Hisbodedus: The Divine Conversation
Selections From Rabbi Nachman's Advice
(Likutei Eitzot)
Translator: Avraham Greenbaum
Breslov Research Institute 1983
To taste the hidden light of
Torah, the secrets which will be revealed in time to come, you should seclude
yourself as much as you can to pray and speak to God. Take a good look at
yourself and make a reckoning. What are you doing with your life? How is your
time spent? Is this the right way to spend your life - to behave as you do
before the Holy One, blessed be He, who bestows goodness upon you every moment
of the day? Weigh all the different aspects of your life very carefully. If you
make yourself the judge over everything you are doing, you will be able to rid
yourself of all fears and worries. You will never be afraid of earthly powers -
princes or rulers, wild beasts, robbers or the like. Nothing in the world will
frighten you. Only before God will you stand in fear and reverence. This is the
way to elevate the fear that is within you to its true root, which is in Da'at, understanding. You will attain
perfect knowledge, because you will know before Whom to stand in awe: God
alone, in His greatness and glory. Then you will be able to understand the
revealed Torah and you will attain genuine humility. You will learn how to put
your whole soul into your prayers. All sense of self and physical being will be
totally nullified as you pray, and you will be able to pray without any thought
of personal gain. When you reach the point where your sense of self and physicality
totally disappear, as if you were simply not in the world at all, then you will
discover the hidden secrets of the Torah. This is the concealed light that is
destined to be revealed in time to come. All this you can achieve through hisbodedus, secluded prayer (15).
***
When a person meditates and
speaks to God, the very words he speaks are ruach
hakodesh, the holy spirit. As soon as a person makes this meditation a
regular practice and prepares himself, indeed forces himself to speak to God, then God Himself sends the words to
his mouth.
Make sure that the words
you say are always new and fresh. Search out new ways to appeal to God. Always
choose words that will find favor. Purify your heart by devoting your mind to
thoughts of Torah and holiness, and then you will find the right way to
meditate and speak to God (21, 156).
***
Letters of Torah are present
throughout the Creation. By expressing your yearning and desire in words, you
invest these letters with strength for good. You give new life and strength to
everything, drawing goodness and blessing into all the worlds. Numberless souls
are stirred to make their own return to God, all through the words of the
prayer you utter before your Maker. How precious are the longing and yearning
which you express before God. The main thing is actually to pronounce the
words. Make a regular practice of this and spend a lot of time each day working
on it. It will help the whole world (31:8,9).
***
Everyone must strive to be
totally merged with the Source of his being. To achieve this requires bittul, self‑nullification. The
only way to attain bittul is through
secluded prayer with God. When a person goes aside to converse with God, he
nullifies everything else and attaches himself only to God. In this way he becomes
merged with his Source (52).
***
The best time to seclude yourself
to pray is at night, when everyone is asleep. Ideally you should go to a place
outside the city and follow a solitary path, somewhere that people don't go
even in the day‑time. Empty your heart and your whole consciousness of
all your involvements in the everyday world. Then work to nullify all of your
character traits, one after the other, until in the end you nullify all sense
of self completely. First work on one character trait, then another and
another, until you reach the point where you are free of any self-centeredness
and any sense of independent existence. You must be as nothing in your own
eyes. Then you will be worthy of attaining true bittul, and your soul will be merged with its root. The whole
universe will be merged with you in your Source. You and everything with you
will be merged in the Unity of God (Ibid.).
***
The ideal time for hisbodedus is at night: seclude yourself
and express yourself before God. Speak with all your heart and search out the
goodness of your soul. Find the good points which are within you and cleanse
them of all the evil in the soul until you pour out your heart like water
before God. This is the way to attain true joy and to subdue the power of fantasy,
which is the source of all lust and desire. Through this you can acquire a good
memory -
which means always to remember the World to Come and never to lose sight of the
end purpose of this life and its ultimate destiny. This is how you can return to
God (54).
***
A person may be praying with
great intensity or at the height of meditation, when suddenly he falls from his
level. This is because somewhere there is a flaw in his faith. He should feel
heartbroken and ashamed. How could he fall from heaven to earth? He should
arouse tender pity for himself because of his plight. He should literally sigh!
This sigh will bring him back to his level (108).
***
When a person speaks to God and
uses every kind of argument and appeal to "conquer" God, then God Himself
has great joy and pleasure. He Himself sends words to this person's mouth so
that he will be able to "conquer" Him. How else could flesh and blood
win a victory against God? It is only because God Himself helps him (124).
***
When a person speaks to God and
pours out his pain and anguish, confessing his sins and grieving at the
enormity of what he has done, the Shechinah (i.e., the immanent Divine
Presence) herself rises before God and pours out her pain and sorrow. Because
every flaw in the soul of man is also a "flaw" in the Shechinah. And
the Shechinah will seek to bring him comfort and devise ways and means of
repairing the damage (259).
***
How good it is to pray to God and
meditate in the meadows amidst the grass and the trees. When a man goes out to
the meadows to pray, every blade of grass, every plant and flower enter his
prayers and help him, putting strength and force into his words (Ibid. II, 11).
