You Can Fly!

Compiled and edited by Ziv Ritchie
 
 
The word sadness is not a good translation. The word Atzvut means sitting there moping away.
 
There are two kinds of sadness. There is marirut, which is bitterness, which is living sadness, and there is atzvut, which is dead sadness.
 
Bitterness is: “I wish I could do better. Gevalt, why didn’t I do better? I didn’t do it right. Why didn’t I do better?” I’m sad just knowing I didn’t do it good enough. This is a living sadness. And then I go out from there, and I want to do better. 
 
The Baal Shem Tov says the difference between marirut and atzvut is very simple: If you see another person after you cry, do you feel love for them or do you hate them? If you cry in the living kind of crying, then every person looks beautiful to you. You think, “I’m not so beautiful, but they are so beautiful. I’m so happy for and together with them.” But if you have a dead kind of sadness, atzvut, then everyone looks ugly to you.
 
Sometimes you cry and you look out the window and say, “Oh, those disgusting creatures walking down the street.” With this kind of crying, G-d can’t look at you either.
 
If a person wants to know at what level his joy is, it is very simple. If you feel one with the world, it is because you feel the oneness of G-d.
 
So if you walk around and say you are filled with joy, but you can’t stand people, it is not G-d joy.
 
If the joy is really coming from a high place, then it doesn’t make you stupid. Some people think, “I am in such a good mood today, I have to tell you a dirty joke.” Is this how deep the joy touched you? It brought out all the garbage you had piled up the last few years? Then it is not the joy we are talking about.
 
The higher place from which it is coming, the deeper the joy goes. If it doesn’t reach you that deep, it doesn’t come from that high.
 
How do you know how deep the joy reaches? If it mamash makes you get up and dance like mad, then it reached all the way through you, down to your feet. Otherwise it didn’t reach you completely yet.
 
Living Kind of Sadness or Dead Kind of Sadness
 
How do you know if you are feeling this living kind of sadness or this dead kind of sadness?
When you are in the dead kind of sadness, deep down you really think, “There is no G-d. I think the whole thing is a fake,” even if it is only for one split second. If you’ll test yourself you’ll see that you really think, “Achh, who needs G-d, who is G-d? The whole thing is a fake.” That means, at that moment, you really reached the bottom of dead sadness. Therefore Reb Nachman says, keep as far away from it as you can.
 
Joy Makes You Strong
 
Joy is the strongest vitamin.
 
Joy makes you strong in a million ways, physically, mentally, and spiritually.
 
There are all kinds of strength. Imagine I could eat animal food and be strong physically. That is also called strong. But the highest level of strength that a person needs in order to live in this world is joy.
 
The whole world is filled with joy, the highest level of joy.
 
What does it mean to be happy with what you are doing?Everyone says ‘I’m happy with what I’m doing.’ What does ‘happy’ mean? Happy means:If you would be willing to be born, and hang around this worldfor 80 yearsjust for this one thing, without ever doing anything else again after that – that is called being happy with this thing.
 
If you can be on this level with every mitzva you do, that you feel: “If I were only born to put on tefillin this one morning, if I were born just for this one Shabbos, it would have been enough,” – that is called joy.
 
Real Joy is a Combination of Truth and Believing
 
There is such a thing as emet [truth], and there is such a thing as emuna [believing]. Real joy is a combination of truth and believing.
 
If emet and emuna are both working strongly inside of me, if I believe what I know, and I know what I believe, then I am filled with joy.
 
If my joy comes from emet and emuna, truth and believing, then it’s called Jewish joy,holy joy. Otherwise it is only called pagan joy.
 
Imagination
 
Reb Nachman always talks about imagination. He says that if you’re sad, it’s not that you have sad imagination. When you’re sad, your imagination isn’t real. Because imagination is flying, right? And if you’re sad, you’re so unhappy you can’t fly. You can imagine you’re flying, but even the whole thing of imagining that you’re flying is impossible because you’re too heavy. But if you’re filled with joy then you have mamash wings, and you can fly.
 
 
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Excerpt from “Rebbe Nachman Says”, The Teachings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslev as Taught by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach z”tl
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s books are available online at the Breslev Israel Store.