Last week we said the Rebbe wants you to chase the sadness and force it into the simcha. This week the question is how — and the answer turns out to change what sadness even is. The Rebbe writes that the man outside the circle is b'atzvus u'marah shechora. But who said so? Maybe he's just standing outside, in a perfectly fine mood. The answer is that there is no third option. If you are not connected, you are not b'simcha — and you are already somewhere on the ladder: atzvus, marah shechora, yisurim, daagos, yagon va'anacha, disconnect. Which means yagon va'anacha does not exist on its own. It is only ever the absence of simcha. It is what fills the room when the connection isn't there. And that changes the avodah completely. You are not fighting something. You are restoring something. What we go through: • Al pi mashal, not l'mashal — why the mashal is the doorway into hasimcha and not an illustration of it • Sason v'simcha yasigu — the simcha reaching the yagon, not you reaching the simcha • Remembering sameach u'merakeid: your child's wedding, and the fact that you infected everyone in the room • You were once the man outside the circle who got pulled in — so you already know both sides of the mashal • The Pac-Man: tracing the moment of joy back to its source, getting empowered, and eating the deygus around you • Milsa d'shtusa — a spiritual defibrillator. Going down the sliding pond in Rechavia. The Rebbe, the shades drawn, and the music on twelve • Sitting with yourself for fifteen minutes, with no phone — and why for some of us that is the hardest avodah in the Torah • Why I need your recognition to feel b'simcha, and what it would mean to give myself my own • Thanking Hashem for the gloominess, because it came from the other side of sason v'simcha and it belongs in the inventory This is not a shtickel Torah. It is a workshop. #Breslov #RebNachman #LikuteiMoharan #Simcha #Hisbodedus #Chassidus #Emuna #TorahShiur