Rav’s prayer for Shavuot

This prayer really speaks to me.

It’s one of the prayers that was distributed ahead of Shavuot.

Meet me below for more of a discussion about how ‘judging ourselves’ in daily hitbodedut can save us from SOOO much suffering and hardships.

Even if we can’t always change ‘the situation’, we can always work on improving our reaction to it, so ‘the situation’ doesn’t ruin the tremendous good that is still to be found in other areas of our lives.

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To judge myself about every single thing

Ribonu shel olam, Who can do anything, and from Whom nothing is withheld:

“And it happened in the days when the Judges judged.” (Megillat Ruth, 1:1)

Ribonu shel olam, Who can do anything, give me the merit to judge myself over every single thing, and every single action, and every single breath.

Because if, chas v’shalom, a person doesn’t do hitbodedut, and he doesn’t judge himself, he brings famine upon the land, and his parnassa is diminished and lessened.

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And he brings no end of disasters upon himself and upon the members of his household.

And in the end, he is exiled from his land and from his house, and his family.

And he goes to live in the ‘fields of Moav’, and there, his two sons die.

And all his property is given to the government, the camels and the donkeys, the cattle and the sheep.

Until in the end, he also dies ‘naked’, and lacking everything.

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This prayer is not so ‘upbeat’, in some ways, I know.

But I say it pretty much every single day, because the point is to learn out how good a person’s life can be, if they do hitbodedut every single day, and try to judge themselves on an ongoing basis.

This is the Breslov way, not to pretend that we can somehow ‘catch’ every thing we did wrong on the one day a year called Yom Kippur, but every single day to go through what happened over the last 24 hours, particularly in relation to others, and to try and understand what we ourselves need to work on, fix, apologise for, acknowledge, etc.

Especially when we are having difficulties with other people, or not feeling ‘happy’, daily hitbodedut is an absolute must, so we don’t start piling-up more and more bad middot.

And then, those bad middot then bring down harsh judgements upon our heads, God forbid.

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There is no ‘bad luck’ in life.

There is only our own bad middot, and then the tikkunim that we are bringing into this life, from a previous life, that can often result in what appears to be ‘bad luck’, or very difficult circumstances.

Once we judge ourselves below, there is no judgment ‘above’.

The ‘daily crud’ we have to deal with – all the suffering we bring upon ourselves because of our own bad middot – reduces drastically.

God knows we are working on stuff, and He has maximum compassion on us, even if that process of ‘working on ourselves’ takes 120 years.

And it does.

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Re: the hard tikkunim we have to go through, because of spiritual debts we ran up in previous lives, there is a choice to make.

Either, we suffer tremendously in this life to clean them off (which is the choice that most people make, mostly without even realising there is another option.)

OR

We get close to the true Tzaddikim, follow their teachings to do 7 Tikkun Haklalis a day, to do hitbodedut for an hour a day, go to Uman, particularly for Rosh Hashana, because Rabbenu explains things can get ‘fixed’ on Rosh Hashana that can’t get fixed any other time.

And the most powerful thing of all is to do regular pidyon nefesh with a real Tzaddik.

Because we pay the ‘money’ damim in biblical Hebrew, so we don’t have to have our own damim – blood – spilt, via illnesses and other terrible suffering, God forbid.

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Just, finding a ‘real Tzaddik’ is the hard part in that equation.

(Assuming you already pay 10% of your income to charity every single month, as the Torah requires us to do, and you aren’t one of those people who look for excuses why not to give charity the way we’re meant to….)

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BH, I’m going to spend today translating some recent Rav stuff that touches more on what went on with Meron, and also the whole ‘tikkun’ aspect to why so many of us suffer so much, even when we’re making such great efforts to be good people and keep God’s Torah.

There are spiritual ‘rules’ that Hashem abides by to run the world.

Once we understand them, life gets so much easier, even when it’s still so challenging.

And authentic Breslov teachings from Rabbenu, and his chain of authentic students, that leads to the Rav in our days, is the ‘rule book’ and the guide that sets all these spiritual rules out.

That’s why the side of evil has always been fighting so hard to keep people away from the real wisdom and light that is Rebbe Nachman and Breslov.

And it’s been like this for 200+ years already – and is continuing in our days.

But BH, not for much longer.

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PS: I’m planning on spending one more intense week on the family tree stuff, and then I got to wherever I got to, and barring more new ‘hints’ from the Rav, I want to go back to writing more about life, Breslov teachings, and other stuff.

If you have questions about spiritual matters that are within the realm of what I can try and answer, or at least, to open a discussion here on the blog, please feel free to let me know.

I have one question to answer about the difference between the Rav’s Pirkei Nevarchim and the Tikkun Haklali, and when to say them, which is on my list to get to some time next week.

But I’m very happy to return to more obviously ‘spiritual’ topics on the blog, very soon, BH.

If God lets me do that…

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