Category: Hitbodedut

A Fairy Tale Visualization borrowed from Rebbe Nachman

18/7/2017

As is well-known, Rebbe Nachman’s so-called “fairy tales” are actually parables soaked with profound and holy symbolism.

Part of the symbolism is that the history of the world and also of the Jewish people is contained within each story. A person's individual history is also contain within each of Rebbe Nachman's Tales.

Just reading or hearing any of the 13 Tales is spiritually healing and can cause you to have musings of teshuvah, even if you don’t realize it—particularly The Lost Princess.

And while I’m a clam compared to Rebbe Nachman, I thought I would take his basic idea and tell over the story of my life as if it was a fairy tale with my soul providing the symbolism.

Furthermore, there must be a reason why Rebbe Nachman chose symbolism and why he specifically chose fairy-tale symbolism. (After all, he could have just as easily used farm animals like Orwell did.)

So I figured witches, giants, talking animals, and princesses were the way to go.

I didn’t plan anything or officially assign any specific characters, i.e. “I will be a princess and my 10th-grade English teacher will be a troll…” Nope, it just ended up being very stream-of-consciousness (and fun too).

And it was unexpectedly effective.

I did this in a long session once, then invested another couple short sessions trying to work out the symbolic knot (“How do I get the Sunflower Princess out of the ice tower?” - not my actual visualization.)

By the way, I think that the symbolic struggle to work out a solution to the symbolic obstacle is an important part of the healing process or the process of inner progression. You are gathering kindling to light a fire at the base of the ice castle to slowly melt it and release the Sunflower Princess, but your subconscious/soul-conscious mind is doing something else, something that your struggle or solution represents.

Anyway, two things happened:
1) I got clarity on certain issues and where I was stuck in life. The fairy tale symbolism allowed me to see things from an outsider’s vantage point, giving me an objectivity that I didn’t have otherwise. It was also very validating for some reason.

2) I noticed a difference in myself a couple of days later, as if something had been solved or healed without me actively causing it. After that, things just started to come together.

I did this orally with Hashem, but you can certainly write it down.
Maybe you can even paint or draw it or play it on your violin or do an interpretive dance about it, if that’s where your soul-expression takes you.

How to Do It

I don’t think there is a “wrong” way to do this.

Just sit down and start talking or writing (or whatever your preferred method of expression is).
Let your soul guide you and see what comes up.
If you get stuck, try to work through the obstacle or “knot” according to the fairy tale symbolism.

While I did a life-story, I assume you could also do this over one specific situation.

For example, if you’re having problems at work (“And then the ginormous eternally hungry troll came stomping through the tulips, while the little Tulip Prince had only his matchstick sword to defend himself…”) or your marriage or neighbors or children (“And then the king and queen gave birth to a banshee…”) or your health…or anything.

Hatzlacha Rabbah!

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Minchat Yehudah Part II: True and Astounding Compassion

21/6/2017

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Fall back to Part I
Spring forward to Part III

Rav Fatiyah was an incredibly compassionate and loving person.

Here's just one of example of his tenderness and holiness:

Later, in the year 5673/1912 15 Elul, a 17-year-old virtuous unmarried girl came to me and her name was Katun the daughter of Aziza and she said to me, “I am an orphan from my father and in 5672/1911, my mother went to the land of Persia to visit my brother who was there because he was ill. And she left me and my little brother and my little sister with the sister of my mother, who was a very angry and irritable person.

Katun went on to describe her great suffering from this verbally and emotionally abusive aunt and how Katun could not say a word in her defense or to stop the abuse for fear of being thrown out on the street. One night, during an episode of profuse weeping over her awful fate, Katun says:

“I felt as if a large cat had fallen on my back between my two shoulders and was scratching my flesh with great scratches in order to make for itself a way to enter into me. And I feared to scream lest the naughty sister of my father also get angry at me. And afterwards, I felt this cat enter my left arm.”

Katun then described physical and audial sensations she experienced from then on, which robbed her of her sleep. She suffered this way until her mother returned around a year later and immediately sought help for her daughter.

"My mother took me to a Yishmaelite plil."

[Note: I could not find a translation for plil, but I’m assuming it some sort of exorciser or someone who utilizes the forces of impurity to “help” others.—MR]

"After several exertions, he said that it was a very strong Christian demon and the plil exhausted himself to exorcise it and he could not overcome it. And we went to the grave of Yehoshuah the Kohen Gadol and I did hitbodedut there alone, and I prayed there with copious tears. And amid this, a great trembling seized me and my eyes closed. And I saw an awesomely venerable man dressed in white clothes and wrapped in white wool. And I couldn’t gaze at his face and he stood at a distance of four amot and he was standing and gazing at me without speaking or words. And when we returned from prostrating, our goal was to go to the plil. Yet without meaning to, we found ourselves standing before your home..."

Rav Fetiyah was very moved by Katun’s suffering. He said:

“And I...when I saw Katun cry and her tears on her cheeks, my heart broke within me, and my heart went out to her.”

Anyway, far from being possessed by "a very strong Christian demon," poor Katun was actually possessed by a very tough Jewish spirit name Roza, who’d sinned quite a lot with a particular boy before she died. In fact, it took Rav Fetiyah an entire year just to get Roza to admit her name and to expel her from Katun took even longer with a lot of struggle.

Eventually, Katun got married in Iran and Roza left her then.

But it wasn’t just Rav Fetiyah’s compassion toward Katun that touched me. Any normal person would feel the same toward such a poor, innocent girl. It was that Rav Fetiyah insisted on helping Roza to rectify herself so that she could escape the terrible torments of Kaf Hakelah.

And just as a side note:
In the stories of spirit possession, the opening for the spirit is usually made by a transgression on the part of the host. In Katun’s case, no sin is apparent. Even Roza herself admitted that was why she needed to fight so much to enter into Katun's body; Katun hadn’t sinned. However, Katun became possessed while in a state of despondency and bitterness.
Having myself been caught up in states of despondency and bitterness, I certainly don’t blame her and neither does Rav Fetiyah, but it certainly is something to consider…

It's also noteworthy to see that praying sincerely from the heart in a holy place (the gravesite of Yehoshuah the Kohen Gadol) brought Katun to the right agent of salvation.

The fact that Rav Fetiyah really wanted to help these lost souls, despite the fact that some of them had behaved horribly when alive and some even continued to do truly depraved and awful things while dead! (I know, this is so weird.) Yet he had so much compassion on them. He even assisted souls such as Shabtai Tzvi and others to achieve rectification.

Believe me, after reading some of the reprehensible events here, I would not care about some of these souls. I’d say, Let ’em burn! But after reading Rav Fetiyah’s example, I see that I’m very wrong.

We need to help people get better and praying for them is the best (and sometimes only) way.
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Here is a conversation between one spirit and Rav Fetiyah, who displays astounding humility:

[Yonah the spirit] said to me, “May God bestow goodness upon you for all your work and great chessed [loving-kindness], which is beyond value and it is more precious than all the treasure in the world.”

I said to him, “May the Blessed God also bestow chessed upon you all for the chessed that you all perform for me.”

And Yonah was amazed at my words and said to me, “How are we bestowing chessed upon you?”

I said to him, “I’ll give you the parable of a baby who suckles milk from his mother. And yes, she performs a great chessed by nursing him, because if she didn’t nurse him, he would certainly die. But indeed, the baby is also bestowing chessed upon his mother to empty the milk from her because if he wouldn’t, then the milk would dry up and [cause a lot of physical torment] and the doctor would need to lance them. Likewise, the issue in our matter. Because I exerted myself for a long time until God merited me to learn these yichudim. And if a buyer wouldn’t be found for them, then all the exertion would be for nothing, may God have mercy. But now I have found in you all a buyer, my mind is content within me that all the exertion wasn’t for nothing.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In fact, when dealing with the notorious Shabtai Tzvi, Rav Fetiyah said:

“Tell me, is it my desire to torment you with yichudim? Because I hope to receive a good reward for my efforts from this young man [possessed by Shabbatai Tzvi]?”

And he said to me, “That is not so. For isn’t this young man a poor man, and he can’t even give you a penny?”

I said to him, “If so, guess why I am straining myself and depriving myself of my business and my studies if not that I pity your soul because it is part of the Godliness Above and it shines like a pearl. It’s just that because of the transgressions, 'rust' has encrusted upon it. And the Holy One Blessed Be He, Who is the Cause of all causes and the Reason for all reasons orchestrated the matter to insert you within the body of this young man so that by this means, there will be an end and a limit to the rectification of your soul through my hands, that I will toil to rectify you.”

If his soul was “part of the Godliness Above” and “shines like a pearl,” then what about ours, which is surely not nearly as sullied as his?
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I feel like it’s very helpful to read about tzaddikim in their own words, as was also done in the post: The Secret Saga of a Righteous Convert as Told by a True Tzaddik.

When we see the world through the eyes of tzaddikim, we get the truth.

We also get a lot of love and compassion, because that is where true tzaddikim are coming from.

And even if we can’t be like them, allowing ourselves to be influenced by their viewpoint and attitudes enables us to be a little bit better than we were before.

The potential within each of us is definitely there.

Fall back to Part I
Spring forward to Part III

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Anyone in Any Circumstance can Talk to the "Big Master"

18/12/2016

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While many people today erroneously view “talking to God” as a Breslov thing or something that “only truly great people do” (rather than the way truly great people became, well, truly great), the truth is that anyone can do it and reap incredible benefits from it.

If you just start talking and force yourself to get past the stuttering, tongue-tied obstacles, and discomfort, Hashem leads you the rest of the way.

To illustrate this, let’s look at the example of someone who is not even Jewish.

Brown Face, Big Master

I came across the example of Jamaican-born Joyce Ford Gladwell (mother of best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell) in her son’s book, Outliers. Back in the Sixties, Joyce wrote a book of her own called Brown Face, Big Master—“Big Master” being the Jamaican term for God.

Joyce descended from biracial relationships on both sides of her family and while obviously black, Joyce inherited the lighter side of brown skin. In Jamaica, lighter-skinned black people benefited. The biracial progeny of the white men and their Jamaican mistresses (who surprisingly often lived together as if husband and wife) were seen as being friendlier and more trustworthy by the white colonists.

So these children were given better jobs and opportunities. Jamaican society thus developed along racial lines, with lighter skin being highly prized, even within a single family unit. Lighter-skinned black people received better jobs and better lives, and achieved great successes. For example, by 1850, the mayor of Jamaica’s capital was a light-skinned black person.

Joyce’s lighter skin granted her success, too, and she and her twin sister went on to university in London, where Joyce met and married a white English mathematician named Graham Gladwell.

As a young couple with a baby, this educated and well-bred couple sought out an apartment near London. After an exhaustive search, they finally found one in the suburbs. But the day after they moved in, their racist landlady insisted they leave, saying angrily, “You didn’t tell me your wife was a Jamaican!”

Now, unlike today’s microaggressions and imaginary penalties, this was real racism with extremely unpleasant consequences.

And Joyce had every right to be hurt and offended, which she was - at first.

