Why is life sometimes so difficult and challenging??

Many times, just when we finally make up our minds to move ahead in life, to move in the right direction, we are challenged with more difficulties, struggles and obstacles. Abraham, at 75 years old, accepts his first real mission from G-d, and on his journey towards Israel to fulfill G-d’s commandment, he is confronted with a famine. His wife, Sarah, is abducted and taken prisoner by the Pharaoh of Egypt. How is it, that you couldn’t find a more spiritual G-dly couple, committed and willing to do what’s right, and they are rewarded by encountering such hardships?


Why is life sometimes so difficult and challenging? Can’t G-d leave us alone?

By nature, when things are too easy, we tend to sit back and become comfortable. Lighting the proverbial fire underneath us, for most of us, is the only way to get us off our backs. Challenges force and push a person to bring the best out of them. That’s just the way it works.

Mysticism discusses the nature of this Universe as being inherently kind and good. When G-d decided to create this world, there was no one to deserve or earn His kindness, and He did it anyway. “The world was created with the attribute of kindness.” That means that even if something appears going downwards – a descent, it must be part of a process of going upwards and getting better, since G-d is good, and all that he does is excellent, with no inadequacies or deficiencies.

If someone is to be honest with themselves, they will acknowledge, only G-d really knows what is truly good and/or bad. Many times, we experience negative things, and we discover they were the catalyst for something very positive. How many people lost jobs only to find better opportunities? Many times what we thought was positive became the reason for something very negative. How many people won lotteries only to curse the day they won all that money? Our scope of vision is finite and limited, and in truth, we can never be sure what is truly good and what may be truly bad for us.

When a person relies on G-d’s infinite wisdom and goodness, by developing his/her muscle of faith and trust, we are catapulted in an entirely different way of viewing the world and our lives. A person who understands that the nature and character of the world is inherently good and a blessing from a source that is positive, benevolent and trustworthy; and develops this faith by using his intellect to strengthen himself, then he never encounters problems. Everything in his life must be another occurrence and experience presented as an opportunity for something positive.

Abraham and Sarah where chosen by G-d to go on His mission because G-d knew they understood this concept and would seek and search the bright side and the kernel of good in all that they would encounter. And so it was:the famine led to being sidetracked towards Egypt, which brought to the kidnapping situation, which and led to the great gifts Pharaoh lavished upon Abraham and Sarah. They literally became exceedingly rich from their travails.

This is the lesson for all of us. We must train our minds, and then our hearts will follow to always see the blessing – or at least have the patience and faith to eventually see in all that happens in our lives to be a blessing. When we look out at life this way, we are guaranteed to quickly see the good in all that happens, and life actually becomes better!

Fear and doubt - defeating traits.

The Bible instructs us to take three steps when entering the Land of Israel. They are; we must nominate a king, eradicate the tribe of Amelek and build a sanctuary.

All the commandments/instructions in the Torah-Bible are a lesson to each individual in his own small world. “The world was placed in his heart.” Our own lives are a microcosm of the world at large.

Once a student came to his teacher and said he wanted to go to Israel. The teacher told him, “Make your own environment an Israel.” Everyone can and must make his own little world a Holy place where G-d would be comfortable to dwell.

When the Bible commands the Israelites in the wilderness to build a sanctuary, the words are, “And I will dwell in them.” It does not say “I will dwell in it” but “in them.” Our sages tell us, this comes to teach us that everyone can and must make out of their own lives a sanctuary for G-d to dwell in each of our own lives.

How exactly do we accomplish that? The first step is to establish a king. A king is the ultimate arbitrator and judge. A person must not allow himself to be swayed in every direction he is blown into. There must be an ultimate value system and authority who rules in a person’s life.

Emotions are very scattered and fragmented. The mind, in which the G-dly soul resides, is considered the king in the life of a human being. We must be aware of our habits, our desires, our pressures in life and with our mind decide, is this choice good for me or not. Is this decision in line with my values and goals in life?

The next step is to eradicate the evil tribe Amalek. In Hebrew, this word has the same numerical value as “doubt,” and the word itself can also be understood as meaning cold and unenthusiastic. The moment a person establishes a king in his life comes around this nuisance and negative energy that cools our enthusiasm and creates doubt. Then questions start cropping up: Maybe it’s not right for me; maybe it’s not the right time; maybe it’s too much for me; maybe I will fail at this and look like a fool. Anything and everything to dampen our progress forward.

