Hearing the Unseen: Unlocking Success through Visualization in Parsha Va'etchanan

Picture Mount Sinai aflame. Smoke blocks the sun, and thunder booms so powerfully that the Israelites can see it. Envision our ancestors in the wilderness, bathed in the divine light of HaShem's revelation as Moses strides fearlessly into the fiery summit. He'll return, bearing the divine gift of the Torah of Truth.

Can you see it?

If not, don't worry. You're not alone.

For the first time since the Exodus and receiving the Decalogue, we are dealing with the question of faith outside of revelation.

Parsha Va'etchanan picks up from where Devarim concluded. Moshe, having led the Israelites to victory, revisits his denied entry into Canaan. He pleads with God. According to Midrash, he offers 518 prayers, yet his entreaties fall on deaf Divine ears.

If the great Moses himself cannot sway God, what hope do we have? Why have faith that HaShem hears our prayers or will deliver us to The Promised Land?

Those are fair questions that the second-generation Israelites, on the banks of the Jordan River, ready to cross into Canan, must have pondered, particularly after learning that Moshe wouldn't accompany them into the Promised Land.

For forty years, the Israelites, under Moshe's guidance, have wandered through the wilderness, losing faith, making mistakes, and earning Divine forgiveness. Now, about to enter Canaan, they stand at the precipice of the harsh realities of the world. They must evolve and strengthen their faith even as HaShem's presence seemingly diminishes.

The first generation witnessed the revelation at Sinai firsthand. Trembling in awe, they could not see HaShem, only hear His voice. Even that proved too much. They sought Moses as their conduit. News of Moshe's impending absence leaves the second generation grappling with their faith.

How can they survive without Moshe's leadership and HaShem's protection?  How can they believe when they weren't eyewitnesses to the divine revelation?

The answer is auditory visualization.

Visualization is more than a trendy hashtag. Athletes like Kobe Bryant, entertainers like Oprah and Tom Cruise, and even computer scientists turned podcasters like Lex Fridman have attributed their success to it.

In Parsha Va'etchanan, Moses, denied entry into Canaan, narrates his divine encounter to the new generation. They learn to visualize their journey from slavery to the cusp of the Promised Land through Moses' words. In essence, they learn to visualize success by hearing the stories of their past and envisioning a brighter future.

The question arises: Why doesn't HaShem provide firsthand revelation to this generation? Because faith nurtured through sight is fleeting. Despite witnessing the Divine revelation, the first generation faltered with the Golden Calf and the sin of the spies. HaShem understands that hearing something deeply engrains it into our consciousness, fortifying our faith. 

Parsha Va'etchanan brings us the Shema. "Hear, O Israel. The Lord is God, the Lord is One." With this central prayer, declaring our allegiance and belief in the one true God, we learn that our faith rests not merely in seeing but in hearing.  Teaching and learning.  Parsha Va'etchanan teaches us to cultivate our faith by hearing, actively engaging with the world and refining our perception, for faith is ultimately seen through the ears, not the eyes.

As the Rebbe comments on this Parsha... "...despite the advantages of sight over hearing, there is also an advantage of hearing over sight. True, when we see something, our sense of the reality is what we see is much stronger than when we only hear about it. However, this experience of certainty is solely due to the force of the experience and not to do with any work we have done in refining our perception. Therefore it's affect on us is ephemeral. Once we are no longer looking at what we saw, our experience in it begins to fade, eventually becoming weak enough to be challenged.

"In contrast, the conviction of truth we arrive at indirectly engages us to a much greater degree. In the course of reaching this conviction we have to struggle with the argument posed by the world which challenges and conflict with this truth. By answering overcoming these tests, we are changed in the process."

This serves as a reminder that sight might lend a transient certainty, but true faith demands struggle, resilience, and confrontation with challenges. The real triumph is in overcoming these tests, emerging strengthened.

We do so through auditory visualization. By saying the Shema twice daily, praying with a minyan, reading Torah in Shul, and by recounting our history for our children during the high holidays and on Shabbos. Auditory visualization strengthens our faith and becomes our link between the generations. Here again, what seems so new, the trend of preaching about visualizing success, the Torah was teaching three thousand years ago.