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Love, Awe and Joy In the realm of attributes and attitudes is an important three. These are Love, Awe and Joy.[1] (1) Love parallels Giving, which in turn leads to health/wealth. (2) Awe parallels Prayer, and therefore the power of self-discipline, as well as drawing down heavenly help and performing of miracles. (3) Joy parallels Wisdom, which creates for us a path to success and achievement. Along these lines, let's look at another teaching: ...the students of our father Avraham have (1) a generous eye, (2) are not greedy, and (3) are humble ... whereas, the students of the evil Bilaam have a mean eye, are greedy and grasping, and are arrogant ... the first inherit eternity ... the latter are destroyed ...[2] Having a generous eye parallels Love. Not being greedy and grasping leads to Joy. Being humble in the face of our giant, magnificent universe, allows us to experience feelings of Awe. Three Relationships We enjoy three types of relationships. These are (1) our interaction with other people, (2) our connection with the Creator, and (3) our relationship with ourselves. These three we can link to the three pillars as follows: (1) To interact successfully with other people, we should focus on showing Kindness to them, on giving to them. (2) To connect ourselves with the Creator, our main vehicle is Prayer. (3) To build our relationship with ourselves, to grow and improve ourselves, depends on Wisdom -- on knowing and understanding ourselves.[3] We can also link these three types of relationships with our three areas of need, (1) our physical needs, (2) our emotional needs, and (3) our intellectual, or spiritual, needs. By investing energy into the three pillars, we feed and boost our three needs. [1] The acronym for these three words in Hebrew, אהבה - love, יראה - awe, and שמחה - joy, is איש, which indicates a person of importance. [2] Pirkei Avos 5.20 [3] Our relationship with ourselves is also a relationship with the Creator, for the soul of a person is "a part of G-d above." (Iyov 31.2) |
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