The 12 Step ‘Program’ To Opening Our Eyes

By Levi Itche Goldman

There is a statement of the Rebbe from the yechidus klalis of 20 Kislev 5752 that is difficult to read casually. Speaking of the days of Moshiach, the Rebbe says that we now find ourselves in them b’pashtus – in a simple and literal sense. The appointed times have already ended, and all the preparations, “including even the polishing of the buttons,” have already been completed.

“All that is needed,” he says, “is only to open the eyes” – מ’דארף מער ניט ווי עפענען די אויגן – “and immediately one sees that the matter of Geulah is already present, and even the true and complete Geulah, in a simple and literal sense.”

This was not an isolated expression. During this period the Rebbe repeatedly spoke about learning to “live with the Redemption,” internalizing it into daily life, and about the need simply to “open the eyes and see.”

For many people, even people who have learned these sichos many times and accept them fully, there is a difficulty here. The difficulty is not necessarily one of belief. A person may believe the Rebbe, believe in Moshiach, believe that we are at the end of golus, and still not experience his daily life in a way that corresponds to those words.

He gets up in the morning and sees the same world he saw yesterday. He worries about the same things, makes the same calculations, reads the same news, thinks about the future in more or less the same categories, and relates to Geulah as something he knows to be true but does not yet see.

That gap between what we know and what we perceive is one of the central problems of our generation.

We usually assume that seeing is passive. Either something is there or it is not. If it is there, we see it. Human beings do not really see that way. We interpret what we see through habits, assumptions and expectations formed over many years.

Two people can look at the same event and understand it completely differently, because neither one is looking with untouched eyes. Each person brings an entire world with him.

Golus has given us an entire world of assumptions. We have learned to experience concealment as normal. We are accustomed to a reality in which Hashem’s presence is hidden, in which the material world appears independent, in which governments, money, social pressure and physical circumstances seem to determine what is possible.

None of this necessarily means that a person lacks emunah. He may have very strong emunah. It means that the emotional and intellectual habits through which he experiences life were formed in golus.

The Rebbe is telling us that those habits no longer correspond to the reality in which we are living. That is a very different challenge from simply believing that Moshiach will come. It means that we may need to relearn how to see.

This is where the Twelve Steps become useful. Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, the Chassidic rav and psychiatrist who wrote extensively about recovery, often emphasized that the Twelve Steps contain principles relevant far beyond addiction. We do not have to describe golus itself as an addiction. The comparison is to a problem of perception.

We have become deeply accustomed to the worldview of golus. It feels reasonable because it is familiar. Even our understanding of Moshiach can be absorbed into that framework, so that Moshiach remains one of the things we believe while ordinary life continues according to all the assumptions we have always had.

If the Rebbe tells us that we are in Yemos HaMoshiach b’pashtus, that the inyan of Geulah is already present, and that what remains is to open our eyes, then there is another question we have to ask besides when Moshiach will come: What prevents me from seeing the reality the Rebbe is describing?

That is the question these Twelve Steps are meant to address.

The Process

These are not the AA steps transplanted into Chassidus. They are an analogy, a way of organizing an avodah that comes from Torah and from the Rebbe’s directives of 5751 and 5752.

1. We admit that golus-habits of seeing cannot show us Geulah.
2. We come to believe that a truer way of seeing is available through Hashem and the Nasi Hador.
3. We accept Malchus and allow the Rebbe’s description of reality to become our starting point.
4. We make a searching Cheshbon Tzedek of where the Aleph is missing.
5. We name the contradictions specifically, before Hashem, ourselves and another person.
6. We become willing to surrender what keeps us attached to golus-consciousness.
7. We develop bitachon, cry Ad Mosai, and begin living with readiness rather than leaving ourselves an escape route.
8. We examine the consciousness we transmit to our children and students.
9. We repair what needs repair, especially through Ahavas Yisroel and Achdus.
10. We continue the inventory whenever the old way of seeing returns.
11. We learn Inyonei Geulah uMoshiach and the Chassidishe Parsha until Torah itself trains our vision.
12. Having begun to see differently, we help another Jew prepare for Kabolas Pnei Moshiach.

