Chassidus explains why. The goal of spiritual growth is not only to know the truth. It is to improve your personality so you can reveal more goodness in the world. Why? Because creation means experiencing yourself as...
Misdirected awe appears differently in every community. In some places, it may attach to money, status, success, politics, or social approval. In religious communities, it can attach to a spiritual leader, land...
It comes after the Messianic era (which may be an era that is for 1 day or 200+ years, depends on when all the Jewish people learn to trust the Creator is good and accept the leadership/teachings of the 'Moses' He...
No one gets the chance to start at the beginning like Adam and Eve did, because we're all born in the middle of a story. But we can still learn how to make that story personal. Marriage is a basic part of the human...
It needs compassion and healthy boundaries. Just as a young child needs compassion and healthy boundaries to grow and feel loved, your body needs both throughout your life. When you do not give your body the compassion...
When we recognize wisdom and goodness in someone, helping them build something worthwhile can feel deeply fulfilling. We understand the value of what they are doing, and we want our actions to become part of it. The...
Ideas and insights from Parshas Vezos Habracha, the final portion of the Torah: The tomb of Moses remained concealed, so that his tomb might not become a shrine of pilgrimage for those who deify national heroes...
At that point, trying harder from the same mindset may not be enough. Sometimes the way out of survival mode starts by noticing more deeply how much of life is still a gift. You did not create your own existence.
To understand why that is possible, we have to start with what kind of world the Creator chose to make. Seeing creation as an act of the Creator’s free choice and compassion gives us a deeper way to understand human...
To understand why that kind of freedom exists, it helps to first ask what creation would look like if it were simply an expression of love. Love wants closeness, goodness, and connection. A world that was simply an...
For more than 2,000 years, Jewish communities lived through persecution, expulsions, forced conversions, and enormous pressure to abandon their relationship with the Infinite Creator. Yet generation after generation...
But that projects human limitations onto the Creator. A human being can become angry, impatient, humiliated, or consumed by resentment. The Creator is not limited like that.
Jealousy can create a strong feeling of certainty: “I can see what is happening. I know what this person really wants. I know why I should not trust them.
Start with existence itself. Existence is not self-explanatory. Everything we see depends on something else for its existence.
The Talmud records a saying quoted by Rava: “There may be seven years of famine, but it does not enter the craftsman’s door.” The idea is simple. When you have a valuable craft, you have something you can use to create...
In Chassidus, the animal soul is rooted in selfish desire. It naturally asks: “What do I want?” “What feels good to me?” “What makes me feel safe, loved, respected, or connected?” That does not mean the animal soul is...
How do we know there is something in the Jewish personality that Chassidus [Jewish mysticism] describes as the G-dly soul [a very deep expression of the Creator's free choice and compassion]? One place to look is...
Anger by itself is not narcissism. A person can struggle to regulate anger because of stress, trauma, learned behavior, poor emotional skills, or a nervous system that goes into fight mode very quickly. This can show...
It can be transformed. Your past, your personality, your struggles, and even the darker parts of yourself can become part of how goodness is expressed. But transformation requires understanding.
If you choose something because it gives you more pleasure, makes more sense, or feels more meaningful, then something about that option is pulling you toward it. Chabad Chassidus describes a deeper kind of freedom...
The beliefs can be real. The deeper problem is the goal. Is the goal intimacy [a real relationship]?
Creation itself is an expression of His infinite love and kindness. He chose to give existence to a world that could know Him, trust Him, and freely enter into relationship with Him. The body comes from dust.
It means thinking about the fact that the Creator is not limited by any side. He is not limited by being infinite or finite, distant or close, hidden or revealed. On a lower level, the Alter Rebbe gives us a metaphor...
The first question is simply: Why does anything exist at all? Everything we see gets its existence from something else. 1.
You need a way of understanding reality that makes the relationship emotionally meaningful, so spirituality can be lived through awe, love, and joy, rather than being driven mainly by guilt, worry, and shame. This is...
He can give what He has. Our free choice is limited, but it can still be real. The Rebbe explains that we do not have free choice over every part of life, like the color of our clothing.
Based on earlier Chabad Chassidus, the Rebbe explains this through three levels of Divine light [the way the Creator is expressed and revealed]. Each level has a different consciousness [what the light is focused on]...
