Where Did You Get Those Shoes??

        I got a text this morning from a guy I don't even know who sends out texts of Breslev thoughts. It said the following: "Poor man doing Hisbodedus - 'Hashem please give me the seichel that I don't need shoes, or Hashem please give me shoes'"

      I don't wanna get into the whole speech that came flying through my brain when I read those words, simply because it's a train of thought that never ends, I was literally comparing it to every concept at every level going higher and higher, and lower and lower until I realized the ultimate concept this concept reminds me of, which is Hashem gives us everything, that even the desire to want something Hashem gives us, even the brain that thinks we want something He created. Then of course that thought led me to THE THOUGHT THAT ALWAYS COMES TO HAUNT ME: So what am I, merely a puppet being pulled by strings??

      But then, later on today I was talking to a friend, a person who I hold very near and dear to me, though we hardly see each other. She had a question, an ongoing question, for some reason it keeps coming up in her life, and her question was: Does belief come before knowing?

     I can't say for sure I understand exactly why she's asking this question, all I know is once it's asked it's a very big question that can spark up screaming matches between usually content regular voiced girls in a small quiet coffee shop near the railroad tracks. The reason I think this question can get people going, is because belief and knowledge are huge words. Every person has their own individual way of believing in something, and every person has their own IQ, their own intelligence pattern in their brain. So every single person will have a different opinion based on his/her different views, thoughts, thought processes, that led them up to the moment in which this question is asked. And no answer is right, because every answer is right, which makes right seem like wrong and then we think we're all screwed. I heard a story once that there was two men who were fighting over a piece of property, they both said it's theirs. They went to a Beis Din and the Rabbi/Judge said 'you're both right'. A third guy came along and said, 'but Rabbi, they can't both be right!', so the Rabbi turned to the third guy and said, 'you know what, you're also right'.
    
       Yes, that may seem like a totally retarded story, but at the end of the day, there is no right when it comes to what we think. Because we're all right. Which makes us all wrong. So what the heck am I talking about? I have no idea. I think what I'm trying to say, is based on the poor man's plea for either the seichel that he doesn't need shoes, or just shoes, we have a whole new thing to learn from. Many times, we think that what we know is what it is. But if you look back to a time where you thought you knew, and then it wasn't that, and then you realized that you didn't really know, then you can understand that maybe right now what I know is not really what I'm gonna know soon. That we have to ask Hashem to give us the strength to combat our minds, because our minds are our biggest enemies. We think and think and think, and then in one moment, all our thoughts could be completely different and everything I just thought doesn't matter anymore. So we come to Hashem and we say Hashem look at me I'm a poor man, I lack the wealth of pure knowledge about You, and Your world. I don't have that wealth. And everyone I know also doesn't have that wealth. We're all so poor, so lacking, and this is not a mashal, we really are poor, we lack the wealth of having clarity of Hashem's ways. So Hashem, You who I heard is so powerful and the Creator of everything, You who has all the wealth in the world, either make me know You, let me see You, or let me be at peace with the thought that I'm never gonna truly understand Your ways, and my mind is gonna play all these tricks on me, and make me think that I need to understand You, so give me the seichel to understand that it's just my mind. OR just let me know clearly.

       Sometimes, people think you have to know to believe, and sometimes people think you have to believe to know. But there's another word, and it's called connection. If you truly try to connect yourself to Hashem, not based on belief, not based on knowledge, just connect. The same way, when you sit with a person and you feel connected, it could be you don't even know them, you just feel connected, or you know them so well that you feel connected, either way we all know that connection feeling. We know how to connect in our own ways. Start connecting to Hashem, whether it's by believing, knowing, learning, yearning, or even telling Him "I have no clue if You're even there, and I might be talking to nobody right now, but if You're there, please help me connect". This connection (which usually takes more than a second to get to, and is very on and off until you have such a clear connection which might just be when you're really old unless you work really hard on it) completely erases THE QUESTION THAT HAUNTS ME, and also calms the commotion of the question my friend asked. Connecting to something is a start, once we're connected we can learn more, or feel more, but we got the connection, we have what to hold onto, even if we don't completely understand or feel it.

       So, I know this whole entire page may make absolutely no sense to a lot of people, but that's just because you either don't have the kind of spiritual ADD me and my people have, or you choose not to think too much. Either way, it's all good, my point of this whole thing was really just one sentence: If you don't have shoes, get to know why you don't have shoes, see if you really need them, and remember where you got them.