The Fine Shell

A little while ago, I was leafing through the English language version of Rabbi Natan’s abridged and simplified version of Likutey Etzot (or ‘Advice‘).

A lot of things struck me. One of the main items that caught my attention was a paragraph talking about how the hardest yetzer hara (evil inclination) is a fine shell. This evil inclination is such a tough one to overcome, it’s only given to souls with incredible strength.

I put the book down. I pondered what I read for a bit before I went to sleep – and I had no idea what it was talking about. One thing I can tell you, my evil inclination is not subtle. My evil inclination walks round with a big sign on its head and with flashing lights and a lot of noise. I can usually spot it coming a mile away – and it’s still incredibly difficult to recognize, battle and overcome.

How could a ‘thin shell’ be harder?

That night, I had a strange dream. I can’t remember all (or even any…) of the details, but I woke up with some very clear understanding of how and why the ‘fine shell’ is just so tough to crack.

It’s incredibly tough because usually, even the person themselves doesn’t know it’s there. On the outside, they are doing a great job: they are trying to work on themselves; they are doing an hour a day of personal prayer; they are davening in a sunrise, or netz, minyan; they are dunking in a mikvah; they are learning, they are doing a lot of kindnesses for others, and they are even teaching an awful lot of torah…

But on the inside? The inside is completely disconnected from G-d. It’s all one, massive, and massively convincing show – but it’s completely fake.

How can this be? Because the person’s soul is completely covered by this ‘fine shell’ that looks like them and talks like them, and acts like them and thinks like them – but it’s not them.

And it’s covering everything, so convincingly, that the person needs an awful lot of siyatta dishmaya even to know that there’s really a problem. Really, deep down, underneath it all, underneath all their praying and learning and lecturing and ‘helping’, and posturing – they have zero real connection to the Creator.

With a more ‘normal’ yetzer hara, the solution would be to go away, and do some soul-searching and make some teshuva. But when you’re dealing with a ‘fine shell’ evil inclination, even that’s difficult. Why? Because you really, truly, 100% believe that you are making teshuva; that you are doing your best; that you really are trying to fix what’s broken. But really – you’re not. You can’t.

Because you don’t even know yourself just how phony you’re being.

Like Rabbi Natan said, it’s a tough one.

But just as G-d created the problem, He also created the solution: prayer. Lots and lots and lots of it.

That’s the only way to really crack the ‘fine shell’, and to start to be a genuine, living, breathing, feeling Jew.

Today, so much of modern life is ‘plastic’. It looks like the real deal; it acts like the real deal; it talks like the real deal – but it isn’t. On the inside, where the feelings are, where the happiness is, where the excitement and joy and ‘verve’ are – it’s all dead.

As in modern life, so in modern yiddishkeit.

How many people do we all know who are walking around with beards down to there, and necklines up to here, who are plain miserable? On the outside, they are so ‘religious’, but on the inside – all they do is moan and whine and worry and blame.

They are so super-strict about keeping mitzvot in the most machmir, stringent way – but their souls aren’t happy. Their souls aren’t rejoicing about the thought of cleaning for Pesach; or rejoicing about the thought of bringing another child into the world; or rejoicing about the idea of living in Israel.

Everything is h-e-a-v-y.

Once I realized what Rav Natan was on about, I marveled again at the insight, the Divine wisdom and the light contained in the teachings of Rebbe Nachman.

Someone asked me a little while back why it was that so many people get to Breslev, and then kind of ignore all the other Jewish teachers and teachings that are out there.

I can’t talk for everyone else, but I can tell you my experience: Breslev works. Breslev knows what it’s talking about. Breslev gives me a practical solution for every single one of my spiritual problems – not theoretical, airy-fairy ideas, but things that even a simple, flawed person like myself can do, and see real results from.

Rebbe Nachman was on such a high level, his advice can even help everyone, even those people trapped in a ‘fine shell’ of evil that’s appears to be so convincingly ‘good’.

In this superficial time, this plastic generation, when good and evil are intertwined like never before, there are a lot more people out there with a ‘fine shell’ than anyone might think.

And Rebbe Nachman is the only one that can crack it.