Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Tefillah

This is just a nice idea I read about tefillah that helps me in my own tefillah. I saw it in praying with fire but I'd like to expand on it.
Why is it so hard for people to daven? One of the reasons, besides for not understanding the words, not being able to focus, or just simply feeling a detachment, which goes a little deeper is that people think who am I to be able to have a conversation with G-d and ask G-d for things that I need or want? People think that they are not on a high enough level to daven and feel that Hashem won't answer or listen to their tefillot because they are not spiritually great enough. Clearly we know that Tefillah is for everyone, and you can ask Hashem for anything at any time. Just look at the words of davening to prove this! It encompasses any request we can possibly have of Hashem. Even the smallest things can be found in tefillah.
I saw a nice idea to answer this q. There is a well known gemara that when a fetus is in the mothers womb, a malach teaches the baby the entire torah and all its secrets and when the baby is born the malach kisses the baby on the upper lip and the baby forgets everything and comes into this world with no knowledge of torah. The question is obviously whats the point? Why teach the baby all of torah, only to make him/her forget it?
When a person is learning, whether its in school, how to ride a bike, how to use a computer program, or any type of learning, it is easier to relearn something that they learned in the past and forgot, than to leran something completely new from scratch. The reason is that the skill is already embedded in them, they just have to reapply it. So to with Torah. When we come into this world, we have the task to re-learn torah and thus become close to Hashem. If we had never learned Torah before, this would be almost impossible becuase of the spiritual magnitude that would be impossible for us to reach in this world! Therefore, we are taught all of torah in the womb, creating a tremendous potential for each and every Jew. When we are born, we have the potential to learn the entire Torah on the exact level that it was taught to us before! If every person realized this, they would know their true potential and that they have the ability to reach such a high level of spirituality!
I think this in essence disproves the misconception that to daven to Hashem you have to be spiritualy great. Every person has the potential to reach that and therefore can reach out to become closer to Hashem and ask Hashem for anything. We just have to realize our potential and that every Jew has the ability to be spiritually as great as he/she was in the womb when the baby learned the entire torah directly from a malach.

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