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Rav Shlomo Katz explores important perspectives and practical insights into our mental health and well-being, based on the writings and teachings of some of our nation's greatest Tzaddikim.
ברוך השם. Okay. שיחות הר"ן מ"א. We're jumping to מ"א, the 41st teaching in שיחות הר"ן.
Learning לרפואה שלמה of יקיר פנחס and רחל דבורה. יישר כוח also everyone from making it on a חפצי תורה and those of you that were able to make it to the יארצייט as well. It was a very powerful day on all, all sides. A lot in the air that day, י"א, י"א, י"א תמוז.
And hopefully it'll be the gateway that this coming Sunday, which is the 18th of תמוז, supposed to be the fast is supposed to happen, the fast of שבעה עשר בתמוז, בעזרת השם there'll be so much love in the air that we force השם to just reveal that the days of fasting, besides יום כיפור, are over. And just the days of שמחה. חג ושמחה. Okay.
מ"א.Here we have a נקודה that is so important to remember, not just now but when you really, really need it. When you really, really need it. This has two parts on it. No, I think you have it on this side.
God forbid not on the other side, but you're... I'm just... The other side is a place we don't hang out, yeah. The סטרא אחרא.
Yeah. מ"א, thank you. Okay.לב נשבר ועצבות אינו עניין אחד כלל. This is very important to remember.
A broken heart and sadness are not the same thing. כי לב נשבר הוא בלב. A broken heart is something that's going on in the heart. אבל עצבות הוא בא מן הטחול.
Sadness, and the word that I saw that Rabbi Rosenfeld used, was it sadness? He uses another word, which maybe we'll find in a bit. This sadness comes from, does anyone know what טחול means? Spleen. Spleen? I was going to say from the brain. Spleen.
Right? טחול is spleen. So again, he says, don't confuse the two. Broken heart, עצבות, לב נשבר. לב נשבר, broken heartedness.
That's something that's going on in the heart. Is that talking about the physical heart? And the spleen? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.So he says like this, עצבות הוא בא מן הטחול.
Sadness comes from the spleen. ועצבות שהוא מהטחול, this is why I said you're not from the other side because here it says, ועצבות שהוא מהטחול היא סטרא אחרא. Sadness, what's a better word maybe for sadness? Depression? Misery? I would say ייאוש, even though that's not what he's saying. Right.
Despair. Maybe, maybe the way that, maybe certain, certain element of depression. Certain element, not all, a certain side of it, not everything, but a certain side of it. That הקדוש ברוך הוא שונא אותה.
Wow. This is... we have a good פירוש though today. I didn't dare come in here unarmed.
We have Rabbi Rosenfeld's פירוש on it to understand, what are these words? השם hates this.אבל לב נשבר הוא חביב לפני השם יתברך. But a broken heart is something that is pleased before הקדוש ברוך הוא. כי לב נשבר יקר מאוד מאוד בעיניו יתברך. It's a very precious thing in השם's eyes, the concept of having a broken heart.
Obviously we're going to have to understand, we're going to have to crack this down a little bit. What is this, what is he talking about when he's saying broken, לב נשבר? והיה טוב שיהיה לו לב נשבר כל היום. It'd be good if people could have broken hearts all day long. Now, one of the reasons why he's saying it would be good, meaning that that's not really what happens, is because we confuse the two, between לב נשבר and עצבות.
And therefore, if a person was able to just clearly define and distinguish between the two, it'd be, we could understand what's going on. Could it be melancholy? Sorry? Melancholy is a word that, I think חיים קרמר, I think they've used that for עצבות. Well, okay, what's the difference between melancholy and sad? Melancholy is a heavier word for sad, right? It's like no one really uses it besides when they translate Hebrew words. Right.
But if we, no, but if we tried to understand it like, it's deeper. It's deeper, right? No, what would Webster's say about it? Like what would be the פירוש? Of what? Like melancholy, yeah. Deep sad, yeah. It's like immobilizing.
Constant. Ah. Yeah, well sadness is kind of fleeting, like you're sad, but then you're not. Ah.
Melancholy is closer to depression. Depression that makes you not function. Ah, functional. It disables.
Yeah, it disables. A feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause. Yeah. Ah, with no obvious cause.
Ah. Okay, let's see where he goes with this. So he says, "היה טוב שיהיה לו לב נשבר כל היום." It would be good if you could have a לב נשבר, not what Mandy just read, but the לב נשבר, the the thing that's precious in השם's eyes all day long. אך, אנשים כערככם יכולים לבוא מלב נשבר לעצבות.
