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The Way We See

The way we see things makes all the difference. See your happiness and success as coming from heavens, and it will come from the heavens. See your happiness and success coming from the earth, and you will search for it here on earth.

The Jews, who wandered in the desert for forty years after leaving Egypt, lived on bread that fell from the heavens. But, you can ask, surely bread that comes from the earth is as much of a miracle? The answer is the above idea. Since they turned their eyes to the heavens, they received their nourishment from the heavens.*

* Lev Eliyahu, Parshas Va'eira.

Imagine

Here is a marvelous device -- worth its weight in real gold. This is, imagine yourself as doing good deeds, great deeds.

Picture yourself helping others, encouraging them, writing checks for widows, dancing at the weddings of orphans, etc.

Picture yourself praying before the Throne of Glory -- drawing down with your prayers, an overflow of goodness, health, happiness -- for yourself, your community, your world.

Imagine yourself sitting with history's leading teachers, listening to their lessons, building up your knowledge, absorbing into yourself a powerful light and energy. See yourself also, giving over these concepts to others.*

See yourself doing great things -- and turbo charge all that you are.

* The heavens count a good thought as a deed, and give us credit for it (Kiddushin 40a). We normally understand this to mean that if a person intends to do a good deed, and in the end, cannot carry it through, he receives the merit of having done it. However, we can likewise explain that it speaks of any and every good thought we have.

Here is a support for this idea. The Torah commands us to sanctify the Creator's name (Vayikra 22.32). This means that, even under the threat of death, we should refuse to transgress a cardinal sin. The No'am Elimelech, in his Tzetel Koton, teaches that when we imagine ourselves in such a situation, choosing to enter a burning fire rather than sinning, we receive merit like one who actually fulfilled it.

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