Today I was reminded of something the Tanya mentioned a few weeks ago:
"Learning Torah reveals tremendous amounts of light in the upper worlds.. but only prayer draws that light down into this world."The shacharit prayer is constructed such that there's an ascension in the first half, a silent focused prayer at the pinnacle of the world, and then a descent back to earth in the second half... It's during the second half where we draw the light back down into this world.
Sadly I usually rush through the second part of the tefillah, even though, when you think about it, if you don't invest energy in bringing the light down, you climbed all the way up for nothing.
(of course not entirely nothing, and I could explain why at length, but let's just say for now, what Rebbe Nachman says, no positive action or good intent is ever lost.)
2 comments:
It's hard work reaching that pinnacle, as we're reminded every chag and R'Ch when we add ya'aleh v'yavo. But what's hardest for me is right when we reach that pinnacle is when we start complaining about what bad people we are; on those rare occasions when I've reached down into myself and been able to really daven with feeling, we fall right into Ashamnu...
Redsneakz .. I don't remember any sources that answered your question but might I share a thought?
Whenever you receive something extremely generous, something beyond our imagination, we always (at least me) feel like we don't deserve it.
(There is specifically the inyan of nahamah d'kissufin, which basically is this in a more extreme way la"d)
So perhaps the Ashamnu testifies to the fact that we really received something truly grand, if we hadn't we might not have felt so greatful and overwhelmed.
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