From the Na'aleh newsletter for Parshat Re'eh, Rebbetzin Tziporah (Heller) Gottleib provides down-to-earth insight and targeted questions to help us get where we need to go (subheadings my own addition for easier reading):
What Elul Gives Us That Other Months Don't
In Elul, every step you take towards Hashem is rewarded with a certain level of Divine Providence not normally found during the rest of the year.
There’s a direct response where we can feel Hashem allowing Himself to come into our life.
There are different ways to draw close.
Part I of the Teshuvah Process
To begin the process, make a history of your life:
– Break it down to segments, such as early childhood, later childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and middle age.
– Focus on the smaller units of time where the critical stages in your development took place.
– Set aside a half hour or an hour to ask yourself,
“What were the important events that took place in my life at this time?”
Don’t intercept with judgment calls because then your narrative will become self -centered and less honest.
If you do this year by year, a sense of what is and isn’t important will emerge.
Part II of the Process
The next question should be,
– “How did I respond to these events?”
– Visualize yourself experiencing it all over again.
– Then ask,
(1) “Did my responses get me closer to where I wanted to be or did it take me further away?"
(2) "What was I thinking when I made these choices?"
(3) "Why did I make that choice?”
– Try to find patterns in both your good and bad decisions.
Sometimes your good deeds may have been prompted by the need to escape or for idealistic motives. Your slip-ups may have been caused by desire for social acceptance, or fear or ignorance.
You may discover that your good side was driven by the desire to be part of something larger than yourself, or in order to know the truth, or to ease your conscience.
"Middot are neither good or bad, It’s what you make up of them"
All this self- introspection is meant to lead you to your middot.
Middot are neither good or bad, It’s what you make up of them.
The Gra teaches that life is about perfecting ones middot.
“Tzadik v’ra lo” refers to someone with difficult middot.
When he succeeds in conquering or turning around his bad middot for the good, he becomes a tzaddik.
In Elul, every step you take towards Hashem is rewarded with a certain level of Divine Providence not normally found during the rest of the year.
There’s a direct response where we can feel Hashem allowing Himself to come into our life.
Just to sum up, here are the prime questions to ask as you examine your life:
And when she advises not to be judgmental when deciding which events were important in your life at that time, I think it means you need to be honest about what you truly found important, and not what others consider important.
For example, the twin sisters born to your family when you were 5 will be considered an important event by others, but maybe you experienced it as happening around you in a vague fog.
Instead, perhaps the new shoes you received around that time seem much more important to you; you still retain memories of the shoes' details and how they made you feel.
So don't judge the importance according to anyone's standards except your own.
- What were the important events that took place in my life at this time?
- Did my responses get me closer to where I wanted to be or did they take me further away?
- What was I thinking when I made these choices?
- Why did I make that choice?
And when she advises not to be judgmental when deciding which events were important in your life at that time, I think it means you need to be honest about what you truly found important, and not what others consider important.
For example, the twin sisters born to your family when you were 5 will be considered an important event by others, but maybe you experienced it as happening around you in a vague fog.
Instead, perhaps the new shoes you received around that time seem much more important to you; you still retain memories of the shoes' details and how they made you feel.
So don't judge the importance according to anyone's standards except your own.
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