Facing Reality
You want to do something, but it all seems so hopeless. You can feed a hungry child, yet millions more remain hungry. For every kind word you speak, so many nasty, hurtful, antagonistic words are spoken all over the world. For every good deed you do, so many evil deeds are committed. What can you possibly hope to achieve?
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Is Anybody Home?
Rabbi Schneur Zalman was extremely gratified to hear that the Czar's minister had affirmed a principle which lies at the basis of the teachings of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov—the very teachings and ideology for which he was standing trial!
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My Sojourn in the Garden of Eden
My eyes opened to see a hummingbird sip nectar from a tree blossom. I had seen that once before, but here it was happening all around me. Why did I deserve to be here after living all my life in one of the ugliest suburbs on the East Coast? I had come here from a gray landscape of supermarkets, diners, and bars— iron and asphalt trimmed by ribbons of flashing lights.
The Development
The human can descend, with difficulty, into animal existence, by acting with no more than raw animal instinct. By failing to use to proper advantage his intelligence capacities, he can become part of the animal world.
He can descend (with much greater difficulty, and then only periodically) into vegetable existence. Through sickness or deep sleep, a human can reach a state where his only life signals are his internal movement.
At death, the body descends to the level of mineral existence.
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