But, having been raised in a religious environment, Joyce responded by turning to God.

And the outcome was very different and more transformative than lawsuits and demonstrations:

I complained to God in so many words: “Here I was, the wounded representative of the negro race in our struggle to be accounted free and equal with the dominating whites!”…

...And then God said, “Have you not done the same thing? Remember this one and that one, people whom you have slighted or avoided or treated less considerately than others because they were different superficially…Have you not been glad that you are not more colored than you are? Grateful that you are not black?"

My anger and hate against the landlady melted. I was no better than she was, nor worse for that matter…We were both guilty of the sin of self-regard, the pride and the exclusiveness by which we cut some people off from ourselves.

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This is exactly what Judaism’s continuous exhortation to turn to Hashem and cry out to Hashem does for us.

Joyce obviously already had a relationship with God; she didn’t just start off their relationship with complaints. And she turned to Him for answers and solace. In return, she received the full loving message Hashem intended via the deplorable behavior of the white landlady.

And this transformed Joyce into a better person than she was the moment before.

Interestingly, God did this for Joyce even though she probably didn’t have real emuna.

Raised in a strong Christian environment, it’s safe to assume that Joyce misguidedly believed in God as one of divine set of triplets. Yet when she turned to Him, He still lovingly and compassionately helped her out.

All the more so will Hashem do with those of us who truly seek Him out and come to him as genuine monotheists, despite our foibles and transgressions.

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Dancing for Din

28/9/2016

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This is the time of year when we invest more than usual in some intense self-introspection. And as our Sages have been telling us for millennia, that as important as it is to treat Hashem with great honor and love, our treatment of each other is even more important to Hashem.

And so, we can hear shiurim and read modern-day writings that inspire us to apologize, forgive, and be connected with even very difficult people.

Unfortunately, it’s common for ordinary rabbis and rebbetzins to encourage us to not only forgive such people (which, if done properly, is extremely beneficial), but to give them the benefit of the doubt in a way that pretends they are everything they aren’t, and to keep up a relationship with them.

But many people see this often doesn't work. For example, what about people who are so cynical, they can’t accept anything you say as sincere and you can never do enough to prove your sincerity to them?

Of course, you should treat everyone with courtesy, but that doesn’t mean that you need to answer their phone calls, host them, hang out with them, sit with them at a wedding, get caught up in their mind games, engage with them on social media or blogs, or help them in ways that hurt you.
(If possible, you can help them in ways that don’t hurt you.)

But unless you are a great tzaddik—or someone with extremely thick skin—it’s impossible to be around difficult people without suffering for it. While you’ve probably experienced obvious consequences when dealing with difficult people—like resentment, low self-esteem, self-doubt, feelings of helplessness, confusion, depression, exploding at that person, exhaustion, unintentionally taking out your frustrations on people who are not the cause of them, nausea, headaches, stomachaches, etc.—studies have proven the physiological effect difficult people have on their recipients.

For example, even “mere” anxiety creates a hormone called cortisol.

Actual fear does even more.

(You can read here about how anxiety increases cortisol, which lowers physical immunity.)

And what are the physiological effects?

Cortisol binds with dormant cancer cells, making it easier for those cells to invade and move around the body
Cortisol weakens the T-cells and white blood cells necessary to fight disease
The body experiences emotions as electrical currents. Each emotion has its own individual frequency and creates neuropeptides according to that frequency, which in turn create specific biological responses—negative ones in the case of negative emotions

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Interestingly, joy—which can be stimulated or expressed through dancing—resonated at the highest frequency (with gratitude a close second), even higher than other idealized states, such as unconditional love, happiness, peace, and serenity.

On the negative spectrum, shame (with humiliation as a close second) resonated at the lowest frequency—even lower than hate, anger, betrayal, shock, and envy.

(Here’s an article on the science of it.)

And difficult people often make us feel some sort of shame. We often feel bad about ourselves. In fact, shaming others into bowing to their will—even if it’s subtle—is one of the trademarks of toxic people.
(And even if that shaming is an automatic, unconscious act on the part of the difficult person.)

And even if you know they're wrong, you may still feel bad (as if there's something wrong or immature with you) about "letting" them get to you!
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Yes, giving the benefit of the doubt definitely helps.

But it only goes so far for people who either intend or don’t care if they hurt you.

In fact, pretending that people are good and well-intentioned when even they themselves know they aren’t will actually make things worse.

Although many do people intuit this on their own (but ignore this because they think that it's sinat chinam), the science of it shows that it's just not realistic to expect the average person to genuinely feel no anxiety (which gets the cortisol going) when dealing with difficult people (and denying or repressing the anxiety doesn't mean it's not there) or to fight the creation of negative neuropeptides and their consequences.

(Please see How to Avoid being a Pathological Pollyanna for more information on how to give the benefit of the doubt in an emotionally healthy manner that conforms to authentic Jewish sources.)

Yes, trying to maintain a compassionate attitude in such situations while reminding yourself that it’s all from Hashem and is for your own good does help, but most people can’t maintain such a lofty state for long or throughout frequent attacks.

Fear and anxiety are perfectly normal reactions to dealing with difficult people.

What many “Keep up the connection and just give the benefit of the doubt!” enthusiasts tend forget is that many people are already dealing with difficult people whom they can’t avoid—like a family member, a boss, a co-worker, a neighbor, etc.—and are already depleted from that.

Furthermore, voluntarily spending time with difficult people only gives them more opportunities to rack up transgressions (because they insist on transgressing numerous prohibitions which forbid treating others poorly—which is NOT doing them any favors) AND only creates unnecessary battles for you, like struggling (again!) to overcome your resentment and the natural dislike you end up feeling for them, in addition to the bad feelings that well up about yourself. Plus, dysfunctional people (like those with personality disorders) are so convincing and manipulative that they can make you feel very confused about yourself, or about what’s right and wrong (this is actually very dangerous, spiritually speaking), and so on.
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Spending Time with People who Hurt You: A Lose-Lose Situation
Sorry to repeat myself again, but it's important to refute the common advice misunderstood as a mitzvah:
So many ordinary rabbis and rebbetzins (not Gedolei Hador) mistakenly advise people to deal with difficult people by being well-behaved victims under the false notion that suffering and catering to bad behavior is a compassionate, merciful response to the victimizer, increasing the mitzvot and good middot for the victim (in addition to the usually false assumption that the victim will develop a thicker skin over time).

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Maltreating others (including covert maltreatment, like well-aimed verbal jabs, insinuations, and mind games) is FORBIDDEN by the Torah. People who continuously engage in such behavior are SINNING. Every punch they give you as their convenient punching bag is yet another TRANSGRESSION on their part.

Furthermore, so many studies have shown that unkind behavior also affects the unkind person himself in a negative manner with all sorts of physiological problems.
So who is benefiting here?

NO ONE.

Not you, their convenient martyr. And not him or her, the malfunctioning avenger.

Basically, such a dynamic ensures that both you and they fail spiritually again and again and again.

Fortunately, there is a happier and MUCH more effective path!
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Davening And Dancing!
It’s well-known in Jewish tradition that the evil Queen Izavel (Jezebel) did one thing right and that was to dance, clap, and shake her head to rejoice at weddings.

When she died, the dogs ate up her entire body, except for her skull, hands, and feet, which because of all her dancing, had become imbued with a type of spiritual protection—despite the fact that she was a sociopath.

This is the power of dance.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov is famous for his emphasis on dancing and clapping as one of the most powerful ways to sweeten din.

Here’s a true story of its astounding potential that I heard from the daughter of one of the following group:

A large group of Jews waited for their turn in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Among them stood an entire family: cousins, aunts, uncles, parents and children.

The Nazi sadists had already filled the gas chamber up with as many holy Jews as they could, forcing this family and the many other Jews there into an agonizing wait for their death.

At that moment, a couple of Chassidim decided that if a Jew should do every mitzvah b’simcha (with joy), then that included the mitzvah of being murdered for Kiddush Hashem.

So they started dancing and clapping and singing. And my friend’s family and many others thought this was the way to go, so they started dancing, too.

In short, the kapos and Nazi guards couldn’t stop them, so Mengele was called in.

Fascinated, he decided that all the dancing and singing was a bizarre stress reaction that he wanted to study further. So he had the whole group sent away from the gas chambers.

Fortunately, it was toward the end of the War and he just sort of forgot about them, enabling them to be absorbed into the rest of the camp and survive until Liberation.

After Liberation, that entire family immigrated together to America, one of the only families to survive mostly intact.

(Now, does dancing ALWAYS work to sweeten a particular din? No. Tragically, there are many stories of Jews who danced into the entrance of the gas chambers and still died. But there is no doubt that their holy actions still sweetened the general din in as a whole over Am Yisrael.)

And while I have no personal story as incredible as the above to share with you, my personal experience with this has still been pretty powerful.

So think about it:

Put your dancing shoes on

What’s better? Sitting with the dysfunctional person as you clench your teeth in an effort to hold your tongue and then struggle with the lingering lousy feelings dragging you down as you go about the rest of your day, trying to be a good Jew, a good spouse, and a good parent and possibly making you sick?

Or avoid them as you prance (or waltz, if physical limitations don’t allow you to prance) around your living room, clapping your hands, and singing, “Hashem, You’re so Great and You can do anything! Please make Aidel Faigel bas Taibel do complete teshuvah out of love! And please don’t punish her for all the garbage she’s done, but just wake her up gently to the error of her ways so that she can fulfill her true potential and rectify everything so that she can merit a fabulous place in the World to Come!”

And so on.

Of COURSE this is light years more effective than hanging out with them while grinding your teeth and fighting the bad middot that threaten to overwhelm you!

THIS is what Hashem wants us to do.

Furthermore, you don’t have to do this for a long time, though you can if you wish.

But even dancing while davening for the other person for, say, only a minute is very, very powerful.

Seeing as everything is from Hashem (including Aidel Faigel bas Taibel’s toxicity), it’s a great act of emuna to turn to HASHEM about fixing the behavior. It is also a very powerful act of ahavat Yisrael to beg Hashem NOT to punish a fellow Jew who has harmed you in some way.
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When "Sinat Chinam" is Not Actually Sinat Chinam

We keep hearing about how sinat chinam destroyed the Second Beit Hamikdash and is preventing the Third from being built. A famous story accompanies this idea:

The story of Bar Kamtza (in which Bar Kamtza mistakenly receives an invitation from someone who hated him, is rejected in a manner Bar Kamtza finds humiliating while prominent rabbis sit by silently, and then goes on to slander the Jewish people to the Roman government, leading to genocide and Exile).

Now, like everything else in the Talmud, the story can’t be taken at face value alone and there are disagreements as to the actual virtue of Bar Kamtza and the main rabbi involved, what the names imply, and so on. But putting all that aside for a moment, what if Bar Kamtza had decided to accept the humiliation as a kaparah instead and daven, either for himself or the Jewish people?

What if he had gone home and started dancing and davening for his resentful host and the rabbi?

He would have brought blessing upon Am Yisrael instead of destruction.

