Dealing with difficulties and obstacles
Words of wisdom translated from Rabbi Eliezer Berland, shlita, taken from the book Sichot HaRav.
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Everything that comes hard for a person, it’s considered as though they are sacrificing themselves to sanctify Hashem’s name.
The Zohar says that the mitzvoth that a person does with great suffering and difficulty, it’s as though he’s literally killing himself every single second. Everything that goes hard for a person, it’s as though he’s sacrificing himself for Kiddush Hashem.
Every person goes through extremely difficult things, and every second that he feels pain and suffering in his learning or in his prayers, etc, that pain is like death.
How can I go to study, I don’t have any strength….
Every pain is like death.
The more suffering a person has about every little thing in the realm of holiness, the more ‘death sentences’ he should believe he’s receiving, and this will atone for him for all the death sentences[1] he’s actually accumulating.
B
Rabbenu [Rebbe Nachman of Breslov] says in the Sefer HaMiddot (Book of Traits, section on Learning, 2:11) that if it’s hard for a person to speak, that this is like skila (stoning). This is what Rabbenu says.
In a second, a person can say 200 words.
After all, how many of the sins that make him liable for skila is he transgressing, and when is he going to atone for all this? Every word that you utter during your learning is instead of being stoned.
C
Whoever has things go easy for them, he misses out on all the tikkunim (rectifications).
Whoever has things come easily to them, they aren’t achieving any of the tikkunim (spiritual rectifications). It’s by way of all the difficulties that everything is rectified.
The more that he has more suffering and difficulties, this is something else entirely! And this applies to his whole life.
Sometimes, a person doesn’t understand why do I always have it so hard? Why is it so easy for other people?
Because Heaven wants to give you the merit!
And wants to let you atone for all the decrees of karait (spiritual excision) and death sentences decreed by the Bet Din (Jewish court of law).
Dafka, the person that they want to give merit to, every movement and effort is accompanied with tremendous difficulties. “For your sake we are killed all day long.”
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[1] I.e. for all the sins he’s transgressing that make him liable to one of the four death sentences assigned by halacha.
