Advice - Likutey Etzot

A holy melody gives strength to the forces of holiness. But the music of the Sitra Achra, the Other Side, damages these forces and lengthens the exile. It makes people stumble and traps them like birds in a snare. Be very careful never to listen to this kind of music at all. The musicians and singers who produce it have no religious intentions what

When people dance and clap their hands the harsh judgements are sweetened (10:1).

When a person is meditating, it is a good thing to say: “Today I am just beginning to attach myself to You.” You should always make a fresh start, because every activity is greatly influenced by the way you start it. In the words of the popular saying: “Starting is half the battle”

The central aspect of any fast is the charity which the person who is fasting gives. Fasting and charity make it possible to subdue the body as against the soul, substance as against form, folly as against wisdom. One emerges from darkness to light, from death to life, from animality to the level of Man. The force of alien ideologies and all other

forgotten their true worth. Giving charity enables these souls to remember what they really are and how they have fallen from heaven to earth. They start to take pity on themselves, and long and yearn to be restored. Because the real essence of the soul is beyond all the worlds — for “Israel arose in His thought first” (Bereshith Rabbah 1) and “the

The effect of trade and commerce is to cause all kinds of goods and materials to move around from one set of hands to the next. All the complex movements backwards and forwards depend entirely on the sparks of holiness within the objects themselves. There are times when a certain object has to pass from one person’s hands to another’s and then retu

When a person admits unholy thoughts to his mind, the holiness of his mind is reduced in direct proportion to the space occupied by these degraded thoughts. If you stick a pole in a river bed, all kinds of dirt and filth gather round it. In the same way, all kinds of bad characteristics develop because of these unholy ideas, and the mind is assaile

When someone is happy all day it is easier for him to spend an hour or so with a broken heart, talking to God and pouring out his heart like water before Him. After a broken heart comes joy. The test of whether your heart was really…

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Greed for food is one of the three lusts which destroy the heart’s capacity for awe and reverence for God. The other two are the desire for wealth and the sexual appetite.