But what's the problem? The the the the status of like the type of people we are today is that it's very easy to enter into, I'm just going to use that word, melancholy, from לב נשבר very fast because we can't, it's not clear to us that there's a very big difference between the two.על כן, צריכים לייחד איזה שעה ביום שיהיה לו לב נשבר. Therefore, like we said, התבודדות, you designate an hour every day for the לב נשבר, for what you feel you're broken over. Not for עצבות. That you have to, there's no room for that.
Again, so what do these two things mean? We have to keep on figuring it out. Meaning the hour a day to cry before השם is over לב נשבר, it's not over עצבות. על כן צריכים לייחד איזה שעה ביום שיהיה לו לב נשבר, דהיינו להתבודד ולשבר ליבו לפניו יתברך כמבואר במקום אחר. Like Rabbi Nachman, like we saw this in our התבודדות classes, those of you that were here for that or that learned with us online with that, that Rabbi Nachman said, listen, the the the magic, one of the magic things about התבודדות is that if you know you have so much agony that you're something you're you're in such pain over.
Now, that could be לב נשבר. Being in agony over something can be לב נשבר. What is, how now why isn't that עצבות? Being in pain over something, why isn't that necessarily melancholy? The this pervasive, what'd you, what was the word you used? Pensive, yeah. I think it's because you're looking for that opportunity to draw close.
It's like, it's different when you're, I was just saying like between like a husband and wife, like you can be angry about something and you can, and you can want to like push away, or you can say, like wait, something's really bothering me and, and how do we clear, how do we push this away to come closer? I think he's talking about this is with השם. The לב נשבר, meaning you could be in a full-on state of לב נשבר while, while, while, while having רצון. עצבות, there's no, no רצון rises out of עצבות. Is that what you're saying? That's yeah.
If it wasn't, would you tell me? Yeah. Yeah, okay, good. Because I don't want to, I don't want to חס ושלום put words in your mouth. I want to just make, okay.
What do you mean by רצון? You you want, you you you can feel like a sadness but you, as opposed to wanting to stay there, sometimes you just like, but there's, there's like, no, like how do I, I'm sad but I want to draw closer, I want, I want to figure it out. I want to make it better. Right. Right.
We're gonna, we're gonna, I wanted to see it inside, I wanted to learn the פירוש on it and I wanted to discuss it as well. But this is where we're going with it. So Rabbi Nachman says if you know you have an hour a day to to cry over what you're in pain over, and you say, okay, right now I'm not going to get into this, I have that hour in the day, something happens to you. You're actually, you're not the disabled person.
Like if you don't feel there's room for expressing this at all, then it's going to completely clog your system and there won't be any, nothing, you you can't move from that place. But if you know I have a designated time where I'm putting that on the table, what I'm in pain over, because I I have a desire to always be close to you, השם, and or I wish I had a desire to be close to you, השם. That's very important to say. I had an hour to say that, something happens to my mind.
It's put at, it's to a certain extent, it's put to a certain level of ease and calm, knowing that it'll have its room to be expressed. I mean, to go back to relationships, that that the hardest part is when you feel there is no room for me. There's no room for my expression. So.
I had a heartbreaking call yesterday, a beautiful guy called me. Young young parents. Says to me, he's dealing with anger issues. So he said to me, I have to tell you though that as as crazy as as bad as I feel that I have an anger issue, part of what I feel really bad about is that it feels good.
I'm like, what feels good? He's like, it feels good to let out of an emotion. So he said to me, I said, wow. I said, okay, where where else do you let out emotions in your life? Where what other outlets of, you know, letting out emotions do you have? Because yes, anger as bad as it is, it is a release of something. It's not anything healthy.
It's not good, but it is a release. It's that same, listen, like, you know, what what's a cigarette basically? It's it's it's this act, right? We could do that all day long. But how do you how do you explain that to a smoker? So ah, nicotine, all that things, psychologically. If you actually set a time for yourself every like hour, as for a smoker, be like, listen, for an hour go like this, have the same kind of, you know, do that exercise, the same motion, something will something would happen to you.
It'll begin to crack down. There are methods like this that deal with trying to kill that habit.Anyway, Rebbe Nachman says if you knew you had an hour a day to do that, that's fine. אבל after the brackets, שאר כל היום כולו יהיה רק בשמחה. But the rest of the day, you're just בשמחה.
ועל זה הזהיר אותנו כמה פעמים להתאמץ ולהתגבר. He warned us a number of times להתאמץ, that comes from the word אומץ, to be courageous, להתגבר that means to overcome. שלא יהיה לנו לב נשבר רק איזה שעה ביום, that we really only allow ourselves to tune into the לב נשבר one hour a day. ועצבות כלל לא.
