BS’D
Shalom and thank you for your question! You feel that you are getting ‘the reverse’ of everything you ask G-d for, whether it be success in overcoming impure thoughts, help with monetary issues, health or morale…
The Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote many letters over the years to people who turned to him with all kinds of issues and requests, giving advice from which we all can benefit. In a letter published in the sixth volume of his letters, the Rebbe writes to a person with a similar quandary, “And what is most apparent in his letter, is that his mood had changed for the worse, and as a result his level of trust in G-d had dropped.” Further on the Rebbe writes, “I am stressing what is most important, that according to what is written in Torah sources in general, and Chassidic sources in particular, trust (in G-d) is the main factor that connects a person’s physical life with his Creator Blessed be He, and if the connection is a full and strong one, there cannot be a lack ‘down below’, for ‘above’ there is no lack at all.”
This letter defines the matter of trust in G-d in an important way. A person who places his trust in G-d is connecting his physical matters (which include all the matters you mentioned, even thoughts…) to G-d. We BELIEVE that G-d is omnipotent, He can do everything, and all of creation comes from Him, but TRUSTING Him means that we communicate that belief to Him. If a child on a street corner asks an adult to walk him across the street, a normal adult in most cases will take out the time to help the child, BECAUSE the child has placed his trust in him. This is so even though the adult and the child had no connection before, how much more so that we are G-d’s children, and when we show that we trust, it ‘draws down’ the blessings that G-d has in store for us!
The book of Tanya (a basic text of Chassidic teaching,) explains in Chap. 11, that truly everything that happens to us is for the good, just that we are not able to perceive it much of the time, but when we adopt this outlook, the inherent good in the situation becomes revealed.
The book of Tanya also explains that for most of us, we should not take to heart the fact that we have negative or impure thoughts, because that is not our fault. What G-d wants is simply for us to be alert to them, and not entertain them. When an undesirable thought of any kind enters our head, we must be alert to it, and as the Rebbe advises, just ‘change the topic’ in our minds. We are not at all guilty that such a thought entered our minds, but only responsible to to try to ‘change the channel’, by diverting ourselves to a different thought or action.
What we’re saying is that by virtue of placing our trust in G-d, we can change reality (or what we perceive as reality,) because in the spiritual source ‘above’ of creation down ‘below’, everything really IS good. This is something that we cannot understand, because by definition we are not G-d, and didn’t create ourselves or the physical universe.
So, when a person truly believes that everything is from G-d whether it appears good or not, he elevates himself to the supernal source (the spiritual source,) of the physical reality, where everything really is good in an absolute way.
Indeed this is very challenging to put into practice. G-d creates things in a way that there is an internal, spiritual aspect to every creation, (like the angel of Esau that fought with Jacob, who was the spiritual source of Esau,) and this internal aspect is completely good at this spiritual level. It is written, ‘G-d is good to all and and His mercy is upon all of Creation.’ Although we cannot perceive in this physical world how everything is good, our role is to relate to it as if it is, since at its source it is.
In other words, good and evil are two sides of the same coin, the one is internal and the second is external. We must use our capacity for free choice to choose to look at life as good, to look at the internal aspect. The more we focus on ourselves and the external aspect of the situation, the more we see the negative. We need to make a conscious choice to focus on the internal aspect.
The Hebrew word for trust, ‘Betach’ is connected to the root of a word which means to stick or cleave. When we trust in G-d we are cleaving to Him. It is also written “You who cleave to the L-rd your G-d…’, this bond expresses itself by trusting and results in inner calm.
The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Akiva was once walking with other Sages, and they saw a fox come out of the site of the Temple which had been destroyed. The other Sages cried, while Rabbi Akiva laughed. They asked him why he laughed? He asked them why they cried… They said they laughed because the prophecy that foxed would walk around there came true, Rabbi Akiva explained that he laughed for the same reason, since if the negative prophecy came true, the prophecies of Redemption would surely come true too! This is the way we can choose to think…
As we are getting ever closer to the Final Redemption, it is important to learn about it and focus on it, thus hastening our personal redemption as well the general one, trusting in G-d and thus drawing down revealed good.
