A person can pray about the future or acknowledge the past, but hisbodidus is always about the present. Intimacy is always in the present.
One person may look for assurances that her situation will change from the way it currently is; that she will be extracted from her current bitter state and renewed to a better future. Another may hope that the present suffering will help her become a new person. Neither of them are living in the present. But there may be a person who wants to grasp the moment of time in which she currently finds herself. This is the secret of intimacy in the present. That will lead her to understanding and life in the present situation as is. (Also, despair is only for those who are living in the past or the future. For one living in the present there is no concept of despair.)
Prayer and self-reckoning are a search for a solution to a problem. If a person finds herself lacking in his Divine service, for example, she will contemplate the root of the problem and how to rectify it so that it no longer manifests itself. She may also seek assistance to change her ways.
Hisbodidus, by contrast, comes from the realization that she has nothing and cannot do anything. There is no solution in the world that she can implement. She is like a child or like someone mired in debt with no apparent way out. She is engaging in Hisbodidus as a means of bringing Hashem into her current situation and to breathe life into it; into the debts in which she is mired. Subsequently she will give some thought as to how to arrange things and to seek advice and direction. The point of the Hisbodidus is not to find solutions but to bring the issue before Hashem. To bring the feeling of being intimate with Hashem into the current situation.
One person may look for assurances that her situation will change from the way it currently is; that she will be extracted from her current bitter state and renewed to a better future. Another may hope that the present suffering will help her become a new person. Neither of them are living in the present. But there may be a person who wants to grasp the moment of time in which she currently finds herself. This is the secret of intimacy in the present. That will lead her to understanding and life in the present situation as is. (Also, despair is only for those who are living in the past or the future. For one living in the present there is no concept of despair.)
Prayer and self-reckoning are a search for a solution to a problem. If a person finds herself lacking in his Divine service, for example, she will contemplate the root of the problem and how to rectify it so that it no longer manifests itself. She may also seek assistance to change her ways.
Hisbodidus, by contrast, comes from the realization that she has nothing and cannot do anything. There is no solution in the world that she can implement. She is like a child or like someone mired in debt with no apparent way out. She is engaging in Hisbodidus as a means of bringing Hashem into her current situation and to breathe life into it; into the debts in which she is mired. Subsequently she will give some thought as to how to arrange things and to seek advice and direction. The point of the Hisbodidus is not to find solutions but to bring the issue before Hashem. To bring the feeling of being intimate with Hashem into the current situation.
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