Guard Your Heart

“Above all that you guard, guard your heart, for life flows out from it.” A Painful Question There is a question that cuts like a sword. Every time it seems I have finally sorted something out, whether my home, this relationship or that situation, why does another one come up in its place? The faces are new, but the sting is the same. The anger is the same. The exhaustion is the same. A person sits and wonders: how much more strength will I pour into trying to fix everything around me? The Foundation King Solomon, who wrote a book about the human being, said: “Above all that you guard, guard your heart, for life flows out from it.” Notice exactly what the verse says. It does not say that life flows *into* the heart, as if the heart only receives. It says life flows *out from* it. Everything in a person’s life comes out of the heart and takes on the heart’s colors. That includes everything he goes through and everything he “feels” is happening to him. The world outside is only raw material. The heart is the workshop where it is shaped. In other words, “life” is not a separate force acting on you. You have a heart, and it shapes what you experience from within itself. The Inner Work That sharpens the question. If life flows out from the heart, why do we spend so much strength trying to change the people and things around us? Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, explains how the animal soul works. This is the self-centered side of us. When it is in charge, anything that does not go the way it wants feels like an insult or a threat. It feels like something broken that needs fixing, and always in the other person. It is very easy to see what is wrong outside. It is very hard to sit down and ask: what is it in me that fell into this same trap again? If my anger depends on how someone else behaves, then my anger is not really mine. It belongs to him. I have handed another person the key to my inner world, and now I sit and wait for him to give it back. This is slavery of the most hidden kind. The real work is just what the verse says: “Guard your heart.” Watch over your heart. Work on it. Refine it. That is where the kingdom that truly belongs to you is found. Same Problem, New Face You may ask: why does the same trouble keep coming back? I tried to keep away from a certain person, and someone else showed up in his place. He was exactly the same type and brought exactly the same test. Here we touch the heart of what the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, taught about Hashem’s personal providence: Hashem guides every detail. This teaching appears in Keter Shem Tov, a collection of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings. Every person you meet and every situation that comes your way is not chance. It is a precise emissary from Hashem, carrying a message you have not yet heard. Until the inner change happens, Hashem will keep sending the same emissary, dressed in different clothes. The problem is not the messenger. The problem is that the letter has not been opened yet. You are not here to educate the people around you. You are here to read the letter. Something New, and a Comfort There is a new idea here, and it is also a great comfort. The goal is not to build a perfect world around you that will never bother you. Such a world does not exist. Even if you built it, your heart would find something new to get upset about, because the cause is not outside. The goal is to build an inner “self” that the world cannot shake from its place. This is what “Above all that you guard, guard your heart” means. Guard your heart more than anything else. This is not so that nothing will touch you. It is so that when something does touch you, there will be a heart there that is whole and quiet. Something deep in it will not be carried away by that first rush of feeling. As the Mishnah, an early collection of our Sages’ teachings, says: “Who is truly strong? The one who conquers his own evil inclination,” the inner voice that pulls us toward wrong. Not the one who conquers the world.