the person will try to adapt himself to his surroundings, and he will be very reactive to whatever takes place outside of him. That is why, in your situation, when you meet people whom you feel are successful, you feel unworthy about yourself, and your inner core is being influenced and shaped by what takes place outside of you.
In contrast to this, if you would become stronger within yourself, you wouldn’t be that reactive to others. You would be only minimally reactive to them, so you wouldn’t be as affected from others, and also, the frequency of your reactiveness to others would also be a lot less, and it wouldn’t affect you on such a core level. Becoming strongly connected to your own inner self would allow you to be more comfortable around others, because you wouldn’t feel a need to be the center of the social circle. It is very possible that others have certain expectations from you and they want you to be a certain way, and that is why you also expect this from yourself, to try to become more popular and be noticed by others. But when people seek social approval, this actually stems from an inner emptiness, to take leave of one’s true self, and a desperate attempt to show others “who I really am” - but it is actually not who you really are.
Therefore, whether the issue is feeling unworthy or feeling a need to be popular amongst your peers because you aren’t strongly connected enough to your true self, the solution is to reveal your own inner world and to enter it regularly. The more you will live like this, most of your issues will be solved, with siyata d’shmaya.
The foundation of repairing all problems is when you have built your own inner world, with a strong and powerful connection to your inner self. It is a pure and subtle connection to who you are: to your true self. In order to do it, you should identify the most positive aspect of your personality and connect to it - on the intellectual level, on the emotional level, and on a “soul” level. And you should actively connect to that positive aspect of your personality. You should accustom yourself to sitting with yourself alone at times, in silence, and slowly you can gain a love for this silence. It is recommended that you listen to the series of ארבעת היסודות – הכרת הנפש (Four Elements – Self-Recognition), and to practically act upon those lessons.
It is for you to reflect upon and understand that a person has an “inner world” – a complete world, in and of itself. In contrast to this inner space in yourself, there is also the outer part of your existence, which turns outward to others. As long as a person isn’t strongly connected to his own inner world, his encounters with others will cause him to go outward from himself, and the person will try to adapt himself to his surroundings, and he will be very reactive to whatever takes place outside of him. That is why, in your situation, when you meet people whom you feel are successful, you feel unworthy about yourself, and your inner core is being influenced and shaped by what takes place outside of you.
In contrast to this, if you would become stronger within yourself, you wouldn’t be that reactive to others. You would be only minimally reactive to them, so you wouldn’t be as affected from others, and also, the frequency of your reactiveness to others would also be a lot less, and it wouldn’t affect you on such a core level. Becoming strongly connected to your own inner self would allow you to be more comfortable around others, because you wouldn’t feel a need to be the center of the social circle. It is very possible that others have certain expectations from you and they want you to be a certain way, and that is why you also expect this from yourself, to try to become more popular and be noticed by others. But when people seek social approval, this actually stems from an inner emptiness, to take leave of one’s true self, and a desperate attempt to show others “who I really am” - but it is actually not who you really are.
Therefore, whether the issue is feeling unworthy or feeling a need to be popular amongst your peers because you aren’t strongly connected enough to your true self, the solution is to reveal your own inner world and to enter it regularly. The more you will live like this, most of your issues will be solved, with siyata d’shmaya.
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