Four Types of People Who Draw Close to the Tzaddik

Four Types of People Who Draw Close to the Tzaddik

Kitzur Likutey Moharan - Lesson 31 - 24 Tevet

A True Tzaddik's teachings are like an intense light which penetrates into the deepest part of your soul and illuminates even the otherwise unreachable dark places inside of you.

I have to admit, that I have a tendency to use overly dramatic language. I almost can't help it. It's one part loathsome vanity ("Look at my mastery of the written word!") and another part shield for my deepest insecurities and imposter syndrome ("If I write the same way I talk in regular conversations, people won't care what I have to say, because it's not all that original.") This leads to me trying to somehow match my language to the substance of the ideas that I've been blessed enough to glean from Rebbe Nachman. It should go without saying that this is ridiculous, because who, exactly, am I to think that Rebbe Nachman's words need my cheap window-dressing. Which is why, I think--although I'm not certain--that there is a lot more value to this blog if I just get real with you about how the ideas affect my life, personally, in the hopes that if you are having similar experiences, this can lead to to your own insights and revelations from the very same lessons.

All that being said, let me try to rephrase what I started out saying in a way that is hopefully more relatable.

I've found that almost everyone who finds themselves drawn to Rebbe Nachman's teachings are the types of people who have a natural tendency to feel deeply. This isn't to say that aspiring Breslovers aren't rational or analytical types. (The whole idea that being rational and being emotional are mutually exclusive is a foreign concept to Rebbe Nachman and authentic Torah Judaism, which appear to very clearly understand the intellectual and emotional faculties as complementary and equally necessary in all people).

So I hope it's not a stretch to assume that anyone who takes the time to read what I'm writing here, can understand, in some way, what it's like to have that moment of clarity, that mental and emotional spark and sizzle, when the light of Rebbe Nachman's teaching hits you deep, and you feel as if you've just been given an unspeakably amazing--if all too brief--gift where, for a tiny infinitesimal point in time, your innermost feelings and thoughts and emotions were in harmony with something fundamental in the structure of the world around you.

Or if that doesn't capture it, maybe it can just be described as a single moment of truth, contentment, and truly grasping something real.
If you've experienced this, you can understand that this is powerful stuff we're dealing with.

As always, Rebbe Nachman knew this and knew all the implications of this. So he gave us a lesson as a guide to experiencing the True Tzaddik's light.

In Kitzur Likutey Moharan 31, Reb Noson summarizes Rebbe Nachman's explanation about the fourt different types of people who receive the light of Torah from the Tzaddik through his teachings, which parallel the four famous Rabbis who entered the "Orchard."

First, are those who attach to the Tzaddik's light through his Torah teachings and do so with just the right measures and understandings and patience, internalizing the Tzaddik's teachings in all their details. These people are affected by that light to become upright Jews, like Rabbi Akiva in the Orchard event.

Second, are those who receive the Tzaddik's great light into their heart with a burning fervor "however it burns too fervently, and as a result, the person can become insane," like Ben Azai.

Third, are those who take that excessive fervor so far that not only do they become insane, but they consequently bring about their own demise, like Ben Zoma.

Finally, there are those who receive from the Tzaddik, but because they come "with twistedness and grievances in [their] heart," they (intentionally or unintentionally) use the Tzaddik's teachings towards building a belief in heresy, until each and everyone one of these types "will distance himself completely, separate himself from the Tzaddik, and turn into an opponent and a scoffer," all in the same way as Acher in the Orchard.

Rebbe Nachman explains that even the second and third type are called "righteous," even though the only true path and option (because no one wants to become insane or die) is to be like Rabbi Akiva.

It's fairly easy to read this and think that this should all go without saying. Of course we should be like Rabbi Akiva and not the other three. We already know that.

The yetzer hara, though, is a trickster. He is, like Rebbe Nachman says, like a man who runs around a room with a closed fist and convincing everyone that they need to chase after him to find out what important thing he is holding, until he's finally led them far away from their true place only to open his hand and reveal that he wasn't holding anything at all.

