R. Avraham's prayer:

My prayer emerges from my deepest desire: to be Yours, God, to be only for You. The more I am connected to that desire, the more my distance from you is made sweet, as I can sense even then your abundant love. In that way I feel Your answer, and the truth that you save me, now and always.

R. Avraham plays with the name of the mountain on which the Akedah took place. It is at once both "YHVH sees" and "on the mountain of YHVH it will be seen" or "it can be seen" - and even alternatively "on the mountain, YHVH will be seen". R. Avraham teaches that when we set out to serve God, it is often difficult. How, after all, can we expect God to pay attention? What can we do - lacking the drama of sacrifice, where it is clear that we are putting our lives on the line - to show our deepest desire to draw near to God? R. Avraham reassures us: when this deepest desire manifests in our prayer, God sees - and then, that God shows up for us. We know it in the sweet ease of sensing God's love no matter what our circumstances.

The image of the mountain that runs through the Akedah story resonates with one that appears in Sukkah 52b:

R. Yehudah expounded: In the time to come the blessed Holy One will bring forth the yetzer hara and slay it before the righteous and before the wicked. To the righteous it will appear like a high mountain, and to the wicked it will appear like a thread of hair. These will weep and those will weep. The righteous will weep and say, "How were we able to overcome a mountain as high as this!" The wicked will weep and say, "How is it that we were unable to conquer this thread of hair!"

Clearly, the assumption of this teaching is that the righteous worked hard all their lives to serve God, accepting that it was difficult, seeking God's presence even when it seemed beyond reach. The wicked, on the other hand, felt that serving God, coming close to God, was too difficult, unattainable. The former accepted the difficulty of their task, but because of their love for God they imagined that due to their own flaws they were not succeeding. They persisted, nonetheless, and receive their reward: they discover that their efforts were indeed necessary, not because they were weak, but because the task was indeed demanding. The latter, however, discover that their half-hearted attempts at service were unworthy of the word "effort", and the difficulty that they perceived was theirs alone - the consequence of their laziness.

In spiritual practice, effort is effort. We do want to be sure that we have undertaken our practice and are doing it "correctly", otherwise we will indeed "spin our wheels". But, when we are doing the best we can with the clearest of instruction and purest of intentions, we may still find that our efforts seem fruitless. Nothing may seem to be happening. We may feel tired, bored, listless, doubtful. We may blame ourselves; we may blame our teachers; we may blame the practice - and consider giving up. It is precisely then that we need to sit ourselves down, and recall that we chose to practice, that no one told us it would be easy, and that it is only in practicing that we have any hope of realization. Practice requires patience, curiosity, dedication, hope and openness as these qualities (and others) sustain us during difficult or dull times. Further, we need to reconnect with our intention in practice: what is it that led us here to begin with? What are our expectations, and do they align with what is offered - and with what we are doing? Sometimes it may be appropriate to let go of a practice, but often what we need is to reconnect with our intention and with our deep inner resources to sustain effort through difficult times.

R. Avraham teaches that our efforts, even when we meet difficulty, are not offered into emptiness. Rather, God already accepts and values them. That we have undertaken to serve God, to engage in practice, to seek wisdom, equanimity and happiness, already qualifies us for God's love, for the peace and ease that is already ours. When we can remember, in the midst of hard times, that our deep desire is already matched with acceptance, our effort may feel less effortful, and more a gift of grace.

My prayer:

It is so difficult to accept things as they are - oh, what I mean: it is so difficult to accept me as I am. My mind races in thought, my eyes dart about distracted, my heart wishes for a thousand things at once - and all I want is to be happy, right here, right now. I get caught in a thicket of confusion, and feel far from You, far from mindful awareness. Let me remember, then, to connect to my true, deep desire, and know that it is responded to, always, in kind. No matter how far I wander, I am never far from You; awareness is always accessible. So, let me stop and pay attention, and know the true ease of this moment.