To fill yourself with wisdom, you must proceed with wisdom.
To fill yourself with wisdom, you must empty yourself of all wise thoughts.
To receive blessings from Above, you must do all those things that draw blessings.
To receive anything from Above, you must be still and quiet.
Shalom,
thanks for this today...Bless the Reb, of Righteous memory, and thanks Chabad for keeping his words alive.
:o)
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Very inspiring - A possible interpretation
Wisdom is Torah and Mitzvot, to fill with Wisdom you must proceed with it i.e. walk with it in the way of Halacha the revealed Torah.
To fill with Wisdom i.e. the inner Torah, you need to empty of all your previously perceived Wisdom in order to ascend to a higher and greater revelation of Wisdom.
Blessings are synonymous with wisdom. The first word of Torah begins with the letter bet and states B'reshit which means 'in the beginning', this can be translated 'in wisdom' as elsewhere it is written 'the beginning is wisdom' .
Things that are perceived as being' blessed' are those things that reveal the essence of Hashem, 'the vehicle of the blessing is none other than the Torah' (Aryeh Kaplan).
The Hebrew word for blessing is related to the word knee. Just as the knee bends to lower the body, Hashem bends to lower His Essence by Blessing.
To be still is to have Emunah (faith) in Hashem that all is Good and to be quiet is to allow Hashem to make Himself Known to us.
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Get over oneself.
Like a pencil, the grounding tool of art, the grounding tool of a relationship with Hashem is.....'it's not about me', or 'get over oneself'.
To force oneself daily to care more about someone else , "I hereby take upon myself the mitzvah, "Love your fellowman as yourself", this is a life's work, but that is how we empty ourselves.
The tool, the quest for humility. Hashem withdraws from the egoist.
If ones mind stops talking incessantly about oneself it will pretty much become silent, then G-d can be heard and blessings will flow.
I believe the blessings the Rabbi is speaking of are not usually monetary, so most people become instantly bored with G-d and move on.
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tools
For me--as an artist--my tools are my pencil, charcoal, paper, camera, brush, oils..
What are your tools that bring you closer to G-d?
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I totally get it! We throb, we contract and expand... way of G-d! Reply
tools what are the tools that draw light? Reply
Empty and Full
I don't understand what this means, Rabbi. Would you be kind enough to point me to a reference that might be able to explain the statements so that I might understand them?
Thank you so very much,
Ellen
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how? when i read this i originally i felt like i got this..... but how is it possible to be 'empty' - what does this mean? Reply
Looks like sunshine in my heart today. Tomorrow, partly cloudy with a chance of
irritation.
I think we are a flexible people. We naturally draw blessings, with every breath.
Every situation is a test, or an interaction with another creature of divine will, like Modeh Ani in the morning, the breath comes back to us seemingly naturally.