Rav Kook quotes RaMChaL who says all this stuff is really obvious, and yet no one gets it.  It is the same reason people can read well-written, brilliant guides of how to succeed in business as written by successful business people and still not succeed.  Because it’s not about the brain and understanding, it’s about [...]

Shalom is a practice more than an end.  But how do we practice it?  As always, Rebbe Nachman has something surprising to tell us about it.

This lesson challenges our understanding of peace and where it comes from.  The conversations at Naropa are always interesting.

Whenever we teach Rebbe Nachman at Naropa, interesting things happen.  The teaching takes on the character of the situation, and we speak toward issues that are relevant there.  We have three recordings from this particular lesson.

On our wedding day, we are forgiven all our sins.  Rebbe Nachman used this opportunity toward G-d-service.  He used forgiveness as an opportunity to move, not to relax.  And we have the same opportunity on Sukkot after the forgiveness of Yom Kippur.

‘For I sat the Jewish people in Sukkot when I took them out of Egypt’ – but we don’t find this story in the Torah.  So Rabbi Eliezer and Rebbe Akiva disagreed – were they actual sukkot like we have, or the clouds of glory?  They are both true, and represent two kinds of sukkah.  [...]

This essay deals with the attempt to manifest the supernal reality of the Jewish nation into a body, and its struggles.  This particular session also deals with the question of when and how Mashiach will come.  Please note these segments are not in chronological order.

We have to go back and look at our weak spots so that when we get ready to embrace a new ideology or system or relationship of state of being, we can anticipate what about it we might be attracted to, and then we can know if we are perhaps falling for it again.

Yes, every belief system has some common ground with Judaism and Torah.  But we need to rigorously figure out what that relationship is – and throw away the excess

Torah is expanding as the world turns.  New ideologies emerge in the world, and it is our work to explore and understand how they interact with Torah.  Because they do interact – Torah is infinite and therefore there is no ideology to which Torah does not relate