The Necessity to be Connected to the Process

Shiur 3 – The Necessity to be Connected to the Process

I want to clarify the main point that we have made so far in the past two vaadim. I will begin by stating what we are not saying. We are not saying that every time a person wants to achieve something, he first needs to set up a mehalech which will bring him to his goal, and the more mesudar that the mehalech is, the better. This is technical and is not something for us to work on.

Rather, we are discussing the following idea: A person needs to develop deep ratzonos, and the only way to manifest these ratzonos is through a mehalech (a process of development).

Our problem with this is that we do not connect with the mehalech but only with the end product of the ratzon.

I just saw this while in chutz laaretz with people who spend most of their day scrolling on their phones. Such a person doesn’t really want anything. Instead, he waits to be impressed by something. He is waiting for something to catch his attention. This means that he is living without ratzonos and without a mehalech.

Wanting the process itself

Nowadays, with all of the modern technology, we are losing the process. When I was in Switzerland, I needed to go and supervise the production of my milk. I needed to go very early in the morning. I needed to stand with a clean kli, watch that the milking was being done correctly, and then take it home and boil it. The process then culminated with a cup of milk. Nowadays, all we need to do is click on Amazon to order what we want. There is no process anymore!!

Nowadays, more people than ever are fulfilling mitzvos and learning Torah, and we are all doing this seriously, but we are not growing from it. Why not? We are only connected with the end product, not the process. One doesn’t grow from the end product!

In our generation, we need to work on connecting with the process. We need to try this out on one small thing with a process. Take, for example, the process of tefillah. We cannot just come and stand before the Melech instantly. The whole tefillah is not just about saying everything with kavanah and then looking back to see if we did it properly. The correct perspective is to recognise that there is a process, a development taking place in our tefillah. 

Modern technology has killed the importance of the process.

In the olden days, the importance of the process was very natural. If a person wanted a table, they needed to take a piece of wood. Then they needed to make it straight. Then they needed to go through various stages of making it smooth until it was really smooth. After this, the legs needed to be made, and then everything needed to be connected. Nowadays, this has been lost. We go to a store and pick whatever fits our taste.

Every avreich wants to make an impact in the house. They want to fix something or build something. Even after being successful, they still won’t want to be a carpenter because they don’t connect with the process. Rather, they go through the process to be proud of themselves and to create what they set out to create. But the avreich is still not connected to the process.

On the other hand, the carpenter is connected with the process. This is the connection between ratzon and seder. A person might similarly observe that if he tries to buy a cake, etc., to save his wife from having to make it, this might, in fact, do the opposite of what he intended to achieve. She enjoys and is connected with the process of making the cake. By buying the cake from the bakery, you are taking away from her enjoyment of the process. The way she perceives the process is not merely an obstacle to the end product, but she enjoys the process itself.

Curiosity

In a similar vein, curiosity is bad. This is a point of contention with everyone that I tell this to. Curiosity is doing things with the hope that something might catch our interest. This is like someone scrolling down pages of modern devices looking for something to catch their interest.

 In Torah, a person can also be led by curiosity-he can jump from a tosefos to an interesting pshat in the parshah and then to an interesting story. He is not involved in a process. Curiosity comes from someone who is empty, but, to at least have something to do, they search for something to capture their attention momentarily. There is no process with curiosity-nothing develops, and nothing productive comes out of it!

 On the other hand, when a person is involved in a process, they are not being pushed by curiosity at all.

The aim of these vaadim

To set it out clearly again, what we want to achieve from these vaadim: Animals have a ratzon to hunt their prey, and they also work through a mehalech of slowly creeping up on it, etc. They also use a mehalech to achieve their ratzon. This is not what we are discussing. We are talking about growing from the ratzon. We are working on creating a ratzon that is connected to the process itself. The ratzon is interested in the process. 

When we work on ratzon, we intend to have a ratzon which creates a process that we are connected to. Our avodah is to find where we can become involved with our processes. The only way to build ourselves is through the esek (process) hatorah. The process, not the product, is what builds the person!

Let us give one final example. A person who wants to daven correctly might repeat the verse poseach es yodecha, etc., of Ashrei until he feels that he said it with kavanah, as halachah requires. This is a person who is only concerned with the end result. The person who connects with the process of davening realizes that davening itself is a process. From Baruch sheomar we reach yishtabach. From yishtabach, we reach the shemoneh esrei, and the shemoneh esrei itself is a process.

We need to work on wanting something, while at the same time being connected to the process through which our ratzonos are realised.

What I am speaking about is very clear from the sefer of my Rebbe, Alei Shor. He shows the process of building the middah. He doesn’t just show the inspiration of the middah, for example, Hashem being a baal chessed with Odom Harishon. Rather, he focuses on how to be involved in the process.

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Written by Rabbi Rapport