Rebbe Nachman teaches the following:
“For the evil forces are an aspect of excess, and they correspond to sorrow, as in (Proverbs 14:23), ‘In all sorrow there is excess.’ They are also harsh judgments, corresponding to (Genesis 6:6), ‘He felt sorrow in His heart….’ And the essence of joy is in the heart, as is written (Psalms 4:8), ‘You have put joy in my heart.’”
One of the most potent weapons of the forces of evil in today’s world is over thinking. We are inundated with so much excess information, products, and choices that our lives are left without personal space. This leads directly to depression, which in turn causes us to run after more and more distractions – an unending spiral of depression.
As Rebbe Nachman teaches and his great grandson Shimshon Barski elucidates in Eitzot Mevuorot: “Exile is analogous to depression.” Meaning, the more we allow ourselves to to become depressed, which is the goal of those excess thoughts and items in our lives, the more we remain in a state of exile.
This is why it is so important to control our thinking and filter out excess thoughts that lead to uncontrollable imagination and ultimately decisions we come to regret. The mind and heart are the central resting place for the Divine Presence, which requires joy to become fully expressed. If we are cut off from this joy, then the Divine Presence is essentially removed from our consciousness, leaving us disconnected and in a state of depression, drowning in our illusory world we have self-created.
We can break free of this. We can find that yearning for a true relationship with ourselves and the Creator, but we must guard ourselves from the forces of evil and their weapons of unending noise and ambient information streaming at us at all times. With our hearts and minds in the balance and the tools at our enemy’s disposal becoming more and more refined, there is no better time than now to begin.