Thursday, January 22, 2015

Good Shabbos!

Hi!

Here is a brief overview of what we have discussed in chapter 4 of the handbook, "Inner Redemption".


Chapter 4:   

The True “I” Is Hashem
(Adapted from Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh, Vol. VI, Chapter 4)

"What, exactly, is a person? Generally, a person is called “neshamah.” 
My “I” is identified with my neshamah, which is a cheilek eloka mimaal, a “piece of Hashem”.  

In order to separate from our ego “I” and live from the real “I”, our neshama, we can follow these steps:

1. Know who you are: a pure neshama (Da Es Atzmecha- ask Shira for the recordings if you have not read this sefer)

2. Love Hashem (fourth constant mitzvah) - this makes everything that you do  for the purpose of serving Hashem and bringing kiddush Hashem into this world (and not your ego)

3. Love Others- When you feel love for others (not judgment), you are connecting to who they really are= also a pure neshama and you are disconnecting from your ego.


We are up to Week Three in Shovevim, Parshas Bo, and will IY"H review the fourth constant mitzvah at the end of the half hour.


Looking forward!

aviva rus


Hashem could have placed streetlamps along all the pathways of wisdom, but then there would be no journey.

Who would discover the secret passages, the hidden treasures, if all of us took the king’s highway?

Likutei Sichot vol. 16, pg. 365, and in many other talks on the difference between the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds.



Sunday, January 4, 2015

How similar to what we discussed on Motzai Shabbos!


DIVREI CHIZUK 

If we live with emunah, then we can experience some of the joy that we are anticipating in the days of Mashiach already now. If we believe that everything is controlled by Hashem, and that He is always doing the very best thing for us, we will live without fear and anxiety.

CHIZUK CORNER 


The Ramban once gave a kamia (amulet) to a student who was on his deathbed, and told him, "When you go to the next world, there is a place called the כסאות למשפט, where you will find the Shechinah. This kamia will allow you to enter. I want you to go and ask Hashem several difficult questions that I have about the way He deals with us, and about why you are dying so young. Come back to me in a dream to tell me the answers."
Sure enough, the student came to the Ramban in a dream and said, "The kamia you gave me allowed me to pass through every gate in the next world. But when I got there, I was not able to ask your questions, because they were not questions at all. Here it is so clear that all of Hashem's ways are just and done with unbridled love and compassion."

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As much as the human soul yearns to rise up and merge within the light of its Creator, so much more so does the Infinite Creator yearn to be found within the human soul.

If so, what force could stand between them? What could hold back the Creator’s infinite light?

Only His desire that this union occur with our consent, that we be the ones to crack open the door.

“Open for me just as wide as a pinhole,” G‑d pleads with us, “and I will open for you a vast, unbounded portal to My very core of being.”
 condensation by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman