Emuna Therapy

Honoring Your Children

Children will only accept guidance from parents who love them when they are 'failing'; who advocate for them when they are not 'succeeding'; who protect them from dishonor and self-doubt; and who accept upon themselves the full responsibility of being a parent. 

Wishing You a Wonderful Family Shabbos,

Dr. Zev Ballen

Here is this week's Parsha Newsletter:  Download CSC NL Week 29 Chukat

 

Parenting Groups Today

 

You are welcome to join us on the phone as we continue learning about emuna in the context of parenting. Today we will begin to introduce some imagery and relaxation techniques that you will be able to use right away in your parenting. 

Heres How You can Join:

Thursday  1:30 - 2:30, Israel time. To request access to the call please contact: yehuditbell@yahoo.com.    

Thursday: 7- 8pm, Israel time. To request access to the call please contact: nehamajulie@hotmail.com.

With Blessings,

Dr. Zev Ballen

 

Live Video Today: Healing Imagery

With Hashem's Loving Kindness, we will be broadcasting live today, Wednesday at 5:00pm Israel time from the Chut Shel Chessed Yeshiva, 13 Shmuel Hanavi Street, Jerusalem. Today's lesson is called Healing Imagery, You can see it right here. The broadcast, as well as our lessons posted from now on - are Mac and iPod compatible. If you tune in too early to the live broadcast link, you'll be sent to the main page of the Breslev Israel website, so try to tune in on time as follows:

10:AM in NY, 7:00 AM in LA and the West Coast, 8:00 AM Denver, 9:00 AM in Mexico and Central Daylight, 3:00 PM in the UK, and 5:00 PM Israel time. If you are not able to watch the lesson live, we will, G-d willing be posting a link to it soon. If you can't see the broadcast, you might need to download a new version of Flash Media player which you can do here. We hope you enjoy the broadcast.

Wishing You Blessings Always,

Dr. Zev Ballen

 

 

 

 

 

Holy Woman

A pregnant widow with six orphaned boys becomes holier and holier with each test: violence, betrayal, her husband's suicide and ultimately a fire that left her with nothing but Hashem.  

- Dr. Zev Ballen

 

Relax Instantly

A calm mind is the prerequisite for Divine inspiration and assistance.

During one of our parenting classes, I mentioned that physical relaxation is actually  the experience of Hashem entering a person's system and settling within him.  This is understandable because Hashem will always come close to a person who lets Him in. 

The physical world is just a reflection of the upper spiritual worlds. What happens when you open an air-tight bottle? Air rushes in to fill the vacume. 

It works the same way spiritually.

The next time you feel stressed out, just sigh deeply and say with sincerity: Hashem: 'I'm ready to recieve You':

Hashem's Light instantly fills your body. He settles in every part of you: your nerves...your bones...your muscles.

Hashem's Light enters every cell of your mind and body. You are whole again...Your consciousness is expanded...You can answer any question and deal with any situation.

With gratitude to Hashem and Rivka White for the inspirational poster. 

Wishing You Peace,

Dr Zev Ballen

My Rebbe's Smile

By Dr. Zev Ballen

My Rebbe's smile is so beautiful and so real; lately I've been wondering about it.  The world is filled with beautiful people with beautiful smiles, but somehow when Rabbi Shalom Arush smiles - you feel something different - it's hard to describe. I've seen the 'confident' smiles of the wealthy and even of those rich in Torah scholarship - but my Rebbe does not smile like they do either.  I don't think I ever saw a real smile until I saw his.
 
What is his secret? What makes Rabbi Shalom so happy?  Does his pleasure come from being a best-selling author? No. He smiled before this.  Is he proud of the Torah institutions that he has built? No. He smiled before this. Is he smiling about his financial success, after years of poverty and debt? No. He smiled before this. Maybe Rabbi Shalom can smile as he does because he is proud of his achievements in learning or because of the beautiful children he has. No. He smiled before all of these. 
 
So what in the world is he smiling about?
 
I think that my Rebbe is smiling because he knows the deepest Truth about life and it just keeps nurturing him and giving him more and more pleasure all the time. He found this Truth when he was poor and unknown.  He realized that G-d is good and that He is the One Reality. Once my Rebbe saw that everything is G-d, it became impossible for him to complain about anything. He saw how much he had, and was grateful for it all.  Life became joyous, calm, sweet and worry-free. There were no more problems. There was only good.  My Rebbe's smile expresses his total and complete centeredness in Truth. When he smiles, he also wants nothing more than to share the Truth with you.  His passion to give can be found in his every intention; thought; movement and word. He has forfeited the illusion of 'self.' He is a limb of Hashem in this world. 
 
