Good ol’ Unconditional Love
As one who has seen miracles from appealing to Hashem for everything, I couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t ‘in to’ the whole Breslev thing the way I am...
Quite a few months ago, I was (trying to) listen to one of the CDs by Rav Arush, where he was talking about how to be happy. With the caveat that my Hebrew is not completely fluent, I understood from the CD that one of the main ‘blockages’ to people feeling happy is when they go around making hard judgements about their fellow Jew – even when their observation is completely true and justified.
This then triggers a chain reaction in the Heavenly Courts, where the person judging is themselves judged in a very hard manner (following the A Turn For A Turn principle), which can really put a down on their day.
The way Hashem has made me is that I usually see things very black and white.
If something ‘makes sense’, I then find it very difficult to understand why the whole world doesn’t see it, and isn’t doing it. Thus, as a newly-frum teenager, I couldn’t understand why the rest of the Jewish world wasn’t keeping Shabbat.
As a new olah (immigrant to Israel), I couldn’t understand why all the Jews left in chutz l’aretz (outside of Israel) weren’t making aliya. And as a struggling individual who has seen real miracles and improvements from appealing to Hashem for help, I couldn’t understand why all my friends, family and acquaintances weren’t ‘in to’ the whole Breslev thing the way I am (and please G-d, may I continue to be so until 120!)
You get the picture. All of which added up to quite a number of ongoing ‘judgement calls’ about quite a lot of people. Until I listened to that CD, I hadn’t realised what a problem it was – but it immediately solved the problem for me as to why I’d been walking around with an underlying heaviness and sadness.
I knew that loshon hara (speaking badly of your fellow Jew, even if it’s 100% true) was bad, and thank G-d, I’ve really been working on that trait. But I hadn’t realised that thinking bad of my fellow Jew was also an enormous problem.
If I wanted to lift the clouds that kept dogging me, I had to stop the judgement calls, and develop some serious ahavat yisroel – loving my fellow Jew.
And that, dear reader, is where the difficulties really began. In my hitbodedut (personal prayer), I started asking Hashem to have real ahavat chinam, or unconditional love, to really love my fellow human. A week or so in, an ‘ahavat chinam’ group announced that it was starting up locally, and I jumped at the chance to join in.
“This is going to be great!” I thought. “I’ll learn about ahavat yisroel, and I’ll also maybe get to share some ideas about emuna.” I had visions of one big, happy family, all talking about Hashem and loving each other unconditionally.
That’s not exactly what happened. Whenever the prize is so great – in this case, ahavat yisroel – the yetzer hara (evil inclination) always pulls all the stops to ruin it.
There was an underlying tension from day one, as different participants had different views about the goals they were trying to achieve and the best way to achieve them. We went ‘off topic’ more than once, usually resulting in a great deal of discomfort and awkwardness (at least for me).
After a few weeks of increasing discomfort and anxiety, I realised that the group wasn’t for me, and I’d have to find some other avenue. I continued praying to Hashem, and He kindly sent me another pointer, this time in a shiur by Rav Amnon Yitzhak, who said that a person can only attain true ahavat yisroel if they are humble, and they get rid of any trace of pride.
Wow. This was getting harder and harder. But in my hitbodedut, I switched from asking for ahavat yisroel, to asking Hashem for greater humility.
I’m not sure if it’s the prayer that did it, or whether Hashem had scheduled it in for me anyway, but all of a sudden, I found myself on the defensive with nearly everyone I was speaking to. One of my dearest friends suddenly turned prosecution attorney, and started picking holes in everything I said or did. I seemed to be arguing with nearly everyone – including some person who I barely knew, but who obviously knew me well enough to start insulting me.
What was going on here? My head was in a whirl. I’d spent months asking for more ahavat yisroel and in the meantime, I was coming to dislike more and more people. I started to get very disheartened.
Then Hashem had mercy on me, and sent me a translation of ‘In Forest Fields’. I read the book cover to cover as fast as I could, and suddenly, a whole bunch of things started to fall into place.
One of the things it talks about is how, when you are trying to change an attitude or trait, you have to tackle it at its root. I was trying to be less judgemental of my fellow Jew, without understanding that I had to change what was causing all the judgements: namely, my pride.
When I was telling people about emuna, and Hashem, and hitbodedut, and Breslev, I thought it was all coming from a holy place; I know that what Rabbi Nachman taught, brought down in our generation by Rav Shalom Arush, is the most potent torah I’d ever come across. I knew it was rooted in holiness and that on a practical level, it really works.
But somehow, my yetzer managed to put ‘me’ in the middle of all that wisdom and holiness. I’d been acting like a know-it-all, like a holier-than-thou clever clogs. I was so stunned when I realised, I felt I couldn’t talk to anyone for a few days.
Suddenly, I realised that all the negativity I’d been experiencing the past few weeks was Hashem showing me all the faults I had to fix in myself. The friend who was judging me so harshly; the incredibly arrogant and rude person at the Kiddush; the other people who were walking around feeling so superior to their fellow Jew, because they were a bit stricter with some of the mitzvoth.
Oww. It really hurt.
But it humbled me. It made some space for me to start trying to see the other person’s point of view, and to understand that teshuva is a long, hard process that takes a life time of prayer, dedication and effort (and free gifts from Hashem…)
I can’t say all my pride has disappeared, because it hasn’t. But I know now that if I continue to appeal to Hashem for help, He will take care of it when the time is right.
In the meantime, the day after my revelation, my ‘prosecution attorney’ friend called, and had made a 180 degree turnaround – she was so nice to me, I burst into tears.
Instead of sinat chinam (hatred for no reason), I got a big dose of ahavat chinam – and I pray that Hashem transforms all the ‘sinat chinam’ between people into ahavat chinam, speedily and in our days, amen.
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