The Spiritual Foundations of Mental Health

All year round we have the opportunity to see that fear can be a form of "false evidence appearing real."  Purim gives us insight on how to take that lesson deeply to heart.

Divine presence is everywhere but potentially inaccessible.  You are the vessel that makes it accessible.

There is room in your life for a spectrum of feelings.  That understanding is not only a great success in its own right, but it paves a path for greater wisdom and creativity.

These two commandments for the basis of all Jewish thought and practice as well as all peaceful and productive living.

A meaningful story about how we can most be of help to ourselves and others.

A championship season and life is filled with failures, and is still a championship life.

Are we resisting or making peace with the inferiority - that will make all the difference.

It is impossible to go through the journey of life without experiencing potentially overwhelming feelings.  And it is impossible to navigate, grow from, and not be undone by those feelings without sensing there's someone with us in those feelings.  The alternative is trauma.

We don't need constant good feelings to know that life is safe, healthy, and a wonderful place to learn and grow.

Every person is deserving and in need of compassion and empathy, an appreciation that their burden is burdensome.  And every person is deserving and in need of the liberating clarity that there's no one to blame - there's only a Single Simple Source who desires our good.

Our disagreements are a wonderful diagnostic - how clear are we about single simple truth behind our psychological experience?  And what would we like to do with that?

Change is possible!  It's helpful to review how it does and does not work.

Does it suggest my prior growth was an illusion?  Must I understand what changed that I was ok with the habit and now struggle again?  No and no, and here's why.

When feelings have an unbounded role in helping us determine reality, we can innocently and unknowingly forfeit so much freedom to be and do in our lives.

We sometimes associate our feelings of shame with our deficits and imperfections.  In fact, we do possess deficits and imperfections, and they are the badge of our humanity and evidence that we have been tasked by the Creator with a unique and important mission.

There is a special wisdom available to us in a moment of stuckness.  Are we open to asking, What is the next small good choice I can make?

There is a bully within whose penchant to take credit for our results simultaneously creates despair and shame in the places where we lack results.  This bully arouses judgment of ourselves and those around us and crowds out humility, creativity, and connection.

Both our inner and outer worlds are spaces designed to reveal something of our essence.  What if we are busy judging or resisting those worlds?

There is a corner of the universe called "me" in which I get a front row view of the darkness of this world.  I'm entrusted with the task of bringing there light.  How does that work?

Both with our children and with the kid within us, when we can communicate values from a place of equilibrium, we provide a space for the kid to be responsive and influenced.  This is authority and it draws the child higher.  

Our imperfect efforts are designed not to create results but to be permeable to Divine insight and power.

How Elul/gratitude leads to the 10 Days of Tshuva/fear to Sukkot/love and healthy vulnerability - with such unbelievable opportunity!

There is no possible evidence in this world - not our past, our moods, our present habits - that can suggest we lack unconditional access to the wisdom with which to navigate our lives with hope, meaning, and contentment.  Thinking otherwise brings to exhaustion.

It's a wonderful thing to have a time/space/activity that feels easy and peaceful.  What if it doesn't seem portable to the rest of my life?

Jewish wisdom lists two different reasons for the loss of the 2nd Temple.  The Talmud lists intolerance and baseless hatred.  The Torah verse itself lists lack of joy in serving our Creator.  What's at the root of this seeming contradiction?