How do I bring what I know about Hashem from my head into my heart?

Rabbi Landau teaches that most people don't suffer because they don't know the truth. “They suffer because they can't live from the truth they already know.” The longest journey in life, he says, is from the head to the heart, and “information is not transformation.”

You know Hashem is in control, yet you still lie awake at night. You know everything happens for a reason, yet you still feel like everything depends on you.

Yirmiyahu HaNavi described this condition in one sentence: “Sakosah ve'anan lach me'avor tefillah,” You have covered Yourself with a cloud, so that prayer cannot pass through. Inside that cloud, every problem feels like your problem: fear, anxiety, loneliness, and the need to control everything. “We think we suffer from a thousand different problems. We have one, concealment, expressed in a thousand different ways.”

The cloud does not mean Hashem's light is gone; it means we can no longer experience it. Rabbi Landau ends with a striking realization: “I have been mourning the destruction of the Holy Temple for years. I never realized I was mourning my own life.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Information is not transformation. The longest journey in life is from the head to the heart.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

A person knows Hashem is in control, yet lies awake at night and feels that everything depends on him.

What may be behind it

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that this gap between what you know and what you feel is not your failure. It is what it means to be a soul inside a body, in a world where Hashem is hidden.

Deepest human truth

Behind fear, anxiety, loneliness, and the need for control is one cloud of concealment. The light is still there; we can no longer experience it, and removing the cloud changes everything.

More questions from this teaching

• Where do anxiety, loneliness, and the need to control everything come from?