distracts you from serving God you should forget about completely, especially the distractions which come when you are praying. Usually they consist of worrying about the past and wondering if you did this or that right. But as soon as
something is over and done with, you should simply put it out of your mind completely. Make this a habit. Just ignore it completely and don't even start to think about it. The same applies to all your worries about past transgressions and other mistakes. Just put them out of mind completely and forget about them, especially during your prayers and devotions. In fact, there is nothing much to be gained from thinking about them any time of the day except in the special time you set aside for meditation. This is the time to be heartbroken and to express all your thoughts before God. You should think about everything you did wrong. But for the rest of the day you should forget about these things completely. Simply serve God with joy, especially during your prayers (Rabbi
THE
MIDNIGHT PRAYER OF MOURNING
FOR THE TEMPLE -- Tikkun Chatzot:
1) How precious it is to rise at midnight in order to pray and meditate and study Torah. Try to make it a regular practice. Then you will be worthy of succeeding in the task of separating the good from the evil in the world. You will also develop a good memory which means always to remember your purpose in life and to keep in mind the enduring life you are destined for in the end. You must recognize that everything you do in this world only has meaning in relation to the World to Come. You should reflect on every experience which God sends you: consider all the different situations you find yourself in each day. The only purpose of all of them is to offer you hints as to how you can draw closer to God at every moment. This is the only true andonly to come closer to God. All the days of his vanity, all the experiences he has on each one of them are only for this (Likutey Moharan I, 54).
2) Rising at midnight sweetens the harsh judgements. This practice is as valuable as presenting a redemption (149).
3) Throughout the year, the correct time for the midnight prayer is when the first six hours of the night have passed. It lasts for two hours until the end of the second `watch.' In the morning, it is a good thing to look up at the sky. This will give you Da'at, knowledge of God.
4) The exile has already lasted so long. God is only waiting for the moment to return to us and rebuild the Holy Temple. It could happen at any time. Our task is to see that from our side we do nothing to obstruct the rebuilding of the Temple. On the contrary, we must make every effort to hasten it. This is why we should be so careful to get up each night at midnight and mourn for the destruction of the Holy Temple. Perhaps in a previous incarnation we ourselves were responsible for something which brought about the destruction of the Temple. Even if not, it could still be that our sins in our present lifetime are holding up the rebuilding of the Temple, and this is as bad as if we had actually destroyed it. This is the reason why we must weep and mourn every night at midnight. When we do so, it is as if we were actually making a tremendous effort to rebuild the Holy Temple. Then we will be able to draw closer to truth to the true Tzaddikim and those who are genuinely God-fearing. They are in fact the embodiment of truth, in its beauty, splendor and pleasantness. Through drawing closer to them your eyes will be opened and you will be able to see how far your own development has advanced and in which areas you need to work in order to return to God and to know and acknowledge His great and holy Name (Likutey Moharan II, 67).
5) The merit of rising for the midnight prayer protects us from destruction by fire (Ibid.).
6) The main devotion of the Jew is to get up every night in the winter for the midnight prayer. In the summer, when the nights are short and we do not rise for the midnight prayer except in the Land of Israel, he should be sure to get up with the dawn each morning (Rabbi Nachman's Wisdom 301).
Nachman's Wisdom 26).
MIKVEH:
1) Immersing in the mikveh is the cure for all troubles. The mikveh has the power to purify us from every kind of sin and impurity. The spiritual power of the mikveh is rooted in the most exalted levels of wisdom and love (56:7).
2) Immersing in a mikveh helps to make it easier to earn a living and receive the flow of blessing. Strife and anger are dissipated and in their place come peace, love, deep wisdom and healing, length of days and the power to arouse men to God (31:2). 3) Immersing in a mikveh is not in the least bit harmful. Any doctor who says it is is no doctor at all. So long as the water is not excessively cold, immersing in a mikveh is actually very beneficial to the body since it opens the sweat glands, as is known by medical experts (Ibid. II, 123).
MOCKERY:
1) People who make fun of the words of the Sages are punished with boiling
excrements (Gittin 56a) Stinking vapors rise up to their brains, leaving them twisted and confused. No matter how much they may study Torah, they will never be able to derive true guidance from it about the way to lead their lives. Their hearts are as filthy as a privy. They never have a clear idea how to live at all. This kind of cynicism leads in the end to severe decrees being passed against the Jewish people. They are expelled from the countries they were living in, and the end result of the upheavals is that whole areas of Torah wisdom become lost to us, notably the mystery of Ibbur, which underlies the structure of the Jewish calendar with its intercalated leap-years. The loss of this wisdom causes strife and factionalism (61:1-3).
2) An enormous number of religious books are available today, and in the future even more will be written. On no account should one ever make fun of any of them. The world needs every one of them (Ibid. 5).
3) When a person makes fun of something holy, it is `the laughter of the fool'
(Ecclesiastes 7:6). The remedy for mockery is tikkun haBrit, guarding the Covenant (Likutey Moharan II, 83).