And this works regardless of your personal level. For example, I am just as flawed as anyone else, and yet I still saw very good results from dancing and davening for people, rather than just trying to “make nicey-nice” until it killed me.

In fact, I’ve consistently seen better and faster results from davening for people than I have when trying to “help” them in other ways, including being “patient” (i.e. forcing myself to be on a level that is actually very far from me) and giving wildly inaccurate benefits of the doubt.

And yes, getting up to dance can sometimes be very difficult. If you’re feeling very heavy, lethargic, or bitter, the initial attempt often feels like climbing a mountain.

But only for a bit.

And while this post focuses mostly on dealing with difficult people, dancing and davening is also a very powerful effort for:

Freeing unjustly imprisoned people
Enabling/Speeding up healing
Preventing anything horrible, like terror attacks and wars
Overcoming a negative middah or an addiction
Bettering your financial state
Dealing with challenging offspring
Getting your baby to sleep through the night
Anything else

The spiritual and physiological benefits of dancing and davening are very real:

Expressions of joy—ESPECIALLY dancing and clapping—sweeten even the harshest Heavenly Judgments (this is the most important)
The exercise creates endorphins in your brain, which increases joy and lessens depression
Dancing can propel you to a state of joy, causing your electromagnetic spectrum to resonate at the highest and healthiest frequency
Dancing while davening about the issue alleviates the obsessive pondering many people find themselves trapped in after dealing with a dysfunctional person
It breaks through lethargy, including the lethargy of chronic depression
It burns off the excess energy that was making you jittery and restless
It releases some of that cortisol, a release which boots your immune system
If you have a very young child around, they’ll find it amusing and join you

So to sum up, in dealing halachically correct manner with difficult people:

If you can’t avoid them, then healthy compassion, accepting insults with love (and an opportunity to daven for something you really want), plus intelligent favorable judgement is the halachically ideal way of dealing with them
However, voluntarily spending time with them is HARMFUL to BOTH of you, both spiritual and physiologically
Dancing while davening for them, even for a very short while, is one of the most powerful things you can to do help both them and yourself, both spiritually and physiologically.

As stated above, this can be much easier to say than to actually do.

But if you must make an effort on behalf of sweeten din and building the Final Beit Hamikdash, then this is definitely the way to go.

May we all succeed in reaching our full potential & sweeten the din for all time.

We want to change our din from this.....

........into THIS!

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14 Ways to Sweeten Dinim

11/8/2016

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We want the dinim to look like this.

Needless to say, it's always good to sweeten dinim.

Often translated as "judgements," dinim are actually the natural spiritual consequences of one's deeds and thoughts. Of course, these spiritual consequences are often experienced physically, i.e. illness, financial loss, etc.

With Tisha B'Av upon us and then dealing with the rest of Av and its Lion mazal (for more information on dealing with Av's Lion mazal, please see the Kli Yakar on Parshat Devarim), and then sliding into Elul, this is a particularly important time to sweeten any harsh stuff hanging overhead, whether on a personal level or the national level—or both.

I am still not Breslov, but I've been going through Sefer Hamiddot (you can download a free PDF of it here) and found the chapter on Sweetening Judgement/Hamtakat Hadinim particularly helpful:

Recite Tikkun Chatzot.
"When you stay awake the whole night, by this you are saved from dinim." (This is something comforting for parents of wakeful children to keep in mind.)
Learning mishnayot of Zeraim sweetens dinim.
Tzedakah transforms dinim into chessed (loving-kindness).
Reciting Tehillim 39 and 77 sweetens dinim.
To battle the decrees of the nations against the Jewish people, recite Tehillim 62.
"Through bitachon [trust in Hashem], the din is sweetened and chessed is drawn forth."
Crying [not in accusation or self-pity against Hashem] sweetens dinim.
Being depressed draws forth bad mazal and via bad mazal, the attribute of harsh din dominates. [So try to fight depression by expressing gratitude for whatever you can.]
"One who wants to sweeten dinim should not drink any wine the entire day."
When you hear someone making accusations against the Jewish people, you should toil to find a meritorious reason behind the criticized actions.
Immersing in a mikveh annuls suffering and brings salvation.
One who accepts suffering with love is as if he (or she!) brought a sacrifice. [Bringing a sacrifice to the Beit Hamikdash sweetened dinim. The Kli Yakar in Parshat Tzav explains how that works.]
When a person sees that dinim rest upon him, he should tell of those who hate him and justify them. ["Tell" implies telling Hashem and not other people, as that would be lashon hara.]

Now, that last one is interesting. Contrary to certain stereotypes, we know that Judaism does not encourage masochism or codependency. Justifying those who hate you should not lead to: "I deserve to be punished and abused because deep down inside, I am innately very bad and icky." And contrary to what you sometimes hear in some classes, halachically forbidden behavior (i.e. hating you unless you are completely and intentionally evil) is never "okay" or acceptable or excusable.

Just for knowing, the Hebrew word translated here as "justify" is יצדיק, the root meaning "right" or "just."

If I understand it correctly, it's very similar to thanking Hashem for suffering. Even if you can't emotionally appreciate your suffering, it's possible to intellectually accept that it is somehow for your benefit in a way that only Hashem understands.

Basically, you are just seeing the other person's point of view.

For example, did you once do something that gave someone else the totally wrong impression of you and they just can't let go of it? Even if they're wrong and should really give you the benefit of the doubt, can you at least understand intellectually and objectively why they feel the way they do?

Or maybe you really did do something wrong and the other person just can't forgive you--even though you sincerely apologized and tried to make it up to them. While they're wrong not to forgive, can you understand why they can't? Given their background, their experiences, their blind spots and stumbling blocks, and their personality, can you somehow "justify" their feelings about you?

Or you might discover that you actually did do something wrong, and this grants you the opportunity to make amends for and rectify it.

Doing all this should not lead to depression or self-hatred.

Remember the paradox of us having free choice while Hashem is still deciding every last little detail of our lives and actions.

Whether you did something to create a hater or if someone hates you for no reason (or for the wrong reason), that's also from Hashem. It seems that this exercise is not about the other person, per se, but about Hashem.

I think it's hard and uncomfortable to do at first, but difficult and uncomfortable acts are usually the most powerful. I do not know how the following will sound to you, but the first time I tried this, a young cat suddenly entered my little yard just as I finished.

It looked kind of like this cat.

In Perek Shira, the song of the cat is:
“I have pursued my enemies and overtaken them, and I did not return until they were destroyed.” (Tehillim 18:38)

That sounds pretty sweet to me!

I felt sure this was a sign that justifying my haters had worked.

Then the seat of my chair collapsed and I fell through and got stuck.

Fortunately, my 13-year-old was around and he held out his arm to let me grab hold of him while using a pear tree for leverage as the chair's legs collapsed, too. I'm sure you'll be relieved to hear that I made it out okay. Thank God for bar mitzvah boys! Anyway, perhaps harsh dinim were transferred to my chair and it was all a kaparah (atonement).

May Hashem greatly sweeten ALL our dinim, both our individual dinim and our National dinim.

We'd like Hashem to do this to our dinim.

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What Eliyahu Hanavi's Self-Imposed Isolation Teaches Us

28/7/2016

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Eretz Yisrael's desert: A fine place for hitbodedut

This is from the Haftarah for Parshat Pinchas, but I only read it this past Shabbat, so I couldn’t get it posted before.

But because it contained such striking points, here it is anyway.

And because I am a bit of a linguistics geek, I've included the Malbim's definitions for certain Hebrew words.

This is entirely from the Malbim’s commentary on Melachim/Kings I 19:3-13.

First off, the Malbim mentions how Eliyahu Hanavi was mitboded. L’hitboded literally means “to seclude oneself”—and specifically, to seclude oneself in conversation with Hashem. Many people think that’s just the Breslov take on the word, but the Malbim clearly defines it that way, too:

Eliyahu was mitboded most of his days and concerned himself with the perfection of himself, to perfect his soul. Only in a time of need was he a Prophet sent out to the Nation. And after he saw that all the wonders he did didn’t work, he realized that he had no business in perfecting the Nation. Therefore, he rose up and returned to go for the perfection of his soul.

Then he left his young servant there in Be’ersheva and journeyed off to the midbar.
Note: The Malbim defines midbar as a place that is generally desolate, but is also sometimes sown, i.e. produces plants and foliage.

Eliyahu Hanavi's motivation was:

...to separate from people, to go out to the desert l’hitboded because that was the object of his desire now…and then he came to the place of his desire because after he distanced himself a day’s walk from the settled area [yishuv], he was in the place of his purpose. For there, he would yitboded with Hashem.

Note: The Malbim defines yishuv/yashav as an unchanging & permanent settlement, and not as a populated area. To me, this hints at a spiritual journey, i.e. it's important to avoid spiritual stagnancy, so one must leave a place (spiritually speaking) that is unchanging and permanent.
______________________________________________________________________________

A rotem tree

The second rotem tree under which he slept was actually an angel in disguise.

The angel woke up Eliyahu Hanavi and then we have the famous passage about the raging wind, the earthquake, and the fire—all of which did not “contain” Hashem—and the “small still voice” in which Hashem was finally found.

Rashi explains these 3 events as occurring via a camp of angels.

The Malbim notes that these 3 effects are layers of klippot [shell] around the nut.
He explains that they are “partitions and veils” separating us from that which is holy.

The Malbim says:

Hashem is not in the camp of wind, earthquake, and fire—only in the small still voice. And from this, His messengers and Prophets will learn not to be raging, not to be tumultuous, and not to blaze a fire like Eliyahu did in his zealousness for Hashem (in that he stopped the Heavens and slayed the prophets of Baal) because He will send his Prophets, that they’ll approach them with a quiet voice and will pull the Nation with cords of love and soft words.

It is not Hashem’s desire that the Prophets will punish the Nation and became zealous with za’am. [Note: The Malbim defines za'am as anger that includes curses and punishments.]

Interestingly, Eliyahu Hanavi refuses to adjust his methods, stating that he cannot change as he feels too zealous regarding Hashem’s Kavod.

Note: The Malbim defines kavod as the inherent splendor of an object's essence.
______________________________________________________________________
I think this passage spoke to me so strongly for several reasons:

Over the past couple of years, Hashem seems to be showing me that I can’t influence others—and who says I’m qualified to do so, anyway? This has led to increasing focus inward and investing more in self-introspection and a raw self-accounting.

For example, ever since I read Rav Arush’s Garden of Education, I became increasingly focused on what my children’s behavior says about me, which reaped more success than all the chinuch books I ever read (which I no longer own) or all the chinuch classes I ever attended (which I no longer attend).

And I spend far less time in social interactions, a natural progression having resulted from several events.

But back to the Malbim....

The Malbim states that Eliyahu Hanavi perfected himself so much that he thought he was supposed to die then because once one achieves spiritual completion, his life’s mission is over. Yet Eliyahu Hanavi still separated himself from society and invested in further self-improvement.

Needless to say, this is very valuable advice.

The Malbim’s supports the idea of giving tochachah with compassion.

But Eliyahu Hanavi couldn’t compromise. His profound awareness of Hashem’s Unlimited Omnipotence and Indescribable Greatness didn’t allow him to soften his stance.
(At which point, he appointed Elisha Hanavi in his stead.)

