Part two of Chapter 29 – We discuss two methods of overcoming the sitra achara, the “dark” side of our soul. We learn about spiritual accounting and how to rage against this dark side. This chapter also works through being a vessel for the divine, leading to a quick thought on this week’s Torah portion, Terumah.
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Our mission in life is to train ourselves to see the truth of every situation. We are tasked with making things better by working on recognizing what is truly in front us. Of course, this can be quite the challenge. In this short one liner, Rebbe Nachman tells us quite simply about the danger of falsehood:
Falsehood damages the eyes — physically and spiritually.
By being exposed to falsehood, we experience two concurrent problems. One is that we become susceptible to not seeing the world for what it is objectively is. As we know from a lot of modern psychological literature, we constantly deal with a variety of confirmation biases, including that we are often predisposed to what we see in front of us based on the experiences of the moment. For example, if we are thinking about buying a red car, all of a sudden we see red cars everywhere, causing us to presume that all of a sudden there are an extraordinary amount of red cars. Objectively this is not true but our perception is biased.
Spiritually, falsehood can also damage the mind’s eye. It can lead us to stray off a path. There is a well known explanation for the verse we recite in Shema:
so that you do not follow your heart and eyes in your lustful urge.
Numbers 15:39
Why does it say follow the heart and then the eyes? We would presume that first we need to see and then it will come into our hearts. The reason it says heart first is because if the heart desires something, then the eye will see it. If we are struggling with spiritual falsehood, we will be more likely to struggle with the results of how the struggle changes our perceptions spiritually.
As we work on our spiritual growth, may we find ways to avoid seeing the falsehoods around us and only strive to work toward truth seeing.
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Part one of Chapter 29. We discuss the challenge when our heart becomes like stone, when our heart becomes unfeeling. How do we overcome this? I offer a brief foray into the distinction between knowing something and feeling/experiencing it. We discuss the struggle of the beinoni as a source of growth, working through various levels of returning to Gd.
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End of chapter 28. We discuss how foreign thoughts during prayer are natural, as they are part of the battle between the divine and animal souls. We discuss how having a positive goal oriented mindset is better than an avoidance mindset when it comes to focus and concentration. The Alter Rebbe reminds us of the importance of turning to/including Gd in our fight to overcome the foreign thoughts breaking our focus.
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Waking up each day, we start off on the next leg of the journey of life. Each day contains elements of that which happened in the past and many of us feel that one day blends into the next. Yet, each day is a new beginning, another opportunity to do new things or bring newer attitudes to that which might seem monotonous.
Rebbe Nachman tied in the notion of faith with waking up each morning, saying:
When a person is asleep he enters the category of “faith”, and this refreshes his intellect, which is the manifestation of his soul. The refreshment a person gains from sleeping can help him to attain new levels of religious awareness and perception of God. He can actually receive a new soul from the light of God’s countenance (35:3-5).
The epitome of faith is found in the state of sleep, the state that allows the soul to reconnect without the constraints of the physical. This opportunity affords us the chance to awaken with a new sense of perspective in life. Too often we all believe once we walk along a certain path we do not have the chance to veer off and do something new. By recognizing that each day is a fresh start, even in the midst of outwardly doing the same tasks from the day before, we can find new levels of spiritual growth.
May each of us work toward seeing all aspects of life, from the awake state to the sleep state, as opportunities for enhancing our faith and growing in our spirituality.
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Part one of Chapter 28. We continue to discuss the topic of extraneous thoughts that come into our minds in the midst of our actions. This time the focus is on how to handle these thoughts in the midst of prayer and Torah study. We get into a discussion of how a tzaddik will deal with this versus how we, the beinoni, needs to work on not allowing the thought to bring us down. I offer a short parashat Mishpatim thought based on the past couple of days of Tanya as well.
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Faith manifests itself in many forms. Much of our approach to faith is emotional/intellectual, in that we either try to gain clarity and understanding in what we see in the world or allow experience and gut to guide us on our journey. In the below quote from Rebbe Nachman, he suggests that faith has a more pragmatic, action oriented element as well:
Charity is only perfect when it is combined with faith. The same is true of all the blessings which flow into the world through acts of charity. They are only perfect when there is faith. Faith is the source of blessings. Keeping the holy Shabbat — which is called the “source of blessings”— is the foundation of faith (31:2).
