Tefilah L'Ani -- Prayer for Purity of Thought by Rabbi Eliezer Berland Shlit"a

To Be Purified from Evil Thoughts

From "Tefilah L'Ani - Leket Tefilot U'Vakashot"

Ribbono Shel Olam – Master of the World, full of compassion beyond measure or number, I believe with perfect faith that You can transform all creatures from one opposite to the other, from evil to good, and it is in Your hand to transform even me, for even though it is written, “Can a Cushite change his skin, or a leopard its spots?” (Yirmiyahu 13:23), You are capable of everything, and no plan is withheld from You, and You can work changes without limit – You can make a triangle into a square, and even turn two opposites into a single subject. Therefore, I believe with perfect faith that You can also make me better, to purify and cleanse even someone as wicked as me – wicked in a way that has not existed since the creation of the world. For my entire being, thoughts, and ideas are only “evil all day long” (Bereishit 6:5). I am filled with evil schemes and wicked thoughts, so that the verse is fulfilled in me, “The heart is the most deceitful of all, and it is desperately sick – who can know it?” (Yirmiyahu 17:9). Only You have known me: my terrible schemes and unbearable thoughts that flood my mind and pass through my thoughts at every single moment, making my spirit filthy and plunging me into utter despair until I am mamash disgusted with my life, for all that I have attempted to become wise and to do hitbodedut, I have not been successful, and I have not moved from the profane to the holy even by less than a hairsbreadth. Yet I know – I truly know, and I believe with perfect faith, that even though I have been swallowed up in the klipah (evil husk) of Haman – myself and my Nefesh, Ruach, and Neshama – and from my foot until my head, there is no sound place in me, and I have turned into the “Ten Crowns of Impurity,” and I have sunk into all fifty gates of impurity – even so, You can fulfill in me, “It was turned over,” and turn me into the total opposite. And just as You seized Yerovam ben Navat by his garment and said to him, “Repent,” and promised to bring him into the Garden of Eden, so may You also have mercy on me and seize me by my garment and grasp the tzitzit of my head so that I fall no more. Ribbono Shel Olam, please, have mercy on me, refine me and purify me, for what can I do when the turbid bloods boil within me day and night to arouse me -- may God have mercy – to all the transgressions in the world, to every forbidden thing, to every blemished thought. Please, pull me out of the evil waters that threaten to drown me – may God have mercy. Help me to refine and purify all the turbid bloods within me, until I am able to praise and glorify You, to sing and rejoice before You at all times. May my blood become clear, clean, pure, and refined, until I merit to the aspect of “my heart is hollow within me” (Tehilim 109:22). For at every moment You are with us, and You are ready and prepared to lift us up from all the descents in the world, and to extract us from the lowest abyss mamash, and to turn descents into ascents and sins into merits. “Save me, O God, for the waters have reached until the soul!” (Tehilim 69:2), “Waters flowed over our heads; we said, ‘We are doomed’” (cf. Eicha 3:54). No one can rescue us from all the forbidden thoughts and sights and from the rest of the awful and unbearable blemishes that pursue us day and night, giving us no rest, allowing us no quiet. Yet even so, our hope has not been lost, and our faith has not been weakened, for the closer we draw to the source of teshuva (repentance) – which preceded the world and is above the Torah – the more we are we certain that we indeed will truly merit to genuine and complete teshuva, until we merit to receive a new Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Chaya, and Yechida, and never again return to our folly, from now until eternity, forever and ever.

Artwork by R' Yehoshua Wiseman