I’m not on that level, obviously, but it’s good guidance to reflect on one’s sincerity and motive.

Back off, bub!

And even if you’re not on that level, I think a reason why people sometimes get so fired up—even if it’s to their own detriment or loses effectiveness on others—is because if you are under attack, you need to hold on with all your might. For your own spiritual well-being, it may be necessary to respond by hunkering down and shooting off porcupine quills at invaders and usurpers.

Furthermore, softness and compassion can turn into passivity and complacency.

At the end of the day, it’s a judgement call. The Malbim and the Kli Yakar obviously promote gentle methods as the first and best option, as does the Pele Yoetz, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, and many more.

But there is also a time to fight.

I know that for me, the message has been to turn inward and work on myself.

Davening for other people and situations have proved far more effective than me mucking around in it all.

At the same time, there are people who use pseudo-introspection and shallow davening as an excuse not to act when action is vitally necessary.

This is why it's so important to ask Hashem individually what we should be doing.

P.S. I couldn't help but notice that the Malbim's commentary sounds exactly like a scene from a Rebbe Nachman story.

The Malbim (1809-1879) is an acronym for Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yechiel Michel, who was born in Russia and served as rav all over Eastern Europe. He was bitterly fought by the Reform Movement for most of his adult life, even suffering a brief imprisonment in Rumania due to a false accusation made by wealthy German Reformers. Fortunately, he left us an amazing commentary on the entire Tanach, along with other valuable works he composed.

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How to Avoid Being a Victim of Mind Control

22/6/2016

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Note: Some people prefer a beefy topic presented in several short posts split up into multiple parts. And some prefer one long post that is sectioned up for comfortable reading. I don't know the majority preference, so I just organized this long post with lots of headings, bullets, pictures, and section dividers for easier reading. I hope it works for you.

The Importance of Identifying Signs of Mind Control

Is this just another oogey-boogey article on the evils of modern society with no real solutions and no actual result other than to scare or depress people? (Nope!)

Awareness helps protect you from falling under mind control and can help you get out of it (by connecting directly to Hashem in your own Divinely imbued unique way).

We've all see frum people who connect to a frum lifestyle as a cult and not as the beautiful spiritual system that it is—a system which enables you to fulfill the mission Hashem put you here for in the first place.

(Maybe you've even done it yourself—I know I did at one point.)

The unwavering adherence to obviously irrational, unproven, inconsistent, or just plain wrong beliefs within general Western society can only be the result of mind control.

The attraction to avodah zara systems like yoga by otherwise sincere and intelligent frum people or Buddhism by secular Jews indicates the influence of mind control (i.e., people leaving one mind-control system for another).
Even positive behaviors, like healthy eating, are often done in a mind-control way as discussed by Rivka Levy here. (But she doesn't use the term mind control; that's my interpretation.)
For comparison, the Kli Yakar discusses here about how to give the benefit of the doubt in an authentically Torah way and not the sometimes harmful manner encouraged by frum American idealists.
Hava haAharona gives several examples here of individuals searching for an identity in a way that clearly shows people chafing under mind control, but who merely choose another cult to join instead of liberating their minds completely.

When you realize that someone is under mind control, it is easier to relate to them with the necessary combination of compassion, self-protection, and objectivity.

It is also a hopeful outlook because you can see how the real person underneath is good and full of wonderful potential, and able to express their true self if they could just free themselves from "the cult"—an outlook which is lacking when you just see someone as mentally ill or Erev Rav or personality disordered or dysfunctional or addicted or bad, etc.

But now for the main question:
Why do so many people—even frum people—behave as if under mind control?

|You can’t resist (or heal from) what you don’t see.

Even among frum communities, you see people getting sucked in by certain aspects of mind control from their surrounding Galut society. Because they are immersed in that society and presented a form of Yiddishkeit based on that society, it's hard to see what's "behind the curtain," so to speak.
The other issue is that people who grew up in secular Western society are used to mind control; it feels “right.” And this applies in particular to baalei teshuvah, converts, and bnai Noach, no offense.

(And since I am not frum from birth, this applies to me as much as it does to you.)

Studies show that people who leave a situation of mind control (whether it be a cult or an abusive relationship or a dysfunctional family) are vulnerable toward falling into another situation of mind control (sources at end of post):

A person leaving a cult is more likely to end up in an abusive relationship or workplace.
A person from a dysfunctional family or after a recent break-up from an abusive relationship is more susceptible to the advances of a cult.
Due to having spent an entire life under mind control within Western society (and perhaps within a religious cult), baalei teshuvah, converts, and bnai Noach are very much at risk of choosing an emotionally unhealthy rav or rebbetzin.

And they often do.

Most people need to learn to relate to God—and if you're Jewish, also to Judaism—in an authentically Jewish way and not in a way based on Western mind control.

Just as one example:
When Tova Mordechai (To Play with Fire: One Woman's Remarkable Odyssey) describes her move from Raymond Webster's cult to Torah Judaism, this wonderful Jewish woman unconsciously took the cult-instilled habits with her: denying her own needs, pleasing others at all costs, and operating at full-speed all the time.

As she herself says:

"I was still running on Raymond Webster's gas." (pg. 429)

Her inner fuel and compass were still being run by the cult from her former life.

Even the cult's value system unintentionally infiltrated her Jewish values at first.

"I had no idea that having a baby was what God wanted from me....I was ignorant and heavily brainwashed. This was not Raymond Webster's vision. Children were a hindrance to God's call on a person's life. They took up time, energy, and resources and did not give in return. And so, about two weeks after giving birth to our first child, I was back at work....it was simply because I needed to work in order to be acceptable before God." (pg. 424)

This explains why many mind-control systems discourage child-bearing. Communism (after its initial stage), modern Western society, certain aspects of Christianity, Far Eastern religions, etc., all consider parenthood as either a lower form of spiritual service (lower than abstinence) and as something that should be limited in order to better serve their society.

Later, when she becomes overwhelmed and enraged from the lack of vitality which had been drained by the cult, the grueling transformation from a Christian hyper-zombie to a fully Orthodox Jew, and then the cultural adjustment to Israeli life along with the normal adjustments to marriage and becoming a mother, Tova says:

"I was deeply exhausted: body, soul and mind....I should have spoken up. I should have discussed the situation with my husband. I could have done many things, but I was too well-trained by Raymond Webster. Mine was just to do or die." (pg. 429)

|It’s much easier to judge others favorably and intelligently when you realize you are basically dealing with a victim of some form mind control.
For a long time, I researched personality disorders, mental illness, spiritual disorders (Erev Rav, etc.) etc. in search of the following things:

an understanding of what was going around me and also behaviors or hashkafot I myself had gotten sucked into, even though they went against what I knew to be right.
something in modern English terms that describes what Chazal has already noted.

Personality disorders or mental illness or bad middot or Erev Rav, for example, did not fully explain what I was seeing. For example:

good, intelligent people making consistently bad decisions
decent people with sincere intentions deteriorating into dysfunctional states.
people who were sincerely struggling and desperately seemed to want help, who also who demonstrated "windows of sanity” (so to speak) and compassion and self-awareness, and couldn't be written off as personality disordered, “just” bipolar, schizophrenic, Erev Rav, addicted, etc.
my own experience of being exploited or manipulated or treated as hopeless or worthless by "rabbis" or "rebbetzins"—and seeing others go through the same thing

The above really don’t line up with personality disorders or mental illness or Erev Rav, even though such people may otherwise fit most of the checklist temporarily while they remain in a state of mind control.

Also, personality disorders are basically impossible to cure. They are people to whom you really can't give the benefit of the doubt as their intentions are always, well, narcissistic (particularly malignant narcissists who know what they are doing).

Labels like "personality disorder" or "mentally ill" or "Erev rav" or "nebbuch" ("Just feel sorry for them!") or "addict" also didn’t fit as I saw some seemingly personality disordered people come out of it and even develop into special spiritual people—without therapy, I might add.

Furthermore, there was definitely a logic to people's dysfunctional reactions—which again, is much more characteristic of how people respond while oppressed in a cult.

|You can deal with people (including doing teshuvah on yourself) more effectively when you relate to them as a victim of some form mind control.

Following mainstream halacha and classic mussar not only prevents mind control, but actually rescues people from a state of mind control. But only by really following it, and not just doing only whatever your community or group gives lip service to or emphasizes.
Much of the halachic and mussar literature regarding practical action and one's attitude toward people behaving dysfunctionally (ie. committing transgressions) is excellent guidance on how to deal with someone in a cult or under mind control.
The real person in all their God-given glory is still there underneath the mind control and CAN be accessed, but it takes patience and prayer.

|Yes, there ARE Erev Rav, Narcissists, Sociopaths, Mental Illnesses, Addicts, etc. However....
But when I really looked into things, I was seeing very little of what could really be defined that way; such behavior seemed mostly characteristic of mind control—even people who behave in a consistently dysfunctional manner often do so in a way that is similar one under mind control, and not as a classic Narcissist, sociopath, manic-depressive, Erev Rav, addict, etc.

There is no doubt in my mind that Western society has become one big cult.

This post will focus on America because:

Being an American, I know the more about it than I do about, say, England or Australia.
American society and culture is so well-known.
Via the entertainment industry in all its forms (books, movies, TV, etc.), America has managed to spread its new cultural mores throughout the world more than any other culture.

And American-style mind control is also evident in all other Western cultures, including Israel (although Israel’s religious population gives some pushback).

Before this post goes into an examination of Western mind control, let’s skip to a glimpse of what it’s like to leave a cult.
_________________________________
WHAT IS IT LIKE TO LEAVE A CULT?
Psychotherapist Jim Moyers says:
“Ex-believers may feel doubly misunderstood and isolated. Family and friends who remain in the group, even when not overtly rejecting a former member, are likely to have limited tolerance for the views of someone who has repudiated beliefs that they continue to hold sacred.”

This very much describes the situation of many baalei teshuvah, converts, and bnai Noach. In fact, regular people who make only one change after becoming fully informed, such as switching from a pro-abortion position to a pro-life position, experience this.

“Authoritarian groups undermine trust in one’s own judgment, and the former member may have a great deal of difficulty in knowing how to regard his/her experience of reality when it is no longer defined and regulated by the group’s teachings. Many feel a sense of despair in being unable to recapture the certainty that came with unquestioning faith in ‘sure and certain’ dogma.”

And so, the desperation of many baalei teshuvah to cling to a rav and/or rebbetzin for advice and non-halachic guidance.
(Note: People, especially the newly frum, need basic halachic guidance. But advice-based non-halachic guidance? That is a very tricky and complex minefield.)

“Having been well-trained in meeting demands that s/he conform to group expectations, the former believer may be very adept at unconsciously meeting the perceived expectations of others.”

This is where the danger lies.

While emuna-based observance of Torah is NOT like that, it is easy to run into people who relate to Judaism in a cult-like fashion and innocently encourage others to do the same.

Remember: Most cult members are recruited by fellow victims who sincerely believe that they are enlightened—and not brainwashed—and that their cult’s doctrine is The Right Way.

