Emuna News

That’s emuna news – everything was, is, and will be for the best. Hashem is the boss, and He put us on earth to live a pleasant life. There is no mitzvah in the Torah to worry and no mitzvah in the Torah to fell stress, anxiety or pressure.

Easier said than done, right? We can attain the emuna that everything is for the best; Rabbenu Nachman tells us how, as follows:

When a person spends 60 minutes a day talking to Hashem in his or her own words, doing daily introspection, teshuva, self assessment and asking for guidance – eventually – sometimes within two months, sometimes six months, sometimes a year – they attain the emuna that everything is for the best. It builds gradually, not like a “Eureka” flash of lightening. With hitbodedut, one observes daily events, interprets them with Hashem’s help, and then arrives at concrete operative solutions based on his growing and reinforced ability to see how even the seemingly bad has turned out to be a gift.

Hashem illuminates the hearts of those lucky people that steadfastly devote an hour a day to personal prayer with no discounts and no excuses. To attain emuna, which is fitness of the soul, we have to work hard, just like working for fitness of the body.

There’s no short-cut alternative to attain the emuna that everything is for the best.

Transgressing the Torah’s laws destroys emuna; that’s why we have to make teshuva every single day to attain emuna. My beloved rabbi and spiritual guide Rav Shalom Arush, may Hashem bless him, always says that a person who doesn’t do teshuva every day can’t attain emuna.

Hashem is infinitely merciful, but He doesn’t just erase wrongdoing and quickly forget about it unless a person makes teshuva. Teshuva has the power to correct wrongdoing. It’s like a spiritual soap that can clean any blemish, no matter how spiritually greasy or grimy it is. Teshuva is the only cure for sickness of the soul; neglecting to do daily teshuva is like having a dangerous heart condition that requires taking daily medication, and you fail to take your meds…

Teshuva insures the health of body and soul because it erases the transgressions that destroy emuna. Emuna is not only the most vital element for one’s emotional (and therefore physical) welfare, but once we have the strong-enough emuna that everything is for the best, then we are on the road to attaining happiness.

So, happiness originates in teshuva, and true teshuva originates in daily hitbodedut. Therefore:

With no hitbodedut, there’s no teshuva.

With no teshuva, there’s no health of the soul.

With no health of the soul, there’s no emuna.

With no emuna that everything is for the best, there’s no happiness.

Where there’s no happiness, there’s sadness, depression, anxiety, shrinks, pills, divorces, suicides, heart attacks, ulcers and more nasty villains…

So, they key to happiness is 60 minutes of personal prayer a day just as King David did, every single day. The Book of Psalms are actually the protocols of his dialogue with Hashem.

Our main way of building the emnua that everything is for the best is simply to ask Hashem to help us attain it, just as we’d ask for any other necessity.

It’s vital that we arouse from our spiritual slumber. As soon as we start working on our personal prayers, we find the road to teshuva and to happiness.

A great gift of teshuva is that when we judge ourselves, the Heavenly court doesn’t judge us, for Hashem doesn’t allow double jeapordy – a person can’t be tried in two different courts for the same crime.

So why is daily teshuva so very important?

We don’t even realize how many transgressions we make a day. Hitbodedut takes care of that. In self evaluation, we discover and remind ourselves of all the little things that we did wrong in the last 24 hours; that’s a lifesaver, for we never walk around with excess spiritual luggage of transgressions that we haven’t yet confessed about, corrected, or are actively engaged in correcting.

Hashem wants you to be happy. So does your friend Lazer. So give me one more big smile, and have a great day. G-d willing, I’ll be back soon with more great news – G-d bless!