The Original Sin

There’s an idea in Breslev thought that if you follow Rebbe Nachman and do an hour of hitbodedut (personal prayer) every single day, you’ll merit fixing every single one of your previous lifetimes, all the way back to the first man, Adam.

A few years’ back, when I first heard this idea, I didn’t pay that much attention to it. It seemed so obscure, so theoretical, and I had plenty of stuff to fix in this lifetime, thank you very much, without going back 5775 years.

In the subsequent years, I honestly and truly feel like I have been on this crazy spiritual roller-coaster ride, that has caused me to change my life, fundamentally, literally dozens of times.

I’ve done poverty, seriously crazy people, multiple moves, paralyzing fears, health issues, shalom bayit problems, massive tests of faith, overwhelming doubt and confusion about what I’m really doing with my life, issues with my kids, and other family members.

At this stage, I reckon I’ve gone through at least 24 previous lifetimes, and to be frank, I’m feeling pretty spiritually exhausted. For months’ now, all I wanted to do is find some way of living a ‘normal’ life, where we have a good or even great income, a nice house, and a nice community to hang out with.

The problem is, it’s not coming so easy, and the last few weeks, I’ve been feeling really ‘blocked’ spiritually. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced it yourself, but it’s kind of like being able to picture EXACTLY where you want to go, and how to do it, but you still can’t move even so much as a muscle to make it happen.

When these spiritual blocks continue for weeks or even months, it can be very hard to avoid a big attack of depression and despair. For me, the only thing that keeps me going, and gives me hope and optimism at these times is my hour of talking to G-d every day. But I digress.

So anyway, as part of our efforts to try to be more ‘normal’, my husband and I have opened a business in the Old City of Jerusalem, called ‘The Meaning of Life’. It’s a thought-provoking movie about the meaning of life, together with a store selling all sorts of ‘cute’ items that can give a person’s life more meaning (like big bars of gourmet chocolate and books by Rav Arush).

We opened the doors, sort of, a couple of days’ ago, and a few people came in to browse. One of them even liked something, and decided to buy it – which is when I started to panic.

OK, I didn’t know how to work the till, and I had no change in it, but the problem was much more fundamental than that. After the lady bought the cute purse for five bucks, I had to close the shop and run away.

Why?

Because I realized, I am petrified of actually succeeding. I am scared stiff of having money, and a lovely home, and the ease and comfort I think I’ve been craving for decades.

This was a massive revelation to me, and I had to go and do a lot of praying about it. Consciously, I really do want all that. Subconsciously, I’ve been sabotaging myself for years.

Why?

The answer I came to has to do with Adam’s original sin. A lot of us think that the problem is that Adam ate from the tree without permission, and THAT was the whole deal. But it’s much deeper than that.

Rav Ofer Erez explains that the whole of humanity was contained in the soul of Adam HaRishon, and that we all had a say in the decision.

G-d wanted to give us a world overflowing with bounty and goodness, ‘for free’, and we didn’t want that. We thought the way to really serve G-d was to torment ourselves with deprivation, strife, wars, suffering and illnesses. But that was never what G-d wanted. G-d just wanted to give us everything, without us having to go through the terrible ordeal that can be ‘life’.

But we thought we knew better.

And on some deep level, I’m still thinking that I need to be a poor, miserable outcast in order to serve G-d properly! But it’s complete rubbish!

Now I’ve realized what’s going on, I’ve asked G-d to take this madness out of my psyche once and for all, and to let me serve Him with a luxury apartment, loads of friends and a new car. I’m praying on it a lot. And I’ve realized that Rebbe Nachman was right – again – and that I seem to back at the beginning of where it all started to go wrong, with Adam’s original sin.

And this time, with G-d’s help, I’m going to make the right choice.