Unfortunately, well-meaning kiruv programs and chinuch classes can unintentionally adapt some mind control techniques (without actually fulfilling all cult criteria) in the misguided assumption that this is desired or permitted by halacha. It doesn’t make them an actual cult, but it can lead to effects similar to that of cults, especially on vulnerable people.

Yet anyone who makes a sincere and continuous effort to connect with Hashem via speaking to Hashem, making a self-accounting via honest self-introspection, and adherence to halacha will not fall prey to mind control tactics AND if already under mind control, such a person will be able to free him or herself from the mind control.

As you read through this post (organized according to the BITE model), you may notice that cultist mind control is also the same dynamic you’ve seen in abusive relationships, dysfunctional families, personality disorders, and toxic work environments.

Yes, it’s all basically the same.

For example, a cult forces sleep deprivation upon its adherents.

And toxic work environments and abusive spouses do the same.

The withdrawal and recovery are also basically the same process.

So what are facets of mind control used by cults?

BEHAVIORAL CONTROL

To at least some degree, cults control what people eat, watch, spend their money on, what they wear, think, and so forth.

|Food
It is very hard to keep genetically modified corn products, hormones, sugar, chemicals, fluoride, and food additives out of your diet. VERY hard. It’s almost impossible. This is despite clear evidence that some of the above is actually harmful and indicative evidence that the rest of it might be harmful to both your physical health and your mental health.

|TV and Movies
TV programming and movies are always based on secular liberal, Leftist values.
Always.
Even the occasional piece which seems to present a conservative ideal will still be surrounded by lots of secular Leftist propaganda.
For example, the rare anti-abortion theme will still have a pro-same-gender marriage theme and pro-premarital intimacy theme.
Or a pro-belief-in-God piece will be soaked with rampant violence or licentious behavior.

I remember a very popular TV show in which not wanting to drink chocolate milk from a straw covered with the saliva of a boy diagnosed with AIDS was presented as the callous act of an ignorant fraidy cat.
Yet what is wrong with wanting to take extra precautions against a disease that is incurable and 100% fatal? No way! the episode implied. That’s mean!

|Books, Newspapers, and Magazines
The same is true of books.

And while I have obviously not read every single book published in my lifetime (the Seventies until now), I can say that I have never read a mainstream best seller in any genre that was anti-same-gender marriage or pro-life or anti-premarital intimacy, etc.

Have you?

For example, if atheists are mentioned, it is always in a neutral or positive way. Atheists are never presented the way that say, religious Christians are often presented (i.e. hypocritical buffoons or abusive manipulators in a way that connects to their belief system).
__________________________________________________
In fact, same-gender relationships are the big thing right now.

Even sites and organizations dedicated to children’s literature discuss the importance of writing characters with same-gender parents, pushing books with titles like Lisa has Two Daddies.

Editors and literary agents actively seek such books and the Wix website-builder has a photo of two twentysomething women for their Wedding site template with the blurb: “Zoe and Amelia are getting married!”

Or on their template for wedding invitations, the header “Keith and Aaron” floats above the heads of two geeky-looking guys in tuxedos.

Twitter’s welcome slideshow features one male soccer player cuddling his head against another male soccer player and kissing his cheek. Because, of course, male sports pros tend to be so cuddly and nurturing. It must be all that testosterone!

There is an obvious agenda to make same-gender marriage and LGBT families the norm, even though statistics just don’t support that. (If under 3.5% of the population is attracted to its own gender, how many families or weddings do you think they produce? How many children really grow up with two LGBT parents?)
________________________________________________
On the other hand, statistics show that unwed motherhood is extremely common.

(This is despite the fact that while divorce may not be avoidable, unwed motherhood is almost always preventable.)

Really, based on statistical need alone, children’s book publishers should focus on flooding the market with books like, Oliver has One Mommy along with Sporadic Men who Temporarily Come to Live with Mommy or Isabella has One Mommy and Only God Knows Who Her Daddy Is.

All joking aside, between divorced parents and unwed parents, many children are not living with both parents and may even have no father-figure at all in their lives. Children's literature only reflects this to a slight extent, and this topic not pursued by publishers nearly as much as LGBT subjects are.

In fact, there are so many other issues that are so much more common for children than LGBT parents: eating disorders, ADHD, taking meds, family members with mental illness or personality disorders, domestic violence, relationship violence, cyberbullying, bullying in general....

So why the huge focus on this 3.5% (or less)?
____________________________________________________________________
Or how about newspaper headlines that describe a terror attack as “Israeli gunman shoots Palestinian driver”—remember that one?

I could go on and on, but you probably have your own examples.

|Fashion
Styles come and go and you know what’s in style just by looking at what the masses are wearing. And even people who rebel against the mainstream styles end up conforming to the set styles of the “rebel” group (like Punk and Goth and “grunge”). Depending on your social group, not conforming enough to the latest style can label you as “tacky” “out of it” “a loser” “a throwback” and so on. And that’s not to mention the sarcastic comments and questions thrown your way, either to your face or via Twitter.

For around 40 years now, Western fashion has been used to objectify people’s bodies while telling them they are liberating them. Such fashion pressures people—particularly women—to dress in ways which are time-consuming, physically uncomfortable—even painful, emotionally uncomfortable, and demeaning.

Some frum communities have been successful in sheltering themselves against the influence of modern styles, but most do imitate the styles to some degree, even if those styles are clearly halachically forbidden.

|Speech
The accent which developed in California’s San Fernando Valley in the Eighties (and became known as “the Valley Girl accent”) has become the de-facto style of speech for most Americans under the age of 50. It is one of the least intelligent-sounding ways of speaking, partly because the voice goes up at the end (including the end of a phrase, and not just the end of a sentence), which makes it sound like the speaker is in a constant state of uncertainty.

For example:
“Well, my personal feel-ing? is that a fetus at 8 weeks is just a clump of tis-sue? And you pointing out that, like, it has a heartbeat? And elbows? And a nose that can be seen in an ultrasound? just makes me feel bad? And I just think that you are….like…sooo—well, I don’t know, but that you hold such a crazy opinion? is very disturbing for me personally.”
Its higher pitch also gives it a more feminine inflection, making men sound particularly silly when they speak this way.

|Rewards & Punishments Used to Modify Behavior
Social media has been a powerful tool in this.

I think we all know by now that the label “racist” can end someone’s career, even if they aren’t racist and never said anything racist.

Just disagreeing with any of Obama’s policies is considered racist.

Speaking from personal experience, you cannot express (with even the greatest amount of grace and understanding) any opinion that diverges in any way with the standard liberal Western opinion—unless you are willing to suffer scorn, mockery, hostility, and hatred, either passive-aggressively or outright.

You must remain silent in the face of all their irrational and immoral comments—or suffer the consequences.

And that is just in interpersonal relationships on the individual level, let alone the widespread harassment prominent figures undergo if they dare cross the PC Line.

On the other hand, if you parrot their garbage, you are considered “intelligent” and “open-minded” and “educated.”
_______________________________________________________________________

INFORMATION CONTROL

Until the advent of the Internet, there was no way for the average person to get enough information to cultivate an informed opinion about any given issue.

Yet even now, the mainstream media maintains a chokehold on what they want you to know and what they don’t want you to know.

With the Obama candidacy, it was blatantly obvious that every news network and every mainstream newspaper desperately wanted Obama in the White House.
As blatant as their adoration of Obama was, the media's support of Hillary Clinton is even more appalling. She actually has a well-documented, extremely public, and ugly record that shows her to be a sociopath at worst and a malignant narcissist at best. Yet mainstream media consistently portrays her in the best possible light.
Rationally speaking, the fact that either side of the political aisle supports either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, despite the obvious hypocrisy and lying they both consistently engage in, shows how low (and braindead) America has sunk.
Generally, interviews and talk shows cherry-pick their guests, then manipulate their discussions and edit their tapes to show Left-leaning views in the best light and Right-leaning views in the worst light.
The mainstream coverage of Israel is appalling as endless examples show.

|Lies
They outright lie.

One of the most famous lies in recent history is the “Hands up, don’t shoot” lie and the rose-tinted characterization of violent thug Mike Brown, who was thankfully shot to death by a skilled police officer before Mikey could victimize anymore innocent people.

They directly lie and misrepresent anything about Israel and often do the same regarding frum Jews.

Here are more lies:

“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor."
"If you like your health plan, you’ll be able to keep your health plan.”
“Obama has been the best American president for Israel.”
"Employment is up!"
"The economy is up!"

|No Forgiveness or Tikkun

People’s pasts (or past tweets and emails) are dug up and scrutinized.
You aren’t allowed to change.
The ugly side of yourself that peeped out during a traumatic incident or while caught up in the immaturity of childhood or adolescence is considered the real you, never to be forgotten.
As a white person, you must always be compensating black people for the slavery that ended 151 years ago. Even if no one in your family was ever a slave owner. Even if the black person never had ancestors who were slaves or if they did, they were slaves to other black people or owned slaves themselves (as many black people did back then and in Africa today, still do).

You can never be sorry enough and can never stop atoning for your “sin,” no matter how much you’ve actually changed and what you’ve done to rectify things.
______________________________________________________________________

Thought Control

The group’s doctrine is truth.

They advocate their own “sacred science.” One of the most obvious and murderous examples of this was eugenics during the Nazi Era.

But pseudo-science flourishes in American culture, too.

|Sacred Science
The group’s beliefs are the ultimate unquestionable truth, despite clear scientific evidence to the contrary:

Throughout its first trimester, an unborn baby is “just a clump of tissue,” despite widely available photographs and scientific evidence to the contrary.
Global warming is happening right now, is manmade, is a threat, is stoppable, and is reversible.
Same-gender attraction is genetically predetermined, and never influenced by one’s environment, and it's also completely irreversible.
Mental states like depression, bi-polar disorder, personality disorders, paranoia, and ADD/HD are "just" issues of body chemistry and/or genetic predisposition in which environment, nutrition, upbringing, and traumatic experiences have very little or no influence.
All white males possess something called “privilege,” which they must constantly “check” without fail.
Hamas is just a group of freedom-fighting idealists.
Muslims worldwide either tolerate, support, or actively engage in things like suicide bombings, child “marriage,” genocide, “honor” killings, FGM, domestic violence, the conquering of better nations, hand-amputations for thieves, slavery, Jew-hatred, oppressive fascist regimes, and the like only because they have not received enough compassion, understanding, and education.
If you give the above Muslims compassion, understanding, and education, they will immediately realize the wrong of their ways and become just like you—whoever “you” are.
Hillary Clinton is “pro-woman” and cares about anyone other than herself.
Donald Trump is pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, and a religious man.
Socialism is the answer to society’s ills and a great equalizer.
Children don’t need fathers.
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
Women are only good for one thing.

