Seven days of hitbodedut

Hitbodedut, secluded personal prayer, is an exalted level, greater than everything. That is, to set aside for oneself at least an hour or more to seclude oneself alone in some room or in the field, and to pour out one's words between oneself and one's Maker, with arguments and pleas, with words of grace, appeasement and conciliation, to request and plead before Him, may He be blessed, that He bring one close to Him, to His service in truth.

This prayer and conversation should be in the language that one speaks, that is, in Yiddish (in our country). For in the Holy…

He also spoke about hitbodedut, for it was his way, of blessed memory, to urge very strongly about this, to be very accustomed to hitbodedut, to pour out one's words before God, may He be blessed, each and every day.

And he said that even when one cannot speak at all, even when one speaks only a single word, this too is very good.

And he said that even if he can speak only one word, he should be strong in his mind and say that word many, many times, without limit or measure;

Concerning hitbodedut and conversation between oneself and one's Maker, and the saying of Psalms, supplications and requests:

it is very good when one merits to say them truly with a whole heart, until he merits to weep before God, may He be blessed, like a son weeping before his father.

But he said that when a person says supplications and requests and thinks in his heart and waits expectantly to weep, this thought is not good, and it also confuses his mind. For because of this he cannot say the requests wholeheartedly and completely.

[The conversation between oneself and one's Maker]

He warned very strongly, several times, about the matter of conversation between oneself and one's Maker: that every person should speak and converse between himself and his Maker, and should reflect well on what he is doing in this world, and have compassion on himself, and spread out his hands in supplications and appeasements, to ask and plead before Him, blessed be He, that He grant him, in His abundant compassion, to draw close to His service, blessed be He.

He said that through saying Tikkun Chatzot (the midnight lament) one can pour out everything that is in one's heart, just as through hitbodedut. For presumably one does not say Chatzot only about the past; rather, the essence of saying Chatzot is about what is happening now with the person. And when one says Chatzot in this way, one can find everything that is in one's heart within the saying of Chatzot.

And likewise with saying Psalms and the like, one must see to it that he finds himself within all the psalms and within all the supplications, requests, selichot and the like.

When our Rebbe, of blessed memory, made known to me the matter of hitbodedut and conversation between oneself and one's Maker, I spoke with him: But man has free choice? And he did not answer me explicitly, only offhandedly, as one saying "nevertheless." That is to say, even though it is impossible to explain the matter to you completely, nevertheless one must conduct oneself so. And I could not ask further, for I knew that this question can be asked also about all the prayers that our Rabbis, of blessed…

I heard in his name that he was speaking with one of the young men and was very, very much encouraging him in hitbodedut and conversation between himself and his Maker in the language that he speaks, as was his way, of blessed memory.

And he told him that originally this was the essence of prayer: that each person would speak what was in his heart before God, blessed be He, in the language that they spoke, as explained in the Rambam at the beginning of the Laws of Prayer (Laws of Prayer 1:2-4; see there, where he explains this well: