Is Inspiration a Torah Concept?

Inspiration can be powerful. But how much does it actually change us?

We listen to an inspiring shiur and leave determined to change. We read something that affects us deeply and resolve to do things differently. During Elul, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur in particular, we may experience moments of unusual clarity in which we suddenly see ourselves as we are and as who we could be. We think, “this year will be different. This time, I am actually going to change.”

And sometimes, for a while, we do.

Then ordinary life resumes. The emotion fades. The resolution that seemed so compelling becomes less urgent. Within days or weeks, we may find ourselves behaving much as we did before.

It raises an uncomfortable question: Is inspiration actually useful?

If inspiration is fleeting, unreliable, and incapable of producing lasting change on its own, what purpose does it serve?

What Is Inspiration For?

Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz explains that the rise and fall of inspiration is not an unfortunate flaw in the way human beings operate. It is a fundamental pattern of growth¹.

In many areas of life, we first receive a burst of inspiration or clarity — an initial “high” that gives us a glimpse of what could be.

Then the inspiration disappears.

We tend to interpret this as failure. Perhaps the original feeling was not genuine. Perhaps we were fooling ourselves when we thought we had changed. Or perhaps we simply lack the ability to sustain spiritual growth.

But nothing has necessarily gone wrong.

The first experience was never intended to last.

Rabbi Tatz describes a pattern of gift, loss, and earned rediscovery. First, we are given an experience that we have not yet earned. Then it is taken away. Our task is to work toward recovering through our own effort what we initially experienced as a gift.

The first stage shows us what is possible. The second stage is where we make it ours.

Consider a father teaching his child to walk. At first, the father holds the child’s hands. Supported by his father, the child can experience what it feels like to stand and move forward. Then the father lets go.

From the child’s perspective, things have suddenly become worse. A moment ago he could walk; now he is wobbling and falling. But the father’s withdrawal is not a rejection of the child. It is what makes genuine development possible. As long as the father continues holding him up, the child never truly learns to walk.

If inspiration is only the beginning, the obvious question is what comes next. How do we take the clarity we experience in an inspired moment and ensure that it continues to shape our behavior once the feeling itself has disappeared?

The same principle applies to inspiration. Its purpose is not necessarily to carry us indefinitely. Sometimes its purpose is simply to show us where we could go.

When Inspiration Becomes Disappointment

Without this perspective, an inspiring experience can eventually become a source of disappointment. We attend a powerful shiur, make a resolution, and feel certain that something has changed. When the feeling disappears, we conclude that the experience “didn’t work” and search for another burst of inspiration.

The mistake is not seeking inspiration. The mistake is asking inspiration to do a job it was never designed to do.

Inspiration can awaken us and clarify what matters to us. What it cannot do, by itself, is build the person we want to become.

That requires avodah.

Building a Bridge Between Inspiration and Action

The answer is that we need to translate inspiration into something concrete. A resolution made in a moment of clarity needs to become a plan for how we will behave on an ordinary Tuesday, when we are tired, busy, distracted, or simply no longer feeling inspired. Rather than relying on motivation to return, we need structures that allow us to continue acting upon what the inspiration originally showed us.

This idea is hardly a modern innovation. The mussar work Sefer Cheshbon Hanefesh offers a remarkably systematic approach to turning a desire for growth into sustained work.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Lefin does not assume that wanting to improve will automatically produce improvement. Instead, he proposes a systematic process of tracking and reviewing our behavior.

Each day, we take stock of our actions, noting where we acted in accordance with the character trait we are working on and where we fell short. Each week, we review our progress again. We examine recurring failures, consider why our plans did not work, and adjust our efforts accordingly.

He even describes keeping a notebook containing grids for the different character traits a person wishes to develop, divided according to days, weeks, and eventually longer periods.

Growth has to be observed, worked on, evaluated, and worked on again.

Inspiration identifies the destination. A system provides the road.

Don’t Wait Until You Feel Inspired

Modern psychology offers a related tool known as an implementation intention: deciding in advance precisely how and when we will act.

James Clear summarizes the technique in Atomic Habits with a simple formula:

“I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].”²

Compare:

I want to learn more Torah.

with:

I will learn this particular sefer for twenty minutes after putting the children to bed, four evenings a week.

The first expresses a sincere aspiration. The second begins constructing a life in which that aspiration can actually happen.

Clear notes that people are more likely to follow through when they decide in advance when and where a behavior will take place. Instead of hoping we happen to feel motivated at the right moment, we decide in advance exactly what we are going to do and when we are going to do it³.

Applied to Torah growth, this means that after the inspiring moment comes the less exciting work of asking practical questions:

What exactly am I going to do?
When am I going to do it?
Where?
For how long?
What is likely to interfere?
What will I do when that happens?

If we resolve to learn more Torah, what will we learn? With whom? At what time? Where? For how long?

If we resolve to control our anger, what situations tend to trigger it? What will we do when one arises? Perhaps: When I feel a conversation becoming heated, I will pause before responding. If I sense that I am about to lose my temper, I will leave the room until I have calmed down.

Now we are no longer relying upon the emotional state in which the resolution was originally made. We are preparing for the person we will be when that emotion is gone.

Inspiration Is the Beginning

So, is inspiration a Torah concept?

Yes, but perhaps not in the way we sometimes imagine.

Inspiration is valuable precisely because it allows us to experience something before we are capable of sustaining it. It gives us a glimpse of where we might go. It can awaken a desire that was dormant and make change seem possible.

But inspiration is not transformation.

If we expect the feeling itself to carry us forward, its disappearance will inevitably feel like disappointment. If instead we understand the initial inspiration as an invitation, then its disappearance does not mean that the experience has failed. It means that the next stage has begun.

At that point, the question changes.

Instead of asking, How can I get that feeling back? we can ask, What am I going to build from what that feeling showed me?

The first moment may come as a gift. What happens afterward is ours to build.

Akiva Tatz, “Journey to the Self — Inspiration and Disappointment,” – https://www.simpletoremember.com/media/a/inspiration-and-disappointment/ ↩︎
James Clear, Atomic Habits (Avery, 2018), p. 71. ↩︎
James Clear, Atomic Habits (Avery, 2018), pp. 70–71. ↩︎