Psycho-babble or Truth

If we don’t develop our emuna, we have only our animal instincts to depend upon, which means that we want to shoot at whatever moves first. “Shoot him or be shot” says the animal brain – because we can’t decipher the message that G-d is sending us via that particular “enemy”. The problem with this logic is that we usually have the exact problem that the “enemy” is manifesting, which is why we’re having to deal with them in the first place.

Let’s take a practical example: a father and son are learning Torah in the same Beit Midrash (synagogue) with different study partners. The son borrows his father’s cell phone and forgets to return it. Later on, the son develops a headache and leaves without telling his father where he is going.

Without emuna, the father thinks that his son is his “enemy”. After all, his son left disrespectfully without a word and took his father’s cell phone! With emuna the father sees that his son is not his enemy but rather a loud speaker through which G-d is saying: “Hey – if you don’t like the feeling of being disrespected by your own son why do you show disrespect to your father in Heaven – to Me?…and if you want your son to be more communicative with you, why don’t you speak more often to Me? I only took your cell phone away for one day to get you to think about how often you make Me ‘wait by the phone’, not just for one day but for many days before I hear from you!”

G-d, in His loving kindness, only sends us tribulations to help us grow stronger in emuna and to heal our souls. These problems don’t need to be “talked out”, medicated or neutralized by a secular-trained therapist who has no real idea what’s going on. They need to be welcomed, spiritually explored and properly addressed.

A Jewish therapist who is not teaching his clients how to cling to G-d in all circumstances is not doing his job. Once we become aligned with our true purpose in life, and we start to sense the enormity of real mission down here, we start to realize just how unimportant all our “problems” really are.

This generation is struggling so much to be truly happy, because we’ve lost sight of what’s really “true” and what’s really “truth”. We aren’t here to have fun, work hard, retire and play golf. We are all here on a spiritual mission. We have a job to do that requires an awful lot of effort, self-knowledge, willingness to change and prayer.

So many of us doubt this truth, because we have grown up in an environment saturated with atheism, where “Mother Nature”’ messes up the weather, and everything else is up to us.

We don’t know why we’re here. We don’t know why apparently “bad” things happen to us. We don’t know how to address our inner demons, or heal our souls. So then, we get sad.

But the most common source of suffering is sadness. Nothing evokes such severe judgments as dissatisfaction with one’s lot. The Torah says that sadness is the root cause of life’s curses. To try and deal with the sadness, we go to a therapist, but many conventional therapy sessions lead people into feeling even sadder and overwhelmed by their problems.

Why?

Because it’s not based on truth. It’s not based on emuna.

The Emuna Therapy approach to dealing with our issues and hardships in life, (many of which can lead to anxiety and depression if they aren’t addressed in the right way), is to put G-d, Torah and our holy, righteous leaders firmly in the picture. Emuna Therapy can provide immediate, genuine relief from the pain we suffer from our problems, and can also lead us to a way of life that will immunize us against further painful problems.

That sounds like a big guarantee – but I’ve seen it work time and time again: when people submit themselves to G-d, the Torah, righteous leaders, and a spiritual guide, they get immediate relief from their suffering.

How can we really incorporate these ideas into our lives? How can I grow my emuna? How can I get past all the negative thoughts and patterns I have in my life, that keep holding me down and preventing me from living the life I truly want to live? How can I develop a strong, happy marriage with my spouse? Or warm relationships with my family members? Or a strong connection to my kids? How can I take these theoretical principles, and turn them into positive changes in every area of my life? How can I develop more positive character traits, including self-confidence, happiness, patience and courage, to name but a few?

Keep reading because this is what this column is all about. In subsequent weeks you’ll find answers to all of these questions.