Some of the major points of Rav Nahman are the Tikun Chazot, Hitbodadut, Seder HaLimud, Not to be stubborn about anything, to be joyful always. Tikun haKlali.

(1) The Tikun Chazot thing he saw as the main job of every Israeli. That is the midnight prayer for the rebuilding of the Temple. [That does not have to include the "piyutim" [added songs]. It just is a short Tikun Rachel and a somewhat longer Tikun Leah. []I actually have not been able to fulfill this for  long time but I still see the hours after midnight as a very important time to learn and pray.

(2) Hitbodadut is thought to be his major point. It is talking with God as one talks with your parents or a close friend in your own language. This was so important to him that he would spend whole days on this and he said that if one really wants to serve God properly he ought to spend the whole day on this every day. [I actually did try to do that fr  awhile when I first got to Safed in the forests surrounding that city.]

[3] Seder HaLimud is also fairly well known but not as much as the Hitbodadut idea. It is to learn by saying the words and going on. It is how he advice one disciple Rav Nathan to go through the entire Shulchan Aruch with all the commentaries [Shach, Taz, Magen Avraham, etc.] in one year. As I have mentioned before I found this very helpful for me when I majored in Physics at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU. [And in  fact that is how I think Physics ought to be learnt. You do not have to be  a genius to learn Physics. If a block of wood would learn in this way, it would also become a physicist in time.] 

[4] To not be stubborn about anything is something that I have also found helpful. Not to force any issues. When the waves of life come along, to lower my head and let the wave pass over me.

[5] To be joyful Rav Nahman saw as the very essence of Torah. Joy he said is the very essence of holiness.

[6] Tikun haKlali. To say ten psalms the day one has sinned any kind of sexual sin. [16, 32, 41, 42, 59, 77, 90,105, 137, 150.]

Rav Nahman that see the Will [Ratzon] as the great and highest of all things.

 One thing David Bronson pointed out to me in the LeM of Rav Nahman. That one word religious authorities love is "No." They see one's "Ratzon" [Desire, Will.] as an evil thing.  It is only Rav Nahman that see the Ratzon  [Will] as the great and highest of all things. Just that one needs to raise his desires towards God. That is what you see in the LeM chap.13 about how the tzadik helps to raise the desires of people towards God. 

[This reminds me of Schopenhauer who also saw the root of everything as being the Will. Logos to him is a secondary derivative.] 

"Not to be stubborn about anything."

There is a whole section of the Hayee Moharan about the idea "לא להתעקש על שום דבר" ("not to be stubborn about anything.") I noticed that one of the examples he brings there is about sleep. That is by trying to force oneself to go to sleep, that is exactly what causes sleep to evade him. And there are other examples there. 

But that is not to say that there are not some things that one needs to be ("makpid") stubborn about. But that one ought to choose one's battles wisely.

[You could apply this to learning also. By being overly stubborn about getting the details perfectly, one can lose the big picture. I mean to refer here to the Conversations of Rav Nahman Conversation 76 where he discusses the importance of learning fast--saying the word and going on until the end of the book and only then to review. It is implicit in this that he is suggesting not to insist on understanding all the details. And in fact I found this method helpful in my Physics courses at NYU.] 

Chaiye Moharan [the life of Rav Nahman]

 The book Chaiye Moharan [the life of Rav Nahman] was not edited. You can see this in a few places. One that come to mind is the statement that Columbus died in chains. This is brought as a proof that who so ever brings some great thing into the world suffers for it. While there are plenty of proofs plus the verse "one who increases knowledge increases pain], still Columbus did not die in chains. He was put into chain in the New World by a favorite of the court, and sent back to Spain in chains. They were removed by Isabella and Ferdinand immediately when he arrived. As far as we know they were buried with him when he died as  he cherished them as a symbol of his loyalty to his monarchs. 

But it also should be noted that he was extremely dishonored and died poor. [But he still had credit he could draw on to pay his rent at an inn.]

There are five major books from Rav Nahman. The most well edited are LeM, Midot, and Stories. The Conversations and Life of Rav Nahman were put together from the writings of Rav Natan. But the publishing took on a series of sad events. It was not edited by Rav Natan, and tons were left out. Later, Rav Shmuel Horwitz's "Left out Parts" helped make up some of the lack.

[But of all the books of Rav Nahman, the Conversations and the Life are the most instructive for me. I mean the path of learning in Conversation 76 you see only in the Conversations and only slight hints of that in the LeM itself.

 x99 G major mp3 file [x99 midi]  [x99 nwc]

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The idea of idolatry is the worship of anything that is not just simply the First Cause who has no form nor image. So worship of pictures of tzadikim or their graves ought to be considered idolatry as much as worship of stars. So the term עובד כוכבים עכו''ם a worshiper of stars [or worshippers of stars and constellations] does not refer to ethnic group or nationality. It is not a synonym of "gentile".

[And since this kind of worship pervades the religious world from top to bottom, I tend to avoid all of them. If there was a Litvak yeshiva in my area, I might go into that, but even then I would be uncomfortable because of the pervasiveness of idolatry anywhere and everywhere in the religious world. Certainly the Gra and Rav Shach were "מוחה" [objected], but their objections went largely unheeded.

[I ought to add that there is an obligation to be  "מוחה" [object], even if you know your objection will not be heeded as we see in the event of the concubine of Givat Binyamin in the book of Judges and the event of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza in tractate Gitin. ] 

[In fact I was hoping to study the connection between hametz and idolatry in terms of the ashes after they are burnt. But so far I have not gotten to that.]  

One way of learning I think helped me a lot was that every paragraph I would repeat twice and then go on forward.

 One way of learning I think helped me a lot was that every paragraph  I would repeat twice and then go on forward. To my mind this combined what I saw in the books of Rav Nahman about learning fast (that is to say the words in order and then to go on) and the way of learning in Litvak yeshivas which was to stress in depth learning with review. In this way of repeating each paragraph twice I felt I was making progress and also doing review. This seemed to help a lot when it came to learning Gemara and later I used this same method for Mathematics and Physics.

[The thing is that in Shar Yashuv there was an emphasis on in depth learning that almost seemed to negate the value of "bekius" fast learning. And in the book of Rav Nahman [Conversations of Rav Nahman 76] the emphasis is the exact opposite. So this sort of compromise was the only way I could make sense of this. And this method definitely helped  me.]

[That was for Gemara and Tosphot. But when it came to the Pnei Yehoshua I used to repeat very paragraph more than 10 times--or at least that much. That was based on Rav Freifel's emphasis on repeating every chapter of Gemara 10 times.]](Rav Freifeld was the rosh yeshiva of Shar Yashuv)