Therefore, we are told to eradicate this pest. Where do we find the strength to do that? One of the very important statements in the Bible that in the merit of reciting this verse, the soldiers were assured to win their war is, “Listen Israel the Lord our G-d the Lord is one.” FAITH. The knowledge that G-d is everywhere and he is the same one in the war field as he is back home. He is the one that made each one of us and gave us the mission and guaranteed us success. Strengthening our faith is the antidote to cold, confusing doubt.

Enthusiasm, is faith manifested. Excitement, passion, zeal and zest come from a mind and heart that knows failure is not an option. If any soldier had fear he would be sent home because “fear is the beginning of defeat.”

Once a person’s loyalty and commitment to his king – his values and his mind is established and fear, doubt, coldness is eradicated by strengthening one’s faith, we come to the last step and that is building a sanctuary out of our lives. How is that done? King Solomon tells us, “in all your ways know him” and “all you deeds should be for the sake of heaven.” By infusing all that we do with a G-dly purpose, we make our lives a dwelling place for the miraculous and blessings.

Ever wonder??? Who really is in control??

Unlike all other creatures that are only body, human beings have a G-dly soul which is independent from the body. The soul, our identity, operates in this materialistic, physical world through the body which has its own life force, which we call animalistic. It is animalistic because like animals, it thinks only of itself and self-gratification.

This is the perpetual struggle all human beings face, which truly spiritual, G-dly people have successfully overcome. The truly spiritual, G-dly person is in control of his body and the animal within. For most of us, however, we are pulled in different degrees by the body and its enticements without even thinking whether it’s going to be good for us in the long run or not. When that happens, the body is in control and the mind has succumbed. When the animal within draws us into its world of selfishness and hedonism, it leads ultimately to depression and loneliness.

In depression, a person has allowed himself to become victim to his own emotional, narcissistic drives. For many people, although they complain and are unhappy with this victimhood there is a certain comfort and syndrome to this situation.

For some, when they are depressed, they have something to blame for their failures. It’s a way to get attention; it’s an excuse not to be productive; and it’s a way to manipulate others. Remaining a victim is never good, it means allowing yourself to be controlled and YOU are out of control. People who are depressed have surrendered control over their bodies to the body and its drives. In truth, we have a G-dly soul, our true identity as human beings, that operates through the mind, and the mind inherently has more power over the animal.

G-d gave us animals not so that they should rule the roost. G-d gave us the tremendous physical strength of the animal so humans can leverage that strength for their human G-dly goals. The reason why G-d put a mind over the rest of the body is so that we should think and use our G-dly gift -- the ability to independently think about our lives, before we make every and all decisions related to our bodies. A person is in charge, liberated, and healthier and happier, when the mind is in control.

When the body steers a person towards superficial, skin-deep endeavors, ignoring the “soulful” value-filled endeavors, we have a very unfulfilled and empty life.

Depression is a bad habit, and after awhile it may even be noticed by a chemical imbalance in a person’s body, but habits, as difficult as they are to break can be reversed. It requires sincere desire to change direction in life. You can’t eat whatever you want and lose weight. I know that’s what people would like to believe, but it’s not possible. In order to develop a change in present circumstances, the current conditions need to change completely. Not necessarily cold turkey, but a new map needs to be drawn with a new sense of purpose.

The first step is always the hardest, but it is the only way to change direction. A good habit to regain control is to constantly remind ourselves, “I, am in control.”

My choices, which I am making constantly, cause the results I have in my life.

is self indulgence the answer???

The national institute of mental health claims more than 26% of all Americans over 18 years old to be mentally depressed! One in four adults! That’s a lot of unhappy campers. :( Is this a state of existence we are forced to suffer with or is there a better way?

In order for a person to make the most out of their lives they must be happy. There is an expression “G-d does not dwell but only where there is Joy”. You want the power of G-d, the power of your own soul to burst it’s brilliance in your life? You need joy and happiness. One of the reasons for music in the Holy Temple was to elevate the spirits of the Levites while serving G-d so they could be good conduits for the blessings to be drawn down.

Depression is a negative harmful energy G-d created within, to test and strengthen us. Its’ force like all the negative forces within is mainly form and no substance. For the most part, a person who grew up and is surrounded by people with a faulty perspective to life will have caught the influence of this negative energy. The first step is to recognize the characteristic of this destructive energy.

Let’s take the root of depression, arrogance and a selfish, self absorbed person. Our society is all about what can I; get out of … whatever it may be. What’s in it for me and how will it serve me. This has its’ extremes, but even on a low key level let us consider the ramifications of this attitude.

