The Illness That Births the Cure

MyLife Essay Contest 2015

Chassidus teaches that everything is rooted in a spiritual source, and when we work on ourselves spiritually we are simultaneously working on the world—mentally, emotionally and psychologically—bringing peace and healing not only within ourselves, but to all of humankind. Much of my guidance, my source of clarity, my teacher of objectivity and truth, and the resulting self-knowledge have been achieved through learning the teachings of the Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, also known as the Baal HaTanya.  The Alter Rebbe has a way of gently yet firmly redirecting and reflecting to us the truth, love, awe and glory of the Divine. Heteaches us of our indispensability and our need to hold ourselves accountable for the great responsibility that we have been gifted with.  This awareness reveals and manifests G-dliness, and transforms darkness into light.  Being aware and conscious of G-d’s boundless giving and unconditional love enables us to realize that this is not a relationship we are willing to give up, and this isn’t a Being that we want to be separate from, even for a second.When we truly love and feel love of any kind in response, our natural desire is to want to invest in the relationship and be closer. Anyone who has held a baby for the first time, kissed their parent after not seeing them in a while, hugged a friend goodbye knowing it will be a long time before they reunite orwalked down the aisle towards the one they are to spend the rest of their life with, can understand this emotion, as can anyone who has simply witnessed these events as a third party.

The Tanya teaches us of G-dly ahava, love, the desire to come closer, bond, and be one with G-d, and yirah, awe, the instinct to protect the relationship so as not to lose the bond and become disenfranchised and emotionally separate, leaving the relationship empty and devoid of meaning.Love and awe are the two most primal emotions that extend to all other emotions, and are the lights that illuminate our thought, speech and action. They redefine the intention behind the words we speak and give wings to our actions, allowing them to rise and fly above the physical, and be transformed and united with the spiritual. Love and awe create an umbilical cord of sorts, connecting us to G-d, and making a pathway between the spiritual and the physical, in effect, ‘building a stairway to heaven’.

The Alter Rebbe opens up the Tanya with a title page based on the verse (Deut. 30:14) “For this thing is very close to you in your heart and in your mind, that you may do it.”He explains that the surest way to manifest our love and awe for G-d is through the long and complex task of engaging and perfecting our thought, speech and deed. He explains that the way to epitomize our love and awe for G-d is by investing in the relationship and getting to know G-d by means of deep and meaningful contemplation.  This is the “longer but shorter way” that will deliver us and all of existence into the Holy of Holies of the Divine.It is incumbent on every one of us to pave a path of our very own in our search, return to the awe and glory of the Divine and to uncover our divine mission—our quest for our hidden treasure. By walking this path we are returning ourselves back to our Creator, liberating ourselves and our brethren from a state of confusion and turmoil to a state of love, tranquility and truthful, G-dly unity. Authentic love and awe of our Creator makes us more aware, in both our individual and collective consciousness, that in order to achieve true personal wholeness and health we must as a people have truly united peace and unity, knowing we are intrinsically and essentially connected. As the author of the Tanya explains,all the souls of Israel are like the organs of a body and the Divine presence (the Shechina) is our heart, and “when all the souls are attached and bound together, the circulation and flow of the life effluence is continuous.” When we are in a state of disunity the Shechina, this heart of ours, is “referred to metaphorically as ailing.”   In other words, when we are in a state of unity we are in a state of supreme health and when we, the Jewish people, are in a state of disunity we are in a state of insanity, giving our very selves a spiritual “heart attack.”

My experience has been that a core element of mental illness and insanity is the refusal or the inability of a person to recognize and access their own inner strengths, which allow them to function with sanity, productivity, relationality, consistency and success. A person who strongly feeds into a false belief that causes him to doubt his very self, convincing himself he is his own worst enemy rather than his constant ally, is someone who is truly suffering and in pain. He lacks the sense of self with which to fight and root for himself and his life. He does not recognize the Divine infinite light and support that lies within him. He is unaware that he never ceases to be part ofsomething much greater than himself, and as a result of all this, he is left with a diseased state of mind and spirit. When we heal ourselves we are healing each other, when we are healing each other we are healing ourselves. The microcosm of the individual and the macrocosm of the Jewish people, of all of humanity, and, in fact, of all of existence, are intrinsically and essentially intertwined as is our disease, our cure and our return to health and Divinity.

We learn in Torah that the refuah comes before the maka, (the remedy comes before the plague).  If anyone feels plagued by anything at all, they can rest assured that they have the remedy within them. We heal and learn together to reach a place within ourselves as individuals and collectively to take pride in our journey, appreciate our battles and wear our external struggles and our inner battles as a badge of honor and pride rather than as a leper left to be forgotten.Often medicine will make symptoms worse before they get better, bringing the illness to the surface before curing it. And sometimes when faced with the truth of who we have become, who we are meant to be and the seemingly vast distance between the two, we may feel discouraged.

The Baal HaTanya comes to warn us of this:  “Be not wicked in your own estimation,” going on to say “if a person considers himself wicked, he will be grieved at heart and depressed and will not be able to serve G-d joyfully and with a contented heart.”On the other hand, if a person lacks an awareness and perception of his flaws and limitations he can become complacent, which will prevent his growth. To find that balance, we must come to know who it is that we really are.

