02 Daily Dose of Gratitude
Update: 2025-11-05
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Welcome to daily ביטחון . We are now focusing on finding God in creation and realizing his kindness, which is the fundamentals of reliance.Now when we're doing this, what exactly are we doing when we're finding God in creation? What should our intent be? We know there's a rule מצוות צריכות כוונה . Our מצוות need to have proper intent. What is the intent? The רמב"ם , in his ספר יד החזקה on the foundations of תורה chapter 2, tells us that we have a מצווה to love and fear השם . And he quotes a פסוק to back up each one of these. And interestingly enough, the same way, the same path to love is the same path as fear. And he says as follows: when a person delves into God's wondrous acts and creations, and he sees from them his wisdom that has no end and no comparison, immediately, he loves him, he praises him, and he has a great desire to know that great creator. As דוד המלך says, צמאה נפשי לאלוקים . I yearn, my soul yearns for God, לאל חי , to the living God.So that's the first reaction. Wow, look at the beauty of the Swiss Alps. Look at the oceans, look at the view. And as he continues to think about those very same items, immediately, both times the רמב"ם says immediately, he is jolted backwards and begins to fear and realize, hold on, I am a small, little, lowly darkened creature standing with my limited understanding in front of the perfect one. As דוד המלך said, כי אראה שמיך מעשה אצבעותיך, מה אנוש כי תזכרנו . What is man that you even mention him?So this is very interesting. We don't realize that when I'm looking at the apple, the orange, or the pear and seeing God's wonders, I am on my way to love and fear השם . That's what we're doing. The ספר מצוות הקצר , another one of the ראשונים that lists the מצוות , when he talks about loving השם in his third מצווה , he says the more you understand God, the more you love God. If it's a little bit, a little bit. If it's a lot, it's a lot. And therefore he says every person has to set aside time to delve into the wonders of creation that through that you will get the honor of God, depending on your abilities. So there's endless things that you can do. And understand when you're doing them, it's not a science lesson, it's a lesson in the wonders of God.Now, there's endless things that you could talk about. This one hit me recently. We'll change the clock now, maybe not sleeping as well, maybe get older you're not sleeping as well. So I got myself one of these watches that measures how much deep sleep you have. I want to know how much I was sleeping at night, tossing and turning. And one of the the factors on this watch is something called REM, how much rapid eye movement did you have? I'm a curious guy, I said, what what exactly, why is rapid eye movement important? And does a lot of things, rapid eye movement. That means that's the time you're asleep when your eyes move back and forth. What is the purpose of this REM sleep? It's when you're dreaming and you're going through your day and processing things. People that don't have this stage of sleep, they can develop anxiety, irritability, even hallucinations, difficulty concentrating, appetite may increase. A lot of things going on. Now I don't want to get into that right now. To me the most fascinating thing about this rapid eye movement sleep is that when a person is in this stage, there's something that happened called rapid eye movement atonia. What does that mean? It's, it means when you're in this stage and you're having your dreams, so in a dream you might be jumping out of a building or running away from a fire or anyone else has their dreams, we're not going to share our dreams now. But the body becomes temporarily paralyzed because it protects the body from acting out the dreams. And that way you can process the emotional experiences, and at the same time not be in danger for what you're dreaming about actually acting out, and that's why you stay in your bed. People that are sleepwalking are obviously missing out on this aspect. But how this developed, you could sit and read about it if you'd like. That's not the important point, but the amount of chemicals and the electrical waves and who knows what's going on. Anyway, this is just a small example of this kind of בחינה , looking for God in creation that you could find with anything as simple as getting yourself a new Fitbit.
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