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5 Hacks To Clear Your Mind

We all have parts of our day where we are half idle with tasks that require little to no concentration. No matter where you are, the evil inclination knows that these are the best moments to pounce.

If you go to forbidden sites while at work, you will be caught and you will be fired. That’s not the temptation. The temptation arises when we go to news sites and they show attractive faces, or people covered up, but in ways that unfortunately stir the imagination.

All you need is one image, and a chain reaction of forbidden thoughts is triggered right when you are most vulnerable to such an attack. We are sitting in front of a computer. We are physically inactive. We are also mentally inactive. We are in a physical and mental state where stimulation and excitement are exactly what we need. This is where the Evil Inclination tempts you with an “easy solution.”

Here are 5 hacks for creating an even greater stimulation: fighting this off.

1. Concentrate on a Torah shiur. If you are doing something that requires little concentration, and you know that listening to something else will not detract from your work, listen to a Torah shiur. It can be from your mobile device, or from the internet via your desktop computer. Once these thoughts attack, do everything you can to concentrate on every word the Rav is saying.

2. Call out to Hashem in your mind. Tell Him that you do not want to think these thoughts. You find them repulsive and you don’t want it. Even while 90% of your emotions and thoughts are still lusting for this, scream to Hashem that you wish they would go away.

According to Rabbi Arush, just one hour of living in today’s world confronts us with more lust than over an entire lifetime just 100 years ago. Can you imagine how much light you flood the world with by fighting?

3. Say the Shema. By reciting the Shema we combat these thoughts. This is a great, and immediate hack to chop away at these unwanted impulses.

4. Scream over and again, “You are not me!” These thoughts come from the Yetzer Hara, our Evil Inclination. This is not a part of you. It is an alien creation formed by Hashem to test us. Concentrate on the fact that these impulses are outside of you. They are a separate entity. It is something that can be cut off and thrown away. Focus on how every thought is not you. It is not a part of you and you can separate from it, even in this world. (Thanks to Rabbi Reuven Levy in his Garden of Emuna, part 8 audio lesson for this! Link:

http://www.breslev.co.il/vod/spirituality/spirituality/a_walk_through_the_garden_of_emuna_part_8.aspx?id=2391&language=english).

5. Take a walk. It’s a lot harder to think about anything superficial if you are going for a brisk walk. Your senses are now being given stimulation of movement, new sights, sounds, and smells. Go out for a cup of coffee. Walk the entire floor of the office. Simply go to the bathroom and throw water on your face.

It’s a challenge to keep our mind clear of bad thoughts. We don’t choose what our co-workers will wear today. We don’t choose what will be on the websites we check every day. We don’t choose who will be walking the street beside us, and what they will be wearing.

Once we sit down and our minds begin to make sense of these stimuli, what we can choose is how we will react to those thoughts that are forced upon us: do we embrace them, or do we push them away? It is a moment to moment battle with millions of small victories that can be claimed in a matter of minutes.

From Breslev.co.il, here.

Wedding on the Temple Mount: From Servitude to Liberty: By Moshe Feiglin

I really envy the sweet Jewish couple who married last week in a surreptitious ceremony on the Temple Mount. I hear the cries of all the Temple Mountaphobes sitting behind the public broadcast microphones and in the name of the public rob my tax money in order to control the public’s consciousness.

I hear their genuine fear of the Temple Mount. And despite the fact that in just a few days we will be celebrating the Exodus from Egypt, the festival of our liberty, they are still stuck deep inside Purim. Not the end of the story of Purim, but its beginning.

Why was a total holocaust decreed upon Israel in the Purim story? Because when redemption didn’t seem to be coming following 70 years of exile after the destruction of the First Temple, ( according to Ahashverosh’s calculations),the enlightened king celebrated the ‘New World Order’; he celebrated the Pax Ahashveroshana. With no redemption for the Jews in the offing, all the nations celebrated, drank and generally gave free rein to their animalistic urges at Ahashverosh’s feast; at the capital of the pseudo-kind kingdom that ruled from India to Africa.

The king also invited the Jewish sages to his feast. Complete equality for all. All the chief rabbis attended: the Ashkenazic, Sephardic, ultra-orthodox and modern orthodox. They all came to drink at the feast. Not before they made sure that all the food would be strictly kosher, under the supervision of the most trusted kosher certification (I am not making this up. All of what I have written is taken from the sources on the Scroll of Esther)  including a partition to separate between men and women according to the most strict stringencies of Jewish law…

After all, it is unthinkable to insult the king. We are responsible leaders. And then, Ahashverosh serves them the wine…in vessels stolen from the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem. And they drink…

At least if they had shed some tears into the wine served to them in the Temple vessels…But Rabbi Shimon Bar Yocahi explains that this holocaust was decreed upon Israel because not only did the newscasters of the time reject the whole Temple Mount idea, Israel’s message of human liberty under the wings of the One G-d – and exchanged it for the message of the liberty to enjoy lavish feasts under the servitude to man – but Israel’s leaders of the time also found their place in the New Order. They had funds for their yeshivot and Torah institutions. So everything was under control. They felt that they had overcome the extremists and that now, politics were in the hands of level-headed people. So they drank a little bit of wine, so what?