4) One of the biggest obstacles in the search for truth is other people, especially those who make fun of religion with `sophisticated' jokes. They are under the spell of philosophical speculation and other current ideas. The damage they cause is quite obvious. They have the power to corrupt people completely, God forbid. What is even more insidious is the sharp wit of people who give the appearance of being
respectable and well meaning, but who have a way of turning all kinds of religious matters into a joke. Many people are deterred from true religion because of this. At
least where the blatant mockery of the philosophers is concerned most people have the sense to be wary and keep away, knowing as they do that philosophy has the power to deprive you of both worlds, this one and the next, and to throw you down into the lowest pit of hell, God forbid. But the `wit and wisdom' of those who give the
impression of being decent and religious can be more dangerous because their words possess a certain aura of truth. Travel the path of purity and you will walk in trust. Keep well away from this crowd and pay no attention to their humor and wise ideas. Walk with simplicity and purity along the ancient path of our forefathers (Rabbi Nachman's Wisdom 81).
MODESTY:
1) One should have a strong sense of humility before God. One should feel ashamed to do anything which would not be in accordance with the will of God, and certainly ashamed of actually sinning, God forbid. Having a sense of humility is the foundation for developing genuine fear of Heaven. A person who has no shame in this world will be put to shame in the World to Come. This is the worst of all punishments. The pain of the feeling of shame in the World to Come is even worse than the bitterest suffering in Gehinnom. Even the Tzaddikim will feel embarrassed before other Tzaddikim who reached higher levels than they themselves. Our Sages said, `Alas for that
embarrassment, alas for that shame!' (Bava Bathra 75). They were talking about the shame the Tzaddikim will feel. How much more will sinners be ashamed and
confounded. In this world it is impossible to form any conception of the bitterness and suffering which the shame and embarrassment of the World to Come will cause. But someone who develops a true sense of shame in this world acquires the instrument with which to keep himself from sin. He will discover true prayer and joy and inner strength. He will draw close to the Tzaddikim and learn from them how to develop perfect faith (22).
2) You should be totally honest when you talk to God. Get into the habit of expressing yourself with such honesty that your heart is stirred and the words begin to pour forth with fire and passion. As you draw yourself closer to God you will see how small and insignificant you are compared with His greatness. You will be filled with feelings of humility before Him. For up till now you simply cast your sins behind your back and ignored them. But as you start to acknowledge them frankly you will be overwhelmed with a feeling of shame at having rebelled against the Master and Ruler of the
Universe, the Source of all the worlds. At first this humility will not actually show on your face. This is because sin sullies the intellect and stops it from radiating on the face. Before a person repents his mind is so weakened that he can have no conception of the true gravity of sin and the greatness of the One before whom he sinned. But as he returns to God and strips himself of his folly, gaining wisdom and understanding,
so his shame will become more and more visible on his face. The sense of humility is symbolized in the tefilin, which are the sign of our attachment to the Creator. The light of the tefilin is a ray of the light of God's inner countenance. When a person achieves this sense of humilty all his sins are forgiven and he becomes attached to the Tree of Life (38).
3) There are certain people who are so brash and arrogant that they feel no shame or embarrassment at all before the Tzaddik or those who are truly pious. This brashness is a sign of impure ancestry: it is very doubtful if their ancestors stood at Mount Sinai (Nedarim 20). They have impugned the holiness of the tefilin, which are rooted in the Tree of Life. Instead they have attached themselves to the Tree of Death. They will be cast out of the Garden of Eden and thrown into Hell. But a person who repents and feels ashamed of his sins will immediately be forgiven, and the wisdom and
understanding of his soul will be restored. He will be able to expel the spirit of folly from within him and become worthy of the radiance of the tefilin (Ibid. 5:6).
4) Shame and embarrassment are the basic qualities which help us to return to God. The merest sin one may have committed should give one a deep sense of shame, because in reality every Jew ought to be far removed from sin. The soul of the Jew is rooted in a source so exalted that in essence he is completely detached from sin. For a Jew to sin in any way at all is totally unbecoming. Even when he wants to perform a mitzvah, a positive action, he should also feel a sense of shame and embarrassment. What right does he have to perform this mitzvah? How does he dare to enter the court of the King and perform the mitzvah when he considers the greatness of the One before whom he does it? The true significance and preciousness of each mitzvah is totally beyond our comprehension. A person has only to look at himself to see how far he is from God and how unworthy he is of performing the mitzvah. How can he stretch out his hand to take the tefilin, the very crown of the King... and simply put them on his head all of a sudden? A person who felt genuine shame would be
embarrassed even to take food and put it in his mouth before God. What right does he have to this food? To acquire a sense of shame one should examine oneself in
comparison with the Tzaddik. This will move him to repent and attain true humility, the humility of Moses. This humility is the root of life -- the eternal life of the World to Come (II, 72).