Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 1

Chapter 1 Prayer from the Depth of the Heart

Since it is written “half,” we understand that more than half is not demanded of us; our half is called “prayer.” Prayer bursts forth from our heart as a result of our emotions. It must break through from the depth of the heart before we start critiquing the feeling in our heart with our intellect, before we start thinking about it or understanding it. The feeling hidden in the heart before we try to control it is called “prayer.”

If prayer precedes our control over it, why are we told that we must pray and reach a prayer, as if prayer depends on our efforts or free choice?

The answer is that we must reach the desire called “prayer” through various actions and means that help bring us to the correct desire. Prayer is a summary; it is the result of our preparations. Accordingly, each time we pray, we feel a certain kind of connection to the Creator in our heart and our prayer to the Creator is always new.

A person can open an ordinary prayer book, written two thousand years ago by the Men of the Great Assembly, and by saying the same words every day, feel something new each day. The interpretation changes so much that the words spoken yesterday no longer fit today. In such a prayer, we feel that we had never said the words that we spoke today.

What words should we aim for in our prayer? Primarily they should be words that speak of the Creator’s glory. Why? It is because in the Creator’s glory, we do not speak of His essence—who He is, or what He is—but we discuss His qualities of bestowal and how we appreciate such qualities. The extent to which we value the Creator’s qualities of bestowal is the extent to which we measure the strength of our connection, closeness, and alignment with the Creator.

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