***
It has already been explained how
important it is to seclude yourself and pray, and how powerful a method this
is. It is the path by which we can
come close to God. Everybody should set aside fixed periods every day and
express himself before God in his own native language. It is much easier to say
what you need to say when you are using your own language. You should set forth
whatever is in your heart. Use every kind of appeal and argument. Use words
that will endear you to God and win His favor. Plead with Him to draw you
closer. Every individual knows his own
personal pain and sorrow and the distance that separates him from God. It is
impossible to convey the true greatness of this method. It is superior to all
others. It is the way of serving God,
and through following it everyone can attain the ultimate good in this world
and in the World to Come. There is nothing that cannot be accomplished by
prayer and entreaty. The greatest of the Tzaddikim achieved what they did only
through this practice. Think about it carefully, and you will see the greatness
of this path. Set aside one hour every day for this, and the rest of the day,
be happy. Then you will be truly blessed (25).
***
It is good to turn the Torah that
you learn into prayers (Ibid.).
***
It is true that weeping and
crying are good when you plead and entreat before God. But don't fall into the
trap of saying psalms and prayers with the constant thought and expectation
that you are going to burst into tears and cry. It will only confuse you and
prevent you from concentrating. The most important thing is to say what you are
saying honestly and with all your heart. Let your ears hear and your heart
attend to the words which your lips are uttering. If you are moved to cry,
good. If not, don't be distracted because of this (95).
***
All the Tzaddikim and all of the
truly righteous attained what they did only through secluded prayer and
meditation. This practice has never been more necessary than in our age,
situated as we are at the end of the period of the exile, subject to the full
force of the evil inclination and the forces of the Sitra Achra, the Other
Side. People are weak, spiritually and physically. The only way to escape from
the power of the evil inclination and all the other obstacles holding us back
from God is to follow this practice determinedly and make a fixed time every day
to talk to God in our own native language. Be totally honest and open your
heart before God, whether to beg for forgiveness for what happened in the past
or to appeal to God to help you in the future by releasing you from the traps
you are caught in and drawing you closer to Him. Even if you find you are
unable to express yourself before God, even if you can say no more than a
single word, this is still good. Even if you can say nothing except
"Master of the Universe" it is also good. The mere fact that you make
an effort, that you prepare yourself to speak, that you feel a longing to speak
-
even if you find you can say nothing - all this is very precious
in God's eyes. If you are determined and persistent and you make yourself speak before God, in time
God will help you and then you will be able to express yourself with words
filled with vitality, freshness and grace. Your words will bring blessings down
from the Heavens and you will attain' true and enduring good. This is the path
to serving God, because all the different ways of serving God require prayers
and appeals to God if we are to accomplish them well. If you remain firm in
'following this path you will be blessed indeed. Small or great, no one can
serve God honestly and truthfully except through hisbodedus, secluded prayer (25, 100).
***
Even when you feel your heart is
not in what you are saying, don't let this discourage you. Persevere, and you
will usually find that in the end your heart will be aroused and the words will
flow from you with genuine fervor. Speech has tremendous power to arouse a
person's heart. And even if the days and years pass by and you think that all
your words and meditation have accomplished 'nothing, don't let yourself be
thrown off course. "Me words have
left their mark. There is no doubt about it. It is the same as when water
is dripping on to a stone. It may seem as though mere water is incapable of
having any effect at all on the hard stone. Certainly the effects of the water
are not visible. But if the water continues dripping for a long time without
interruption you can see for yourself that it will wear a hollow in the stone.
The same is true of the heart, even when the heart is as hard as stone. The
words and the prayers may all appear to have no effect. But with the passing of
many days and years the heart will be worn away by the words.
When a person is meditating,
it is a good thing to say: "Today I am just beginning to attach myself to You." You should always make a
fresh start, because every activity is greatly influenced by the way you start
it. In the words of the popular saying: "Starting is half the battle"
and this way you can never lose. If things were going well before, now they
will go even better. And if God forbid they were not going well before, then in
any case you would have had to make a new start! (Rabbi Nachman's Wisdom 234).
***
When you speak to God you should
arouse your heart to the point where your soul all but flies out of you. This
is true prayer (Likutey Moharan 11,
99).
***
When God helps you to pray you
will be able to express yourself before Him in the same way that a person
speaks to a friend. You should get into the habit of talking to God like this - as
if you were speaking to your teacher or your friend. For God is close by. He
can be found everywhere. The whole earth is full of His glory (Ibid.).
***
How good it is if you can pour
out your prayer before God like a child complaining and pestering his father.
And it is good if you can stir your heart so much with your words that the tears
literally pour down your cheeks, like a child crying to his father (Rabbi
Nachman's Wisdom 7).
***
It is possible for you to scream
in a "still small voice" (Kings 19:12) without anyone in the world
hearing you. Not a sound emerges from your lips. You just imagine in detail
exactly how you would scream (Ibid. 16).
***
A broken heart is precious
indeed. You should understand that a broken heart has nothing to do with
depression. When a person is depressed it is a form of anger and irritation.
But someone with a broken heart is like a child nagging his father or a baby
crying and screaming because his father is far away. A broken heart is precious
in God's eyes. It would be good if one could go through the whole day with a
broken heart. But this would easily lead the majority of people to fall into
depression, and depression is very destructive. Therefore, the best thing is to
set aside a certain period each day to pray with a broken heart and then spend
the rest of the day in joy.
© Breslov Research Institute