But the depression meaning, I want to be careful with that word depression, not not depression because that that that's complicated. The melancholy sadness which we're still cracking down the difference between the two, that he says not that you don't let yourself have an hour a day of that. That's nothing. There's no room for it.
There's nothing that we do with that. ושאר כל היום יהיה בשמחה, and the rest of the day, you be בשמחה.So now in מ"ב, we're going to have a little bit of an explanation now of what does he, what is he referring to? עצבות, הוא כמו מישהו בכעס וברוגז. Sadness is likened to someone who's angry. רוגז literally means uh, rage.
I never realized that. When I was younger, ברוגז. It was like, yeah. ברוגז means, אני לא רוצה לדבר איתך.
But really it means no. Yeah. We say it in תחנון. ברוגז רחמים תזכור.
In times of rage, please remember us with רחמים. Raz has amazing ניגונים on that. Old, one of his old ניגונים. Imagine Raz singing those words, ברוגז רחמים תזכור.
I'll send it to you. So עצבות הוא כמו מישהו בכעס וברוגז, כמו שמתרעם ומתלונן עליו יתברך, חס ושלום, על שאינו עושה לו רצונו. He says, what is עצבות? What are you really what happens? Where's He's saying, what is sadness that we're speaking about is that you're enraged that God isn't doing what you want. Maybe it is ברוגז also because like And you're ברוגז with השם.
What's the signs? There's signs for it, right? This is ברוגז. יש שלום, is this right? שלום is this and ברוגז is your, yeah. Takes Americans time to realize that when you go like this to somebody, that's not a good thing, yeah. Then this is שלום and ברוגז.
It's true. ברוגז, עצבות, basically is you made a mistake, God. What is מתרעם? מתרעם, רעם, comes from thunder. You're thunderous, you're, you're like a, yeah, explosive over it.
Because when you when a person comes to a real sense of identifying themselves with believing that they think God made a mistake, they're they're not in this world. You're not, you don't have a place in this world. So the only place you could identify with at that moment is explosive rage, because there's not, you're you're being, that's where it says, הקנאה והכעס מוציאים את האדם מן העולם, that these things remove remove man from the world. So this concept, this concept, it's showing us that it is explaining to us, he's ממש it's it's incredible.
It's another week of our therapy session with our, it's amazing. He's saying, do you want to understand who you become, go to your beliefs behind whatever you're feeling in those moments. And you'll realize that when you think, even though you'd never say this because you sound like an idiot, but if you think that השם made a mistake, you will be led to this place called עצבות and called, I mean it's so, it's so, it's so childish to say this, you didn't give me what I want.I have a hard time with the concept of of thinking השם made a mistake in the sense that if you have השם in the equation at all, doesn't that... you would think.
I agree with you. No, but I agree with you Jess, sorry. I'm not trying to say like, oh I've never, you know, been that upset about something, I have. But if I honestly I don't think השם was even in the equation.
And once השם came into the equation, I feel like there was some development of... I don't know. So maybe when השם is in the equation it's more לב נשבר and not עצבות. Maybe.
Right, because you said once השם was in the equation, then it started to שטים. I don't think that he's saying that you're saying, "השם, I know you did this wrong for me.\" but the second that you have a feeling of something's going wrong and I'm upset about it, that's kind of what you're saying in your subconscious. In your subconscious, right. Because you would never consciously say this.
Because if you said it you'd be like, wait a second. What am I, what what am I talking about? You'd never, you'd never come to like stand by that belief once it was verbally expressed from you. I think so. If you're talking to השם all day and you're in those moments and you try to verbalize it, it snaps you out of it because you realize I'm feeling this way, but I'm saying, why is this happening?נכון.
נכון. And then you're able to... לב נשבר is I I I לב נשבר is like, I saw לב נש... I saw the I saw the greatest example of this.
We've mentioned them last week, Henkin. When the parents were killed, the Henkin couple, I went to the funeral. It was הושענא רבה morning and I went after דאווענען. It was in הר מנוחות.
And the father of the, the father of the one that was killed, Rabbi Henkin Sr. The wife is a נשמת, right? The, so the husband, so he stood up there on the thing. Now you could say it was עצבות. You could, I don't even know what you call that. But he he got up and I'll never forget, he looked up to שמים and he said, \"I know you're running the show,\" he said, \"but sometimes,\" he says, \"I just don't understand.\" That's what he said.
So at that moment, like of course, you know, people in those kind of situations וכולי and all those things, but what he was really saying was he wasn't saying, \"You didn't do what I want.\" He wasn't saying anything about \"you did something wrong,\" but there was room to express. That is לב, that's the לב נשבר of all לב נשברs. That's the agony of the soul. That's what I love about this so much is that it's just so honest and real about the whole array of actual human emotion as opposed to always supposing the happy and okay with everything.
