As the month of Pisces, or Adar, II, enters, there is an abundance of joy which is awakened in this world, giving each of us the opportunity to draw tremendous joy into our lives.
We understand that joy and happiness constitute the great moments and times in our lives, but the truth is that often joy, actually, is a choice. Sometimes we allow ourselves to be sad or upset, when really a choice or a thought process can change that. And although sometimes we like to say or think that we’re down or that something is out of our control, the reality is that most of the time, we can choose to be happy. Most of the time, we can leave sadness behind. And awakening ourselves to this consciousness of choosing joy is tremendously important for our spiritual connection, our ability to draw Light and blessings into our lives, and our ability to receive guidance and clarity.
Therefore, we need to push for happiness. While it is true that in this month there is an awakening of an abundance of joy, what we want to receive is not just the joy that is given or the joy that is available; rather, we want to learn and have the strength to be pushing ourselves towards joy all of the time. We have the ability, more often than not, to choose joy and to choose happiness. We allow ourselves often to wallow, to stay in anger, upset, and sadness, when we should be choosing instead to push ourselves to be happy. Therefore, as we enter into the new month of Adar II, when there is an abundance of joy shining down into this world that we can receive, we also want to receive an elevation of consciousness about the importance of pushing to choose joy as often as we can.
When something happens, in that moment, we become sad or upset. Normally, we hold onto that state of upset, we hold onto that sadness, but we have to remind ourselves it's not working. Because if we want to be able to receive great Light and great blessings, we have to be pushing for a state of happiness, for a state of joy, so that we can draw Light, blessings, and even greater joy and happiness from the Upper Worlds.
In the Zohar, in Vayera, section four hundred, the Zohar quotes from Psalms, from King David, saying that when the face of the Creator, the Light of the Creator, is hidden, it causes fear. When the Light of the Creator is concealed, it awakens fear. Nothing negative can come from the Light of the Creator. When the Light of the Creator is there with you, when it is in your presence, nothing negative can happen. And therefore, when the Light of the Creator is revealed, no negativity, in any form, occurs to the individual. But when the individual, through his or her consciousness, allows the Light of the Creator to be removed from them, he allows negativity to enter into his life.
Because what happens, as we learn from the Zohar, is that when a person is in a state of sadness or upset, when he is not pushing himself towards joy, then the Light of the Creator does not reside with him. And when the Light of the Creator does not reside with him, it opens the individual up to all types of negativity; as such, we need to talk a little bit about holding onto sadness. My father, Rav Berg often used the term, “hug their chaos.” Everybody experiences chaos, but we have the choice to hug that chaos or to let go of that chaos. Everybody experiences sadness, experiences upset, but there is always a choice at some point to either hold onto it, or to let it go. And the Zohar here is telling us about the danger in not letting go of that sadness or not pushing towards a state of joy and fighting for it.
Usually, we think it's passive; today something happened and I'm happy… tomorrow something happened and I'm sad. But we can't allow ourselves to be in that state of reactivity towards the emotion of upset or sadness. Yes, something may happen. But when you have the choice, the question is, am I pushing myself to be happy, am I fighting against sadness, am I fighting against upset? Or, as the Rav said, am I just hugging that chaos, staying in that state, and being OK with it? We learned from the Zohar, from King David, that if an individual remains in that state, he allows the Light of the Creator to leave. Therefore, as we enter into this new month of Pisces II, we don't want to allow that state of sadness to remain with us; we want to push for joy, we want to choose happiness.