My yetzer hara is constantly trying to convince me that I'm not attached to Rebbe Nachman at all, because I'm not fervent enough. My zealousness is lax compared to everyone else. "What do you do?" he says. "You write a silly blog, not even able to keep up with a daily schedule? You only did 45 minutes of Hitbodedut yesterday? Can't even do an hour? You don't burn with a true desire to follow Rebbe Nachman's path to get closer to your Creator!"

He's tricky, that yetzer. He knows I am highly unlikely to fall into complete heresy (although, knowing how low I am, and how little I know, I wouldn't be surprised if that is the real ultimate goal and that it was more likely than I truly think, G-d Forbid). But he knows that if he can bring me down by insulting my level of fervor, he can then build up that broken version of me into a Ben Azai, until I eventually lose my grasp on sanity.

People probably think that it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that a normal, mentally healthy (at least in comparison to many others) person can go crazy from learning chassidus.

But, logically, wouldn't it make sense that people who truly care about the supra-rational, inexplicable, and Infinite G-dly reality behind the veil of this physical world, are also the one's who stand a chance to lose enough of their rationality trying to understand something impossible to understand with our tiny finite minds?

And set aside the logical argument. Rebbe Nachman, the True Tzaddik, the spiritual doctor until the coming of Mashiach, tells us explicitly that this is what can happen; By receiving his light through learning his teachings, you can lose your mind (or die, or become a heretic, G-d forbid).

I think all of this is to tell us how important it is to keep a balanced, clear, faithful mind when learning from Rebbe Nachman and Breslov chassidus. Because everything that has the power to completely change your soul and your understanding of Truth for the better, also necessarily has the power to make those changes in the worst way possible.

Which is why, as I understand it, Rebbe Nachman's teachings on something as simple as smiling at a friend are just as important to learn and re-learn as his teachings on what appear (on the surface) to be "deeper" and more esoteric.

Rabbeinu provided us with a path. It gives us all a lot of flexibility and leeway to travel it in our own way, and to experience the journey back to the Creator in a way unique to each one of our souls. Like anything else in life, though, there are guideposts and standards, and the flexibility can only go so far until we've stepped off the path completely.

Yet as long as we listen to Rebbe Nachman's advice and the hints in our souls sent everyday by Hashem, I am (perhaps naively) optimistic, that we can slowly, slowly, little by little, move closer to connecting with the Master of the Universe in a loving embrace.

The Hints From Above Bringing You Back to Your Path

The Hints From Above Bringing You Back to Your Path

Kitzur Likutey Moharan - Lesson 31 - 23 Tevet

"God sends to each individual the thoughts, words and deeds appropriate for the day, the person and the place. Within them are hints intended to draw the person closer to God's service." -Likutey Moharan I, 54

Credit: Pixabay - Blickpixel

One of the oldest slanders about Breslovers and anyone who follows Rebbe Nachman's path is that they will eventually go crazy.

Even though this is obviously ridiculous, it has--everything else in this world--a small kernel of truth mixed in among the enormous lies. 

Because like with any other important discovery in about the Big Truths, Rebbe Nachman's teachings can hit you really deep in your head and your heart. They can make you shift your entire perspective on the world to the point where what you've discovered can be almost dazzling. And after that, if let yourself go too far afield with your own "logical implications" of Rebbe Nachman's ideas (which are really just the same old Torah ideas of Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov), your thinking could, potentially, become a bit jumbled.

Of course, the True Tzaddik knew this could happen, which is why he was very explicit about what you can, and what you can't, do with the lessons he gave over.

The paradigm case of all this is Rebbe Nachman's ideas about the almost constant "hints" being sent by G-d to each and every person, you included, tailor made just for you in order to guide you back on the path leading back to your Creator.

This is important because for Rebbe Nachman, there's no metaphor being made here about Nature, or some complex magical/mystical phenomena. 

