"Make a Light for the Ark"

"Make a light for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from above; and set the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks" (Genesis 6:16).

"Make a light for the ark" – meaning, speak words of truth that illuminate... The main intention is that when one is immersed in the utmost darkness and impurity, and is trapped and enclosed within the darkness and gloom surrounding him from all sides, God forbid, and he has no opening or strategy to escape the darkness, then his main advice is to draw himself to the truth, look at the absolute truth, and seek only the true truth" (Likutei Moharan 112).

A person needs to know, the foundation of the Rebbe is truth. All the Rebbe wants is a point of truth, not politics, not gossip. Baruch Hashem, a person eats, drinks, and is joyful, until 120 years, but where will he reach with eating and drinking? Where will he reach? The person is in the depths of Sheol, is this how he will come to the World to Come? "He who says Hashem is lenient, his intestines will be loosened." Therefore, one must cry out to Hashem in truth! Begin to be a person of truth! Let every word come out in truth.

A person needs to wake up from his sleep. If he sees that his mind is blocked and he cannot learn, what does a person do? He goes to sleep. Is the mind blocked? Go to the field! Cry out to Hashem! Until your mind opens, "From the straits I called upon Hashem," "From the depths I called upon You, Hashem," because every person is in the straits, and through a true cry, the advice is drawn to escape from the depths, from the darkness.

Because one needs to know the advice to escape the darkness, like deep waters in the heart of man (the waters are the advice revealed through the cry from the heart), there are deep waters, a flowing stream, a source of wisdom. The advice of our Rebbe is a flowing stream, bubbling springs. Give a cry, one cry from the depths! Dig a little deeper! Then geysers of water will emerge, rivers of water, the advice to escape the darkness will be revealed to you.

The Rebbe said - it was also difficult for me to pray, it was also difficult for me to learn, but I cried and shouted to Hashem. A person can easily learn mathematics, physics, but Gemara is difficult for him to learn. A person's mind is a physical mind, an animalistic mind, a mind of a non-Jew, just as a non-Jew can learn mathematics, etc., he can also learn, but spiritual matters are difficult to learn. Gemara is a spiritual matter, through learning Gemara, one merits to transform the physical into spiritual. Therefore, if a person sees he cannot learn, he should pray about it, he should cry out, cry out to Hashem truly from the depths of the heart, true cries from the depths of the heart, and one must always cry out to Hashem, and when a person is in public, he should cry out quietly, cry out from the depths of the heart.

A person is in an abyss, in terrible desires, and if he cries out to escape these things, then a point of truth will be revealed to him, as it is written "Please, Hashem, save now" "Please, Hashem, make prosperous now," one must cry out to escape the desires.

Suppose a person owes large debts, he needs to cover the check, find a loan, so he cries out to Hashem "Save now," and when he is saved... now what will he cry out for?!

Now the main cry and prayer is to escape the desires and blemishes of the covenant and forbidden sights, because every day a person's evil inclination renews itself against him and wants to kill him. The entire battle is with the evil inclination. If a person decides to defeat his evil inclination, to escape all the blemishes, then there will be such light in the world that all of Israel will return in teshuvah, and this is a 24-hour battle, every second and moment there is no second of rest, there is no second that the evil inclination leaves a person, as Rabbi Akiva Eiger zt"l says in his letter, in his testament "the evil inclination is intertwined in all your 248 limbs and 365 sinews," there is no corner in the hair, sinews, arteries that does not have the evil inclination, all your blood is the evil inclination, the impure blood incites a person to bad things, and only with cries can they be cleansed, only with in-depth Torah study can they be cleansed, with powerful prayer can they be cleansed.

Through truth, the world is created, a new world is created, every moment is a point of truth, even when a person is in the depths of Sheol and below it, and from there he cries out a true cry to Hashem "Take me out of the terrible desires!" This itself shows that he is in truth.

Every person is a root for all the souls, he is a root for six hundred thousand souls, a root for all the souls in the world, and the moment a person cries out truly "Please, Hashem, save now," then he will escape from his depths of Sheol and then he will elevate with him thousands of others, and the entire world.

'Tzama Nafshi'