It's like there are times when we're just so broken. Which is funny because ברסלב is known so much for like מצווה גדולה להיות בשמחה תמיד and everything, but... Except for that hour. Except for the hour, right, except for the hour.
Yeah, it's true. Now. But even in that hour he's talking about לב נשבר, not about עצבות. Right.
I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said. It's okay to feel that way. פשוט. What he said at the funeral, that's, that's okay.
Like ר' אבא, that's... Absolutely. Absolutely. It's exactly what he's saying.
But that's לב נשבר. עצבות is something else which we saw before. עצבות is the place that you don't have any exit from. There's no, that's a dead end.
Because it's לא יועיל. How could you do this to me? Right, stick with that question, right. It's like victim consciousness. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. That's why like we see even, I had a work story where there was an issue with insurance and there was a pre-existing condition that nobody knew about and something wasn't getting reimbursed and the parent was upset. And when I said, you know, it seems like you're you're blaming me. And and the woman said, well, I'm not going to blame you, who am I going to blame? Right.
Because I have to. We have to blame somebody. We have to. We have to, yeah.
with a serious face. Right. Right. And he's sitting there, \"Oh yeah, sure.\" I can see Steven understanding.
It's true. You're absolutely right. I'm sorry. It wasn't actually, it was somebody else.
But. Okay, let's go back inside in מ"ב, third line. א לב נשבר הוא כבן המתחטא לפני אביו. That's the language in the גמרא.
בן המתחטא לפני אביו is like a kid that knows that they're before their אבא and they're not trying to pull any shtick, they're just saying, \"I'm just in pain.\" I've done wrong, maybe I've done wrong, I'm just in pain. כתינוק שקובל הוא בוכה לפני אביו על שנתרחק ממנו. Like a תינוק, like a kid, like a child, like a baby that's crying before its father that I've come far from you. ועיין במקום אחר מזה and look in other places for this.
So this is, באמת, these pieces keep on going. מ"ג. And we're gonna, one second, before that. I have copies here.
This is already the second ספר that was printed from from שיחות הר"ן. There was already another volume that we, I don't even have it. the second, but I mean I have it 'cause I did it, but I don't have the actual ספר, they didn't give me one yet. But but, here's here's copies of of from these שיחות.
I don't have them. I haven't not asked. You have one? Okay, so look how he says here. There are two kinds of a broken heart.
This is Rabbi Nosson's friend. One is called a לב נשבר when a person's heart is broken. He feels deeply sorry for what he did, but the sorrow in his heart is due to a sense of a craving desire to come close to השם, and therefore he cries in that cry. At the core of his cry, there is שמחה.
At the core, there is happiness inside. Now, why? Why would he say this? It's like what you said on one of your tapes about how you say וידוי. Right, I'm so happy that it's before you. Right, meaning, right, so in that same spirit, meaning, I know I'm going to be forgiven.
Right. Cause I'm crying. I'm saying in that in that same language, in that same נוסח saying, why is it in the core of this kind of לב נשבר there is שמחה? Because at a certain place, I realize I am so happy that this is what's bothering me in life. This is what we said on Sunday in the בבא בתרא class.
This makes me happy. The fact that being far from you hurts me is a שמחה. It takes me time till I realize. In the beginning, it doesn't feel like that.
In the beginning, it's agony. It's pain. The more sensitive our souls become, the more we don't, and that's why רבי נחמן says that it gets so dangerous between this and עצבות. But you have, that's why not, you can't go like this all day long, this לב נשבר.
It's too close to the other side. I relate. I relate to what? Because eventually, if you go through the התבודדות of of of expressing it, you'll come to the realization that in the core of this pain is שמחה. That this is what I'm sad about, and not, what did we say on Sunday? that I didn't make it for happy hour.
Right? And who said, a few people said, \"I have no idea what that means,\" and Sherry was so beautiful. That's a beautiful, that's a beautiful thing what he's saying over here. You do know what a happy hour is. This is happy hour.
Okay, so fourth line. Whereas another kind of a broken heart is due to עצבות. Sorry, this is not עצלות, עצבות. This is before editing, obviously.
Don't worry, they didn't print it like this. It's due to עצבות, חס ושלום, which is a state of sadness. This is a depressed state of mind where a person feels very low and is in a bad mood. In this case, it's difficult for him to think clearly.
This kind of sad, depressed state of mind is the opposite of לב נשבר. This עצבות, רבנו ז"ל says, comes not from your heart but from the טחול, the spleen. Now we're gonna get back to the beginning what he said over here in מ"א, right? The heart feels. The heart feels happiness, the heart feels sadness.
