heal the body, coax the soul

Rebbe Nachman explains (Likkutei Moharan I:268) that illness is when the soul wants to return to HaShem, and so it begins to leave the body; because it fears it will never reach completion in the body.

What convinces the soul to come back and stay in the body? When the person goes against their nature and takes the vile tasting medicine, the soul understands that it is within the person's ability to break their nature. This gives the soul renewed hope that the body might yet break its nature in order to serve God, and so it agrees to stay in the body.

Some people hear this and think, oh, so now when someone is sick, it means they're a sinner.

I hear this and think: Wow, the world is more beautiful than I thought, illness isn't for nothing.

healing prayer

The Meiri taught that one should always know that prayer when performed correctly is always effective. In the case when someone is suffering some hardship in their home or one of their family members has fallen ill, he should go to a Hacham and learn from him the appropriate way to pray, so that his prayers will be affective. [The Ramah (Rav Mosheh Iserliss) saw it differently, saying that he should go to a Hacham in order that the Hacham should pray for the one who was ill.]

I took away from this that the Meiri is teaching us that all hardship is a means to clarify, purify and strengthen our prayer. In fact, I spoke about this earlier when I said that if we strengthen our prayer anyways, we're sending out a signal to HaShem that we don't want or need to suffer.

less free will makes us happy apparently

Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, has done extensive research on how happiness and how choice affects it. In his talk at TED, he explained that when people make choices with no option to reverse the choice, they end up much happier. They actually make themselves happier about their decision.

This is really profound and really cool. I think it says a lot about the divorce rate. It's much harder to find happiness (or convince yourself of it) if you think you can change your mind at any time. If you recognise it as a life-long decision, you will find more happiness--according to his research anyways.

not perfect and not knowing it

Today's Tanya, as well as R'Moshe Hayyim Luzzato (in Messilat Yesharim:1, via Cosmic X) and others, mention the plight of the neshama in this world, in this body. Namely, that it suffers down here in this body, in this world, where it is far from the perfection of it's origins. These same sources talk about how the Godly soul itself has little to do with this world other than to be a shining example to the Animal soul within each of us. Our Animal soul being that which needs to be fixed and perfected. Ok, great, but still I never asked this question before today but: Why this particularly Godly soul with this particular Animal soul?

I read today that Rebbe Baruch, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov (by his daughter Adel), said that an herbal remedy not only cures the patient, but that that particular patient actually cures the herb as well, fixing the 'brokenness' that this herb has been suffering from since the orginal sin.

This is a really radical and novel point of view. Visible elsewhere in the ideas of God's supreme justice. But still, looking at things in this way opens up new possibilities. Namely, that the Godly soul you have been given is not complete, not until it refines the Animal soul within you, through which it completes and refines itself as well--even though the Godly soul was initially blind to any fault or lack in itself.