Mitzvah and Meditation as Complementary Modes of Service
When first comparing meditation and mitzvah, it seems that meditation would penetrate more deeply into the unconscious while the effects of mitzvot (as gross physical actions) would stop at the superficial layers of being. Action appears as a surface oriented practice when compared to meditation’s more inner and subtle stirrings of soul. Yet, in terms of tikun, the opposite is true: Mitzvah actually penetrates more deeply into the unconscious than meditation.
The primary benefit of meditation is that it expands and enhances consciousness by strengthening focus and concentration. When people are easily distracted they do not penetrate into the depths of things and consequently their conduct lacks mindful intent. Such individuals are driven by their unconscious because they do not examine its impulses and question its intentions. Only by mindful discrimination between life-enhancing and life-undermining urges does the lower nature loose its ruling grip. Meditation practice corrects and expands people’s perception of reality and encourages them to change according to their broadening awareness of truth.
Though meditation extends the boundaries of conscious awareness to include more and more of what had previously been unconscious, its primary field of influence remains the conscious realms of heart and mind. The unconscious, to the extent that it remains unconscious, can only be rectified by right action.
The unconscious, or nefesh, is called the animal soul, for it performs the vital functions of the body: It keeps the blood circulating, the cells dividing, the lungs expanding, the stomach churning. It is also responsible for such elementary emotions as the fight-or-flight response, sexual arousal, territoriality and familial loyalties. In other words, it directs all the functions we have in common with our fellow creatures in the animal kingdom.
The animal soul has an animal world view. It is concerned with creature comforts and physical security, and will sacrifice anything to satisfy those needs. The Divine soul, on the other hand, wants only to serve God, and is equally adamant in its pursuit. It, too, will gladly forego anything, even life itself, to draw close to its Creator.
Meditation calms, but does not transmute the animal level of self. This is accomplished by action, by forcing the animal soul to actively serve the Divine. One employs the same technique to train the animal soul as one would use to train an actual animal. Through forced repetition of appropriate behavior, the trainer impresses a habit of right action on the animal. Similarly the mitzvot habituate our animal souls to behave in spiritually productive ways. When a person performs a religious obligation, the body (however reluctantly) invests energy into the mitzvah’s higher purpose and is physically transformed by the experience.
The 613 mitzvot reveal the science of right action for the human kingdom. Each mitzvah defines a physical act which must be performed by the animal soul and repeated time and again. In this way the body gets programmed to act in accordance with spiritual law as defined by Torah.
“Greased pathways” is the term that scientists use to describe the neurological affects of mitzvah practice. Every time a person performs a particular deed, they “grease” that neural pathway making it more likely that the same deed will happen again. Now, at a crossroads where several options exist, the alternative already tried is more likely to happen again. And even more so the next time. That option has been “greased. “ The image is graphic. Imagine a number of children’s slides branching out from a common center. If one is “greased” and the others not, it will quickly become the preferred option.
Every mitzvah “greases” a neural pathway and effects a physiological transformation in the one who performed it. In the course of a lifetime of mitzvah practice, a complete network of neural connections get wired into the body.
Judaism teaches that we come into incarnation primarily to rectify our animal natures. The Divine soul is already perfect and immune to the contaminating effects of wrong living, so the priority of life is to refine our animal souls by training them to serve God and obey spiritual law. The primary tool for this work is mitzvah practice. Through it the “wild beast” acquires healthy instincts. Its animal nature is neither denied nor abrogated, it is simply cleaned of short-sighted and self defeating habit patterns.
Textual study, because it combines both mitzvah and meditation, is a uniquely powerful tool of transformation. Its requirement of focused concentration on the text in an alternation of still-mind and active-mind is a potent meditation technique. Its practice of voicing the words aloud and dialoging with a study partner engage the body’s vocal organs thereby greasing neural pathways and engraving habits of right speech.
