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 Rav Nahman in the end of the LeM brings this statement "This that tzadikim [saints] do tremendous sins is for such and such a reason." [In the השמטות]

.....זה שצדיקים עושים עבירות גדולות הוא בגלל וכולי

That is to say there is some point that a person works on himself. He does avodat hashem [the service of God] even sincerely. He learns and prays and is a "masmid" continually learning. Then reaches some spiritual level. Then the sitra achra  [Dark Side] spends a good deal of time and effort to subvert that person. 

That is with a region called "היכלי התמורות" palaces of delusion.

That is that it takes a lot of effort even to get to the palaces of delusions. But to come to the Light, it is necessary to go through that intermediate stage. And there people get ego inflation. Plus the Sitra Achra gives insights and miracles that  are traps.

I have to admit I owe great gratitude to many people in the Ukraine who showed me kindness when no one else would. But I also noticed some of the types that can be problematic. So I have not written much about it since there seems to impossible to generalize. 

The doctor the operated on my foot Sergey Alexivitch and his whole staff, showed not just competence but even something I would call "Mesirut nefesh" absolute determination to do a good job. But that is just one example. They wanted to be so careful that they only used local anesthesia. The nurse Irina held my hand the entire time and called me Avraham Philipovitch -a meaning of respect to call me by the name of my father. 

 So it is hard to make sense of things there.

 The test of men nowadays is divorce. When the woman he loved turns into a determined desperate enemy fixated on doing everything in her power to destroy him. This can wear down a person's mental state.

The test of women is talking neighbors. 

In all these cases Reason does little or nothing to protect one from the evil inclination.

For as Benjamin Franklin wrote making fun of the human condition: "How wonderful it is to be a reasonable person because then you can find reasons to do anything you want."

Or as Kelley Ross [The Kant Fries School] puts it. Be careful when people start talking about reason or as when Spock says "Logic dictates...". Reason does not tell us much.

That is the source of the idea of the Kant Fries school of "immediate non-intuitive knowledge." Or what Rav Nahman calls "faith".

 On the way to the sea I met someone who had been afflicted with the virus. From what he told me it seems that he was really sick from it, and it is not just a hoax. He had noticed me going into the sea, and doing a bit of exercise afterwards, and was telling me that he thought that would be good for him also.

Though  going into the sea, and doing a bit of exercise I  do just because of spiritual health, but he was suggesting that it has to do with physical health also.

I can imagine he must be right since I know there are little things in the blood which attack hostile viruses and so doing the ocean and then exercise I guess must boost that immune system.

Even at the founding of the American government, people found it hard to concentrate on anything else. I noticed this in the events surrounding the creation of the Constitution. From that you can see there is  a kind of collective consciousness. [That was an idea around I guess for a long time,-- but in particular I recall it was a subject of an argument between Ibn Rushd and Aquinas].

Nowadays it does seem hard to concentrate on anything else besides the coming election -even for people who have at all other times no interest in politics.

I am however not sure if perhaps it is possible to rise above that. I recall that during the time I was at the Mir in NY, I was  unaware of politics at all. And that was not just me, but rather because I was immersed in an atmosphere of people that were highly involved and dedicated to learning Torah.