Emuna Therapy

A Worry-Free Succos

There is no better way to prepare for and enjoy the upcoming festival of Succos, than to read well these life-affirming words of my beloved Rebbe and spiritual guide, Rabbi Shalom Arush.

Translated by Rabbi Lazer Brody

It hurts me to see people persecuting themselves. Succot should be a time of the greatest joy, especially in the intimacy of the family. Yet, people have sterna nad unhappy faces because they're still worried about Yom Kippur.
 
I know that if I tell them that there's nothing to worry about, they won't listen. So, I'll play their game. Suppose that they still have stern judgments hanging over them that somehow weren't atoned for on Yom Kippur (and that's only "suppose"). That's still not a problem, as we're about to prove:
 
Gratitude and trust, when mixed together, become a magical spiritual elixir that mitigates all stern judgments. The Gemara (Tractate Berachot, 10a) shows us a magnificent illustration of this

principle in the following story: King Chizkiyahu was very ill. Isaiah the Prophet visited him and told him that his days were numbered. King Chizkiyahu answered, “Stop prophesying and leave! I learned from my grandfathers that even if a sharp sword is placed on your throat, don’t lose hope in [Hashem’s] mercy!”
 
What does this mean, the “sharp sword is placed on your throat”? Imagine the harshest decree signed and sealed on Yom Kippur; gratitude, trust and emuna can overturn this too. There’s always hope and no room for despair - ever.
 
We learn trust from King Chizkiyahu. Any person – no matter how low he has fallen – can make a complete turnaround and return to Hashem whenever he wants and under any circumstance. Things might look hopeless, but Hashem has infinite solutions and modes of salvation. Despair and depression are counterproductive. Trust, emuna, and gratitude work miracles.
 
Oftentimes, the Evil Inclination injects its poisonous propaganda into a person’s heart and brain. If it succeeds in reducing a person’s mood to the abyss of disappointment and despair, that person becomes neutralized. That’s why the Evil Inclination will tell you, “Hey, look what you’ve done! Look how terrible your sin is! You’ll never be forgiven…”
 
The Evil Inclination is a liar. Anyone sincerely desiring to make a new start in life can at any given moment. It’s so simple – Hashem loves every individual; He’ll unlock the door for anyone that truly seeks Him. We can always depend on Hashem’s mercy – this is the basis of our trust. We believe that Hashem is a loving Father and we thank Him for all His blessings. Soon, all the concealment dissipates…
 
With all this in mind, we can now appreciate what Rebbe Nachman of Breslev always emphasized – there is no despair in the world at all. There’s no reason for despair, since emuna, trust and gratitude provide a bright ray of light that guides a person out of the deepest and darkest tunnels in life.
 
Rebbe Nachman also answers the Evil Inclination’s claim that a person’s sin is unforgivable. Rebbe Nachman says, “If you believe that you can ruin, believe that you can rectify!” Once again, Rebbe Nachman’s teaching is anchored in the Gemara’s lesson about the power of teshuva (Yoma, 86a,b).
 
Hashem gives us a priceless gift called personal prayer. Anyone who spends an hour a day in gratitude, self-assessment, and teshuva attains a lofty level of emuna and trust. Hashem gives us the wonderful opportunity to judge ourselves; when we do so, Hashem doesn’t allow the Heavenly Court to judge us. Our sages explain that there is no double jeopardy in Divine jurisprudence – the Gemara says that if there is judgment in the material world, there is no need for judgment in the spiritual world.
 
Let’s take a closer look at the story of Isaiah the Prophet and King Chizkiyahu. Continue Here...

Blessings for a wonderful new year 5773!

Dr. Zev Ballen

Judge Yourself Well

When we decide to look for the good in ourselves and our current situation with the same zeal that we look for quality in the four species, we will experience true closeness to G-d and the greatest happiness possible.

 - Dr. Zev Ballen

 

                              image credit: shachta_man

Have a wonderful Shabbos and New Year 5773!

Dr. Zev Ballen 

Emuna Classes Today

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With Blessings,

Dr. Zev

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Ultimate Love

Ultimate love is Spiritual and therefore indestructible. It cannot be stopped by anything in this world. This short clip will give you something worthwhile to shoot for on Yom Kippur.

 

Sigh - Cotherapy

By Dr. Zev Ballen

Here's the question that's gnawed at me for most of my life. 
 
What, if anything, would make me happy?
 
I became a psychotherapist in the hope of finding the answer to this question.
 
As part of my training I was required to undergo a full classical Freudian psychoanalysis. I lied on the couch 4 times a week and free associated to an analyst who I never saw. She sat behind me for almost nine years. During that time, if I wanted to make emotional contact with her, I wasn't allowed to turn around.  Through her abstention from being a person, my analyst became a blank screen.  At times, my unconscious fantasies turned my analyst into a withholding childhood mother, a punitive father, or even an omnipotent G-d-like figure. As my childhood conflicts emerged, I gained incredible insights into myself and my dealings with people.  Unfortunately, despite a plethora of insight, after nine years I can't say that I was any happier than when I began.
 
Then I started banging on pillows with baseball bats and tennis rackets in an effort to release my  

pent up aggression and hurt feelings. The primal scream therapist prompted me to scream at the top of my lungs.  This procedure helped me to feel like a new person for about two days.
 
In cognitive behavioral therapy I focused on trying to make all of my thoughts positive. "I'm a happy person..I'm a happy person...I'm a happy person!" The problem with that was that I was forcing myself to be positive but my internal state had not changed. I soon saw that I could not just by-pass my internal mood I needed to deal with it.
 
Next I became fascinated with hypnosis.  I was sure that with the aid of hypnosis I would be able to go deeper into my mind and uproot the mess in my unconscious mind.  The problem with positive thinking had been that it did not deal with the skeletons that were hiding deeper down in my unconscious closet. So I hoped that by re-programming my unconscious mind with positive hypnotic suggestions that this would make me happy.
 