|Buzzwords
This is a little bit trickier to define because every society, profession, and culture naturally has its own jargon. But there is a difference between using jargon for convenience (like saying “ICU” instead of “intensive care unit” or “DA” instead of “district attorney”) or because it expresses your thoughts more clearly and accurately than any other term possibly could (like saying “davka” or “stam” or “geshmak” or "gevaldig").
On the other hand, buzzwords whitewash something bad or demonize something good or neutral.
In short, buzzwords are often created with ulterior motives in mind.
Here are some examples of buzz words:

Baby-daddy
Carbon footprint
The n-word
Transgendered male
Undocumented immigrants
Micro-aggressions
Safe spaces
Diversity
The war on women
Islamophobe

Just as an example of how buzzwords work:
“Diversity” technically means “diverse.”
But colloquially, it refers to culture or race (and sometimes to gender or orientation), and not political stance or intellectual opinion or anything else. And it doesn’t mean “diverse” at all since any Liberal who demands diversity only intends to expand the non-white population of a particular campus, company, or city.
For example, no one is anxious about the dearth of straight white males majoring in Women’s Studies.

|Black-and-White Thinking and One Sacred Version of Reality
Similar to sacred science, here are examples of “sacred reality” and black-and-white thinking:

Only white people can be racists
Anyone who dislikes Obama’s policies, values, or taste in ties is a racist.
Claiming that a statistic deemed racist is, in fact, not racist is actually a sign of racism.
Any man who finds it difficult to take seriously or to concentrate around a professional woman dressed like a particularly risqué cocktail waitress when all her male colleagues are dressed in 2-piece suits and neck-strangling ties with shirts buttoned up to their chin (even if their neck is too short to carry it off elegantly, making them look like Mr. Potatohead) is a weak-minded pervert and a misogynist who needs to “just get over it” and “get with the times.”
Any woman who feels the same as the man in the above example is just being “catty” because she is just “so jealous.”
Not believing in evolution is exactly the same as not believing in math.

|Encouraging only “Proper” Ideas and Positive Thoughts

Girls are permitted (or even obligated) to profess a desire to be a member of a certified and paid profession like: nannies, neonatal nurses or doctors, preschool teachers, chefs, hotel housekeeping supervisors, or to earn a degree in Early Childhood Education when they grow up. Yet they may NEVER NEVER EVER declare being a wife and mother as their main career goal. NEVER. That is bad. Such a girl is considered to suffer from a warped and poor self-image, and she probably needs therapy. Only official careers are acceptable goals.
From sixth grade and onward, it is okay to engage in physical intimacy of any kind with anyone of any age (even if there is a significant age difference that may indicate exploitation, like a 14-year-old girl with a 22-year-old guy) and with an unlimited number of partners—as long as birth control is used. If either partner is particularly free with themselves or they only just met, then the birth control should be of the kind that lessens the spread of unsavory diseases.

This is called “being responsible.”

However, if anyone under the age of 25 indicates a desire to do something that actually signifies and facilitates genuinely responsible and mature behavior, such as the desire to enter into a monogamous lifelong relationship with only one person (i.e. “marriage”), then that desire is considered irresponsible, rash, and a cause for panic. People who actually want to get married before the age of 25 likely have “issues” and need to examine why they are “in such a rush” to do something that has “permanent consequences” and is “so limiting.”
People who seem unhappy or emotionally sensitive (by whose definition?) likely suffer from a chemical imbalance that needs to be medicated.
Energetic children—particularly male children who display normal healthy male qualities and tendencies—likely suffer from a chemical imbalance that needs to be medicated.
On the other hand, people who seem too happy are kind of weird, too, and need to “calm down.” Medication is also good for that.
Positive thinking can enable you to “manifest” whatever you want.

|Thought-Stopping Techniques
Such techniques are another way to allow only the “right” kind of thoughts. These techniques include:

Denial (“The Marmara flotilla held only peace-loving pacifists; why did the Israelis send armed commandos?”)
Rationalization (“She was asking for it.”)
Justification (“It’s okay because he had a bad childhood” or "I had a bad day")
Wishful thinking (“If we relentlessly police people for ‘micro-aggressions,’ we’ll be able to stamp out racism completely!”)
Chanting (“Hope and change!” “Hands up, don’t shoot!” “Just think positive!” “We are the 99%!” “Europe is the cancer, Islam is the answer!” “Just say no!”)
Meditation, singing or humming (I had a friend who did consistently this whenever she felt someone was being too "intense" or "negative"—it was really annoying and disorienting), praying (I disagree with this, obviously. I guess it depends how and to Whom), etc.

Other thought-stopping techniques forbid rational analysis, critical thinking, or constructive criticism, and forbid questions critical of their leader, policy, or doctrine (“That’s racist!” "That's insensitive!").

Alternative belief systems are considered evil, illegitimate, or useless.

Think of how people who are pro-capitalism, pro-life, Republican, want excellent screening and high standards applied to potential immigrants, pro-traditional marriage, insist on a God-based view of science and the Universe, and pro-abstinence until marriage are marginalized, denigrated, and mocked.
_____________________________________________________________________

EMOTIONAL CONTROL

There is some overlap with the other categories, but again, specific emotions or needs are deemed bad or wrong as cults seek to narrow the range of acceptable feelings.

For example:

The idea that a woman needs a husband, or that fathers are actually just as important as mothers in a child’s emotional and spiritual development is considered denigrating toward women and downright insulting toward single mothers.
Feeling remorse after an abortion is considered merely a normal albeit unnecessary part of the post-abortion phase. Society will insist that a post-abortion woman plagued with remorse or depression needs meds or therapy—NOT to help her to deal with and rectify what she did—but to simply overcome these feelings, which are actually normal reactions to doing an act that harms both yourself and others.
Feeling good about publicly humiliating someone—as long as your comment was truly witty and your target “deserved it”—is perfectly fine.
In many circles, wanting to stay home with your baby long-term and not wanting to leave the baby with a babysitter signifies unhealthy attachment.
Feeling uncomfortable around vulgar language means you are repressed and uptight.

|It’s Your Fault, Never the Group or Leader’s Fault

Poor employment, rampant immorality, increased mental illness, increasing violence, poor health, bad habits, addictions, failing schools….?

It has nothing to do with your surrounding culture.
It’s just you. (Or the influence of the enemy: the right-wing conservatives.)
After 8 years of Obama, America’s problems are still the fault of George Bush. That’s how bad Bush was; even a talented wunderkind like Obama still couldn’t fix things. Or stop them from getting worse. So if you voted for Bush....

|Instill Feelings of Guilt or Unworthiness
Cults want you to feel guilty about your identity, history, family, past, affiliations, and your behaviors. This keeps you dependent on them. Cult members and leaders toss out superficial platitudes (in particular, platitudes that may contain a grain of truth within their one-size-fits-all slop) in place of the kind of self-introspection that can lead to genuine self-discovery and self-transformation.

All white males must “check” their “privilege.”
You must constantly be on the lookout for racism within yourself.
You are from a dysfunctional family and were raised by toxic parents.
You are "manspreading." (Another buzzword!)
It’s what you’re eating, it’s allergies, it’s chemicals—food is your enemy.
If you've got a business—you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.
You need to feel ashamed of being wealthy or successful; it's not fair to others who aren't as lucky.
Your opinion is worth innately less than that of a college graduate or an individual with a higher degree or a degree from a more prestigious institution, regardless of your actual knowledge and experience. (Usually implied rather than stated outright.)
It’s your attitude—you’ve got a bad attitude.

Or the wrong attitude—whatever that means.

You just don’t want it enough.
You unconsciously attract losers and kooks.
You just need to get over it/him/her/them/yourself.
You really need meds.
You're just being close-minded. Or intolerant.
It's your genetic predisposition.

Note: Maybe you are from a dysfunctional family or allergic to certain foods or are close-minded. But is that the only reason why things don't seem right? And can Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump or Prozac or college or socialism really fix those issues?

(And just for knowing: Genes can be activated or deactivated, depending on one's behavior.)

|Instill Fear
A very effective way of keeping people trapped in a cult and to keep them from even wanting to leave is to instill fear.

Disapproval, shaming, mocking, and character assassination are all weapons of the Left to maintain control. This is done at a national level through the media, of course, but it is also done at a personal level.

Like some of you, I have been personally mocked or sneered at when "liberal, open-minded" friends or family members discovered appalling things about me like:

I see that scientific research clearly indicates a Master Designer.
I don’t let my kids use the Internet.
I support Efrat, the Israeli pro-life organization that is genuinely pro-woman and does so much to support families long after the baby is born.
I have more than three children.

And in case you're wondering, I never went around on a soapbox proclaiming my views. It just came up nonchalantly in conversation at times when I forgot who I was talking to and that I am not “allowed” to express such views (or act in such a way).
__________________________________________
A Typical Example of Auto-Pilot Fear Instillation
Once, a successful secular Jewish female doctor asked me what I wanted to do when I graduated from high school.

I immediately felt very apprehensive because I knew my answer was not acceptable to people like her. But I felt even more uncomfortable about lying. So I tentatively said, “Um, well, I’m thinking about being a nurse, I guess.”

She recoiled as if I had said, “Um, well, I’m thinking about moving to a gingerbread house to become a cannibalistic witch, like the one in Hansel and Gretel.”

After she collected herself, she calmly said, “And why would you want to do that?”

“Um, well....I’d like to help people....ease suffering....well, actually, I don’t know for sure that I want to be a nurse. I just feel like it’s a caring profession and I’d like to work in a caring profession.”

Even to my own ears, my words—decent values in my own mind—sounded so nurturing, so feminine....which didn’t bother me at all, but I knew that it bothered other people. Like secular female Jewish doctors who grew up in the Fifties.

“So why don’t you be a doctor?” she asked with forced nonchalance.

Uh-oh. The dread and apprehension welled up within my teenage self once again. “Well,” I said, “the thing is....I’m not so good in math....”

Her jaw hardened and her shoulders stiffened. Steam started coming out of her nostrils. (Well, no, that didn’t happen. But it looked like it might.)

Yet I forced myself to continue because I really wanted her to understand that it wasn’t that I merely thought I couldn’t become a doctor due to being a brainwashed victim of wonky gender stereotypes, but that I genuinely couldn’t become a doctor.

“Um, I’m not so good at science, either....” I explained. “And I don’t really want to be in college for eight years.”

After a cold pause, she said, “I see.”

Can you imagine the same kind of conversation between two men?

Picture a successful male high school English teacher talking to a male teenager:
“What do you want to do when you graduate?”

“Well, I’d like to be a PE (physical education) teacher.”

“Oh, yeah? Huh. Why do you want to do that?”

“Well, I like to work with kids. And I’d like to foster good sportsmanship and other important values I feel you can teach kids through baseball.”

“So why don’t you become a high school English teacher?” (The implication being that important values can also be taught through analyzing English literature and class discussion. Plus, students hone important writing skills.)

Realizing that teaching baseball isn’t nearly as prestigious as teaching English literature, the teen boy answers, “Well, my verbal ability stinks and I’m not so good with language arts. And as a normal healthy boy misdiagnosed with ADHD, I really don’t want to spend my whole day cooped up in a classroom.”

“Yeah, I get that. Cool.” (Meaning, “I understand that teaching English is really not for everyone. It’s good that you’re planning for a career that suits your individual needs and plays your strengths.”)

