Conquer your yetzer hara without sacrificing your ‘self’

“I’m so upset with myself for getting bored and antsy after learning for such a short time. So I keep pushing myself to sit for longer, even though I know it’ll be really hard.”

“I feel so frumpy wearing this long, modest skirt. But I’m doing the right thing. That’s all that matters, right?”

“I’m getting so much enjoyment from my volunteer work with special-needs kids. Oy… I know that sounds selfish.”

Many of us associate spiritual growth with hardship. Pain. Stress. Discomfort. Mitzvos are supposed to be difficult, we tell ourselves. If we’re not at the edge of our tolerance, we just aren’t serving Hashem properly.

After all, don’t the classic mussar works teach that life is supposed to be a constant war between us and our yetzer hara?

Yes, they do teach that. But they also maintain that we’re supposed to serve Hashem b’simcha. With joy. Contentment. Inner peace.

Spending life in the trenches of a desperate inner battle doesn’t exactly sound joyful or peaceful, does it?

So what’s true? What should we be aspiring to?

To start with, let’s make sure we have the right definition of the term “war.”

Some wars, like ours against Amalek, are waged simply to eradicate an enemy. Others, like Dovid Hamelech’s war against Avshalom’s revolt, are only fought to restore peace. Those types of wars don’t usually end with mass destruction, but with men in suits and ties gathering civilly around a nice mahogany negotiating table.

As we mentioned last week, Rav Yisrael explains that man has both a yetzer tov and a yetzer hara – a conscientious intellect, and a more earthly element that seeks physical and emotional gratification. In order to survive, both these elements need “feeding” and attention.

It’s easy to assume that Torah and mitzvos nourish our intellect, while our emotional needs must be met through lowly materialism. But that would leave us stuck in a constant state of tug-o-war, stretched painfully in opposite directions. Not exactly ideal conditions for a life of simcha.

Simcha comes when we reach a state of shleimus, completeness and inner peace. When our intellect and human cravings are no longer competing for nourishment, but are actually being fed from the same source – Torah and mitzvos.

Think that sounds impossible? Well, remember those words from the Shema that we quoted in last week’s email? By commanding us to love Hashem “b’chol levavcha,” the Torah teaches that we can nourish both our inclinations through avodas Hashem.

Alright, so we can. But how?

As we just discovered, war doesn’t always call for total destruction. Instead of stamping out our “human” element, we can take it to the negotiating table and convince it to change sides. We can make peace between our yetzer hara and our yetzer tov.

How? By becoming diplomats. By opening a dialogue with our resistant yetzer hara. By meeting it where it is. That way, it won’t need to be forced to surrender. It will actually want to join our side, to help us in our avodas Hashem.

Join us next week, for our first negotiation class.