Mashiach our Neshama

        Adam being viewed by the angels
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In Lamentations 4:20 we read: "The breath of our nostrils, the Mashiach of the LORD, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the nations".

To say that Mashiach is the breath of our nostrils is as though to say that he is our neshama, our Godly soul.  Adam became a living nephesh, a living soul, like all other living creatures, but unlike other creatures he did so through a relationship of shared breath with God.  It is revealed through Scriptures such as this one in Lamentations that this "shared breath" between God and Adam is Mashiach.

Adam lost the vital connection to Mashiach when they sinned.  Only through the covenant promise given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and through the fulfillment of this promise in Yehoshua was this connection restored to Adam/Israel.  This is the mystery of the history of redemption, for it involves the judgment of death as well as the justification of God's grace and resurrection from the dead. Therefore it is a mystery to the natural mind.  Only when our mind is informed by our spirit which has passed through that word of God given to Israel can we begin to understand these things.

We see this mystery portrayed in the history of Israel, as represented by this passage in Lamentations.   This mystery of God that still governs the minds and hearts of the whole world will soon be made clear and revealed, first to Israel and then to the whole world, as we read in The Book of the Revelation of Yehoshua HaMashiach.  In the Future Eternal World Mashiach will again be the breath of Adam's nostrils, because he will be the living breath of Israel's nostrils without ceasing.

The eternal life of all other living souls is to ultimately come through the consummation of this relationship between Mashiach and redeemed Adam/Israel.   See Romans 8.

A Woman of Valor

Teaching tzedakah by Akiva via Flickr"In the Future Era ..., 'a woman of valor will be the crown of her husband,' [i.e., the higher quality of the mekabel {the 'receiver'} will be revealed].  [As a result,] the soul {where ultimately the "soul" has reference to Yehoshua the Mashiach} will receive nurture from the body {and the "body," redeemed Adam/Israel, is his bride}."* {This is as in Ephesians where the bride stands at a level of eye to eye with the bridegroom. This must be understood to say that the bridegroom receives 'nurture' from the bride as in the Scripture, "He will see the labor of his soul and will be satisfied, Isaiah 53:11a."}

The relationship of the redemption of the body and the soul is a very vast subject.  There is a time when in the resurrection of the dead the body is more elevated, as it were, than the soul.  For the resurrection of the body is entirely the work of grace but there is a form of grace in relation to the soul that allows the soul to learn, which allows the soul to cleave to God.  So in the resurrection of the dead there is this aspect in which the soul receives its nurturing from the body.  However, all of this ultimately is a figure of the relationship of Mashiach and redeemed Adam/Israel.

*This quote given in black, in italics, is from, I Will Write It In Their Hearts vol. 1. A Treasury of Letters from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. Selections from Igros Kodesh. Translated by Rabbi Eliyahu Touger.  {My own notes are in red.}

For further indepth background study you can read this following entry on the FoundationStone site.
You can download the book quoted from here and related material and books from Hebrewbooks.org