I’ve been having some interesting conversations, recently.
Offline.
A lot of people seem to be struggling a lot, at the moment, with ‘the matzav’ of the world generally. I’m hearing a lot of fear, a lot of despair, an overwhelming sense of powerlessness.
I had my own ‘down’ last week, after watching conspiracy theories about Elvis and Donald Trump being the same person. One of those videos was just two clips of Elvis saying disgusting things about his bedroom encounters, spliced together with Trump saying disgusting things, in truly disgusting ways, about his pgam habrit.
Then, because ‘one sin leads to another’, I got to a bizarre video of Rudy Giuliani cross-dressing as a Manhattan matron, who Trump tries to pull his moves on.
It’s technically shmirat eynayim, but I’m not going to post it up here anyway, because after all that, I felt literally physically ill, and totally overwhelmed with how evil the world seems to be. I asked my husband to hide the internet cable for the next two days, so I could ‘detox’, a little, and work on getting my emuna and optimism back.
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What helped me regain my sanity, as usual, was following the advice of Rebbe Nachman, and Rav Berland.
Rabbenu’s advice to do an hour a day of hitbodedut, every single day, even if you have nothing to really say, has been the single biggest game-changer in my life. As well as helping me to slow down and re-examine my own thoughts and actions, it’s also a conduit for my soul to make itself more heard.
So, I can catch the things, the people, the ideas, that are making me miserable and unhappy, way more than would be possible, otherwise.
And then, I can do my best to try to do something about them.
If you are stuck dealing with anything ‘toxic’, then hitbodedut is the best spiritual filter I know of, to work things through and process them out of the body, mind and soul.
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Last week, I did some serious hitbodedut after all that ‘Elvis/Trump’ evil garbage, and after two days, I started to pick up on a whole bunch of ‘negative thinking’ that has been bringing me down about myself, and the world generally.
I cried for like, three hours straight, about all the pain of 5785 (and the rest of it….) But then, I could let it go, and I started to feel much calmer, less anxious and more at peace again.
This big watershed occurred on day 20 of saying 40 days x 7 Tikkun Haklalis, as Rav Berland prescribed HERE, where he promised:
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I don’t think it’s a coincidence, that my bad middot seemed to be reaching a crescendo point precisely in the middle of the 40 days.
Nor, that I did some of the most sincere hitbodedut I’ve done for a very long time, to get a whole bunch of emotional and spiritual crud moving out of the system, precisely then.
When you follow the advice of the True Tzaddikim, or try to, things can and do start to improve in a radical way, in your own dalet amot.
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Which brings me to the main point of this post.
Namely, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that most of the suffering most of us are going through is 100% self-inflicted.
Let’s take ‘fear’ and ‘anger’ as two common examples.
This week, I had a long chat with someone whose life is so governed by fear, it’s completely destroyed their peace of mind, and has led to a situation where as well as creating a need for ‘anxiety medication’, taken every day, it’s also fuelling a number of highly destructive and warped decisions.
Like, the kids can’t go outside any day there is a siren, in case a Houthi rocket falls on them…
(This is just one example of how fear is impacting this person’s life, and probably one of the milder examples that could be given.)
The person doesn’t believe in God – and is making a very big effort to stay ‘unbelieving’. So, you hear all the usual BS about ‘space aliens who created humans’, and all the rest of it, because people would prefer to be enslaved to anxiety medication and fallen fears, than to put themselves under the yoke of the Torah.
It’s mamash haval.
This person has so very much good in their life, but it’s being corroded and eaten up by their own bad middot, in a very dramatic way.
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Then, there’s the ‘justifiable anger’ stuff.
Most of us have probably been dealing with that this year, where we just feel so angry and so full of hatred.
We can argue that it’s ‘the matzav’ that’s inducing all this, and it’s for sure true, on one level. It’s very hard to live in a world where you understand how much deliberate evil is going on, and how many people are blindly walking into the traps designed to hurt them, in a million different ways.
But then, there’s all the ‘niggles’ and dissatisfaction we have in our own dalet amot, that our life isn’t turning out exactly how we planned and expected it to.
And boy, are we angry about that….
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Whenever we are angry, we are really just angry at Hashem.
That’s the bottom line. Because Hashem is the One who is arranging everything, the Cause of Causes, regardless of the middle-men who are carrying out the instructions.
Anger is one of the most corrosive bad middot, and can have huge and disastrous impacts on every aspect of a person’s life, including their physical and mental health.
Maybe, just maybe, part of why the world is so ‘anger-inducing’ right now is because God has designed all this as a massive test of middot, and like all important tests, you can’t cheat, or not do the work, and still pass it.
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What’s upsetting to me, is that while so-called ‘secular’ people don’t have an emuna framework for understanding this stuff, and working it through, so-called ‘religious’ people do.
