EXOD117 Enthusiasm is one of those soul-traits that is best cultivated by understanding and addressing what obstructs it. The natural tendency of the heart is to be passionate and energetic, so setting free that innate power is more a matter of removing impediments then stoking the fire. What is it that subverts and deflates your enthusiasm? Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto offers his guidance in The Path of the Just. The first major stumbling block to enthusiasm he identifies is its direct opposite, which is laziness. When laziness rules the roost, not much of anything happens, except that we remain stuck in our present circumstances, arrested like a bud frozen on the limb. Laziness may seem benign, but Rabbi Luzzatto warns us about how insidious and dangerous that trait can be: "The bad that comes from laziness does not come about in one fell swoop, but slowly and without notice. It comes in a sequence of one bad deed after another, until you find yourself sunk in evil." Without even recognizing that it is happening, laziness carries us lower and lower until we ultimately become agents of evil: "The lazy man, though not actively evil, produces evil through his very inactivity." What Rabbi Luzzatto has to tell us about laziness that we may not realize is that laziness is characterized by heaviness: "And see that the nature of a human being is very heavy." (Path of the Just, ch. 6). Like many Mussar teachers, he associates his laziness with our physicality. If we were beings of pure spirit, we'd be light and active, but because we live in bodies, we are tied to the physical world. Controlled by the force of gravity, we are pulled down. These are realities over which we have no control, but Rabbi Luzzatto does point out what is under our influence. It is up to us whether we succumb to these forces or, alternatively, make an effort to lift ourselves up into enthusiasm: "If you abandon yourself to this 'heaviness' you will not succeed in your quest," he concludes. The Hebrew word for heavy also shows up prominently in the story of Moses's attempts to get Pharaoh to release the children of Israel from Egypt. There we read [this verse] that Pharaoh refused to pay attention to Moses's entreaties because his heart was literally "heavy," [kaved] though the translation usually says "obstinate" or "stubborn." Here, too, we get an image that helps us understand what it is to be "heavy"-- like laziness, it means to run counter to the way of spirit.