One Is Where One Thinks

Keep your feet from suffering a man’s jolt prematurely, since “one is where one thinks.” Hence, when one is certain that he will not lack anything, he can focus his efforts in words of Torah, for “blessed cleave to blessed.”

But with absence of confidence, he will have to toil, and any toil is from the Sitra Achra, “and the damned does not cleave to the blessed,” since he will not be able to devote all his efforts to the words of Torah. But if one wishes to wander overseas, he must not consider these words at all, but return to one’s routine as quickly as possible, as though by diabolic compulsion, so he will not scatter his sparks in times and places that are not yet properly unified.

And know that no flaw is ascribed to the lower ones except in a time and place that are permitted, as it is now. I wish to say that if one embezzles, regrets, or despairs in the current moment, he throws away all the times and all the places in the world. This is the meaning of “A moment’s anger, what is its worth? A moment.”

Hence, there can be no correction to a person unless one aligns all the present and future moments and dedicates them to His Great Name. And one who rejects the current moment because it is hard reveals his foolishness to all—that all the worlds and all the times are not for him, for the light of his face is not clothed in the changing times, though man’s work is necessarily changed by them. For this reason, the belief and the confidence above reason have been prepared for us by merit of our holy patriarchs, which one uses effortlessly in dire times.