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…We gain a great insight from this: that if we are brings us our salvation and that we must stretch our hands out
inspired to truly pray to come close to Hashem, may to receive it, the work of the will becomes qualitatively different
He be blessed, to pray that Hashem will nullify all of our than it was before (as will be explained in depth, with the help of
uncleanness and obtuseness of heart, we will realize that heaven).
we are always with Hashem, may He be blessed, and He is
close to us. The only condition is that we must truly seek We Cry Out for Life
Him. Then we will speed the process immeasurably
beyond all of the barriers of obtuseness and obstacles, As stated above, Hashem wants to save everyone spiritually, and
until we will truly cleave to Him. And the more we unite He is always able to do so. He is only waiting for us to prepare
ourselves with this, the more we will succeed (with the our vessel. What is that vessel? It is our strong and whole will. I
understood from the story about Rabbi Nachman hanging from the
help of Hashem, may He be blessed)…. wall that a person’s strong will, as expressed in an authentic outcry
from the depth of his heart, constitutes the complete vessel that
The second way, which is solely spiritual, penetrates directly into brings about every sort of salvation. The simplest reason that we do
our inner being. Our sages said that “from the day that the Temple not change spiritually is that our will to change in spiritual matters
was destroyed, the gates of prayer were locked…, but the gates is infinitely weaker than our will to be saved from the danger of
of tears were not locked.” The “locked gate” is the obtuseness of death, and so we do not cry out for spiritual life in the same way
the heart. After the Temple was destroyed, [the heart] grew so that we cry out for physical life.
thick that we cannot split it and come close to Hashem…. But with
deep prayer to the point of weeping, we can split that obtuseness, Know that in order to be effective and receive the spiritual
remove it, and come close to Hashem. This gate is never locked. abundance and heavenly assistance that Hashem deeply wants to
give us, we must want to receive that spiritual salvation with a
And our sages said, “There is something that stands at the peak of
the world, yet people which disdain—that is prayer” (Berachot 6b). strong and powerful will that leads to an outcry of truth from the
depths of our heart. It is impossible to speak of an outcry of the
This means that prayer transcends the rules of this world, so heart unless a person truly feels that his spiritual danger is at least
that we do not arise by means of prayer gradually as in other as terrible as his physical danger.
means of ascent, but we rise instantaneously to attain purity
of the heart. A person requires great encouragement to awaken and
pray for the removal of his uncleanness and obtuseness. A person A Critical Situation
who encourages himself in this way will certainly succeed,
because on this path there is no impediment whatsoever. As a result of the story of the drowning student and the stories
about Rabbi Nachman, I came to realize that the entirety of the
To Recognize Hashem work of the will is to feel that one is in literal danger, in terrible
and immediate jeopardy. Wholeness of the will means that we feel
that our situation is critical and that we have no time. We need our
Now I will summarize the two components of faith, and combine
them into a single unit. salvation here and now. That is the essence of the work of the
will!
The Vilna Gaon states that the greatest yearning in the world, The problem is that we think that we have time and that the
greater than any other, is the yearning of the soul to do the will of
situation is not critical. Thus, even as we pray, we think to ourselves:
