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.