Rebbe Nachman takes G-d seriously. When G-d tells us in the Torah that we are His children and that He waits, at every moment, for us to come back to Him, simply because He loves us and we are His children, Rebbe Nachman knows that G-d means exactly what He says.

G-d watches us stumble around on this Earth, on our unsteady legs, constantly distracted by all the beautiful--and not so beautiful--things He put here in this physical world, and He knows that we need his help.

The incredible thing about this is that even though we can't really put it into words, we can comprehend, on a deep level inside ourselves, exactly how this works, through similar situations in our own lives. 

My youngest daughter is the most pleasant child I have ever experienced. She barely ever cries, and when she does it's only because she really needs something, like a diaper change or to be fed. But even then, her cries aren't all that sad. If you have kids, or younger siblings, or an important four-legged friend, you know what I mean about the difference between the "sad" cries and the "hey guys, look over here, I'm kind of hungry, can I get some food please" cries.

But every once in a while, usually if something startles her awake in the middle of the night, or if her view of my wife and I is blocked and she can't find us--in these moments, her cries are so sad in their searching and longing for mommy and daddy to just be with her, that even writing about it now makes my heart feel like its dropping out of my chest.

If you know that feeling that you just can't quite describe to anyone else, even though you know exactly how it feels inside yourself, then you know exactly why G-d uses everyday, regular occurrences, to send us hints--messages from the One Who Loves Us Infinitely--so that we will realize that every moment of searching and longing for meaning and happiness in life has always been a pale substitution for our true desire for our Creator to just be with us.

This is all directly related to this entire essay, because it wouldn't have existed were it not for G-d's very obvious hints to me.

I had originally planned on writing one post per-day, for each daily portion of the Kitzur Likutey Moharan (according to the schedule lovingly provided by the Breslov Research Institute in their amazing English translation of the same). 

Well, I started writing this on 23 Tevet. I last published here on 19 Tevet. 

Fail.

And not just any kind of fail. I failed in my plans after one day!

Epic Fail.

I was feeling incredibly down about this. I recognize that for many of you, this is a very strange thing to feel down about. But it just was one more thing in the long list of things that I've determined to do in my daily, flailing attempts to even take one tiny step closer to Hashem.

So I was going to just abandon this blog and put it down as yet another entry on my seemingly endless list of bad ideas.

"But you should still read the daily lesson Rav Noson wrote in the Kitzur."

It was just the briefest of thoughts that popped into my head as I was reading about a new variation of that meatless meat stuff, of all things.

Should I really have been so surprised that the day's lesson was directly related to what I was feeling? 

Rav Noson writes:

"The general principle is that yearnings and longings for a holy thing are extremely precious."

Here I was, wanting so bad to make this new project work, but feeling like a complete failure because as much as I knew the real truth of my desire to make this smallest service to the Creator in order to take just one tiny step closer to Him, it seemed like I wasn't going to be able to accomplish it.

And yet, obviously, Hashem saw what was happening in the deepest parts of my heart, so He sent me this hint. Not in some kind of conspiratorial "I hear voices" madness, but just a gentle guiding hand, putting what I needed to hear in front of me exactly when I needed to hear it. The longing and yearning I have to write about Rebbe Nachman's path here shouldn't be bringing me down. It should be bringing me higher than high, because those feelings are, per Rav Noson, "extremely precious."

The same should go for all of you. Anytime you set out on a path to do something to get you closer to the Infinite One, but for whatever reason, you feel like you've failed miserably, don't let that get you feeling like a failure. It should be the complete opposite. The very fact that your longing and yearning to get closer to Hashem is strong enough to make you feel so bad when it doesn't go as planned, is a message and a sign from Hashem Himself that your longing is precious to Him and should encourage you to keep going, no matter what happens. 

As Rebbe Nachman stressed over and over again, the descent is always for the purpose of the ascent. If you never fall, you may not even realize that there was more space to raise yourself up, even closer, in your connection to Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

Just as long as you keep desiring to get closer to Him, you never have any room to doubt how cherished that very desire is to the One Above.