Imagine, for fun, how a Holy person would score on a 'cutting edge' 'highly reliable and valid' personality inventory.  The doctors would laugh at him like people laughed at the pure and simple man in Rebbe Nachman's story of The Wise Man and the Simple Man.  There are no psychological categories that can contain holiness.  If a tzaddik took a personality test, G-d forbid, he might appear psychotic, schizoid, isolative, obsessive, or grandiose. Continue reading here...

 

Wishing You Blessing Always,

Dr. Zev Ballen

The 'Science' of Parenting

Science is based on observing what might be a cause and effect relationship; then testing the reliability and validity of the supposed cause and effect relationship; and finally drawing conclusions from what was tested to determine 'the truth.'  

Behavioral science has led us to believe that when a child misbehaves if we respond to that behavior with love that it will cause the misbehavior to be reinforced and thereby repeated.

According to this way of thinking, if a child comes home with a 'bad' report card, or a mother recieves a threatening phone call from her daughter's teacher, or a child loses control of himself and hits his brother -  hugging the child at such a time will reinforce the undesirable behavior. 

A parent who believes this has been brainwashed by science.

Since behavioral scientists derive their conclusions based only on what they can observe, their advice to parents is useless. The scientists don't bother themselves with thinking about the child's soul. Since they cannot observe a child's soul, they dismiss it completely -  for research purposes a child's soul and Hashem's Wisdom are irrelevant. Since the scientists don't believe in anything except that which their fallible human eyes can percieve, their 'conclusions' are the lowest and most primitive way of knowing anything about children.

A person with emuna sets his gaze much higher than the scientists can see with their limited powers of observation. A person of Faith asks himself, "how could it be that Hashem is limited to 'A' causes 'B' 62% of the time."  The person of Faith  knows that there is nothing sacred about correlational research. He knows that anything is possible in Hashem's world; and in fact there is no correlation between A and B at all unless Hashem wants there to be. There is no set connection between one moment and the next or even between one day and another. Hashem is creating the world new every moment.

The foundation of emuna is to believe that we can always start again anew. That the One and only Cause of all things is Hashem.  A foundation principle of our belief is that 'Only He did, does and will do all things." 

The next time that your child has a 'failure'  help him start again by showering him with hugs and kisses.  When your child 'falls' is the very best time to step in and protect his honor and feelings of self-worth. Hashem will take care of the rest. 

Here is this weeks Newsletter / Parsha Sheet: Download CSC NL Week 28 Korach. I hope you enjoy it. Have a wonderful family Shabbos!

With Blessings,

Dr. Zev Ballen

New Emuna-Parenting Groups

It fills me with great pleasure and gratitude to Hashem that I can now invite you to call me directly with your questions about emuna-parenting on our new interactive conference-call sponsored by Breslev Israel and the Chut Shel Chesed Yeshiva of Rabbi Shalom Arush.

In order to accommodate those of you who live distant from Israel as well as those of you who live in Israel or near-by, there will be two groups. 

Every Thursday:  1:30 - 2:30, Israel time. To request access to the call please contact: yehuditbell@yahoo.com.    

Every Thursday: 7- 8pm, Israel time. To request access to the call please contact: nehamajulie@hotmail.com.

I am, G-d Willing, looking forward to facilitating both of these groups. 

With Blessings,

Dr. Zev Ballen

 

 

 

 

Live Broadcast: Trusting Yourself

With Hashem's Loving Kindness, we will be broadcasting live today, Wednesday at 5:00pm Israel time from the Chut Shel Chessed Yeshiva, 13 Shmuel Hanavi Street, Jerusalem. You can see it right here. The broadcast, as well as our lessons posted from now on - are Mac and iPod compatible. If you tune in too early to the live broadcast link, you'll be sent to the main page of the Breslev Israel website, so try to tune in on time as follows:

10:AM in NY, 7:00 AM in LA and the West Coast, 8:00 AM Denver, 9:00 AM in Mexico and Central Daylight, 3:00 PM in the UK, and 5:00 PM Israel time. If you are not able to watch the lesson live, we will, G-d willing be posting a link to it soon. If you can't see the broadcast, you might need to download a new version of Flash Media player which you can do here. We hope you enjoy the broadcast.

Wishing You Blessings Always,

Dr. Zev Ballen

 

 

 

 

My Brother's Joy

Jealousy can be lethal, as it was when Cain killed Abel, his younger more successful brother. In contrast,  Aaron responded joyfully to the news that Moshe, his younger brother was succeeding him as the leader of the Jewish people.

The teachings of  Rabbi Shalom Arush cleanse our hearts of envy and direct us to recognize that when others succeed - so do we! We must learn this video well and teach it to our children.

- Dr. Zev Ballen