"...Kriyat Yam Suf"

Welcome to Split The Sea, where I attempt to provide my dear readers with relevant advice on how to find success in dating, relationships and marriage. I hope you enjoy and benefit from this blog as much as possible.


Thursday, July 24, 2008

Let’s Go Apple Picking: How Do My Prayers Influence G-d?

It’s a complex matter, but this is the way I see it. G-d decides what you’re going to get based on the level you are on. Example: You are on Level 5, so you will be getting its corresponding Packet 5, which has certain things in store for you. If you want to receive a Level 10 packet, with more goodies, you need to work your way up to Level 10.

A single person who wants to get married has to reach the level where he or she is ready to receive the packet of ‘getting married’ in their life. Ready to receive? You might be thinking…well, I’m ready to receive it right now! Hmmm…are you?

Receiving what you desire is like apple picking. Jane is going apple picking. There are thousands of apples on the numerous trees in the orchard. She wants to pick several dozen apples, and then go home and bake apple pie, apple strudels, and apple turnovers to last her all winter. Jane really wants those apples.

If Jane were to walk to the apple orchards empty handed, and stand there picking apples, how would she take her apples home? At most she’d be able to carry maybe four apples in her arms.

Jane doesn’t walk into the apple orchard expecting to carry the apples home in her arms. Rather, she drives over to the orchard, brings 3 big baskets, and picks all the apples she wants. Then she drives the apple-laden baskets back home, at which point she has a lot of baking to do.

When a person wants to receive loads of goodies from Hashem, he or she needs a container, a vessel to hold all the blessing. The vessel which you use to collect the blessings from Hashem (the objects, events, goals you desire) is YOURSELF.

G-d is always sending forth blessing to everyone. G-d is the Source of Everything, and the Source of all Blessing, and all the blessing and goodness emanates from G-d. The thing is, a person may have their basket already full of hair rollers or something, and the blessings (G-d forbid!) may not be getting through. What to do? Empty out the basket!

The key factor in placing as much as possible into any container is that the container must be empty. If Jane’s baskets had been half filled with a bunch of hair rollers, she wouldn’t have been able to collect all the apples she wanted. Because you are the vessel, and because you want to fill it up with as much as possible, you need to make the vessel empty.

[Note: Please continue to eat your regular meals. You can go a day without eating, like on a religious fast, and you’ll feel empty. Your prayers might even be more readily answered. But that’s not a way to live every day, and it certainly is not the prime way to serve G-d. So please, eat 3 square meals a day so you can have enough energy to serve G-d as best as you possibly can.]

Right, so you’re living life normally, and eating. Then what does it mean to make oneself empty? A person must rid themselves of their ego, the ‘I’, the inner turmoil and busy consciousness that seems so important to most people – but one must realize that it’s mostly nonsense. The realization that I as a person am less than a speck of dust compared to the Almighty, BUT also that He, G-d, created the world for ME! – This helps create an optimal environment for receiving blessings from G-d.

In more practical terms, I like to use the term gratitude.

Expressing gratitude and appreciation to G-d for all He has given us is the key to being the kind of person who can receive more from G-d. In order to reach that higher level of yourself and therefore receive what you desire, feel gratitude and express your appreciation and thanks to G-d for what you already have. Feel joy about what G-d has already given you!

Hopefully, you have a lot to be thankful for. But even if all you can feel gratitude about is something ordinary - feel joy about and appreciate your computer, your cell phone, your new tube of makeup. Feel thanks about your health, your personality, your beauty, your intelligence - whatever it is that Hashem has given you, appreciate it and acknowledge that you received it from G-d Himself.

The next step, and this is a real revelation. Feel gratitude, joy and appreciation about that which you wish to attain, as if you have already received it! Once you have set in place the feelings of appreciation and joy about what you have already received, apply the same feelings to that which you desire to receive!

You want to get married? In your prayers and meditation, FEEL the joy and gratitude you would feel on your wedding day. Imagine the happiness and appreciation you would have for G-d and your spouse every single day of your married life.

When you feel that gratitude and joy, when you express your appreciation to G-d for having given you these wonderful gifts, you have brought yourself up to that higher level. By feeling the way you would feel upon receiving it, you create the space in the vessel that is yourself. At that moment G-d’s Blessing pours right in and overflows.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

if you are on level ten and you pray for something, while a level 5 prays for the opposite, do you get a 10-5 packet?

what if 200,000 level fives pray for something that 100,000 level eights are praying against? does god grant the highest total? there is a quantity vs. quality issue we must address...