At the base of our Torah and our Jewish psyche lies an incessant urgency. Not just a sense that things are not the way they should be, but a relentless striving to heal it all this very moment.
Relentless, because it refuses to decay with time or to fade with disappointment. In the morning, we make our plea as though unable to tolerate another moment. And as evening comes, we demand again as though morning never passed.
We live on the edge of eternity. May we arrive now.
May we arrive now. Well, there is no other time. It is always now.
Can we see ‘time”, of course not, we can only see the now instant by instant.
Everything else is merely thoughts: memory projected in thought. It will never work.
Notice that all is repeated over and over again in different ways.
We live on the edge of eternity, because we are afraid to enter it.
You are not the mind.
Stop thinking all the time and enter the silence, until you get it.
Like Adam and Chava, who had it until they lost it and entered time.
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Avishai, as usual great insight and advise,
I lived through many generations of thinking this was the time of Messiah. This does seem like the worst, but maybe it's not the worst maybe more truth is coming into the" light". The world and the governments have always been corrupt but now it is more evident.
The truth is a painful thing to face. Since the Atomic bomb, we have all been faced with total innihilation. Stress breeds a lot of crazy thinking. That still small voice becomes more silent in the noise of discontent. It seems that trusting in God is our only option now. Maybe the Messiah is the carrot that leads us there. Maybe Messiah is within us all who believe in the Almighty God. A lot of speculation can be a harmful thing. Just listen to the differing news sources; they are the only acess we have to the rest of the world. Torah is the only real truth for sure.
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Urgent Yearning: The cited passages are spot on observations of a portion of the Jewish psyche. However, they highlight an incessant sense of urgency that encourages psychological damage akin to PTSD. We must engage in concurrent discussions of healthful ways to survive and thrive as we respond to the mitzvah, tikun olam. The encourage unrelenting urgency is to invite burn out, and daily misery for ourselves and those we love. Reply
Urgent Prayer
Those who have that point in their heart - that yearning to connect to G_d and reveal His presence are responsible to bring healing to this world urgently.
We witness daily how the world becomes darker as negative forces reign to bring harm and despair. This is G_d pressuring those who are accountable to serve as a conduit for His positive energy to connect and correct us.
The Kabbalists tell us how to join our hearts in yearning to connect to G_d. This depends on us connecting together in prayer to request Him to correct our egoistic nature and unify our hearts to merit His quality of Love of others. Then this reforming Light that is attracted, will spread throughout humanity to raise all to a new level of peaceful coexistence.
We need to act urgently before we receive greater pressure fom above. Those who are given this divine yearning are accountable for the healing and will receive the greatest pressure to perform their mission.
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Good Morning, Brenda! [2019]
You are blazing hot; On Fire!🔥
Keep the Faith!
Be Blessed
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Yes, G d is perfect and in his highest heavenly realm there it’s perfect. However, none of us are perfect and probably never will be, and this earthly world all of us inhabit is definitely far from perfect. G d created us in his image and bestowed certain attributes within us capable of developing into great and g dly natures, but no how reaching the plateau that G d exists upon. We were given the choice to distinguish between right from wrong, and every time we make a good choice we move somewhat higher up the ladder toward learning and achieving blessings we never probably thought possible. This is one of our reasons for reaching out to make our earthly life somewhat better each day through good deeds, helping in every way to clean the earth up. That’s our job given to us by G d and he rewards us by placing more blessings within our minds, our hearts and our souls until someday we’re finished and it’s time to move on. We then take another step up the ladder to a higher plateau. Reply
Hi Rabbi,
Do you have a specific source for this message of urgency (is it ואתה תצוה?) or is it just a more general observation of an outlook of Chassidus and Judaism? If you do have one please share it!!
