ליקוטי מוהר''ן חלק א' פרק ע''ב

One thing Rav Nahman said was that when one prays often thoughts come that mess up one's prayer. Often you find people tht shake their head and do all kinds of odd motions to get rid of evil thoughts. He said that does not help and in fact just the opposite. The more one fights against them the more they get stronger. The only advice is to ignore them completely and just continue in one's service. I find this advice to be helping me in other situations besides prayer, for example learning.

ליקוטי מוהר''ן חלק א' פרק ע''ב

The LeM of Rav Nahman of Breslov vol I chapter 72 

It is a fact that King Asa was blamed in the Bible for going to doctors instead of God. In the verses it looks like an "either or ,-but not both" function. This ("Shtims") parallels well with what the mishna says טוב שברופאים לגיהינום. [The best of doctors is destined for Hell]. 

It is well known that Rav Nahman of Breslov also warned against doctors. 

So the whole Covid hoax and vaccination poisons have not seemed to me to be worth paying any attention to. But I have not protested or gotten into arguments about them.

Ad I do not want here either to go into this subject. it is well known that psychology is pseudoscience and even what is thought to be regular medicine. However in Breslov it was the custom to go to doctors anyway--just the best ones. And from what I can understand from my parents is that once a procedure has been well established for  over 50 years (at minimum), then it can be thought to be more or less reliable.

I might add that while I was in Uman in Ukraine God granted to me that i had great doctors when i needed them. the care I received was astounding--but I was nervous because for example  in the same trauma unit where I had an operation there had been in the time of the USSR a doctors who was a butcher.. I knew a girl that was crippled for life after being operated on by him. So I should say that my good experiences were all after Ukraine gained independence. And I should add that the good doctors were very conservative in that they would never use new medicines nor new procedures. 

Besides that I should admit I owe a lot of gratitude to people in Uman for other reasons. When I needed help, may there were there to help.

 

z43 

 I can see where the West keeps on giving out gender studies degrees and China keeps producing STEM mathematicians physicists, and mechanical engineers who is on the rise and who is failing. Even when I was in Polytechnic Institute of NYU the best students were from China.

The USA made war on fathers and now is harvesting the whirlwind.

I was in the Na Nach place today (on the name of Rav Nahman of Breslov and Uman) and listening. One thing Rav Nahman said was not to pray with the intensions of the Ari {Rav Isaac Luria} because for those who are on that level it is just the plain meaning of the words and for those that are not on that level it is like forbidden magic.

This gets to a subject that is hard to figure out in the Ari. On one hand he had great insights, but on the other hand  people that get involved in that seem to get sidetracked. And it is not clear why. Maybe it is like is usually said in the Litvak world that it is only for people that have learned Shas many times.

Further as to what Rav Nahman said it is only for those for whom the intensions are the simple explanation of the words, I have to admit I do not see any explanation of the Torah that makes sense to me except  the Ari. Just to give a simple example--the flood of Noah. How can you understand that expect that it refers to מים נוקבין (the female waters)? Or the basic time line of Genesis? How can you understand that except by the Ari? It is not as if the time line is ambiguous.  It does not come out to be 13 billion years. It comes out to be a very specific number of years are 7000 [counting the years of life of all those people from Adam until Abraham and from him until Moses and from him until the first Temple.]] Unless you explain the Seven Days of Creation as referring to the seven lower sepherot, it makes no sense at all.

So what I suggest is in fact to pray with the intensions of the Ari in the Sidur HaReshash.  Now there are two sidurim of the Reshash. The three volume small one I think is not any more well established than the large one from the grandson of the Reshash. It is called on the name of the Reshash, but was actually put together by students of the Reshash. I think the large one [five volumes] is better. 

But I agree with the Litvak world that all this is only if one has gone through Shas a few times.

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