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268 | A New Light
danger, heaven will not answer you and you will not bring about a
change in yourself, but you will continue to sin, and cravings will
continue to burn in you—and who knows what you will come to….
What Are You Praying For?
Thus, the principal theme of your prayer must be attaining
will and not your request for Hashem to save you. When a
person only asks for Hashem to save him spiritually but he does not
possess wholeness of intent, he is lacking a great deal. To explain:
let us say that a person wants to guard his eyes, but he is still far
from possessing the wholeness of intent. Can he say to Hashem: “I
need to guard my eyes, and if I do not, I am as good as dead…”?
That isn’t really how he feels. Heaven wants to help a person guard
his eyes more than he himself wants to. But what can heaven do
if this person does not have “hands” to receive? A person needs
these “hands,” which are the will. Therefore, pray to receive the
will.
If a person wants Hashem to save him so that he will be able to
guard his eyes even though he lacks the “hands”—the will—this
means that, practically speaking, he wants to be blind—because
how else will heaven help him guard his eyes? It can only do so if,
heaven forbid, he is blind. Then he can no longer damage himself
by looking inappropriately.
The same applies to all cravings. A person wants to stop having
a craving—for instance, he wants to nullify his craving for eating—
but he is far from having wholeness of intent. If he demands of
Hashem, “Help me right now stop having the craving to eat, and
if not, I am as good as dead,” heaven can only do that by making
him sick. But heaven wants to give a person his salvation in a good
and complete form. Therefore, the essence of this person’s request
must be: “Completely nullify my eating for the sake of satisfying my
appetite. May my entire intent be only to eat for the sake of doing
Your will, because Your wisdom decreed that a person must eat in
order to bring about spiritual clarifications. Give me the wholeness
of will to always eat sedately, with decorum, with dignity. Give me
the wholeness of will to eat sitting down. Give me the wholeness of
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cry out to Hashem regarding spiritual goals, “You must save me!”
many of them told me that these words fill them with great fervor
to do the work of the will.
Everything depends on how a person interprets these words.
When a person understands clearly that Hashem wants to save him
and is only waiting for his work—meaning that the essence is his
work—these words give him great impetus and he engages in the
work stormily, with all his might and with all his fervor. But if a
person is seeking to release himself from the yoke of work, and he
thinks that this way is a shortcut and he cries out to Hashem, “You
must save me!” superficially and without truly working on his will
and feelings, then it is forbidden for him to tell Hashem, “You must
save me!” because these words anesthetize him and give him the
justification to continue to remain on his level. He throws all of the
work onto Hashem and thinks that he himself does not have to do
anything.
Thus, although this wonderful practice inspires one person to
work, it takes away another person’s sense of the yoke of service.
From here, I learned that different people interpret subtle and
delicate points in faith in accordance with their will. One person is
inspired to work, and another falls into a deep sleep.
Bring Receipts
Therefore, I have hedged this about with many explanations:
that a person should tell Hashem, “You must save me!” only with
true feeling. Also, when we tell Hashem, “You must save me!” we
must bring “receipts.” There is no better receipt than a person’s
habituation to doing the work of the will at a set time every day.
That constitutes the proof that he has true will. And now when
he asks to attain a strong and mighty will, that is a request that is
reasonable and pleasing, and it is accepted.
Similarly, the essence of prayer and request is to ask Hashem to
give us the will itself, because that is a person’s essential quality
that he may not compromise in the least. Therefore, when we
tell Hashem, “You must,” the essence of our request is to say to