This is a healthy kind of a broken heart. A person expresses his sorrow and his remorse remorse over his sins before השם or he cries to השם to be helped. However, the עצבות which comes from a person's spleen is a destructive type of sadness and is known as מרה שחורה, a bitter feeling, and this השם despises. So what he said, הקדוש ברוך הוא.
הקדוש ברוך הוא שונא אותה. Okay. Without, we don't have to be all professors on the anatomy of the body right now, right? Right, right. Okay, what he did say to us so far was about the heart.
The heart feels. He said the heart. He said the heart feels happiness, the heart feels sadness. Both, good and bad.
So the heart feels. The soul only feels happiness? I don't know. I don't think so. I think a נשמה can be in pain.
I just don't know what that means. Would it be fair to say that a broken heart, the difference, or a difference that could be is that the broken heart, there's no ego? Like things that you have, and then the other stuff, the melancholy stuff, there's ego attached, meaning that you think that you are owed something. There's a story attached, and you develop a whole story around something, and that creates… That's the, that's the עצבות, right? Yes. Uh-huh.
Could be. It's the דרשה again. It's the interpretation. It's the פירוש, yeah.
Uh-huh. But he didn't yet explain here the, look, why is it that the spleen is what, right? He didn't say that yet. We don't have any חבר'ה here that know the depths of טחול. They talk about it in Chinese medicine.
In Chinese medicine with the spleen. I think that they do. The רמב"ם used to speak about it too, yeah. When I had postpartum, that was a thing, strengthen your spleen.
Really? Yes, that's what he's talking about. That's... Really. I don't know it enough, but it's really true.
Now that they say the stomach is the second brain, and there are two resources of serotonin in the body. One is from the brain and one is from the stomach. So if you take an SSRI, it goes to your gut. What's an...
It's an anti... It goes to the stomach. And then it spreads the serotonin. Wow.
That's where you digest everything. So it's, but then there's also research that says that serotonin is a crock. So... Uh-huh.
There's research for everything. It all depends on what you believe. Yeah. That...
so that's why you have to come here. Okay, look, look what he says here. This is, this is interesting. Very crazy.
The רמב"ם talks about all this... The רמב"ם goes thoroughly through all this, נכון? And he, I think that there the correlation between spleen and כעס is very clear, actually. But we'll see why now over here. Now, why is it that השם despises this? This the, the the, the עצבות coming from the טחול.
Because according to the זוהר הקדוש, the טחול is the seat of the ס"מ, the שטן. The שטן is the angel of evil who has a mate that's even worse than him. The female part of the שטן is more dangerous and more destructive than the שטן. Where is the female part of this שטן found? Which organ is in the body represents this? The טחול, the spleen.
And we can understand why רבנו ז"ל says that this עצבות comes from the spleen because that's where the female of the ס"מ, the שטן resides. A pure broken heart is, by the way, I'm not even going to try to understand what he just said here. I'm just taking, there's nothing, no. At a certain point you'd be like, yeah, and and you...
אמונת צדיקים, there's nothing we can, what are you going to do with this, right? No, it's a very high thing. Oh yeah, this is the זוהר הקדוש says this. Where are these פירושים on this? Where? Rabbi Rosenfeld was one of the greatest תלמידי חכמים. He was a giant.
Is this something written down that רבי נחמן wrote, רבי נתן? He knew the זוהר. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, through all the... Everything he's saying is a culmination of knowing ליקוטי הלכות inside out. Inside out.
ליקוטי הלכות is רבי נתן's פירוש on, it's really on ליקוטי מוהר"ן but it's on the שולחן ערוך. But yeah, this is, and any any בעל קבלה that was sitting here, anyone that's ever delved into the works of קבלה would be like, oh, טחול, spleen. Uh, שטן. I think it's called מטרוניתא, I think.
I'm not sure what the word is exactly. Oh yeah, of course. That's where the משכן of the, the dwelling place of the of שטן's wife, whatever that means. But again, there's not a lot we can do with that other than be like, okay, this is what they're saying, right? And to go ווייטער.
That's what's called אמונת צדיקים. A pure broken heart is something that השם likes very much, and therefore, it would be fit for a person to devote his entire day to cry before השם, so to speak, and cry to השם with a broken heart, cry. This would be very good, but רבנו ז"ל says this is very dangerous because if a person has a broken heart for too long a period of time, it could lead to a depressed state of mind. It's exactly what...
saying. Therefore, since it's dangerous, a person should have that broken-hearted state of mind for approximately one hour a day. The rest of the day a person should be constantly with שמחה.This refers again to the talk of התבודדות. התבודדות is when a person comes before השם, cries to השם for his assistance, pours out his heart again to השם.