There is a phenomenon known as Stockholm syndrome, in which an individual who has been taken hostage identifies with his captors to such an extent that he adopts their mandate and sees his allies as his enemies. We are that kidnapped person who has been taken hostage. We are a soul in this foreign corporeal world.  We have forgotten where we come from, and the mission we have come down to this world to carry out. We have come to identify with a false reality based on non-truths or incomplete truths at best.The Torah is our message in a bottle from G-d, reminding us of our true identity. Chassidus helps us to decipher that message, re-teaching us who we are, and reassuring us that although sometimes we may act like our kidnapper—which is the world that we currently reside in, a place that contains obscurity, evil and darkness, we will still never actually become our kidnappers.  We will always be a Divine soul.

To avoid this identification, the Tanya addresses an individual known as a beinoni, and suggests that each of us has the ability to live up to that potential. The beinoni is a person who hasperfected his thought speech and deed but has some residual spiritual illness (sin) left in the recesses of his mind. He possesses a neutral desire for the physical that can be directed towards either the positive or the negative, the holy or the unholy.This unrefined desire can be perceived as something negative, or as a gift. This need for refinement and fixing can result in a journey that will take us to places we never imagined.  Discovering treasures along the way, we come to appreciate the struggle that the imperfect part of us initiated, propelling us forward on our journey. By fixing what he has broken, and returning to what he has distanced himself from, he develops an intense yearning for G-dliness that can only be experienced by one who has temporarily departed from and subsequently returned to his true self, to his one G-d.   By taking the longer but shorter way we come to completely redefine who we are, rather than just tweaking different parts of ourselves.

This is like the difference between doing minor renovations and taking a wrecking ball to a home. In the case of the latter we demolish the original structure and then pick up the fallen bricks and piece-by-piece, step-by-step, rebuild it from the very same stones that originally stood, this time with the help of a knowledgeable architect, a good contractor and talented designers. With conscientious motivation, we will create a tailor-made plan to recreate a home that is more stable, useful, beautiful and valuable than before.We may at times feel broken as a result of pain and loss, and the challenges of the journey we have embarked upon. But this longer-but-shorter way will surely deliver us to our innermost chambers, our Holy of Holies. This process of revealing ourselves is a journey that takes time, and willingness to try and try again.We must start from the beginning, taking a practical path back to ourselves, our source. We must unscramble all of the eggs in ourselves. The quest to become a beinoni is complex, and personal. Everyone has a unique way of internalizing and expressing himself.

We must come to know our tendencies, strengths and difficulties, our inner demons and our unique capacity to understand the Divine gifts that were given to us. Then we can actualize our self-knowledge and spread it out to the world.Targeting thought alone can be very daunting. Having a constant flow of thoughts, we can end up trying to control our thoughts rather than purifying them, and as a result get stuck in our ego, which is the opposite of our goal.  Focusing on our speech may allow us more leverage with which to accomplish our goal. Thought and speech are connected to each other, both containing letters that form words that form sentences stemming from some source or flash of inspiration or emotion, or some external trigger or stimulus. The big difference between thought and speech is that words are more limited than thought and so some of us have more control over what we say than what we think.In order to perfect our speech, and how we choose to use our words and express our intention behind what we are saying, we must become quiet within ourselves, slow down and be present. We must exercise impulse control, being conscious of what we are about to say, and the impact that it will have on ourselves, the person we are talking to, and if talking about another person, the impact it could have on them.If we make an effort to ask ourselves whether what we are about to say is positive, helpful, hopeful, constructive and proactive, we will force ourselves to start thinking in these terms. When we use speech as leverage to build, protect and enhance the self-esteem of another we are simultaneously purifying our thoughts and transforming the desire in our mind to be used in desiring the good, rather than trying to achieve something negative.By generating love, compassion and kindness we are emulating our Creator by using our existence in order to nurture another.

The Chofetz Chaim, Rabbi Yisroel Meir Kagen of Radin, spent his life educating people and authoring books that continue to this day to impress upon people that by protecting our speech we are literally choosing and fostering life.G-d created the world not just by thinking it into existence, but chose to use speech as the creative medium. Human words similarly have the power to create realities by engaging and using the “five organs of verbal articulation” i.e., the larynx, palate, tongue, teeth and lips, as a boundary between what one is thinking and the reality one wants to create. By being aware of how we are about to employ the organs of speech we are purifying both our speech, and reflexively, our thoughts, and ultimately the world.Mindful speech also directly impacts our love and awe of G-d, because when we are loving, protecting and showing the minutest concern for any and all of Hashem’s creations we are loving Him in the most practical possible way.

We thus come to know that this search for self, for healing, and for the Divine, was never for the sake of our own isolated self, but rather for the sake of every other self out there yearning for meaning, G-dliness, goodness and peace, just as we are. With this clear perspective we are truly ready to act in a way that is synonymous with holiness.Sometimes in life, on this mission of ours, we become weak and weary, feeling our demons of the past chasing us from behind and the seemingly insurmountable struggles up ahead. We may be inclined to stubbornly engage in an unproductive battle just for the sake of protecting our ego.