Unfortunately it turned out that even my unconscious mind had a mind of its own. My unconscious mind stubbornly refused to accept even pleasant hypnotic suggestions for more than a few days - after that my body seemed to reject them as if they were foreign bodies.
 
It was around this time that I discovered the fascinating world of Ericksonian hypnosis.  My Ericksonian hypnotherapist said that traditional hypnosis had not helped me because my unconscious was not some passive entity that could be bombarded by ideas however positive - he said that my unconscious demanded more respect than this. I was told  that my unconscious mind had amazing untapped resources that could be used to find creative solutions to my problems. This sounded great. I couldn't wait to start. It was truly empowering to be told that I was smarter and more resourceful than I knew I was in my unconscious mind. This was by far the most compelling psychological theory yet. If I could learn to trust my unconscious then everything would be okay.
 
The problem was that although I could now access more of my unconscious creativity, still my unconscious didn't always know what to do when I was in severe conflict.  Whenever the stress mounted I gravitated back to my core conflicts.
 
So I decided to give psychoanalysis another try but this time the interpersonal school of psychoanalysis. Instead of the emphasis on picking apart the inner workings of my mind I would now hopefully be cured through the corrective emotional experience of a "therapeutic relationship." The idea was that I had never had a healthy relationship before and having one with someone who had earned a degree in psychology would be my ticket to personal growth and salvation. 
 
It wasn't.
 
Determined to cure my neurosis I tried a family therapist. He sat with me on the couch and together we drew my family genogram - a pictorial view of my family tree. He showed me how I am reliving the life of one of my ancestors who lived three generations ago. The theory is that there was some "unfinished business" in that person's life that I am trying to complete in a maladjusted way.  All of these therapies were really interesting intellectually. But no - family therapy didn't do it for me either.
 
Then came gestalt therapy. I was put in a chair and was "helped' to resolve my relationship with mom by speaking to her in empty chair across front of me. 
 
Need I say more?
 
In primal scream therapy I was taken into a sound proof room and told to scream at the top of my lungs. All that I got from this was a sore throat.
 
In paradoxical psychotherapy I was told that all of my worries and concerns about myself were absolutely true (a form of reverse psychology).  I was in fact a depressed narcissist with competitive and emotionally dependant traits. 
 
The theory behind paradoxical therapy was that my problems were rooted in repressed rage. The therapist continued to provoked me in the hope that I would break through my inhibitions and lash out at him. 
 
I couldn't really take the paradoxical approach seriously. It was easy to see through the therapist's ploys - especially since I had read about this technique in graduate school.  
 
After all this, I expressed my misgivings about traditional therapy to a clinical supervisor telling her that I was feeling drawn towards spirituality. My supervisior told me that if I abandoned psychotherapy for spirituality I would be acting out my wish to claim an oedipal victory. I was looking for a vindictive triumph over my mom who was a psychoanalyst.
 
That was the last straw.
 
I am writing this in the hope that I can save you the enormous outlay of time, money and emotional turmoil that almost 40 years of aimless wandering through the wasteland of secular psychotherapies has cost me.
 
Here are 16 reasons not to go to for secular therapy: Continue here...

The Relationship Game

The cause of the conflicts between people are always rooted in the lack of spiritual fulfillment between them.  By learning to decipher the "relationship game" you'll end conflicts by meeting your partner's deepest emotional and spiritual needs. 

Dr. Zev Ballen

 

World-Wide Prayer

Beloved friends - this video is well-worth 12 minutes of your time. Have a wonderful Shabbos and a Gmar Chasima Tova for the new year!

Blessings,

Dr. Zev

 

Please forward now: All Jews ready for September 23!

WORLDWIDE PRAYER FOR PEACE, SIMULTANEOUSLY, FROM ALL THE JEWISH PEOPLE !

Sunday, September 23 (17:00 Israel, 16:00 London, 11:00 New York, 8:00 Los Angeles…)

Blessings,

Dr. Zev Ballen

Home Sweet Home

 

By Dr. Zev Ballen                                                  Image credit:sethfrantzman 

Lifta is an ancient settlement on the outskirts of my home town of Romema. It dates from before the second temple period. The site of a large spring (Mayan) it was also home to a number of Arabs who attacked Romema in 1947.  In 1948 Jewish forces attacked the village in retaliation and the people fled. It was never re- settled or torn down. Now people go there to speak to Hashem.

With Blessings,

Dr. Zev Ballen

The Fast of Gedalia

 

Today begins The Ten Days of Repentance before the great and awesome day of Yom Kippur. During these days you should study more Torah, perform more mitzvos and spend less time on your business. Above all we must set right the wrongs tht we have committed against our fellow man and obtain forgiveness.

Tomorrow, I'll be head back to my beloved Israel after 11 days in Uman.

With Blessings,

Dr. Zev Ballen

Erev Rosh Hashanah

 

 

By Dr. Zev Ballen                                  Image credit: plasticiti3s

 

It is customary to go erev (the day before) Rosh Hashana after the morning prayers to the cemetery and bow prayerfully at the graves of tzaddikim [righteous men]; charity should be given to the poor, and many fervent supplications offered to arouse the saintly tzaddikim, in their eternal resting place to intercede for us on the Day of Judgement. There is an additional reason: the place where tzaddikim are buried is sacred and pure, and prayers are more readily accepted when they are offered on sacred ground, and the Holy One, blessed is He, will show us kindness for the tzaddikim. But it should not be your intention to appeal to the dead who rest there, for that would be tantamount to "Inquiring of the dead," (Deuteronomy 18:11),[which is forbidden.] (Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 128:13)