is a little anthology of Rabbi Nachman's teachings about joy.What
is the difference between sadness and joy? Joy really fills
you; whatever you have is fuller, and sadness empties you out.
"I don't have this, I don't have that," so even what
you have you don't have. People walk around sad because they
don't know what to do with their future. You have this minute
right now. What are you doing with it?
The difference between sadness and joy is very simple. Sadness
always tells you, "oh man! What are you going to do in
ten minutes? What will you do ten years from now?" If
you are really filled with joy for one minute, then you will
know what to do the next minute also.
What is God giving you? He is giving you this minute. He
hasn't given tomorrow; He promised He would give tomorrow.
Of course I don't know what to do tomorrow, because I didn't
receive it yet. Sadness is very much concerned with what I
don't have, and I really don't have tomorrow yet.
Why, if somebody dies, God forbid, are you filled with sadness?
Because somebody isn't there, right? The depths of joy and
sadness are 'being" and "not being". If you
get something you are happy. The more you get it, the deeper
you get it, and the deeper is your joy.
Have you ever seen people who are so happy when they have
an excuse to be sad? One woman said to me, "I can't talk
to my mother unless I am sick." When she is sick then
her mother has something to say. There are certain parts of
a person which react only to "not being". We have
to wipe them out. If you say, "I'm just happy happy why?
Because the beauty parlor instead of charging you $35 only
charged $29 and you give a tip of $2 so you saved $4? Rabbi
Nachman says if you are happy for no reason, without doing
something good, you are just kidding yourself. On the contrary,
the reaction to this kind of joy will be that you will be
knocked down low five minutes later. If you can be happy just
because you are alive then you have something, if you really
feel it.
Sadness is a sickness, not an emotional problem. It is absolutely
a sickness and you have to get rid of it. Rabbi Baal Shem
Tov says if you want to know whether you are really serving
God, it is simple. If my heart is filled with joy each time
I put on phylacterys, and each time I do something good my
heart is filled with joy, I am serving God If I am not on
that level, then I am just doing mechanical things. That is
very holy, I'll be rewarded in Heaven for it, but it is heartbreaking.
Imagine that I am standing on the roof with one foot on the
roof, and the other hanging over the edge. You say, "Listen,
do me a favor. You make me nervous, even if you are the greatest
acrobat in the world. Put your foot back on the roof. I don't
have strength to watch that." You have to realize it
is the same way with God When you walk around sad you make
God uncomfortable. God says, "I love you. I'm your God
I signed a contract on Mt. Sinai and I will stick to it. I'll
be with you, but I really don't feel comfortable with you
when you are sad."
When you smile filled with joy, and you look at somebody,
they look back at you, when you cry they can't really look
back at you. You can smile eye to eye, but you can't cry eye
to eye. We know this world is a little mirror of Heaven, so
although it can be beautiful when you cry, God still feels
a little uncomfortable about it. You can cry with being, or
you can cry with nothingness, with this dead kind of sadness.
If someone says, "Really I love you so much, I want to
be the greatest friend to you," and he cries while he
says it, that can open your heart in a thousand ways. But
if someone cries, "I was in the beauty parlor, sniff
sniff, and they cheated me, sniff sniff, and I paid five dollars"
what do you feel then? Would you say it is a beautiful confrontation?
You say okay, pat her on the back, and look away. There is
a very deep difference between crying before somebody and
crying about something. If I am crying before God it is the
holiest thing. Maybe He is crying with me, If I am crying
about something, am I telling it to God, it is not as good.
Anyway, the most important thing you have to know is that
if you are shining below here, God is shining. If you smile
below here, then God smiles back at you from above. Something
very holy is going on between you and God Tears open the gates,
but joy breaks down the walls!
The word sadness is really a bad translation. The word atzvut
actually means to shut yourself off. There are two kinds of
sadness. There is marirut, which is bitterness, which is living
sadness, and there is atzvut, which is dead sadness. Bitterness
says, "I wish I could do better. I didn't do it right.
oh boy! Why didn't I do better?" Without regretting,
I just know I didn't do well enough. That is living sadness,
because when I walk out of there, I want to do better. The
Baal Shem Tov says you can tell the difference between marirut
and atzvut very simply. If you see another person after you
cry, do you love them or do you hate them? If you cry in the
living kind of crying then every person looks beautiful to
you afterward. "I'm not so good, but they are so beautiful."
If you have the dead kind of sadness, then everything looks
ugly to you. Sometimes you cry and you look out the window
and say, "Oh, those disgusting creatures walking down
the street." With this kind of sadness God can't look
at you either.
If a person wants to know what level his joy is, it is very
simple. If you feel one with the world, it is because you
feel the oneness of God So if you walk around and say you
are filled with joy, but you can't stand people, it is not
God joy. Some people think, "Today I am in such a good
mood, I have to tell a dirty joke." Is this how deep
the joy touched you? It brought out all the garbage you had
piled up the last few years? Then it is not the joy we are
talking about. The higher it is coming from, the deeper it
goes. How do you know how deep the joy reaches? If it makes
you get up and dance, then it reached your feet. Rabbi Nachman
always talks about imagination. He says if you are sad, it
is not that you have sad imagination, your imagination isn't
real. Imagination is flying, and if you are sad you are so
heavy you can't fly. You could imagine you are flying, but
even that is impossible if your sadness is too heavy. If you
are filled with joy then you really have wings, and you can
fly.
There is such a thing as emet , truth, and there is such
a thing as emuna, believing. Real joy is a combination of
truth and believing. If emet and emuna and are both working
strongly inside of me, if I believe what I know, and I know
what I believe, then I am filled with joy. If my job comes
from truth and believing, emet and emuna, then it is called
holy joy. Otherwise it is called pagan joy.
The greatest joy in the world is when a person is really
his own judge. If a person can observe himself, know what
he did, what he has to do better, that means he is really
in touch with himself.
Sometimes you walk along and suddenly you are so happy, and
you don't know why. At that moment they declared in Heaven
to give you something, even if it might not be until a hundred
years from now. Your soul heard of the gift and was happy.
Joy is the strongest vitamin, because joy makes you strong
in a million ways, physically, mentally and spiritually. There
are all kinds of strength, and the highest level of strength,
which a person needs to live in the world is joy.
If someone asks you something, and you give them real true
advice, it fills you with joy!
If you do someone else a favor, your filled with joy!
If you are suddenly unexplainably happy, it could be because
somewhere in the world a very holy soul was born.
When you tell stories about holy people, and you tell other
people there are holy people in the world, it fills you with
joy.
is a little anthology of Rabbi Nachman's teachings about joy.What
is the difference between sadness and joy? Joy really fills
you; whatever you have is fuller, and sadness empties you out.
"I don't have this, I don't have that," so even what
you have you don't have. People walk around sad because they
don't know what to do with their future. You have this minute
right now. What are you doing with it?
