The Two Judges Within

This week in our Tanya class we continued with the Benoni, the in-between person. It is a comforting teaching, because the Benoni is not someone who has stopped struggling. He feels the pull of the animal soul and the pull of the divine soul, and the Tanya describes these two impulses as internal judges. One judge speaks in the voice of fear, shame, and doubt. The other speaks in the voice of love, trust, and compassion. Both are allowed to present their opinion. What the Tanya is teaching us is that neither one gets to rule. We are not the fear, and we are not the anxiety. We are the one who listens, and who chooses.

So much changes when we can hold our inner life this way. When a wave of fear rises, we do not have to become it. We can picture it as one judge on a panel, offering its opinion, and we can notice that there is another voice on that same panel offering something gentler. In the language of inner work, this is what it means to unblend from our parts. The moment we witness the fear instead of drowning in it, a little space opens, and in that space we are free.

And then the Tanya says something tender. There is a third judge, and that judge is G-d Himself, who comes to help the good inclination. On our own, the pull of survival can feel so strong and so physical that we are sure it will win. But a small candle lights up a whole dark room. A little help from above gives the divine soul the advantage, like the advantage of light over darkness. We are not doing this work alone.

The King Is in the Field

All of this lands even more deeply because we are in the month of Elul. There is a well known parable that during Elul the King is in the field. He does not wait for us in the palace, dressed in our finest and behaving perfectly. He comes out to meet us in the field, where we are wearing our ordinary clothes, where there is mud and there are thorns. G-d meets us exactly where we are, in the mess, in the honesty of our real life.

One of the students shared something honest and painful, that Elul can start to feel like the same performance every year, showing up without feeling anything. I do not want to smooth that over, because it is a real feeling. But I also see so much yearning in it. The willingness to show up, even when we feel empty, is itself precious in the eyes of G-d. He is not only present when we are inspired and on fire. The voice of the divine soul is very quiet and very subtle. Sometimes the deepest spiritual work is not a high at all. It is becoming more grounded, more present, more here.

The heart of Elul is the verse, I am to my Beloved and my Beloved is to me. We take the first step. We do the work of peeling back the layers, of feeling what we are feeling, of turning toward G-d and saying, help me, I cannot do this alone. And then He meets us. He gives us the strength to return to the truth of who we are underneath all the protective layers we have built.

If you take one thing from this week, let it be this. Whatever you are facing, G-d is rooting for the good in you to win. He is with you on that side. So when the fear feels loud, open even a pinhole. Ask for help. And trust that you are being met, exactly as you are, right there in the field.

With love,
Miriam