What the Rav said:
Rabbenu writes in Lesson 154 of Likutei Moharan that all suffering that we see comes because a person is afraid. The fear draws the suffering.
Because a person is afraid, he has worries and fears, this is what draws over him the judgements and suffering.
If a person had trust in Hashem, that Hashem is completely good and that He only wants to show His mercy, then it’s not applicable at all that a person would ever suffer, because
Hashem is so good.
A person who believes in this with complete emunah won’t see any suffering.
When a person fears something, he gives that thing power to harm him.
My thoughts:
This is very powerful, and eye-opening.
We all have worries and fears. Even those people who aren’t scared of anything (right…) are often stressed up to their eye-balls. “I’m stressed”, by the way, is just a more macho way of saying “I’m scared”.
There are two principal, root emotions which exist. Fear and love. When they are in their right place, they translate into Fear or Awe of Hashem, and Love of Hashem. When they ‘fall’ they end up as fear and worry about everything and anything, and lusts for the pleasures of this world.
We need to raise both of them back up to their proper place.
Leaving fallen love to a different post, here we have some advice on fallen fears.
If we fear Hashem, we fear nothing else (and vice versa).
And, not only that, but the Rav tells us that is is our fears themselves which cause us to suffer.
Like Rabbenu said (as mentioned a few times now!) “The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the main thing is not to scare ourselves”.