From this passage, we are given a shift in our perspective on both charity and faith. As to faith, Rebbe Nachman gives us a clear approach to its value in that faith allows us to be a receptacle for blessing. Through faith in its ideal, we open ourselves up to a more selfless approach to life as a whole. Obviously, this takes work and effort to overcome selfish faith, one in which we claim faith only so that we can receive blessing. Rather, we have to cultivate faith in our individual and collective missions to make the world a better place. All of this leads us to charity.
Charity is a complicated idea. Maimonides, for example, makes it clear that tzedaka, which we translate as charity, a term that implies a certain subjectivity in that we can choose how to be supportive, is not the correct translation of tzedaka. Rather tzedaka should be seen as a required form of supporting others in positions of need. Without tzedaka, the world wouldn’t stand as we would be relying only on acts of kindness, chesed, which are contingent on the goodness of one to another. Others work with the more colloquial approach to tzedaka as the equivalent of chesed, which I would argue is what Rebbe Nachman is suggesting. As such, this is where faith comes in. If we combine faith with our sense of charity, we will find it easier to give because this combination cultivates our sense of trusting our giving is not a diminishment in what we have but rather a conduit for furthering our collective mission as human beings in caring for all.
Finally, how does Shabbat fit in? Shabbat, cessation from doing, is the source of all blessing. When we allow ourselves to take a moment to witness all we have done, we can often gain a deeper perspective. We can see the bigger picture. We can have the time and space to reflect and to not be caught up in doing, allowing ourselves to strengthen our spirituality and ultimately our faith. This foundational principle is in line with the above. When we allow ourselves to stop, we are saying that we trust that even if we aren’t doing, the world can continue because we have done what we could. Faith is the sense that we do our part and believe that Gd will take care of the rest. Faith is a deep sense of trust. Resting/Shabbat and Charity both must be accompanied by this notion of faith in order for them to be done to their utmost and if they are, then we should hopefully see blessings come into this world as a result.
As we get ready to enter the Shabbat of the special reading for Parashat Shekalim, which is about the obligatory giving of a half shekel to support the tabernacle and Temple, may we see the merits of our giving shine a light on our lives.
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End of chapter 27. This section looks at a second approach to overcoming our base, physical instincts, or overcoming the Sitra Achara (dark/other side). There are many permissible actions one is allowed to do yet we must also work on the motivation for doing them. If we are doing things for the sake of connecting to Gd, then we are also suppressing the power of the Sitra Achara from getting the upper hand. This comes through the means of learning how to delay giving in to our physical desires. We are not ignoring them. Rather we are using things like eating as a tools to grow spiritually. We also briefly explore the term Kadosh, translated as holy to find the depth and beauty of this term.
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Part two of chapter 27. The Tanya warns us not to be sad about the internal struggle because the internal struggle is our mission in life. He suggests that it is this struggle which helps define the Beinoni, the intermediary person, to whom he is writing. We discuss the power of struggle and overcoming it to continue along a path of spiritual growth. I reflect on the importance of maintaining practice even if our minds are not engaged because the actions can, if we are intentional, hopefully open the door to further spiritual growth.
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As we continue to explore some key points of faith as per Rebbe Nachman, this short piece is fundamental to his thought as well as a good reflection on the ideal engagement with faith.
Even a person who attains a certain level of religious insight and understanding must take good care to ensure that the perception he has is suffused with faith. Intellect alone is not something to rely upon (24:6).
For faith to have an impact on our lives, it cannot just reside in our minds. Faith needs to find its place in our heart, in the depth of who we are. How many of us struggle with faith not because we don’t have it but because we work too hard to try to understand the world. We are educated to think, debate, hypothesize, experiment and sometimes we forget the simple beauty of just seeing what is right there in front of us. Rebbe Nachman warns that the more we learn, the more we think we know, the more we must also work to strengthen the tie to the emotional feeling that is faith. I believe it is from that feeling that is faith we draw on the strength to withstand traumas and crises.
But this is no easy task. It is hard work to get to this place. How do we do that without intellectualizing our faith? Perhaps this is the power and beauty that we can find in prayer. Through prayer, we approach the world from a place of recognizing lack and looking to Gd to show us how to fill up what is missing. Prayer as a regular practice goes beyond knowledge. While it is important to have a deep understanding of the words we are saying, the deeper investment of energy in tefillah, prayer, is in allowing each time we pray to be a new experience, leaving the intellectual to the side and approaching it from the emotional.
May each of us find and cultivate our individual reservoir of faith as we also work to learn and increase our knowledge and understanding of the world.
Are you struggling with your spiritual growth? Faith? Feeling lost in the midst of the journey of life? Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com
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