Or maybe, if he’s a snarky fellow, the English teacher will make a snide comment about thick-headed jocks—but not because he feels the teen boy must break out of gender stereotypes, but because the English teacher was once a socially and athletically inept geek and enjoys the opportunity he now has to take potshots at the athletes he used to envy.

What's the difference?
With women, there is a gender-based agenda imposed on society.

Note: The female doctor above obviously intended to be helpful. She clearly thought that I was under some kind of mind-programming and genuinely wanted to help me out of it--just like cult members who want to "help" others by "enlightening" them and recruiting them to their cult's ideology. She wasn't thinking; she was making knee-jerk assumptions based on her own brainwashed notions. I experienced her response as disempowering and repressive, even though she clearly meant to empower and "liberate" me. But she couldn't respond appropriately due to living on the auto-pilot induced by mind control.
________________________________
|Confession
This was really common in the Eighties. You had people all over the place proclaiming they were an alcoholic, a pot addict, bulimic, anorexic, had been abused, etc. And this openness was considered something to aspire to. You were supposed to be completely open about all your faults and anything traumatic that had happened to you.

Then people realized this wasn’t so beneficial as they could not rid themselves of that initial impression of them as a recovering alcoholic and no more than that.

Yet today there are still vestiges of that. You are supposed to be really open about if you have a mental illness (well, not any mental illness—just the socially acceptable ones, like depression or an eating disorder, etc.) or ADD/HD or a learning disability or an addiction.

A lot of social media has a confession aspect to it as people post so many details of their lives and moods for everyone to see.

There are many, many more examples of the above aspects of mind control as you've likely thought of yourself.

THE BENEFITS OF MIND CONTROL

There aren’t any real benefits to mind control cults.

But temporary comforts and assurances do exist, just like they do in any abusive relationship.

For example:

A cult can sporadically provide a warm, accepting atmosphere.
A feeling of togetherness and caring also exists in cults.
The methods they offer may actually work temporarily.
It can be a relief to know exactly what you need to do to earn approval
It can be comfortable or reassuring not have to think for yourself.
Staying feels safer than leaving.

For example, the cult of Communism provided people with fewer choices, which resulted in less stress during a decision-making process. They never suffered from “information-overload” (although they suffered from other things instead).

Russian immigrants who came to America initially had to deal with a “choice-overload,” even in very routine situations such as grocery shopping.

Furthermore, people from Communist countries initially miss the freebies to which they were used—like health care and schooling—even if the freebies were inferior in quality or quantity to non-freebies in a democratic country or came at a much higher emotional price.
_________________________________

STRIVE TO LIVE ON EMUNA AND AVOID LIVING ON AUTO-PILOT

Again, it’s important to realize the signs of mind control in order to break its power.

In the above example with the successful female doctor, she was responding to her own upbringing within in America's post-WWII mind control, in which women were supposed to wax their kitchen floor while wearing poofy skirts and pink heels. They were supposed to become nurses, teachers, or secretaries—but never doctors, lawyers, or CEOs.

(Although some women did, anyway, even before the feminist movement came along.)

Forced immersion (via the expanding entertainment media and educational system) in a post-WWII mind control culture made them susceptible to the later cult of feminism (among other forms of mind control), which actually has made things much worse for women (as I’ll explain in a future post), although most women are unable to see this due to the effects of auto-pilot-induced mind control.

In the frum world, many frum women either:

intone the benefits feminism brought (despite the fact that these benefits started before the official feminist movement and would've happened anyway without the official feminist movement, albeit possibly at a slower--and likely healthier--pace); this response is short-sighted, but does make a lot of sense on the surface. With a certain amount of discomfort, I used to hold this view myself until I became more educated.

verbally disparage the feminist movement while simultaneously living up to a frum version of the feminist ideal; this hypocritical and bizarre response is obviously the result of poor self-awareness and "auto-pilot" mode.

______________________________________________________________________
Unfortunately, some frum communities unknowingly behave in accordance with mind control. Well-meaning community leaders or school principals can also unintentionally encourage a mind-control dynamic simply because they don’t know better.

It just feels right.

Note: In my experience, chinuch courses for parents are particularly susceptible to this. So when you, as a parent, are choosing a chinuch consultant or class, please be extra alert.

This also applies to those chinuch hotlines you can call.

|Signs of Mind Control that Affect the Frum Community
Within the frum community, the best way to avoid living on auto-pilot is to look at the attitude toward halacha and Torah hashkafah, both as evidenced by the community leaders and the community members—then make sure that you are not doing the following:

Are minhagim emphasized—even subtly—over mainstream halacha? Are Torah-true attitudes dismissed or ignored or even replaced? (i.e. If the same attitude can be found in most Sagely writings regardless of culture or time period and despite limited exposure to other Sagely works, it is likely a Torah-true attitude.)
Can their opinions and methods be backed up by Torah sources?
If they do base their methods on a minority opinion, do they have solid mainstream opinions for allowing themselves to go according to the minority opinion?
Are they taking texts out of context and twisting things around to support their views?
Is what they do what Chazal actually intended? (i.e., When Chazal said that a kosher wife does the will of her husband, did they really mean that she must wear miniskirts and Vegas showgirl sheitels if that’s what her dear husband desires? Or that she most enslave herself to his whims if that's what he wants?)
Are halachically forbidden social mores, behaviors, clothing styles, etc., rationalized to make them seem "okay"?

It doesn’t mean you go on the warpath against such individuals or groups (unless they are overtly and severely harmful) because such people are rarely acting with evil intentions (as is true of most cult adherents). In fact, they usually mean well. People often misunderstand a clear halachic directive due to their emotional blocks, and not out of a desire to manipulate or cause harm.

But even if they don't have good intentions, battling them directly usually awakens sympathy in others due to the Flying Monkey syndrome (again, see the Kli Yakar), which is also the result of mind control.

And anyway, it is nearly impossible to wake them up until they start waking up themselves.

Davening is the best solution to helping others.

This is more of a clean-up-your-own-backyard-first issue.

You can't really know someone else's mission and their journey to get there.

Just as one example, there are Tribal tendencies and we do not know what Tribe we descend from. We know that Asher is occupied with the olive industry, Yissachar with Torah-learning, Levi with musical service to Hashem, Zevulun with sea-based mercantilism and supporting Yissachar, and so on.

Should, for example, Yissachar be imposing his Tribal tendency onto Asher?
Or vice-versa?

No, of course that's wrong.
______________________

|Freeing Yourself from Mind Control

Recite Pitum Haketoret daily. (See this article for more information on its power)
Recite Tehillim 15 (to destroy a demon), 80 (to be saved from worshiping false gods), 135 (to be saved from thoughts of avodah zara), and 5, 29, 40, 86, 91, 101 (all these protect against "ruach ra'ah"—an evil spirit)
Talk to Hashem daily.
Do a regular self-accounting using genuine self-introspection.
Investigate what the halacha really says and really means.
Recognize that it's hard enough figuring out your own journey, let alone knowing exactly what others need to do (or how they need to do it).
Respond to all events with emuna as much as you can (i.e. look for the message in hardships while expressing gratitude for the good things).
Accept that you can't always have full knowledge or closure immediately, but that these things do come with time (although some issues will only receive full understanding in the World of Truth, and not in This World).

When you close your mind to mind control,
you automatically open it to God.

And when you open your mind to God,
you automatically close it to mind control.

Resources

You are happily encouraged to do your own research.

Here are some sources to start off with:
http://www.carolgiambalvo.com/what-is-a-cult.html
This site is particularly valuable as she cites the differences between a healthy religious value system and a cult.

http://www.exitsupportnetwork.com/recovery/leave.htm
This describes the different reasons people a cult and the 10 stages of the withdrawal process. Based on my own experience and conversations with others, this process describes a lot of what baalei teshuvah, converts, and bnai Noach undergo when adapting a Torah-true outlook and lifestyle. This seems particularly true of gerim and bnai Noach who withdraw from Christianity.

Unfortunately, this list refers to Christian-based cults and considers Christianity as the ideal non-cult state. (Ha!) But I couldn’t find an unbiased list of stages. So as you read through the stages, you can just mentally replace “scripture” with “CNN” or “college class” or “Liberal.” And you can replace “church” with “political party.” And replace any reference to Christianity with “God” or “monotheism” or “Torah,” and you have something that describes the process of leaving Esav or Yishmael and embracing Torah Judaism.

https://freedomofmind.com/Info/BITE/bitemodel.php
This post relied heavily on the structure of the BITE model, but didn’t include everything. So this is the BITE model in its entirety.

http://www.cultwatch.com/howcultswork.html
https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/secul/landmark/forum.html
These are helpful because they also focus on secular cults (like a self-help cult), while most cult awareness articles focus on religious cults.

My disclaimer on the above sources is that anything they say that conflicts with halacha, I obviously do not support.

6 Comments

The Breslover on a Bicycle: A Love Story

19/1/2016

1 Comment

One summer evening, my teenage son and his friends saw a Yerushalmi man in his thirties trying to ride a bicycle. The bike kept wobbling and falling, but the man seemed cheerfully determined to ride it. He noticed the boys watching him and said, "It must seem pretty odd to see a guy learning how to ride a bicycle at my age, eh?"
The boys smiled bashfully and nodded.
The chassid spoke the kind of Hebrew that, while clearly fluent, still indicated that he was more used to speaking Yiddish.
"Well," he said, "I grew up in the Geula-Meah Shearim area of Jerusalem and we weren’t allowed to ride bikes."
He didn’t seem at all resentful about it and added that he really liked how he grew up—"but bicycles just weren’t an acceptable activity in my circles, that's all."
My son nodded. He learns in a Geula yeshiva and is familiar with the different customs of different groups in that area.

"But now," the chassid continued, "I live in Bnei Brak and in order to go to hasadeh (the field) to do hitbodedut (personal prayer), I need a bicycle. It’s too far to walk and the buses don’t really go there."
The boys stared at him without replying.
Hitbodedut? Hasadeh? He could only be Breslov.
But in those boys' world, all Breslovers were Sefardi Israeli baalei teshuvah.

So it was easy for them to forget that Breslov—like every other Chassidus—started out in Eastern Europe among Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews whose descendents ended up in Jerusalem and who wore black pants tucked into white socks just below the knee.
My son also enjoyed how this seemingly typical chalmer (a Chassid born and raised in the Geula-Meah Shearim area) still used Breslov terms like hitbodedut and hasadeh (literally "the field," but Breslovers use it colloquially to indicate a place in nature in which to do hitbodedut). The boys asked him if he knew Rav Shalom Arush and he said that he had run into Rav Arush b’sadeh ("in the field") a couple of times and had liked him very much, and felt a lot of respect and admiration for all the work Rav Arush was doing. Then he asked the boys for bicycle-riding tips and they told him he needed to pedal faster to maintain balance, even giving him a personal demonstration. After watching them do it, he got back on his bicycle and tried pedaling faster. Sure enough, the riding went a lot smoother. He thanked the boys and, with a cheerful wave, he rode away to keep on practicing.
It was the kind of encounter that only Hashem can orchestrate, the kind that no matter good a parent you try to be, you really need an interaction like this to inculcate certain principles into your child:

The most mundane objects can be used for kedushah and to increase ahavat Yisrael—even a bicycle.
Intimate connection with Hashem via personal prayer is normal enough to mention in casual conversation (as opposed to being something that only tzaddikim or fervent eccentrics do).
Hitbodedut is so personally desirable and pleasurable that it compels one to learn a new skill and go out of one’s way to pursue it.
Childhood "deprivations" don’t need to be experienced as "deprivation" and can be made up for and even enhanced in adulthood.
Jews of different—even wildly different—ethnicities and backgrounds can still really like and appreciate each other.