Step One

We admit that golus-habits of seeing cannot show us Geulah

The first step is not an admission that the world is hopeless. Quite the opposite. The Rebbe is telling us that the reality is far more advanced than our perception of it.

The admission is about ourselves.

We have lived in golus for so long that golus has become normal. We know how to function inside concealment. We know how to calculate, protect ourselves, worry and survive. We can become very accomplished at managing life inside golus. But the habits of perception formed in golus cannot, by themselves, teach us how to see Geulah.

This is harder to admit than it sounds, because a person naturally trusts his own perception. If he sees darkness, then there is darkness. If events appear unstable, then the world is unstable. If what he sees seems inconsistent with Geulah, then perhaps Geulah must still be somewhere else.

The Rebbe’s statement forces us to question that assumption. If the Rebbe says that we are in Yemos HaMoshiach, that the inyan of Geulah is already present, and that the difficulty is that our eyes are not open, then pointing to the world and saying, “But look at what I see,” does not really answer the problem. It assumes that our present way of seeing is the standard by which the Rebbe’s words must be measured. The Rebbe is telling us that the eyes themselves need work.

The first step, then, is not to pretend that we already see what the Rebbe sees. There is no value in pretending. It is to acknowledge honestly that there is a discrepancy between the Rebbe’s description of reality and our experience of it, and that we cannot resolve that discrepancy by simply trusting the same habits of thought that produced it.

We have tried to understand Geulah through the categories of golus and then wondered why Geulah remains difficult to see. Step One is the admission that this method is inadequate.

Step Two

We came to believe that a truer way of seeing is available through Hashem and the Nasi Hador

The original step speaks of being restored to sanity. Here that means being restored to a more truthful way of seeing.

The second step is the willingness to say: I do not yet see it, but perhaps the defect is in my sight. Perhaps Hashem has given us a Nasi and prophet precisely because our own perception is not enough.

For a Jew, the first part is obvious. Hashem is greater than us, and reality is defined by Him rather than by our perception of it. But Hashem does not leave every generation to work out its own place in history without guidance. He gives the generation a Nasi.

In the sicha of Shoftim 5751, the Rebbe speaks explicitly about the prophet of the generation and the Torah’s command to listen to him. The Rebbe quotes the halachic framework of prophecy and applies it to the Nasi Hador, describing him as judge, adviser and prophet of the generation, and then states that this includes the central prophecy of the time: the immediate Geulah and “Behold, Moshiach is coming.”

This is where the words “אֵלָיו תִּשְׁמָעוּן,” “to him you shall listen,” become important. A prophet is necessary precisely because there are things the prophet sees that everyone else does not yet see. If everyone could already see them, prophecy would not be needed.

This does not mean abandoning the mind. Chabad demands understanding. But there is a difference between using the mind and insisting that whatever is true must first fit comfortably inside the assumptions I already possess.

That willingness already changes the question. Instead of asking whether the Rebbe’s words can survive the test of my perception, I begin asking whether my perception can be educated by the Rebbe’s words.

Step Three

We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to Hashem through Kabolas Ol and Kabolas HaMalchus

The third step is where belief becomes surrender.

It is possible to admire a Rebbe very deeply without surrendering one’s own authority. A person can learn the Rebbe’s Torah, repeat his teachings, feel tremendous hiskashrus, and still preserve an inner right to decide which parts of the Rebbe’s worldview he is prepared to admit into his own.

Kabolas HaMalchus asks for something more. A king is not merely a teacher whose ideas I appreciate. A king is accepted.

This does not mean that all questions disappear. It means that the questions are asked from a different place. There is a great difference between asking, “Can I accept what the Rebbe says?” and asking, “How do I learn to understand and live with what the Rebbe says?”

The first question leaves me as the final authority. The second begins with Kabolas Ol.