That's why רבנו ז"ל says a person should have his התבודדות for one hour a day. And during that hour, the broken heart is expressed, but the rest of the day should be entirely filled with שמחה only. There is nothing that should allow a person to fall victim to this עצבות.The very first serpent caused the downfall of אדם and חוה that brought death to the world. נחש plus one in גמטריא is שטן.
The נחש became the שטן who is the angel of death. The question is what is the bite of that נחש? What kind of poison does he have in his fangs? עצלות. When he bites, it brings עצבות. It brings this melancholy state of mind, which is the poison of the serpent.
That's pretty. That's the what do you call it, the vemon? Right? It injects its poison into, yeah. You see that's really what it is. Now you could say it's ספק, and it's true, it's the it's the root of ספק as well.
Because ספיקות will lead a person to clear עצבות. It won't lead a person to be like, you know what? It's like this, imagine this, a person has starts to have ספיקות, doubts, and he's like, you know what? I used to really believe in something, but I have doubts now, so now I don't. No. If a person begins to have doubts, it leads them to עצבות.
They don't just stay in that place like, now I don't know. It's not true. It lead, it brings you to that place of מרה שחורה. That's where it brings you to.So, רבנו ז"ל says that one should be very careful not to allow himself to be bitten.
That's really what he's saying. Basically he's saying, stay away from the primordial sin. Or the primordial, I guess the the what led man to the first sin. The apple.
The apple. Sorry. You had to. He's supposed to be with שמחה at all times, and it's certainly wrong on his part to have this עצבות after having this advice by רבנו ז"ל, especially one who's close to רבנו ז"ל and has received this advice.
This is like, now we're getting into like, you want to know what a Breslov, you want to know how a Breslover lives? You want to understand their concept of being a חסיד of רבי נחמן? That you take this ענין really, really seriously. You see people laugh at that because they're like, oh that's not like a real thing, that's not intellectual. There's there's nothing more real than a person taking this advice from רבי נחמן and living with it to its fullest. That person is a healthy person.
His life is filled with openness meaning and space to express that which needs to express and not allowing that which can only lead to destruction.The key of being one of רבנו ז"ל's תלמידים is when you're asked by anyone, are you close to רבנו ז"ל? Do you have אמונה in רבנו ז"ל, meaning in his in his message, in his תורה? The answer should be yes, I am בשׂמחה. If a person is not בשׂמחה, it shows a definite trend away from אמונה in the צדיק אמת, חס ושלום, and the opposite is being close to the שטן, to the נחש, to the serpent. I don't want to dwell on this right now. Now I want to continue.רבנו ז"ל says the עצבות and a broken heart seem to be very similar, but you can detect the difference.
עצבות is like a person who is very angry and bad-tempered. When he דאווענט with עצבות, he complains to השם, why this happened to me? Why am I suffering from this or from that? All with a plaintive tone of voice. Whereas, a לב נשבר, a broken heart, one who cries with sincerity, is like a child coming to his father and begging his father to overlook his foolish deeds. He did something that his father didn't like, and he comes crying before his father with a love for his father.
Take me back. I did something foolish, I'm sorry. I regret what I did. This is the same feeling a person should have when he דאווענט to השם.
This is the true לב נשבר as different from עצלות.You know what, I I I I want to continue before moving forward, I want to I want to just continue on this topic because I want to make sure that we get something very clear. This next topic we have is the same, you know it's the same theme, but we're gonna save it for next week. For men and women, this is this works very differently as well because you brought up postpartum, right? So that's something that we can I don't want to put that in this conversation. We're talking about like a spiritual or… Not thinking about like a chemical.
Not a clinical depression. I want to make it very, very, very clear. We're speaking about that, but the problem is, the issue is, is that, and and רבי נחמן warns this is that for man to be able to have this differentiation between the two, you have to work on yourself for years and years and years. It's not just this thing of, oh, he said there's a difference.
I'll know. I'll I'll be able to know when it's this and when it's this, and then I'll be able to stay away from the עצבות. It's not. It creeps up like… You can really have both, because you can actually like התבודדות with these things.
Like, I hate that I feel that, meaning, coming from a לב נשבר of, I have these feelings of anger and anxiousness. No, coming from coming from עצבות. No, coming from a לב נשבר that I that I have עצבות. Meaning, while you're doing your an hour of התבודדות, you can like really be broken from a from from the right place.
From the right place, נכון. From the right place that I have whatever it is people have, anger and temper and those traits. You know. נכון.
People have it stronger than others. Right. And so, what would it what would an עצבות התבודדות sound like? Why did you do this to me? Why did why me? Why me? Why me? Why me? How could you do it? How could you do this to me? 23 hours a day, still not 23, but you you'll have your moments through your day of having עצבות. You'll catch yourself.
