A person falls, feels ashamed, and starts thinking about what happened. That sounds like the beginning of teshuvah. Sometimes it is. But sometimes the result is that he feels too worthless to make the next good choice. One failure becomes the reason to give up on the rest of the day.
Why does Tikkun HaKlali answer this problem with Tehillim, with words of praise and song? To understand that, we need to see what simcha, joy in serving Hashem, gives a person who is trying to return.
The part of life that can go either way
We have been learning Likutey Moharan 205. Its starting point is the value of a person's creative power. Bringing a soul into the world is a tremendous gift. The rav describes this as drawing a neshamah from beneath the Kisei HaKavod, the Throne of Glory. When that power is misused, something precious has become caught in a place where it does not belong. The work of tikkun is to recover it. The rav repeatedly refers to the image of rescuing a princess in the story of the Seven Beggars. The princess and the ten fingers used in her healing express something precious that can be brought back.
Tehillim has ten forms of song. Rebbe Nachman explains three of them here: Ashrei, Maskil and Hallelukah. These are three expressions of song, rather than three chapters that make up the whole Tikkun. The specific ten chapters are listed later in 205 and again in Likutey Moharan II:92. The rav also mentions Biur HaLikutim as a place where the other seven expressions are explained, and says he may return to them. His explanation here concerns the three that Rebbe Nachman develops in 205.
Ashrei was connected with sight. A person can look at everything from the outside and see only what he wants to use. He can also learn to see the holiness and purpose within what stands before him. We connected this with Avraham lifting his eyes, and with the teaching in Likutey Moharan 1 about seeing the inner wisdom of things.
Maskil brought us to Targum, the Aramaic explanation of Torah, and to the area called klipas nogah. This is the mixed, intermediate part of life. Some things are holy in themselves, such as korbanos. Some are forbidden. Permitted food belongs to the area in which our use matters: it can become part of serving Hashem, or it can draw us into a life ruled by appetite.
The same pattern was applied to language. Lashon hakodesh is the holy language. Aramaic stands between it and the languages of the nations. The Zohar and the Talmud Bavli use Aramaic for Torah; the language can carry holiness into a place beyond the original Hebrew. The same point of contact can also be misused. Likutey Moharan 19 develops this connection between Targum and the struggle over the bris.
There is a parallel in the way we understand places. Eretz Yisrael is the place of kedushah; the lands outside it stand at a greater distance. Ever HaYarden, where the two and a half tribes settled, illustrates an intermediate area that can be drawn toward the holiness of Eretz Yisrael. This is a spiritual comparison about drawing the outside inward. It does not settle the different halachos of land, borders or residence.
In all these examples, the middle area demands something from us. A permitted thing does not automatically become holy simply because it is available to us. Our manner of using it matters. That is why speech and the bris are connected. Sefer Yetzirah 1:3 speaks of the covenant of the tongue and the bodily covenant. The way we express ourselves and the way we use our creative power affect one another.
The same food, a different way of eating
Yaakov was cooking lentils for a mourner's meal. Rashi explains that Avraham had died and Yaakov was preparing food to comfort Yitzchak. Esav approached the same food in a very different way:
וַיֹּאמֶר עֵשָׂו אֶֽל־יַעֲקֹב הַלְעִיטֵנִי נָא מִן־הָאָדֹם הָאָדֹם הַזֶּה כִּי עָיֵף אָנֹכִי עַל־כֵּן קָרָֽא־שְׁמוֹ אֱדֽוֹם׃
Esav said to Yaakov, “Please pour some of that red, red food into me, because I am exhausted.” Therefore he was called Edom. (Bereishis 25:30)
Rashi explains the force of Esav's request by comparison with feeding a camel: open the mouth and pour the food in. The food itself was permitted. Yaakov was using it for a mitzvah; Esav's language expressed being driven by appetite. The difference was in the person's relationship to the food.
Chanukah gives us another example. The Mechaber, Orach Chaim 670:2, says that the additional meals were not established as obligatory feasts. The Rema there records the practice of adding songs and praises, through which the meal becomes a seudas mitzvah. Eating can become an occasion for thanking Hashem.
This helps explain the contrast with Yavan. In the letter-image used here, yud, vav and the long final nun suggest a movement downward. The rav describes yud as the highest beginning in this letter-image. It is associated with Olam Haba, the World to Come; vav carries something downward, and the final nun extends below the line. Something with a high beginning can be carried all the way into physicality. Oil, which floats above water, provides the opposite image in the Chanukah lights. The physical can be drawn upward.
Beauty belongs to this discussion too. The Torah describes Rachel's beauty in the same verse that describes Leah's eyes:
וְעֵינֵי לֵאָה רַכּוֹת וְרָחֵל הָֽיְתָה יְפַת־תֹּאַר וִיפַת מַרְאֶֽה׃
Leah's eyes were tender, and Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. (Bereishis 29:17)
Physical beauty has a place in holiness. The question is how we relate to it. When a desire becomes the force directing a person's life, he is being pulled along by something he was meant to use with purpose. Addiction gives a particularly strong example of that reversal: the person has lost freedom in relation to the thing he wanted.
Turning wailing into praise
The third expression is Hallelukah. Likutey Moharan 205:2 connects the opposing spiritual force with constant yelalah, wailing. The letters of יללה can be read in reverse as הללי, a call to praise.
This is a movement a person can recognize in himself. He can keep returning to what is missing, to how badly things have gone, and to how little he thinks of himself. He can also begin noticing what he has received and finding words with which to thank Hashem. Praise gives his attention a different direction.
The issue is especially important in the struggle over the bris. The creative power we have been discussing is precious. A person who has stopped believing in his own worth finds it easier to treat that power as worthless too. “What difference does it make? I am already so low.” Joy in his connection to Hashem can give him a reason to guard what he has.
A Chassidic saying makes the point by asking what joy and sadness lead to. Even if one were to set aside the question of whether a particular feeling is itself a mitzvah or an aveirah, simcha can lead a person toward many mitzvos, while atzvus can leave him exposed to further failures. The concern is what happens to the person's strength to act. Rebbe Nachman's own insistence on joy in Likutey Moharan II:24 still stands; the saying is not a denial of that avodah.