When You Have Thoughts About Sex

When You Have Thoughts About Sex*

Kitzur Likutey Moharan - Lesson 31 - 18 Tevet

*Tzniut Warning - See Bottom of Post

Credit: Pixabay - Jambulboy

Sex is the type of thing that is always affecting every person, at every moment, whether they want it to or not.

Either sexuality--and everything that comes along with it--is on your mind almost constantly, or someone you love (maybe your spouse) has made it something fundamental to your relationship.

This doesn't necessarily mean that you have these thoughts flowing up from your subconscious into your conscious mind at all times. In fact, many people have progressed up the levels (or were, perhaps, born at a higher level) such that sexuality is something you've gotten a handle on.

But we need to think about that for a moment.

How strong of a drive--how fundamental an urge is sexuality, that you need to "get a handle" on it.

We don't talk that way about other things. You don't ever feel the need to suppress or repress urges for food or games or conversation.

Sure, we all struggle with eating healthy, not wasting time with video games instead of earning a living or doing mitzvot, or with holding our tongues when the situation requires it.

But except for people who suffer from various addictions, we don't talk about those urges or instincts as if they are always there, lurking around the corner, threatening to take over our thought process at the drop of a hat.

Sex, though, is different. It is, in some ways, fundamental.

Rebbe Nachman, the Tzaddik he was, understood this. He didn't shy away from the basic biological, spiritual, and existential fact of human sexuality.

Humans are pulled toward sex constantly. It makes sense, doesn't it? Biologically, it is a necessity. The dopamine dump from that particular activity ensures that we'll seek it out, again and again.

Spiritually, how could it not be important? It is the Creative Act. The singular activity that emulates the Creator and his Infinite Love spreading out and shining down on us at every moment. In Latin they call it "imatatio dei"--Imitation of G-d.

In Judaism we just call it "Mitzvot."

We are made in the Image of the Creator, and so we work at every moment to "be like" the Creator (such as it is possible).

And so the moment of the Creative Act, being involved in the very act that parallels the supernal Love to the point of withdrawing His Infinity to make a space for His Creations to exist, we experience a microcosm of that ultimate pleasure and delight.

It's not modest to discuss this in an explicit way, but it's an idea that's always there, behind the culture, and the civilization, and the etiquette.

Rebbe Nachman understood this better than anyone.

In Kitzur Likutey Moharan - Lesson 31, Rav Noson explains Rebbe Nachman's corresponding lesson in the simplest of terms:

"The main existence and vitality of emunah (faith) can be achieved ONLY through Shmirat HaBrit ("guarding of the brit" or "sexual purity").

Notice that Rebbe Nachman is not saying that this is one of many important ways to achieve the vitality of faith in G-d. He says that this is the only way.

Why is that the case, you might ask? Rebbe Nachman explains all of the things we have said up above in a simpler, more beautiful, way than this blog ever could:

"[The] entire functioning of the world . . . depend[s] on the maintenance of sexual purity and holiness. Furthermore, all the blessings and the influx of bounty into the world, which are the products of these forces, depend on this."

How deep is this idea? How universally applicable. It recognizes that the world is controlled by the human urge towards the sexual act, and that our ability to purify and sanctify this act--to use it in the proper way with the proper holy intentions--is the only way to ensure that the entirety of Creation continues to exist for Good.

Whether you are comfortable openly admitting it or not, this idea is practical to your life right now.

You know that at any moment, for various reasons that are completely out of your control, your mind can be inundated with thoughts related to and stemming from the urge towards sexuality.

It happens to everyone, barring the holiest of the holy Tzaddikim. And if you're reading this blog, with no offense intended, you ain't one of those Tzaddikim. (I'm as far away from that label as a person can be).

And so you have those thoughts.

In Western culture (inherited from the Greeks, which really ends up making us so inundated with Greek ways of thinking, from the moment we wake up until the moment we lie down, that we don't even realize how alien it is to our Jewish souls), thoughts are just that. Thoughts.

"I can't control my thoughts. And it doesn't hurt anyone. So there's nothing wrong with just thinking about something."