Kabolas HaMalchus means that the Rebbe’s description of our time no longer remains one teaching among many that I happen to admire. It begins to organize the way I understand my life. Accepting that Malchus also means accepting the assignment that comes with it: the Rebbe’s words about our time are not only to be studied. They are to reshape how a person lives.

I may still say honestly, “I do not yet see it.” But now the problem has been located in the right place. I am no longer editing the Rebbe’s words until they fit my vision. I am beginning the work of allowing my vision to be educated by his words.

Step Four

We made a searching and fearless Cheshbon Tzedek of our lives

Once a person has accepted that his own perception may be part of the problem, the next step is not more enthusiasm. It is more honesty.

The Rebbe gave us an extraordinary framework for this in the sichos of Iyar 5751. The difference between golah and Geulah is one letter, the Aleph. The Aleph represents Alufo Shel Olam, the Master of the world. The transformation from golah to Geulah does not mean the destruction of the ordinary world. It means that the Divine truth already present within it becomes revealed.

This gives the Cheshbon Tzedek a very practical form.

Where is the Aleph missing from my life?

A person may conduct business honestly and still experience his livelihood as though it comes primarily from his employer, his customers or his own intelligence. He believes in Hashem, certainly, but in the emotional life of Tuesday afternoon the bank account feels more real than Hashgachah Pratis.

A person may believe deeply that everything is from Hashem, but when something unexpected happens his first and deepest response is that everything has gone wrong. He may remember Hashem ten minutes later. That first reaction tells him something about where his consciousness actually lives.

The same question can be asked about Moshiach. We may believe every sicha, but how do we imagine the next five or ten years? What assumptions are built into our plans? When we speak about the future with our children, do we speak as people living in Yemos HaMoshiach, or do we quietly assume that golus is the permanent framework into which everything else must fit?

The point is not that planning is wrong or that physical circumstances should be ignored. The Rebbe did not teach irresponsibility. The question is which reality is primary. Is the physical circumstance the true reality, with Hashem added afterward as an article of faith? Or is Hashem the reality within which the circumstance is understood?

The Rebbe’s teaching about the Aleph prevents us from making another mistake as well. Opening our eyes does not mean learning to despise ordinary life. Geulah does not discard the golah. It reveals what was present within it all along.

A Cheshbon Tzedek can therefore move through the different areas of life and ask where we are still living without the Aleph: our work, our marriage, our parenting, our fears, our ambitions, our use of time, our relationship with money, our understanding of world events. Where do these things exist for us as independent realities, and where have we begun to recognize Alufo Shel Olam within them?

Step Five

We admitted to Hashem, to ourselves and to another person the exact nature of our golus-thinking

There is something uncomfortable about specificity.

It is easy to say, “I need more bitachon.” It is much harder to say, “I am frightened about money, and although I believe that Hashem provides for me, I actually behave as though my security depends entirely on my ability to control the situation.”

It is easy to say, “I need more hiskashrus.” It is harder to say, “There are statements of the Rebbe that I instinctively soften because I do not know what to do with them.”

It is easy to say, “I believe in Moshiach.” It is harder to examine why I can discuss the Rebbe’s words at a farbrengen and still hesitate to allow them to reshape my expectations for ordinary life.

General statements allow us to remain unchanged. Specific statements expose us.

This is one place where Rabbi Twerski’s emphasis on honesty is especially useful. Human beings are gifted at rationalization. A person can discuss his problem with enormous sophistication while carefully avoiding the one sentence that would require him to change. The Cheshbon Tzedek therefore has to become personal.

There is also value in speaking, when appropriate, with another person. A mashpia or a trusted friend can sometimes hear in five minutes where we have been hiding inside our own language for five years.

The purpose is not confession for its own sake. It is to bring into giluy the contradictions that golus allows us to keep concealed: what I say, what I actually feel, and how I behave. Geulah is giluy. Bringing those contradictions into the open is itself part of the work.

Step Six

We became entirely ready to surrender the attitudes and attachments that keep us in golus

The sixth step is about readiness.

