Effort & Surrender: Spiritual Success and Your Unique Mission

In Chovot HaLevavot (Duties of the Heart) we learn that there is a difference between how we practice trust in God for material matters and for spiritual matters.

• Material matters: A person ultimately controls nothing — neither the effort nor the outcome. Even decisions like which business to pursue, what job to take, what to buy or sell, are all governed by Heaven’s decree. All the more so the final result after one’s efforts is exactly as was decreed from the outset.

• Spiritual matters: “Everything is in the hands of Heaven — except the fear of Heaven.” A person does have the choice to desire the good, to choose it, and to strive for it. However, even in spirituality, the results of success are not in human hands.

This principle is helpful to someone who says: “I tried hard to attain a certain mitzvah, I labored in Torah — why are my friends more successful than I am? Why do they grasp Torah more deeply, pray with greater concentration, or succeed more in helping others, while I too choose the good and strive for high achievements but don’t achieve what they do?”

In spirituality, success and the outcomes of our efforts are not in our control. Our obligation is to strive and do all that is within our power, but how much success and when it arrives, is in Heaven’s hands.

With this understanding, there is no place for anger or frustration when one’s spiritual results fall short. When a spiritual goal or aspiration doesn’t materialize, one can pray, and ask God to grant him the merit to bring his aspirations into action, and believe that he simply has not yet merited it. Similar to someone who wanted to wake early, set an alarm, asked a friend to wake him, did all proper hishtadlut, but in the end neither the alarm nor the friend woke him. He should not get angry at all, but pray that God help him not to miss prayer or rising early next time. Anger has no place here.

"The Torah's ways are pleasant" and therefore even our shortcomings should be handled with calm.

Faith in Providence — Even in Spiritual Matters

As explained in the book Shevet Musar (ch. 23), citing the Arizal, every person comes into this world for a particular tikkun (spiritual repair), and each person is fashioned with traits and capacities suited to that tikkun. A person should notice his own inclinations and tendencies to understand where to focus, as this indicates the main purpose of his creation.

For example, Shevet Musar writes that if someone is especially prone to a certain negative trait or drawn to a particular desire, he should know that this is where he must focus as this is the essence of his mission (“turn away from evil”). Likewise, if his heart is strongly drawn to a certain area such as analytic study, broad knowledge, prayer with deep intention, acts of kindness, or inspiring the public, and yet he encounters obstacles in precisely that area despite his desire and effort, that is a sign he should invest himself there and ignore the mockery or distractions that try to divert him elsewhere.

One should not become broken or discouraged upon seeing the success in Torah and mitzvot of others, while he cannot match their achievemeents, as we do not know our tikkun or theirs, or why we or they came to the world. Indeed, one should feel constructive jealousy (kin’at sofrim) that spurs growth, but if the jealousy is negative, it will only lead to despair and faint-heartedness.

Everyone Has a Unique Role

A believer knows and understands that his own service and effort are dearer to God than all the sacrifices of another, so long as he is doing what is his duty and achieving what lies within his reach. Even if he accomplishes little and struggles to see results, he is happy with his lot and does not complain.

As taught in the Tanya: those who are burdened and harried, who labor greatly and achieve only a little — this is their tikkun. They bring greater delight to their Creator by serving Him under difficult conditions and limited results than if they had easier conditions, natural talents, and could achieve great things with little effort.

Rabbi Chaim Vital writes in Sha’ar HaKavanot that every person has his own task, and one cannot repair what his fellow is meant to repair. “The chelbenah (galbanum) repairs what the levonah (frankincense) does not.” That is, even the “galbanum,” with a foul odor — symbolizing the lowest person in Israel, can effect a repair that the “frankincense,” the most exalted, cannot. Sometimes a specific rectification can be accomplished by a wicked person performing a good deed, which even a great tzaddik cannot effect. This lies among God’s hidden mysteries.

At the end of the terrible destruction of 1939–1945, one of Jerusalem’s great sages and righteous men said to Rabbi Yitzchak Ze’ev of Brisk (the Brisker Rav): “Our master is the greatest of the generation. Shouldn’t you convene a special high court of the generation’s leaders to issue a ruling that the Messiah must come?” The Brisker Rav answered: “We are obligated to do everything that the Holy One, blessed be He, commands us in His holy Torah — not to tell the Holy One what He must do.” (Peninei Rabbeinu HaGriz​)