Enter Haman – the Amalekite. Amalek always shows up just before the redemption, when Israel gives up on its destiny and it message, preferring sweet servitude. That is what happened just before the Jews were supposed to enter the Land of Israel. All of them sobbed, just like the afraid-of-the-redemption newscasters.

Ultimately, they entered the Land. But not before the entire sobbing generation died in the desert.

The same thing happened throughout history, until the Balfour Declaration in the 1920s, when the British called upon our Nation to return to its Homeland (and even provided us with a foundation for a modern state). But the Nation of Israel did not show up. And once again, destruction was decreed upon that generation.

Yes, it is always the flight from our message that precipitates the next holocaust. Not  a lack of ascent to the Mount, but estrangement from it.

And who saves the day?

Mordechai.

“Have we gone mad?” cried the Shushan broadcasters. This crazy man is throwing a match into a barrel of dynamite. What was so bad about bowing before Haman? Let him keep his vision to himself and stop endangering all of us!!! Now we will all die because of one old man who insists on sticking himself right in front of the eyes of the world. And he angered Haman, who is always on the lookout for a way to bring us trouble…

And then, it really happens! The intifada breaks out because of Mordechai! Haman decides to annihilate all the Jews! And the broadcasters are proven right. Those whose world is narrow like the world of an ant, who are completely detached from the message of the Nation of Israel, those whose only concern is survival – to reach 12 o’ clock at night and to worry about tomorrow when the sun rises – cannot understand the situation differently.

For the covenant that safeguards our nation’s wondrous eternity has a terrible price. The Creator, Who made an eternal covenant with us, is willing to put up with our temporary weaknesses in fulfilling the commandments. But the King is not willing to give up on the vision and on Israel’s destiny.

If an elite force errs in navigation and misses the mark, it is generally hit hard by the enemy and lessons are learned. But when the elite force decides not to carry out the mission, it makes its existence superfluous. That is the time to bring in a new elite force.

Mordechai understands that in order to save Israel, they must cling to their purpose, cling to their destiny and not fall into servitude to Haman. They must refuse to become servants to the Pax Ahashveroshana. They must choose liberty.

Mordechai would not kneel or bow to Haman, the Third Intifada brokr out and the Nation of Israel was redeemed.

Ben Gurion also understood this principle. The ‘mad old man’ (as he was called at the time) insisted on declaring statehood, ‘provoking’ the Arab armies to finish Hitler’s work and annihilate the small and hopeless Jewish community in Israel.

And how much death ensued! 6,000 fatalities, fully 1% of the Jewish population in Israel, were killed in the War of Independence. And all of our newscasters and talk show hosts today praise this extremist, who understood – from a completely secular perspective – that flight from our destiny makes Jewish existence in the Land of Israel superfluous. It leaves us in the Pax Brittania and sends us back to the desert for another 2000 years.

I really love you, dear couple. You are so beautiful, so simple and dignified. Continue to safeguard your anonymity. It is good that you are not being interviewed. You entered the covenant of marriage in the place of the covenant of the Jewish People with our Father in Heaven. You safeguarded that covenant for us all.

The frightened leaders have forgotten that covenant. But you are the Nation.

You are the Nation, you are its soul – its lofty spirit.

In your modesty, you brought us out of the servitude of Shushan to the Festival of Liberty.

And who knows how many people you saved.

From Jewish Israel, here.

Picture of the Day and interesting psak about marijuana and Pesach

no, that is not Rav Kanievsky checking someone’s aravos. Yes, that is Rav Kanievsky checking out someone’s marijuana.

Rav Yitzchak Zilbershtein issued a psak that medical marijuana is kosher for Pesach and are kitniyos-free, after he inspected it and the growing process and ensuring that there are no grains mixed in with the leaves…

Rav Zilbershtein then brought it to Rav Kanievsky who smelled it and made a bracha (borei minei besamim) after being told that smelling it helps to heal.

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שיבנה בית המקדש

Zochreini Na זָכְרֵנִי נָא

Zochreini na, ve’chazkeini na, ach ha’pa’am ha’zeh, ha’elokim. V’eenakma ne’kam-achat mi’shtei einay mi’pelishtim.
זָכְרֵנִי נָא וְחַזְּקֵנִי נָא אַךְ הַפַּעַם הַזֶּה, הָאֱלֹהִים, וְאִנָּקְמָה נְקַם-אַחַת מִשְּׁתֵי עֵינַי, מִפְּלִשְׁתִּים.

Translation:
Remember me, I pray Thee, and strengthen me, I pray Thee, only this once, O God, that I may be this once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.

Translation source: Jewish Publication Society Bible (1917) (public domain)

Information:
Taken from Judges 16:28