There are things a person recognizes as unhealthy without truly wanting to surrender them. He may dislike the anxiety but still be attached to the sense of control that produces it. He may want peace but remain attached to the resentment that allows him to feel justified. He may want to live with Geulah while still wanting his existing categories of reality to remain untouched.

In Chassidus, this step is bittul. Bittul does not mean that the person disappears. It means that the false independence of the ego stops being the measure of everything.

The question in Step Six is therefore more searching than simply, “Do I want Moshiach?” Every Jew wants Moshiach. The question is whether I am prepared for my worldview to change.

If my eyes truly opened, which fears would lose some of their authority? Which ambitions would need to be reconsidered? Which arguments would suddenly seem much less important? Which parts of the identity I have built inside golus would I have to surrender?

We are attached not only to pleasures. We are attached to our explanations of reality. We like knowing what is reasonable, what is possible and what cannot happen. Bittul means becoming willing to allow the Rebbe’s Torah to challenge those assumptions without setting conditions in advance.

Step Seven

We humbly asked Hashem to remove what blocks our vision and placed our trust in the Geulah He has promised

After surrender comes bitachon.

Bitachon is not simply optimistic thinking. It is a way of living in which Hashem’s reality has more authority than my fear. For someone trying to open his eyes to Geulah, this means that the Rebbe’s words cannot remain only material for study. At some point a person begins to rely upon them.

This is where the Rebbe’s insistence on Ad Mosai becomes important. On 28 Nissan 5751, the Rebbe spoke with extraordinary pain about the fact that people could cry Ad Mosai because they had been told to do so and then return to life essentially unchanged. The Rebbe demanded a genuine cry and gave the responsibility for bringing Moshiach to each of us.

Ad Mosai is not despair. It is what happens when Geulah has become real enough that continued concealment is no longer accepted as normal.

There is also the declaration of Yechi as one concrete expression of Kabolas HaMalchus. Its importance, in the context of this step, is not only the declaration itself but what it asks of the person saying it. If I proclaim the Malchus of Melech HaMoshiach, then I have to ask whether that Malchus is present in my expectations and decisions as well.

Bitachon also means giving up a certain emotional escape route. It is very easy to say that we believe Moshiach is coming immediately while quietly arranging our inner life around the assumption that golus will continue indefinitely. That protects us from disappointment, and it can even masquerade as maturity.

The Rebbe’s language in 5752 is the language of readiness. We are not being asked merely to entertain a hopeful possibility. We are being asked to prepare ourselves to greet Moshiach. Bitachon is part of that preparation.

Step Eight

We made a list of the people affected by the way we see the world

The original Eighth Step asks a person to identify those he has harmed. Here one of the deepest forms of harm may be the worldview we pass on to people who learn how to see from us.

Parents do this constantly without realizing it. A child does not learn only from what his parents explicitly teach. He learns from what frightens them, what excites them, what they talk about at the table, what they treat as serious, what they dismiss and what they assume about the future. A teacher does the same thing.

We can teach that Hashem runs the world and then allow children to watch us behave as though everything depends entirely on circumstances. We can teach Moshiach in school while speaking about Geulah as though it belongs to a remote and undefined future. We can teach the Rebbe’s sichos while communicating, through tone and behavior, that the practical world operates according to another set of rules.

The Rebbe gave extraordinary attention during this period to Jewish children and their relationship with Geulah. He points out that even after the Jews had physically left Egypt, their spirits were still affected by slavery. At the Yam Suf, the children were the first to recognize Hashem. The Rebbe connects the child’s simplicity and bittul with the ability to recognize redemption, and speaks explicitly about educating children in the subjects of Moshiach and Geulah.

Parents and teachers therefore have to examine not only what we tell children but what kind of consciousness we transmit.

When my child hears me talk about his future, what world does he imagine?

When my student hears a sicha about Geulah, does he sense that I am describing something real?

