Parshat Shoftim: The Battle Rages Within

After detailing the laws of righteous judgment, of law and order in the land, Moshe passes along Hashem’s words concerning battle. “When you go to war against your enemies and you see horses and chariots in numbers greater than yours, do not fear them, because Hashem your Gd is with you, He who brought you from the land of Egypt.”1

Most of us do not go to war, but we do face enemies whose strength feels overwhelming. We feel ourselves confronted by endless responsibilities, each more important than the last, and in far greater number than the hours available to us. We feel trapped in situations, in habits, that feel unbreakable. We look at what we must do in this life, what we want to do, and it feels insurmountable. The obstacles are too great. The enemy is too strong. What is the Torah’s advice? “Hear, Israel! You are about to join battle with your enemy. Let not your courage falter. Do not be in fear, or in panic, or in dread of them. For it is Hashem your Gd who marches with you to do battle for you against your enemy, to bring you victory.”2

What the Torah teaches us here is that our enemy is not before us but within us. Our enemy is the fear that tells us that we cannot succeed in this venture. Our enemy is our doubt that keeps us glued to our bed with the stress of the day looming. Those are our enemies. It is not the day that we fight, it is our perception of the day. It is not the challenge we fight, but rather the nagging doubt in our minds that whispers: you cannot do this. You are not strong enough. Do not think that your strength lies in your power of action. You can slash away with all your might at invisible enemies and get nowhere. We must first know our true enemy if we want to win the war.

How do we fight this enemy? We find Hashem in the fight. We close our eyes and steady our breathe and just watch the battle raging within. Instead of being afraid, we simply watch the fear. Instead of doubting, we watch the doubt. We identify ourselves not with our enemy but with our consciousness. Our consciousness is the infinite fraction of Hashem within us. He is our higher perspective, the part of us that can see and feel every physical sensation happening in our body and still be outside of it. We are not that which we can watch. The next time your to-do list runs stressfully through your mind, do the thing that you least want to do – stop, breathe, and watch. You will not win the war by checking every to-do box. You will win the war by watching. You will win the war by breathing and feeling the peace within you. You will see that what you want is not found but realized. If what you want is something beyond, a prize for tomorrow’s achievement, you will remain forever chasing. What you want is right here right now. Just watch your body scream: run forward. Fight that enemy. We do not listen to such a voice. We simply stop and smile. You cannot control me anymore. You will not have me fighting from a place of fear. And we smile. “The devil...the prowde spirit...cannot endure to be mocked.”3

You will see Hashem always marches with us in these battles. It is we who forget that He is there. It is we that forget ourselves in our loops of fear and anxiety. We must simply fall behind the noise to our place of higher awareness. We must not fight the emotion. We must watch it. We must smile at it, for we know that every second we watch, it loses some of its power forever. We have been fighting a war of our own creation our entire lives. We think that we are our fear and we fight invisible enemies. Let us choose a different way. Let us choose to watch our fear without act on it. We then learn to live from this palace of higher awareness. When we do it ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times, then we become it. Then, we have won the war.

Many of us carry within us a contradiction. On one hand, we know that it is impossible to do all that we want. We cannot possibly be the best mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, friends, sons and daughters, and employees while staying healthy, feeding our passions, praying, reading, learning, and writing. Yet, despite that we know it is impossible, we feel inadequate. We feel not enough. We feel like failures. “It is not up to you to finish the task, but you are not free to avoid it.”4 We are not expected to be perfect. We are not expected to do the impossible. We are expected only to show up. “There is no losing heart.” (Rebbe Nachman) Realize that as long as we try harder to do the impossible, we remain trapped, fighting the wrong enemy. As the Ramchal says, “This is one of the tactics of the yetzer horah...to burden people’s minds with toil...so that they are not left with any time to contemplate and examine which path in life they are traveling.”5 Break the cycle. See that the real enemy is our destructive mind that burdens us with the impossible. Seek Hashem in your higher awareness. Use affirmations, write, dance, pray. Do whatever it is you must do. But do not stay caught in this trap. Self-hatred is not a virtue.

Often we feel that if we change the rules of the game and identify the true enemy in the equation, then we will lose motivation. For most of us, our fear has motivated us, at times even towards holiness and goodness. What are we if we are not our fear. Perhaps we will be lazy? Unmotivated? This is an absolute lie. What is the greatest motivator of all? Love and joy. If we truly let go of our fear, we will not be lazy. Rather, we will be so filled with energy and fire, that we will have the strength to go further than almost anyone else. Living with an abusive relationship with ourselves – where we are constantly judging ourselves, hating ourselves, berating ourselves for not doing the impossible – is exhausting. It is not holy even if we think it is motivating us towards holiness. The yetzer hora is happy for us to keep kosher and live motivated by our fear. He can then convince us that it is our fear that makes us holy, not our intrinsic and powerful soul.

When Am Yisrael goes to war against Amalak in Parshat Bishalach, Moshe stands on a hill overlooking the battle. When Moshe raises his hands, the tide of battle shifts in the favor of Yisrael. As his hands begin to tire and drop, the battle shifts towards Amalak. We must remember that our true battle is always a spiritual one. When our hands are risen high, then we remember that victory depends not on swords and spears but on walking with Him. May we merit to always identify our true enemy. May we have the strength to look within and see that our true enemy cannot be beaten without help from above, from Hashem, from our higher awareness.

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