Giving My Heart: Learning to Watch Your Own Mind

“And I gave my heart…” A Strange Way to Speak King Solomon opens the Book of Ecclesiastes with these words: “And I gave my heart to seek and to search out with wisdom.” The heart is puzzled. Does a thought need to be “given”? A person thinks on his own. Thoughts come by themselves. They roll in and fill the head, day and night. So what does Solomon mean by “I gave my heart”? He speaks like someone who hands something over on purpose: knowingly, by choice, with intent. From this comes a great new insight, and that insight is the whole point. Two Levels of Thinking A person’s thinking has two levels. The first level is thoughts that drop into your head. You are sitting, and suddenly a thought comes up. It might be about making a living, or about yesterday, or about what to eat at the Sabbath meal. The thought happens to you. You find yourself inside it, though you never decided to go in. This is how most people live, most of the time. The Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, describes this in chapter 12. These are thoughts that come even to the “in-between person,” an ordinary person who is neither wholly righteous nor wicked, and who does not rule over his heart. The second level is a thought that you own. It is not just happening to you. You are looking at it. You “have” the thought, so to speak, like something you hold in your hand. You stand beside it and watch it take shape. This is what Solomon means by “I gave my heart.” It is a choice to turn your awareness toward the act of thinking itself, and not only toward what the thought is about. Here is the new insight. Seeing is not the same as looking. Seeing means your eyes are open and the picture comes in. Looking means you turn yourself toward something, you give it your attention, you choose to see. In the same way, an ordinary thought is not the same as “I gave my heart.” The highest gift of the human mind is not sharpness, and it is not knowledge. It is the ability to watch what is happening inside your mind while it is happening. To the Heart of Every Jew My brother, you know what I am talking about. You are standing in prayer. You begin the blessings before “Hear, O Israel.” Suddenly a thought arrives. You did not ask for it, and you did not want it. It might be about making a living, or a conversation from yesterday, or some small worry that has stuck to you and will not let go. So you fight it: “Go away! Not here! Later!” Sometimes it seems that the fight itself makes the thought stronger. When we pay attention to something we do not want, we tighten its grip on us. So what is the way? Not fighting. Looking. The moment you notice the thought, you are no longer the same person. You are not swallowed by it. You see it. Here is the thought, and here are you, and between the two of them there is space. That small space makes all the difference. The Tzemach Tzedek, the third Lubavitch Hasidic leader, and the Maharal of Prague, the great sixteenth-century sage, both teach that there is power in the idea that “the mind rules over the heart.” What does “rules” mean? It does not have to mean that the mind wipes the feeling out. It means that the mind watches, recognizes and is aware. Whoever watches from above is in control. Whoever is swallowed up is controlled. This is why Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, teaches in chapter 28 that even the in-between person must not let these thoughts settle in and make themselves at home. He does not mean that you must crush them by force. You simply do not give them a foothold. How? You notice them from a distance, and that alone takes away their power. Closing This is the “giving of the heart” King Solomon speaks of. It is an active choice, made by someone who has turned the act of thinking itself into his field of inner work. He pays attention not only to what he is thinking, but to the fact that he is thinking. The very second he notices, he is already “giving.” He is no longer just passively “receiving.” At its deepest level, this is the meaning of the “image of Hashem” in every person. Hashem watches over His world and guides it, and nothing is hidden from Him. When a person becomes a watcher over his own inner world, he becomes like his Maker. Through that very act of looking, he opens his heart to Hashem.