Do we teach Moshiach as one subject in Judaism, or do we allow children to understand that the rest of their Judaism is taking place inside Yemos HaMoshiach?

Children should not have to inherit our closed eyes together with our Yiddishkeit.

Step Nine

We made direct amends wherever possible and began practicing Ahavas Yisroel as a taste of Geulah

The ninth step returns to repair in the ordinary sense. There may be people to whom we owe an apology, grudges that need to be dropped, relationships that have been damaged, debts or obligations that need to be addressed. Opening the eyes to Geulah cannot become an escape from the people who have been hurt by our behavior.

But there is also a broader Geulah dimension to this repair. Golus fragments. Geulah reveals unity.

It is difficult to speak about seeing Elokus in the world while continuing to see another Jew only through his faults, his group, his personality, his opinions or his usefulness to us. Ahavas Yisroel is therefore not an unrelated ethical addition to a program about perception. It is one of the clearest tests of whether our perception is changing.

Can I see the neshomah before the disagreement disappears?

Can I recognize the underlying unity even when personalities clash?

Can I give up the pleasure of machlokes?

Can I repair something rather than remain right?

The Rebbe repeatedly connected preparation for Geulah with greater Ahavas Yisroel and Achdus, and spoke about beginning to experience in our present avodah the qualities of the coming Geulah.

To forgive another Jew, refuse unnecessary machlokes, speak well about someone, bring people together and practice Ahavas Chinam is not merely being nicer while we wait for Geulah. It is learning to live according to the unity Geulah reveals.

Step Ten

We continued to make a Cheshbon Tzedek and corrected ourselves promptly when the old way of seeing returned

Insight is not permanent. A person can understand something clearly at a farbrengen and wake up the following morning with all of his old reflexes intact. Golus-thinking has been rehearsed for a very long time.

Something frightening happens and within seconds the physical circumstance becomes the entire reality. A plan fails and the future suddenly seems closed. A headline appears and the old assumptions begin running before we even realize what has happened.

The Tenth Step is the practice of noticing earlier. The original Twelve Steps emphasize continuing the inventory and correcting oneself promptly. That word is important. A person does not need to turn every fall into an identity. He notices and returns.

Perhaps I spent the morning behaving as though my livelihood depends entirely on another human being. I can notice that. Perhaps I allowed a piece of news to define my entire understanding of the world. I can notice that. Perhaps I spoke about the future in a way that quietly assumes the Rebbe’s words are irrelevant to practical life. I can notice that too.

The Rebbe’s teaching about the Aleph makes this a daily exercise. Sometimes the work is not to escape the circumstance that triggered golus-consciousness but to reveal Alufo Shel Olam inside that very circumstance.

Over time, the interval can become shorter. What once took hours to notice may eventually take minutes. The old reflex may still appear, but it no longer gets to define reality uncontested.

Step Eleven

We sought through Torah, tefillah and hiskashrus to deepen our conscious awareness of Geulah

The Rebbe did not leave “opening our eyes” as an inspiring metaphor. He gave us an avodah.

One of the central directives of 5751 was to increase in the study of Inyonei Geulah uMoshiach. Learning allows the ideas of Geulah to enter the mind and become part of the way a person understands the world. The Rebbe repeatedly emphasized that this study should be internalized so that one begins to live with Geulah as a present reality.

If the problem is perception, the mind itself has to be retrained. A person cannot absorb the worldview of golus throughout the day and expect a few moments of inspiration to determine his sight. He needs Torah that continuously teaches him what reality is: the halachos of Moshiach in Rambam, the Rebbe’s sichos about Geulah and Moshiach, the maamarim, and the Torah of the Nasi Hador in which these ideas can be absorbed intellectually.

There is another directive of the Rebbe that belongs here very naturally: learning the Chassidishe Parsha, the weekly maamarim in Torah Or and Likkutei Torah.