Thanks so much
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I wrote it as an abstract of the mood of the Rebbe's talks in the latter years of the farbrengens, but yes there is one talk that stands out in this regard. It was Shabbos Dvarim, 5751, especially near the end of the farbrengen. Reply
urgent yearning appears i'm in need of some enlightenment. yes, i have an inherent, incessant sense of urgency that is relentless. personally, it feels that the urgency is to try to live up to what G-d wants (with His help of course). it's impossible for me to imagine living on the verge of 'eternity' - each day is plenty for me! Reply
Yearning For The Light
Initially we were all submerged in His Light - embraced as One with Love and Giving. We separated from Him when He created the quality of the 'self'. We turned our attention towards this self and all drifted apart from the other and Him.
Deep within us is a spark that longs to reconnect to that Light again. Our yearning will draw us and the whole of humanity to that sacred place again - This is our work and this is the time.
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No Broken, No Fixing Needed Who is exactly that is telling us that this is not a perfect world a perfect Torah? God created a perfect world, exactly as it should be. Otherwise GOD would not be perfect. That said; harping on the brokenness of the world closes our eyes to GODs perfect creation. It is man that is not perfect who is broken. A man who constantly lives in the negative is easy prey for a Moshiach or guru to free him. Stop waiting and awake and realize that this is a perfect world created for each of us. Reply
Eternity Most of us have this urgency but be patient. Study, lead by example and the "urgency" will not seam so urgent. Live each day the best you can. Like was already said; wait for the fruit to ripen. Reply
yes the soul is eternal But while our soul is in the physical realm limited by the physical body and its physical senses we do not see or feel the eternal untill a time when even the physical will also be permeated and reveal the eternal. That time is what we yearn for..... Reply
Eternity
The Eternal is The Soul of Now.
Not to know this is to live an unenlightened life.
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Eternity is meant to permeate our physical world That is what we yearn for Reply
I yearn every day... I totally relate to this Dose of Wisdom. I yearn every day and night that things in my life, the lives of my family and friends, and even the lives of workers of iniquity, will be healed. I have experienced this yearning for quite a long time now, and my yearning does not decay, fade or diminish over time. May this be so for all of Israel. Reply
May we arrive not now ,when ripe & complete. No good arriving prematurely .eg.We eat fruit when its ripe, not when its unripe.Most of us will take eternity to awake ,grow up and be holy like our L-rd & G-d commands. Reply
We live on the verge of Eternity ?
Not true.
We live in eternity. Eternity dosn't begin next week, or tomorrow, or when we die.
Eternity is ALL time. Thus we live in Eternity right NOW. This exact moment.
To suggest otherwise is to keep the heart and mind from resting peacefully in The Eternal....which is forever NOW !
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I understand only part of it
This yearning urgency I know by experience.. There is always the wish, that things should be good now.
But the explanation, that we live on the verge of eternity?
In "arriving there" I understand, that we are going to die. (Because only with G-d things are eternal.)
And that I do not want "now". I suppose there is ment something else, but I am not able to understand, what it means.
Do other readers understand???????
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if there are enough people bent into doing good, yes, then we are on the verge of eternity. Indifference is the issue here ! We don't know what Eternity is at all, but we know now that he world is on fire. I have no idea how the Rebbe who lived through another world of fire would respond but he is pushing us toward optimism with a belief in H'.. Sadly, as individual human beings we can do little but if we unite is Eternity possible ?
The ? is can we really ever UNITE. Maybe a pitiful few do and always that same few or remnant, manages to agree on a particular way to do that, but everybody thinks their way is the right way and fails to see that that's not the right way for the other, even if there are only two of you.
My son thinks I should be able to jump out of a plane or drive over the speed limit, but that is sooo not in my bucket list.
Shalom Linda: I definitely agree on a personal level since everyone of us has a certain way of thinking. MY Abba insisted that I should name my children the names he wanted but forthe first time I did not agree with that because it is a custom, and those names were not adeqaute forthe US. So yes there would always be those personal disagreements and those are fine. However, I am prodding us Jews to think of higher level of unity because there are important issues at stake: The Survival of Eretz israel, the permanence of Yerushalaim, the release of the hostages and the w ay the divisions are now in the Israeli political milieu. In those issues is where I long to have UNITY because the stakes are higher than how I named my own children, Yes?