This person believes he DESERVES to be happy and friends and family owe it to him. Everything is going in one direction and that is towards himself to serve him. Besides the fact that he is in for a big bad surprise and everyone in the world doesn’t “owe him”, this is a good prescription to become very lonely in life.

Because he is so self absorbed he thinks of himself and not others and the fact is, if you don’t serve others no one will serve you. Expecting always to be served will leave the person totally disappointed and disillusioned. Depressed - dejected and disheartened.

This person thinks life should be perfect, because he is perfect – arrogance, - which can lead to acute compulsive disorders, anxiety when subconsciously he faces the realization that he may err, and fear and doubt that he may not live up to the picture he has created of himself in his mind.

All this is a figment of the person’s imagination and not rooted in reality. The worst part of it all is that this faulty attitude perpetuates itself. Once we have trained our mind to see something in a certain way we seem to find more and more tidbits of information that support our faulty conclusions.

Being depressed is being a victim to the unbridled animalistic emotions within, which is self centered.

The solution – be happy. Not from another beer or more jewelry. Happiness comes when a person is internally fulfilled. The soul – the G-dly spark within needs an outlet, a channel to express itself. The G-dly spark within wants to create good and spiritual worthwhile endeavors like G-d did when he created the world. The G-dly spark wants to be able to think like G-d and not be inhibited by the coarse pleasures of the body.

When a person begins to align their bodily lives with the unique G-dly purpose we where put in this world to accomplish, happiness and joy starts flowing. Blessings and strength starts finding their way in to this person’s life.

A habit of this will make YOU HAPPY

One of the great sages once said, the evil inclination within is more interested in the depression we get after we do something bad than the bad we did. Depression is one of the grand tactics of the evil force within, to steer us in a bad direction.

Everyone is prone to making bad choices every so often, and to fail is to be human. Machines can be incredibly accurate however, they don’t realize when they make a mistake. Realizing we made a mistake is a sign of our humanity, and it signifies we know bad from good which is a good thing.

Despair after having done something foolish or wrong is a tactic of the evil within to bring us down and stand in the way of any self-improvement. Despair, melancholy and depression suck the life out of us and are the opposite extreme of joy and happiness that opens the gates of our soul to inundate and flood us with life and energy.

There is no reason for people to feel shame and humiliation when they are depressed because just like every so often people catch a cold. In the same way, the blues is a built-in challenge that we can overcome, no different than the feeling to push the snooze button in the morning. This is true for the overwhelming population who suffer from the blues and/or worse yet, depression.

Depression is a result of a person’s arrogance and selfishness, traits of the animalistic human nature when left unrestrained. Someone who is self-centered and thinks how he can get more out of the world for his selfish pleasures, is arrogant and haughty and thinks everyone owes him something. This is a most important cause for depression. Arrogance can sometimes be very crude and other times it can be subtle. People of this sort are into themselves and eventually this attitude puts a person into a very small and unstable world. They become psychologically lonely, isolated and separated.

A great Rabbi once said depression is a cheap excuse for avoiding one’s purpose in life and having a purpose in life is the best remedy for depression. Having a purpose in life means thinking about giving of one’s self to help someone else, be it a family member or anyone else in the world. It means sacrificing of one’s own time and money and appreciating the value it presents the world and as a result grants them.

Unfortunately, being surrounded constantly by marketers of products and consumerism, we are constantly being fed messages that compare us to others, trying to make us feel inadequate and needing to buy more things as a source to find happiness. But more things are not the answer. As a matter of fact, the focus on more things is what makes us increasingly less happy. It is a superficial cream -- an immediate shallow treatment -- that feeds further unhappiness.

Happiness and love aren’t things you can ever acquire by thinking more of how you can serve yourself. Gladness of the heart and contentment are the direct by-products of doing the right things.

Three of the right things are: to practice humility; think of others; and think of why G-d made you and gives you the miracle of life every time you take a breadth. Guaranteed, if you make a habit of the above, you will become a much happier person.

Addressing depression

The more we feed and give in to the body with its drives and passions, the more we are nourishing the animal soul within the body, and the more we must suffer all the consequences and penalties the body will create for us. Self gratification turns the body into itself, which is a very lonely place to be. Making a habit of giving in to bodily wishes brings anger, constant hunger to fulfill our desires and allows for control of the body over the spirit.

The body is heavy and lazy and is no different than an animal; after all it is motorized totally by the animal soul. The spirit of G-d within, is light and fulfilling, rewarding, meaningful and purposeful. One of the very painful situations the body will put a person into, is depression and sluggishness. Depression is the ultimate control of the body over the spirit. As a matter of fact, a depressed person has no energy or spirit left in him since it’s been totally blocked by the drives of the body. Happiness and internal joy is the spirit driving the body.

