590 - Transform Your Bitachon! (Part-27)

It is with great simcha and appreciation that today we begin the Torah sources of this tremendous journey of Bitachon. Today we begin to explore part one of the many sections we're going to be exploring as we've outlined in the previous sessions. So part one, what is Bitachon? Now of course this question really encompasses anything and everything we're ever going to learn about Bitachon because ultimately everything we learn about Bitachon will give us more clarity about what Bitachon truly is.

 

But this is an introduction to Bitachon to get a bit more clarity about what it means to rely on Hashem. What does Bitachon itself mean? How do we even translate the word Bittachon? So with Hashem's help let's begin our journey in Bitachon. The first source that we're going to explore is the Chovos Halevavos in the Shaar Habitachon, right at the beginning in Perek Aleph where he writes that “The essence of Bitachon is the tranquility of the soul of the person trusting and relying, and that the person's heart should be relying on the one he is trusting in.”

 

The Chovos Halevavos is teaching us here that the true essence of somebody who has Bitachon is tranquility. That means to say that anything and everything could be happening around me. On a global level or on a personal level there could be a major world war and chaos everywhere with things completely unpredictable and a person with Bitachon will have absolute inner peace and tranquility. And the reason for that is because one with Bitachon is relying on someone else to take care of them. Of course we are referring to Bitachon in Hashem but the Chovoss HaLevavos illustrates this by teaching us what happens when one relies on someone else.

 

I'd like to share a story that I once came across that helps illustrate this concept from the fantastic sefer Living Emunah from Rav David Ashear. He tells that there was a little girl on an airplane ride and suddenly there was tremendous unusual turbulence on the flight. Many of the passengers were quite scared as to what was going on whereas this girl was completely calm. One of the flight attendants noticed this and came over to the girl and said, “Little girl. The adults on this plane are feeling quite terrified at the moment and you seem to be completely calm as if nothing is going on. Why is that?” And the girl responded, “well my father is the pilot so why should I be anxious about anything? I know that my father will absolutely always do what is best for me.”

 

And as the Chovos Halevavos goes on to say in this paragraph that a person who has Bitachon in someone else has inner peace because you're relying on that other person and you know that they will always do what is best for you. Now the reason the Chovos HaLevavos teaches us about having Bitachon, reliance on other people is because ultimately that teaches us how to have true Bitachon in Hashem. This little girl understood that her father would only always do what is best for her and therefore even when things seemed like they were not going according to plan and potentially could cause anxiety, she felt calm.

 

Now the example is not 100% accurate because when it comes to other people we are limited in our abilities as well-meaning as we might be, we might not be able to help another individual under certain circumstances because of our human limitations, whereas when it comes to Hashem, the basics of Emunah teach us that Hashem is completely beyond any limitation and can without a doubt save us from the most unpromising situation that we might encounter.

 

So again what we're learning in this first passage from the Chovos Halevavos is that the essence of Bitachon is tranquility. Of course we cannot expect to get there in a day where we can have bombs exploding around us and we can remain completely tranquil, but again as we spoke about in the introduction, the point of Bitachon is not necessarily to get there - it is to aim to get there and to take small steps to go as far as we can. B'ezrat Hashem, let's continue further in our journey of Bitachon.