And there you have it.

1 Comment

Question Time with God - How to Do It Right

16/11/2015

2 Comments

In Parshat Toldot, Rivka Imeinu discovers that when she walks past a place of occult worship, she feels her unborn child struggling to come out. Yet when she walks past the study hall of Shem and Ever, she also feels her unborn child struggling to come out.
Rivka Imeinu realizes this disturbing situation means something, but she isn’t sure what.

We know that Chazal presents us with several layers of meaning regarding what was going on here, but now we’re going to focus on what the Kli Yakar says about it.

He says that Rivka Imeinu did not realize that she was carrying twins, but feared that it was one child who was equally attracted to both belief systems. When she asked, “Why is this happening to me?”, the Kli Yakar says she meant: “I am just like the other idol-worshipping women [who will produce an idol-worshipper]! In that case, how am I better than them if, chas v’shalom, there are two Authorities?” (Meaning that their idol possesses equal power to Hashem, chas v’shalom.) "Therefore, 'she went to seek out Hashem' – meaning, to investigate God’s existence."

This is a shocking statement about Rivka Imeinu who, despite having grown up among the most repulsive and leading occultists of that time, clung to monotheism and core Jewish values and exemplified emuna and attachment to Hashem to the point that she achieved ruach hakodesh.

Of course, some Sages say that she went to ask Shem and Ever about this and some say she asked Hashem directly. The Kli Yakar maintains that she communed directly with Hashem, Who replied: “It is the opposite of what you think. There is just One Authority. Really, there are two children in your womb – one will be a servant of Hashem and one will be an idol-worshipper – and God has always been One and there is no other authority besides Him.”

The important thing to note here is that when Rivka Imeinu had doubts, she went straight to the Source. She did not make a whole big “objective” study of the opposing belief system for comparison. Whether you go with the sources that say she asked the greatest Sages of her generation or whether you go with the sources that say she accessed Hashem directly on her own, she still took her question to the True Source.

What Not to Do
Due to having been under the yoke of Christian influence for centuries, even frum people may believe that such basic questioning denotes heresy. According to the Kli Yakar’s interpretation of Rivka Imeinu’s example, it clearly doesn’t.

When people face disturbing situations in life, they often surrender to one of two harmful options:

They question God’s Existence/Goodness/Involvement and decide that they need to investigate outside sources (which actually understand and explain very little, relatively speaking), which then often leads to a slide in their emuna and Torah observance or even to outright atheism.
They repress their feelings and thoughts, which lead to a kind of dissociative state, cognitive dissonance, and a Torah observance which, rather than being vibrant and rich with joy and meaning, becomes superficial and “plastic.”

But really, we are supposed to take our distress, our doubts, and all of our issues directly to Hashem. We don’t need to feel guilty or bad when we run up against a wall because the situation that led to a crisis of faith (or whatever) in the first place is also from Hashem.
Struggle is an inherent part of spiritual growth.
If you don't wrestle with your issues, you won't grow and you won't achieve the potential for which Hashem put you here.
(Although we needn’t necessarily share this struggle with others because many people have not worked out their own issues and will be judgmental and otherwise unhelpful. It depends on who you speak with.)
But first, you need to be able to acknowledge that you have the issue.

It’s interesting (and tragic) that when many people first wrestle with their issues, they ruminate about it in their minds – sometimes delving further into Torah study and mitzvah observance in order to escape their discomfiting thoughts and feelings – and consult with someone else (who is often not entirely helpful), and then start investigating outside sources, often “testing” Hashem by transgressing some core mitzvah to see whether they’ll be struck with lightening or something (generally, they won’t be).
What they usually don’t do is turn directly to Hashem and discuss it with Him using the same amount of time and energy they invest in dealing with it via the other methods.
(Note: I am not belittling in any way Torah learning or mitzvoth as a way of dealing with spiritual angst, but sometimes they’re used as escape or repression when, really, Hashem is throwing a curve ball in order to bring you closer to Him in a very personal and intimate way.)

The Ideal Way to Lead an Examined Life
In Rebbe Nachman’s story of The Cripple, the cripple finds himself alone in a forest with nothing to eat except herbs and grasses and no way out. He forages for a while and then:
Once, he came to an herb the likes of which he had never eaten before. This herb pleased him very much, because he had been eating grasses for a long time, so he knew them very well, and such an herb he had never seen before. He came to the decision to tear it out with its root. Under the root was a diamond.
The Leviat Hachen (Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Bender ztz”l) explains:
….when the cripple found a new herb possessing a flavor he’d never tasted before, he didn’t think it was a coincidence. But even in the difficult situation in which he found himself, he was able to compose his mind and delve into the root of the matter. And this comes to hint to us that it is forbidden to ascribe anything to natural occurrence and coincidence, God forbid. On the contrary, one must pay good attention to everything and to every change that occurs under the sun, to analyze with his mind and to delve into the root of every matter, to examine and to ask why Hashem made it like this.
And the root of every matter is emuna.

The cripple’s scrutiny of the herbs and grasses led him to find the diamond which eventually led him to complete spiritual and physical healing, signifying the achievement of his spiritual potential, which in turn, allowed him to heal the world.

So when we come across something in our life or in ourselves, we shouldn’t just brush it off. We should face it and take it to Hashem – and then see where He takes us.

The translation of the Kli Yakar is from Rabbi Elihu Levine’s superb rendering of Shemot I from Menucha Publishers.
The translation of the Leviat Hachen is my own and any errors are also mine.

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How to Borrow Hitbodedut from the Torah

21/9/2015

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[The English translations are from Chabad.org]

Sometimes, despite helpful guides like Outpouring of the Soul or In Forest Fields, we get stuck when we want to talk to Hashem. In such situations, it helps to borrow the hitbodedut of spiritual giants.Their hitbodedut can be said as if it's coming from our hearts. Or it can be used as a jumping off point for our own hitbodedut or as a guide. Let's start with the hitbodedut of Yom Kippur's haftarah: Yonah Hanavi.

Yonah 2:3-10
And he said: I called out from my distress to the Lord, and He answered me; from the belly of the grave I cried out, You heard my voice. And You cast me into the deep in the heart of the seas, and a river surrounded me; all Your breakers and Your waves passed over me. And I said, I have been driven away from before Your eyes. Indeed, I will continue to gaze upon Your Holy Temple. Water has surrounded me even to the soul, the deep encompassed me; the Red Sea hangs over my head. To the bottom of the mountains I descended, the earth-its bars are closed on me forever; but You brought up my life from Gehinnom, O Lord, my God. When my soul grew faint upon me, I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came to You to Your Holy Temple. Those who keep worthless futilities abandon their kindness. But I with a voice of thanks will I sacrifice to You; what I vowed I will pay, for the salvation of the Lord.

Then there's Ezra Hasofer
Ezra 9:6-15
And I said, "O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, for our iniquities have increased over our heads, and our guilt has grown up to the heavens. Since the days of our forefathers, we are in great guilt until this day, and because of our iniquities, we were delivered-we, our kings, our priests-into the hands of the kings of the lands by the sword, in captivity, and with plunder and with shame-facedness as of this day. And now, for a short moment, favor has been granted by the Lord our God, to leave us a remnant and to give us a peg in His holy place, so that our God may enlighten our eyes and grant us a little life in our servitude. For we are slaves, and in our servitude our God has not forsaken us, and He has extended loving-kindness upon us before the kings of Persia, to give us life, to exalt the House of our God and to erect its ruins, and to give us a fence in Judea and in Jerusalem. And now, what shall we say, O God, after this, for we have forsaken Your commandments, which You have commanded by Your servants the prophets, saying, 'The land that you are coming to inherit is an unclean land because of the uncleanliness of the peoples of the lands, by their abominations with which they filled it from end to end with their uncleanliness. And now, you shall not give your daughters to their sons, neither shall you take their daughters for your sons, and you shall not seek their peace nor their prosperity to eternity, in order that you become strong and eat the goodness of the land, and you shall cause your children to inherit it to eternity.' And after all that has come upon us because of our evil deeds and because of our great guilt, because You our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserve, and You have given us a remnant such as this. If we revert to breaking Your commandments to intermarrying with these abominable peoples, will You not be wroth with us until destruction without remnant or escape? O Lord God of Israel, You are righteous, for we are left a remnant as of this day; behold we are before You in our guilt, for we cannot stand before You because of this."

And here's one from Sefer Nechemiah.
Nechemiah 1:5-11
And I said, "I beseech You, O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God, Who keeps the Covenant and loving-kindness to those who love Him and to those who keep His commandments. Let Your ear now be attentive and Your eyes open to listen to the prayer of Your servant, which I pray before You today, day and night, concerning the Children of Israel, Your servants, and I confess the sins of the Children of Israel, which we sinned against You; and I and my father's house have sinned. We have dealt corruptly against You, and we have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances that You commanded Moses, Your servant. Remember now the word that You commanded Moses, Your servant, saying, 'If you deal treacherously, I shall scatter you among the nations. And if you return to Me and keep My commandments and perform them-if your exile is at the end of the heaven, from there I shall gather them, and I shall bring them to the place that I chose to cause My Name to rest there.' Now they are Your servants and Your people, whom You redeemed with Your great strength and with Your strong hand. I beseech You, O Lord, may Your ear now be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and to the prayer of Your servants, who wish to fear Your name, and cause Your servant to succeed today, and grant him mercy before this man."

And really, the entire book of Tehillim can be said as a personal prayer. In fact, Likutei Mohoran II quotes Rebbe Nachman as saying that each perek of Tehillim can be read as a personal prayer. Even the verses about fighting kings and battles are metaphors for our inner battles.

May we all always have meaningful talks with Hashem.

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The Breslover on a Bicycle: A Love Story

Question Time with God - How to Do It Right

How to Borrow Hitbodedut from the Torah

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How to Do It

The Importance of Identifying Signs of Mind Control

BEHAVIORAL CONTROL

INFORMATION CONTROL

Thought Control

EMOTIONAL CONTROL

THE BENEFITS OF MIND CONTROL

﻿STRIVE TO LIVE ON EMUNA AND AVOID LIVING ON AUTO-PILOT

|Freeing Yourself from Mind Control

Resources

Myrtle Rising

Categories

Emuna Blogs

Jewish Current Events

Jewish Health

Archives

Copyright Notice

STRIVE TO LIVE ON EMUNA AND AVOID LIVING ON AUTO-PILOT