068 Tanya Shvat 27 ~ m077b Adar I, 8b
Questions for today:
If my challenges increase when I start doing well, eg when I start praying, how should I react?
Recently, there was a great ad campaign. We'd see grown adults acting like total fools; one of them is swinging around a lightsaber, |another one is dressed like a fairy prancing around…
…And then the camera pans out, and you can see that they are sharing a heartwarming moment with their little child, and the ad concludes, “take a moment to be a dad today”
Yesterday we gave an analogy of a competition to describe distracting thoughts while we are praying. In fact, it's a great analogy because there really are two souls that are competing: The G-dly soul is engaged in contemplative, meditative, prayer directly with the Creator.
Meanwhile, the animal soul is throwing tomatoes trying to distract.
Today's Tanya reminds us, that the way to respond is to focus on our prayer and ignore the distraction.
Because if we are going to engage with the distraction, for example to try to analyze where is it coming from, then when the camera pans out we're going to see that we are engaged with a fool - and we're going to look like a fool.
Tanya book 1, ch28 pt 2
Yesterday's analogy of a competition is ideal, since indeed there are two souls inside of us, competing.
Our rules of engagement must be: don't engage. When we wrestle a fool, we look foolish as well.
Study today’s Tanya in full:
https://www.chabadmed.com/dailystudy/tanya.asp?tdate=2/9/2022
See today’s video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o23BHFBHYLo&list=PLFZQPK6u-zSBls9Hwx3P5vKI_BRnjBvHe&index=69