1. Noach: Where Is YOUR Ark?: Raising Above The Struggles Of Life

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/avrohom.lipszyc/videos/10157453498128257/ Written Notes: https://www.dropbox.com/s/a3t59gux8xecz5z/1.%20Noach%205780%20--Where%20is%20YOUR%20Ark%20-Rising%20Above%20the%20Struggles%20of%20Life.docx?dl=0 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/hachaim/1-noach-where-is-your-ark-raising-above-the-struggles-of-life YouTube: https://youtu.be/QmOG4yRD2uQ ------ Here is a fact of life: All human beings experience struggles in life. From the rich, famous and powerful to poor, unknown and downtrodden. Struggles, one may say, is the purpose of life. Why, you ask? Because our soul descends into this world to reach unprecedented heights, and unprecedented heights can only be reached when we are pushed far out of our comfort zone. In other words, the soul achieves its goal only when we transform our struggles into opportunities, and then successfully work these opportunities. This is actually what the story of Noah and the flood is all about. The flood rains for 40 days and forty nights, and then the waters prevailed for 150 days. After which the waters began to subside, leaving Noah in the ark for a total of 12 months before he was able to leave the ark. The flood waters, according to the teachings represent the struggles of life, which have the potential of numbing and drowning our spirituality. And thus, King Solomon states (-Songs 8:7), "Many waters cannot quench the love, nor can rivers flood it." As a matter-a-fact, not only can the waters not drown our spirituality, rather, the struggles become opportunities, through which our spirituality reaches unprecedented heights. And thus, the verse states, (-Genesis 7:17-18), "Now the Flood was forty days upon the earth, and the waters increased, and they lifted the ark, and it rose off the earth. And the waters became powerful, and they increased very much upon the earth, and the ark moved upon the waters." However, this only worked for those who were in the air-tight ark, while those who were outside succumbed to the raging waters. Thus, it is through building an air-tight ark, with all its biblical specifications, and then entering into the ark, that we can transform the struggles into opportunities. This lecture is here to teach us how to build our arks, enter our arks, and how to transform our struggles into opportunities. This lecture is based primarily on a maamor the Rebbe delivered on this Shabbat, in 1977, exploring the deeper dimension to the ark, and how it presents itself in our personal and individual lives.