This, though, is as wrong as wrong can be, and for so many reasons.

Putting aside the fact that when we allow ourselves to continue having thoughts about any topic (but especially one as strong as the urge towards the Creative Act), we set in motion of chain of events which will ultimately make it that much harder to properly recenter our minds and avoid violating a Torah prohibition, there is the entire issue of the connection between our thoughts and our holy souls.

Our souls are intimately connected to our minds. The Rambam traced this back to a point he called the "Active Intellect." The Baal Shem Tov referenced this when he said "You are Wherever Your Thoughts Are."

The core of who we are as Jews--as human beings even--is rooted in our thoughts.

Yes, our actions are fundamental. Thinking of doing a mitzvah does not (typically) count as actually doing that mitzvah.

Yet, our thoughts are not just something whimsical we can ignore.

Our thoughts are our souls. Our thoughts are us.

So how does this relate to Rebbe Nachman's advice about sexual purity.

Rebbe Nachman explains elsewhere (Likutey Moharan I - Lesson 27):

"When a person sees that sexual thoughts are entering his mind, and he subdues his desire and turns his attention from them, this is his main repentance and rectification for his spoiling of the Covenant in the past, each one according to his case. For this is the matter of literally 'balancing the scales'. Therefore, one should not be discouraged when one sees that very lustful and shameful thoughts are overwhelming one, for to the contrary, this is precisely one's rectification and repentance, for specifically through these thoughts coming upon one, and one overcoming them, specifically through this one reaches rectification and repentance, and through this one raises the sparks of holiness that had fallen through one's past spoiling of the Covenant."

How amazing is this? Look at the gift Rebbe Nachman has given us.

We can be sitting around and find, seemingly out of nowhere, a thought regarding the sexual urge rises up into our minds. We have three options once we become consciously aware of this thought:

(1) Dwell on it more and continue thinking of it, because "it's just a thought."

(2) Push the thought away and become frustrated that we are still having such horrible thoughts.

(3) Push the thought away and thank G-d for loving us so much that he gives us the chance to make-up for our past mistakes, by doing something as "simple" as pushing away improper thoughts that bubble up to the surface of our minds.

Option 1 is the Greek way. It's the modern western way. It leads to nothing but desires unfulfilled, and never-ending sadness from reaching for something you can never, ever grasp.

Option 2 is idolatry. It is the way of questioning G-d's hand on our shoulders, guiding us through life, simply because we don't understand why G-d is choosing this particular path for us. This is the way of darkness.

Option 3 is Rebbe Nachman's way. It is the way of Torah. Most importantly, it is the way of Happiness.

Option 3 is knowing that G-d gave us these powerful urges that can be used to do very bad things and very good things, and that even though we've used them to do so many bad things in the past, G-d loves us and gives us a simple way to fix that.

Rebbe Nachman understood how sexuality works.

Because he understood humans.

He understood You.

* I have tried, as much as possible, to speak about this topic in as modest a way possible. I sincerely pray that it avoids any violations of discussing immodest subjects in improper ways. This is solely focused on the spiritual aspects of this issue and is, if I have been successful in my rendering, squarely based on the teachings of Rebbe Nachman. If you are at a point in your path such that it would work as a detriment to your Teshuva and Tikkun, to read about the spiritual effects of being Shomer HaBrit or, G-d Forbid, p'gam habrit, and matters related to that, then I would obviously encourage you to avoid this topic and I hope you will understand my only intention is to give over lessons of Rebbe Nachman and their usefulness for getting closer to G-d. I'm intentionally using the word "sex" instead of a roundabout metaphor, like "niuf" or "zenut" or "pgam habrit," in order to capture the issue in a real-world, practical way for people who look to Rebbe Nachman for help and illumination. I hope it goes without saying that this post was not written for those in the frum community who would otherwise avoid reading about this topic in such a straightforward manner, and I beg for forgiveness from those of you who may stumble upon this and find it to be harmful as opposed to helpful.