The following are four methods mysticism utilizes to address the condition of negativity in one’s life, especially depression, by shifting away from the bad and/or discovering the good or transforming the bad to good.

Depression ( in its’ many degrees) is a negative force since it takes the life away from a person. The following four steps must be done with the help of an outsider since there is a rule, “A person cannot untie his own knots.”

The first method is the weakest one and applicable to the right person at the right time. The depression is still there but a positive use was found for the depression which allows for the beginning of a small crack of light to shine into the person’s life.

It is to use the depression against itself as a handle to knock out the depression or better yet the depression itself is used against itself.

Depression, if carefully directed, can be used AGAINST those elements in life that a person should truly be unhappy about. This is temporary since we are dealing with a poisonous and harmful energy which should be avoided.

The second method is based on the axiom, “everything comes from a positive, G-dly source”. Depression started out as either frustration over a worthwhile desire or some other positive reason. We trace the negative back to its trigger and source and we sublimate the negative outcome, namely the depression, by addressing the positive need.

For example, if a person was frustrated over a lack of validation in life at work or at home, which is a perfectly healthy need and desire, once the validation is addressed, the depression will be for the time being eliminated.

This method can temporarily ignore the propensity to feel depressed, but potentially it’s still there should the problem recur.

The third method is completely shifting, focusing and training oneself through habit to ignore the bad and to focus entirely on the positive in life. Here again the bad is still there but not being allowed into this person’s consciousness.

The last and most powerful step which transforms the depression into joy is an understanding and developing the faith and trust, that all G-d does is for the good. Things that appear in life as challenges are disguised goodness. This attitude transforms all the bad in one’s life. Everything becomes only positive and good.

Bottle neck issues

There is a constant conflict between the G-dly soul, which is intellectual and thinks objectively, and the animal soul, which thinks instinctively and impulsively.

The animal soul, who animates our bodies, draws us to the desires of the flesh. The G-dly soul, who shines through the mind, keeps on reminding us to do, not what feels right, but what is right.

The G-dly soul inside the body, our identity as human beings, is life itself. The body which is heavy and lethargic conceals and hides this inner soul. We need transcendence to rise above and go beyond the wants of the body in order to successfully allow the soul to express itself.

To live life, real life, not just the body being alive, a person needs the unhindered and unimpeded flow from the soul. However, as the soul coming first through the intellectual mind tries to make its way down to our heart and emotions and to influence the rest of our body, encounters bottleneck traffic. This is the shape and form of the narrow straights that exist between the head and the heart namely the neck.

Pharaoh was a wicked king over the land of Egypt, who kept the Jewish souls in servitude. He was assisted, the Bible tells us, by three servants, the butler, baker and butcher.

In Hebrew, the letters that spell “Pharaoh” can also mean the neck. “Egypt” in Hebrew can also mean constraints, and the first letters of the three servants spell, impure.

Mysticism explains that in a person’s neck, his Pharaoh - constraints, there are three major vessels corresponding to the three above servants. The baker is represented by the esophagus, the butcher is represented by the carotid artery and blood vessels and the butler is represented by the trachea. These three servants symbolize the resistance in the neck, between the head and heart.

The bottleneck that holds back the influence of the mind over the heart, and gives the heart and emotions in which the animal soul expresses itself, strength to resist the intellect are these three vessels. When a person continually indulges himself in physical enjoyment for its own sake, like eating – the baker – or is immersed in general pleasures, the butler – and identifies all his enthusiasm and heat of the blood in materialism - the butcher, it will strengthen the pharaoh in the neck to keep the soul in bondage.

When a person lives in order to eat and to enjoy, and his focus in life is materialism, the blockage is fortified. The more a person is into materialism, the more he is desensitized from intellectualism and G-dliness, and the animal soul is strengthened

When a person learns and gains the habit to ignore these impulses and instead of living to eat, he eats in order to live, as King Solomon says, “someone who guards his mouth and tongue, (this person) guards his soul from harms and troubles.”

That is why the Jews had to run away from Pharaoh. A person must escape the clutches of this terrible pattern. The more a person gives in to a bully the stronger the bully becomes. When a person allows himself to be manipulated by the commands of his own Pharaoh and his attendants, the more he gives in to materialism and reinforces these habits, patterns and strengthening of the body of flesh, the more difficult he makes it for the soul and the mind to be successful in influencing and harnessing the emotions.

To be continued….