60 Minutes

I was talking to a friend a little while ago, who was telling me how much they love all the Breslev ideas, and the stuff about emuna, and the talking to G-d BUT… (there is always a ‘but’): they felt it put far too much emphasis on praying, and not enough emphasis on ‘doing things’.
 
“Where’s the personal effort? Where is the trying to do something yourself, and not just leaving it all to G-d?” they wanted to know.
 
It’s a reasonable question, except for the small but incredibly salient detail that praying takes an awful lot of personal effort. Every day, I have to think about where am I going to make the time to do a full 60 minutes of hitbodedut, or personal prayer. Every day, I have to fight with my evil inclination to even start to do it; I have to keep going, even when I feel tongue-tied and useless; and I have to make sure that I do my level best to explain to G-d what’s going on in my life; what things I need His help to work on; and the areas where I’m really falling down.
 
It is hard, hard work.
 
And let’s not even talk about the times when I had ‘big stuff’ going on in my life, and I was frequently popping off to some holy place to do six hour praying sessions.
 
As I said, it is hard, hard work.
 
Which is why when people dismiss prayer as being the easy option, I get kind of cross with them. Only a person who has never made a real, concerted effort to talk to G-d for an hour every single day could possibly think that it’s not ‘personal effort’.
 
Prayer isn’t magic dust. You don’t just throw a few minutes of hitbodedut at a problem and Hashem magically makes it disappear (although depending on the circumstances, that does happen an awful lot of the time.)
 
Depending on the severity of the situation a person is facing, the tests they are being asked to stand up in, the depths of their suffering and despair, the middot they need to fix and the sins that they need to straighten out, it can take days, weeks, months, and even years for prayer to ‘work’, in terms of sweetening the situation or solving the specific problem.
 
But in other ways, prayer ‘works’ immediately. It works immediately to help a person develop a sense of humility, that they are not the masters of their own destiny, and that they actually need some outside help from the Big Man to get anywhere in life. And if a person is regularly doing 60 minutes of hitbodedut every single day, it also works to sweeten all the judgements hanging over them as quickly and painlessly as possible. And when there isn’t a mountain of spiritual debits to contend with, a person doesn’t have to worry about being sent all sorts of trials and tribulations in this world to pay it off.
 
This point is so incredibly important, but time and again, I’ve watched it pass people by. Why do I try my very best to do 60 minutes of hitbodedut every day? Because Rabbi Nachman promises that anyone who does that will not get hit with any severe judgements.
 
On page 71 of the English translation of ‘In Forest Fields’, you’ll find a letter that was written by Rabbi Nachman to one of his pupils. This is an excerpt from it: “one of the conditions that I stipulate with those whom I draw close to me is that they don’t allow others to fool them, and that they don’t fool themselves. You’ve heard frequently and have understood that my main method and advice for attaining one’s complete soul correction and achieving what’s possible to achieve is none other than hitbodedut, that a person designate a place for himself where he can speak his heart to Hashem, and ask for all his material and spiritual needs, to confess all his misdeeds, whether intentional or accidental, under duress or by free will. He should thank Hashem for all His favours, material and spiritual.”
 
So far so good, but here is the absolutely mind-blowing bit:
 
“I have succeeded in arranging with Hashem that any person who implements this advice with complete simplicity, stands before Hashem for an hour a day of [personal] prayer – even if he can’t say a single word, only that he should force himself to yearn to speak to Hashem, he shall merit every good! There will be no severe judgement on him from Above, for with this [advice] he shall correct all three parts of his soul – nefesh, ruach and neshama.”
 
Rabbi Nachman didn’t make this promise about 30 minutes of hitbodedut; or about an hour of hitbodedut a week; or a few minutes of snatched hitbodedut while you are stuck at a traffic light or waiting for your toast to pop.
 
This guarantee only applies to someone who is trying their best to do 60 minutes of hitbodedut, every single day.
 
If this was a talk show, the phone lines would be jammed right now with people complaining that they’d ‘love to do, but it’s just not practical’. One person has small kids; another person works a very long day; another person is run ragged looking after a sick, elderly relative.
 
I hear yah, I really do.
 
No-one said that an hour a day was easy – it’s effort, remember, it’s the purest, most effective effort you can make, and it’s really hard work. But just take a minute to think what a life without harsh judgements looks like: no serious illnesses; G-d forbid; peaceful relations with your spouse, your neighbours, your parents, your siblings; enjoyable work; enough parnassa; finding a quick shidduch with the best person in the world; no more kids off the derech; a happy heart and lightness of spirit…
 
Be honest. If someone came up to you and promised you all this, and all you had to do was talk to them for an hour a day – AND you can even pick the most convenient time, AND they will even make a house call, if you are finding it hard to get away, AND it’s for free – you’d grab it with both hands. Wouldn’t you?
 
And if not, why not?
 
There’s really only one answer to that: either, you don’t really believe in Hashem, OR, you don’t really believe Rabbi Nachman’s promise.
 
The important thing, as Rabbi Nachman himself wrote, is not to fool yourself. You can tell yourself you are too busy to do it; you can tell yourself that the half a minute allotted to ‘personal prayer’ in Shemonah Esra is enough; you can tell yourself that it’s really not that big a deal, and that Rabbi Nachman was ‘just another rabbi’. But in your heart of hearts, you know it’s not true.
 
The last few weeks, I’ve had to fight and fight to do an hour a day. I’ve had guests from abroad, sick relatives to visit in hospital, early morning pick-ups from the airport, parents’ evenings, bar mitzvahs, youth group ‘shows’ to attend – a million and one things going on.
 
But what’s kept me going is the knowledge that every day I do hitbodedut for an hour, is a day I won’t get hit with severe judgements. And every day, that’s enough to get me up, get me out, and get me talking to Hashem.
 
That 60 minutes is an investment in the rest of the day and even more importantly, in my soul and my peace of mind. Yes, it’s effort; yes, it’s often really, really hard to do it. But when it comes to trying to fix your soul, attaining the world to come and living the most fulfilled, happiest life you can, there are simply no short cuts.