But so many of them are not using it.
Which brings me to one other thing I’ve really been noticing lately, which is the difference between the people who are sincerely trying to follow the Breslov path, and particularly Rav Berland’s take on it – and those who are not.
It’s literally night and day.
I know for myself, how much the hitbodedut, the pidyonot when required, the instructions to do 7 TKs, the effort to try and pray with the Rav at least once a week, (or ‘connect’ to the prayers online, if you can’t be there in person) – I’m seeing what a huge difference that makes to me, when the waves of despair, anger and fear come crashing in.
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Even if they take me out for a bit, like they did last week, I get back on my feet, and with a lot of useful insights and renewed optimism, pretty fast.
Why?
Because I am following the advice of the True Tzaddikim, and it really works.
And then, I see a whole bunch of people suffering tremendously – from overwhelming fear, depression, anxiety, hatred, powerlessness, frustration, apathy, the list goes on and on – and what upsets me, is that they are the main cause of their own suffering.
Because there is good advice, that really works, from Rabbenu and Rav Berland about how to ameliorate our suffering, and retain optimism and emuna in God’s goodness, and start to overcome the bad middot that are sucking all the joie de vivre and happiness out of us – but so many people are scorning it.
They prefer their anxiety meds, their weed, their three glasses of wine a night, whatever, to taking some time to make contact with their souls.
And to developing the understanding that we don’t have to stay ‘stuck’ with bad middot like overwhelming fear, depression and anger.
But only, if we are connected to the True Tzaddikim, and moving forward with doing our best to following their advice.
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After all these years, I have learned there is no point wasting my time trying to ‘talk someone into’ having emuna, or out of their bad middot.
Instead, I sit down and I write a post about it, and anyone who wants to read it can, and anyone who wants to ignore it and carry on suffering, will.
You can’t argue someone out of their bad middot, that is the bottom line.
But friend, do yourself a favour: If you are suffering a lot, and not enjoying your life the way you could be, even today, even with all the madness occurring around us, at least consider engaging with the advice of the True Tzaddikim about how to turn things around.
Do way less ‘medicating’ and bingeing on Youtube videos and social media, and do way more Tikkun Haklalis, or trying to carve out a patch of time every single day, to connect back to your soul, and talk to God about your pain and suffering in your own words.
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I can’t tell my secular acquaintances stuff like this, without getting into big arguments about space aliens.
But I highly doubt that a lot of secular people who believe aliens created human beings are reading this.
It takes effort and hard work, to even begin to ‘serve Hashem with happiness’ – defined as peace of mind and acceptance of what we cannot change, directly, ourselves.
If we keep letting ourselves off the hook and making excuses, instead of knuckling down to deal with the bad middot that are keeping us suffering and in pain, then to put it bluntly, we are never going to get anyway close to ‘serving Hashem with happiness’ and really enjoying our lives. Even if externally, we’re still going through the motions, like frum robots.
And that is mamash, mamash haval.
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PS: Kipaadu is doing a sterling job, as always, of pulling together evidence about who is really arranging all these terror attacks in Jerusalem, like the bus massacre yesterday, and the dead soldiers in Gaza.
You can see her channel HERE.
She has videos of a number of survivors of yesterday’s terror attack clearly stating that the bus didn’t move for many minutes before the terrorists showed up, and just kept collecting passengers until it was totally stuffed full.
Then, the passengers started asking for the driver to open the doors to let them off, if it wasn’t moving. The driver refused to do that.
Then, the driver got a phone call from someone, immediately opened the doors and left the bus – and that’s when the terrorists showed up, and started shooting at close range from the front of the bus.
Obviously, they need to find that driver (before he conveniently ‘suicides’ himself, and also conveniently, his phone gets ‘lost’…)
Second – do you really think that such a sophisticated terror attack like this can be organised on the spur of the movement, by two jihadis from Ramallah?
This was organised and planned minutely, carefully co-ordinated to cause maximum damage. The only question is, who planned it…
I’m not a betting woman, but if I was, I would say we just got another ‘gift’ from our best friends, the good ol’ US of A.
But what do I know?
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You can see the video testimony, plus English translation, on the YWN propaganda site HERE.
Snippet:
“It stood at the bus stop for five, seven minutes and didn’t move from the stop,” Malka said. “He wouldn’t let anyone off the bus. I thought there was some type of malfunction. We waited there for several minutes, and he wouldn’t let us get off.”
“He then turned off the motor, and at that moment, the terrorists entered the bus. I managed, together with other people at the back of the bus, to escape. But the people in the front were shot.”
Malka then repeated that the bus driver stood at the stop for about seven minutes, and when the passengers asked the bus driver why he’s not moving, he refused to answer.
