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390 | A New Light
One time, Rabbi Nachman spoke with us a great
deal about the value of hitbodedut, and he praised this
practice extravagantly. He said that it is impossible to
obligate people to engage in this practice more than an
hour a day, because it is impossible to burden them more
than that. But in truth, they should spend the entire
day doing hitbodedut. He spoke a great deal on this
topic, and we heard a few beautiful and lovely talks from
his holy mouth regarding the value of hitbodedut, which
is superior to everything…. He spoke at length on this
the entire day. Fortunate is the person who engages in
this practice.
When we feel pleasure in doing the work of the will, our prayer
receives an entirely new character. It becomes the heart of the
day. It is no longer a frustrating time that we want to end, as
though prayer is a punishment, heaven forbid. On the contrary,
this is when we are awakened from grinding habit and from the
necessary circumstances that distance us from our goal. We return
to ourselves and to our inner being, and we free the true yearning
of our soul to cling to its Creator. This is the only time that is
ours, in which we can truly be who we are and express our true
intentions.
A Personal Request
Dear reader, every day you pray three times and you recite a few
psalms. Thus, every day thousands of jewels are passing through
your fingers: prayers for learning Torah, for the success of your
children, and for the fulfillment of all of the needs of the entire
nation of Israel in all areas and across all generations—wonderful
explicit requests and wonderful implicit requests. It is a pity that
day after day passes, and you only read the siddur. It is a pity that
you do not experience the proper taste of prayer. It is a pity that
you do not build the vessels with which to receive new abundance
Chapter Nine: | 411
Know, dear reader, that you can sleep much less—but do
not try to do so by force. You must engage in much work
on holiness, pray a great deal and engage in the war of the
will with all your might (as will be explained).
We Don’t Want to Sleep
Until now, I have demonstrated that sleep does not give life. Now
I will return to the topic and explain why the concepts of tiredness
and the urge to sleep are tremendous heresy and irreverence. The
concept of “being tired” is extremely negative. The Torah tells that
when the evil Esau returned from the field, “he was tired” (Genesis
25:29). Rashi explains that he had returned from murdering, and
our sages say that he had transgressed five grave sins that day (Bava
Batra 16b), which may be translated as “You were tired and weary
and you did not fear God” (Deuteronomy 25:18).
Tiredness results comes from a disconnection from Hashem. A
person who clings to the Life of lives is alive. And a person must
have the will to cling to Hashem 24 hours a day. Therefore, I
do not like to speak of “sleep,” because sleep is forgetfulness and
disconnection from Hashem. The letters of the Hebrew word for
“sleep,” sheinah, can be rearranged to form the word neshiyah,
“forgetfulness.” Why does a person go to sleep? In order to gain
life and strength, and in order to renew his mind. But know that
sleep does not accomplish any of this. It only damages a person and
disconnects him from Hashem. Therefore, never say, “I am going
to sleep.” The true description of this part of your life must be:
“I am going to cling to Hashem”—in the simple sense. What is the
rectified aspect of sleep? Absolute clinging to Hashem!
A person must cling to Hashem by means of the Torah, prayer
and keeping the mitzvot. But when he feels that it is hard for him to
concentrate on Torah learning and prayer, and therefore he cannot
cling to Hashem by means of Torah and prayer, he must bond to
Hashem directly by means of absolute clinging to Hashem. But
the desire to sleep is something very lowly. It means that a person
wants to forget and disconnect himself from Hashem, that he wants