Yeah, but can you can you put, but לב נשבר is almost like if you have those לב נשבר moments during the day, so you feed it by saying, don't worry, you can קוועטש this tomorrow morning or tonight. עצבות moments appearing during the day, what do you say to עצבות moments during the day? Can you can you approach it in the same way? Like, will you satisfy or be able to push those moments away saying, don't worry? No, but they'll still come. They'll still come. That's the key that's the trick.
The first step is to label them. That's an עצבות thought. That's the real עבודה here. Okay, so that's that's the real עבודה.
Like we have to say right now, okay, let's make a תפילה about this. This would be an easy תפילה. השם, please, I'm begging you, make it teach me how to make it clear to me when I when what is what. Like, it's the most simple.
Is that though? When it's asking why me or blaming others, then it's עצבות. And when it's why can't I be okay with this? That's more לב נשבר. Okay, so let's let's work on that for a second. Let's go let's go with that.
Why me, okay? Oh, it's עצבות. I've labeled it. There's another part of the תפילה. And then when I realize what it is, pull me out of it, השם.
So it's not just labeling it, but it's understanding to have the inner wisdom and כוח to deal with that all day. Because... That's why רבי נחמן says ideally, he said, not just that hour, right, but it's while during those other 20 during that hour it's not going to say it's easy, but it's more secluded. You're not distracted.
Right. But during the moment you have to quickly label and say, השם, like in the moment. Right. Not wait 'til your התבודדות the next day to say I messed up.
Because what will happen if if that's not what the if that's not your way of dealing with it during the day? It's a spiral. Yeah. Yeah. So you listen to yourself and see if you're whining.
If you're whining, then it's it's... You think it's it's that? Oh yeah. עצבות alert. If you're whining.
Yes. You're whining. Why me? Why me? The thing is that when we're, the thing is when we're in the כעס and רוגז, usually nothing but usually nothing sensible works. You're taken over.
You're you've been bit by the snake. It's not you. You're bit. רבי שלמה said in the name of the האר"י ז"ל that when a person is angry, the נשמה says to the person, okay, listen, I'm going to I'll be there, and when you're done, I'll come back because here there's no room for me.
What does he do? He goes away? He retreats. What do you mean? In moments of if I'm ever angry, yeah, which happens less and less, but... ברוך השם. He walks away.
And that works for you guys? Like that that... Married for 20 years. I mean like that's a that's a thing that worked like honestly like I don't know. It's a but you can say like I need my like the kind of like it shuts Right.
Right. אימא needs a timeout. Even if you're doing your like your kids, like there's always like afterwards you're always thinking like, was that just me? Did I just do that? cuz it sometimes feels like to be out of body. Yeah, when you see someone else, sometimes you see someone else doing that, you're like, oh my gosh, did I sound like that? And you're like horrified because you realize.
And it's a helpful reminder. And you're embarrassed because everybody else. No, but ברוך השם we have it on our radar and you're like, look back and say, maybe. This this actually, I mean we haven't we haven't fully like there's still more we're going to do on this subject, but this is definitely the ramifications of parenting here are tremendous because with a focus of לב נשבר versus עצבות looking at the חינוך of children, game changer.
Game changer. Cuz לב נשבר, not that you would ever say to your child, oh, no, listen, I'm not sad about what you're doing, I'm just so brokenhearted. That's not what we're talking about either. What do you talk, you know? Oh, now I get it.
Oh, oh, sure. Yeah, oh, oh, so it's okay now, no. But if inside that's where you're operating from, then there's a word that like kind of dissipates on a certain level. What word is that? If I'm really working from לב נשבר, looking at parenting, then what do I feel less and less and less and less? Anger.
Which also translates to the feeling of expressing disappointment in your child. In your child. Which is the worst thing ever. And we spoke about this in one of the first parenting שיעור.
A person that's disappointed in their child is not disappointed in their child. They're disappointed in their expectation, expectation of what they what they were certain should be. That's all you're disappointed in. You're not disappointed in the It's not a true statement.
But that's what he's saying about עצבות is that you turn to השם and you're disappointed about what you thought should be. That's what we said on Sunday, is we think our lives should be amazing. We are certain. נכון.
Exactly like the yellow brick road. It's so beautiful. נכון. That's our path.
And רבי נחמן is teaching us here, he's saying that the the root of that is in the טחול. That's the spleen, that's the עצבות, that's the נחש. That's the נחש that tells you, you know, you're not an idiot. What's that? מגיע לי.
מה זה מגיע לי. לגמרי. I would never say it. Again, if I would say those words I'd feel like an idiot.
Right? But we think it. We subcon and it's the it's the subconscious chatterbox. We but we but again, like a lot of things we would never say. Like, would you ever say to someone, I can't believe you chose to wear that today? Even though that's what you're thinking inside? It's the same level of absurdity of certain things that we are certain are truths.
And they and if it were just be expressed, you'd be like, oh my god. That's why probably this what's it called when you uh listen in? Uh sifting is the word I'm looking for. When you when you're מתבודד, there is a certain level of sifting of your of your emotions, and then it's probably easier for you to detect what's עצבות and what's and what's uh לב נשבר. But as long as they're just things that are in the back of my mind, or wherever those words that aren't expressed reside, all they do is clutter and, you know, just cause a big בלאגן going on inside.
Can I add something? I know we keep going on this, but it's so cool how it coincides with the same wording in CBT, in cognitive behavioral therapy. So there's an exercise that you can do. It's just reframing. It's just, you can take a piece of paper and you just instead of saying it should be this way, you just rewrite it as I would prefer it to be this way, or just taking down that element of מגיע לי.
Yeah. Mad at life or mad at השם because things should be the way I want them. I'm I'm upset because I would prefer that it was this way. Right.
There there is, the only word רב שלמה said that should be obliterated from our consciousness is the word should. Should is עבודה זרה, because should means something different than the way things are now would have been, would be, would have been smarter to have happened. And that means you're that's that that's a דעת on השגחה. We do it to ourselves all the time.
But it's anyway, this this topic is, listen, this is a big topic. We're going to go And we should learn this again. We will, we will, trust me. I mean, this is this is the beginning.
But I really, really believe, I believe very strongly that two two things. One, is that if we do it with patience and הדרגה, like the באבובער was saying earlier in the week, it's probably smarter to learn these things. Like slowly, slowly, if I find more material during the week to to learn upon this שיעור now also, then not every דרך of understanding this is going to be for us. And to be open to that.
Like, רבי נחמן told us clearly, you need to have your פירוש on my תורות, and if it's bringing you closer to עבודת השם, it's me speaking to you as long as it's within the framework of הלכה. So therefore, it gets a little bit confusing here because don't now try to pick up every single even every single ברסלב liturgy on this because, you know, you think I kept everything Rebbe Rosenfeld said in this text, I didn't. Because there's a few lines here that would have completely swayed us the other way. This is our עבודה to get to, that's why we're learning the צדיק's words inside for ourselves and seeing where we could go through it.
The other thing I urge you to do is to keep on speaking about this with each other in between the שיעורים. That's very, very important to keep this conversation going and הבנות that you're getting to, תפילות that you're getting to, so that we could help each other be able to create a path to figuring out the difference of the, like where because if the עבודה is, what is אצלות? מרה שחורה, what is לב? What is what is לב נשבר? In Hollywood, when you say I'm heartbroken, what is that? Is that לב נשבר or is that עצלות? It's עצלות. That's the that's the confusing thing here. In יידישקייט, being heartbroken means a heart that's open to feel and to receive.
That's the main difference. Heartbroken in Hollywood is a heart that's not broken. It's sealed. It's shut.
It's not broken. You broke my heart. No, you didn't. You sealed it.
That's the that's the, we need a lot of rewiring, talking about, yeah, talk about reframing. I mean, taking that word heartbroken and just changing the way that we've grown up with it of heart being heartbroken is a very important עבודה for us to continue to understand this. Change it to heart open. It's beautiful.
I'm heart open. Yeah. Now you'd never say, oh my God, she opened my heart. No.
You never like, I can't believe what you did to me, you opened my heart. I feel so... No, you wouldn't say that. Who says such things? So anyway, we will בעזרת השם, I'll hold on to these papers for next time.
So but with this, with this part. Yeah. Being present with it? Yeah. Well.
Yeah. What? Reframe the word hard? It's really challenging. Worthwhile. Worthwhile.
Thank you. Worthwhile. Say it again. Now say, no no.
It's really worthwhile. No, but you see what happened to you? When you said hard, your face looked like this. Right. You don't say like this, oh my God, it's really worthwhile.
Right? You say, you know what I'm saying? Oh my God, it's really hard. You say, oh my God, it's really hard. Oh my God, it's really worthwhile. It's really true.
It really is an עבודה. And which part makes you be happy the rest of the day? That's how you can be that's the thing of being בשמחה. We just throw out that word. Right.
Nothing, nothing. It's a lot of work. But that has to be defined also. Yeah.
That has to be. We'll get there. We're gonna get there. What's that? It's שמחה.
I think we just need to spend all day and all night in it. I figured it out. Okay. Right.
There's no objection.