The importance of this goes beyond adding another shiur. Torah Or and Likkutei Torah train a person to see the inner reality within what appears ordinary. A parsha is no longer only a historical narrative. Mitzrayim becomes an inner condition. Eretz Yisroel becomes an avodah. The journeys of the Jewish people become movements of the neshomah. The physical world begins to reveal an inner structure.

That is precisely the kind of mind that can begin to see Geulah. Opening the eyes requires more than information about Moshiach. It requires Chassidus to teach us how to look.

This is why the learning has to be regular. The mind gradually becomes shaped by what it spends time with. When Geulah is learned consistently, it begins to move from something the person believes into the lens through which he interprets everything else.

Step Twelve

Having begun to see differently, we carried this message to others and helped prepare them to greet Moshiach

The final step cannot remain private.

The Rebbe describes the shlichus of our time in similar terms. At the Kinus Hashluchim of 5752, the Rebbe stated that the task of the shluchim in the present period is to prepare for the acceptance of Moshiach and the Geulah, and immediately broadened this to every Jew as a shliach of Hashem. In Shoftim 5751, the Rebbe says explicitly that the status of the Nasi Hador as judge, adviser and prophet of the generation must be publicized, including the fundamental prophecy concerning the immediate Geulah.

This gives us a very different way to understand spreading Moshiach. We are not trying to win an argument. We are trying to help another Jew see.

If I am trying to win an argument, I may become impatient with the person’s questions. His hesitation feels like opposition. But if I understand that I myself am still learning to see, I can approach another Jew differently. I know what it feels like not to see. I know that a sincere person can accept the Rebbe and still struggle to integrate what the Rebbe is saying. I know that information does not always change perception immediately.

So I can learn with him. I can listen to what actually bothers him. I can show him the sichos instead of merely telling him the conclusion. I can help him encounter the Rebbe’s words seriously enough that they begin to work on his own way of seeing.

There is humility in this. I am not the person who sees perfectly explaining reality to the person who does not. I am a Jew who is learning to open his eyes, helping another Jew do the same.

That may be one of the gifts of using the Twelve Steps as a framework. It reminds us that this avodah is not performed from a position of superiority. We are all recovering, in one way or another, from assumptions formed in golus.

And we travel together.

What It Means to Let the Rebbe Teach Us How to See

The purpose of these Twelve Steps is not to create another spiritual system that we can understand, admire and leave untouched. If we are in Yemos HaMoshiach, and if the true and complete Geulah is already present in the sense the Rebbe describes, then those words eventually have to enter ordinary life.

That does not mean pretending that pain is pleasant or fear is nonexistent. Chassidus does not ask a person to falsify his experience. It asks him not to allow that experience to become the final definition of reality. A person can say, “This hurts,” without concluding that the pain tells him everything about what is happening. He can say, “I do not understand what I am seeing,” without making his lack of understanding the judge of the Rebbe’s words.

We allow the statement of 20 Kislev 5752 to follow us into our davening, our homes, our relationships, our work, our fears, our learning and our shlichus.

The question is no longer only whether we believe the Rebbe.

The question is whether we are prepared to let the Rebbe teach us how to see.

Questions and Feedback are welcome at [email protected]

Notes

1. Sichos Kodesh 5752, p. 410 (yechidus klalis, 20 Kislev 5752).
2. “Open Your Eyes and See,” adapted from the addresses of Shabbos Parshas Vayeitzei 5752 and other occasions: Chabad.org.
3. Shabbos Parshas Shoftim, 7 Elul 5751: Chabad.org.
4. Shabbos Parshas Acharei-Kedoshim, 13 Iyar 5751, and Shabbos Parshas Emor, 20 Iyar 5751: Acharei-Kedoshim; Emor.
5. Eve of 28 Nissan 5751, “Helping to Bring Mashiach”: Chabad.org.
6. Shabbos Parshas Chayei Sarah, 25 MarCheshvan 5752 (Kinus Hashluchim): Chabad.org.
7. “Children — The Vanguard of the Redemption,” 5752: Chabad.org.
8. “Bringing Mashiach Now,” 5751: Chabad.org.