"Do Hisbodedus, Break the Ice, Immerse in the Ice, Learn Gemara

"One needs to start immersing one's head in Gemara study. A person can do an hour of Hisbodedus, and study for 16 hours—that is 17 hours. Afterwards, he still has, Baruch Hashem, 7 hours left to sleep quietly, a sweet sleep. But the main thing is to do an hour of Hisbodedus. We need to serve Hashem with hard work. We get up for Chatzos, do Hisbodedus, break the ice, immerse in the ice [mikvah], learn Gemara, do an hour of Hisbodedus. And during that whole hour of Hisbodedus—so that you will have a quick and sharp mind—do an hour of Hisbodedus, go to the fields, scream on the mountains."

"Start saying Tehillim (Psalms). Go do an hour of Hisbodedus. Go out to the field, cry out to Hashem. Go to the field, do an hour of Hisbodedus, make a vessel, and the abundance (Shefa) will descend for you. Guard your eyes. Hashem brings down abundance for two thousand years, each day in its time. Everyone has a Bat Kol (Heavenly voice) that announces where he will live and how many rooms he will have; just make a vessel. Go to the field every day, don't lie in bed, start getting up at night. A person does an hour of Hisbodedus, goes out to the field, then he unloads all his tension, all his nerves. Do a Cheshbon Nefesh (soul-accounting), do Hisbodedus, pray to Hashem."

"Abba Techinah used to do an hour of Hisbodedus every day. They called him Abba Techinah Chassida; he was also a Chassid, and he was also Abba Techinah. Every day he would do Hisbodedus, every day secluding himself, walking in the villages. There was one student who wanted to follow the 'Ketzos HaChoshen' [Rabbi Aryeh Leib Heller] to see what merit he had. Before studying, he [the author of the Ketzos HaChoshen] would enter some deep cellar, and they didn't know what he was doing there. So one student managed to enter and lie down; (he) hid there behind something, behind some bed. He saw that for half an hour he lies on the ground and first does Hisbodedus. For half an hour he lies on the ground and screams (Psalms 50:16), 'But to the wicked, God said: What right have you to recite My laws?' He screams for half an hour with copious tears, with terrible screams reaching the heart of Heaven."

A Holy Prayer by Our Master and Teacher, the Gaon and Tzaddik, Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a

Master of the World, Omnipotent One from whom no plan is withheld, merit me to perform an hour of Hisbodedus every day. And I will pray then for holiness and purity and guarding of the eyes, that I will no longer stumble in any forbidden looking or gazing, Heaven forbid.

Oh, Hashem Elokim, behold You made the heavens and the earth with Your great power and Your outstretched arm, and nothing is hidden from You. Merit me, in the merit of the hour of Hisbodedus, to be like the Blind Beggar who saw nothing of the world; and like the Deaf Beggar who heard nothing of the world; and like the Heavy-Mouthed [Stuttering] Beggar who never spoke any idle chatter in his days; and like the Beggar with the Crooked Neck who always twisted his neck so as not to see anything of the world, and uttered no vanity regarding worldly matters; and like the Beggar with the Hunchback who learns Torah day and night and never straightened his back; and like the Beggar Without Hands who can shoot all ten arrows—and he promised that we would be like him—and he has ten types of charity and ten types of wisdom, and he can enter into the ten walls of water, and the winds stand them up and they stand there always, and the winds lift the waves; and he has ten types of melody to return the spirit of life to the soul; and to be like the Beggar Without Legs, who with the dance of his legs will bring Mashiach ben Yosef and Mashiach ben David, as it is written, "Come, look from the peak of Amanah" – the melody of Emunah (faith). And merit me, in the merit of the hour of Hisbodedus, to penetrate through the ten walls, and to return the spirit of life to the soul, and to shoot all ten types of arrows, and to merit the ten types of charity and the ten types of wisdom, and to exit from all types of falsehood, for "a speaker of lies shall not be established before My eyes." And may I merit in every single second to hear the Ten Commandments, and specifically the commandment "I am Hashem your God Who took you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage" (=2495 [Gematria]), for from there comes all the spirit of life. And in the merit that I shall merit to hear all the Ten Commandments at every moment and second, may I merit that the souls of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, Moshe and Aharon, Yosef and David, Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah (=2495) be impregnated within me.

Courtesy of the "Kevavas Shamram" leaflet – 058-500-6318