The Spiritual Foundations of Mental Health

The opportunity of Yom Kippur reminds us that there is an inextinguishable, incorruptible space within us that yearns to grow.

Small choices are not small when they share a partnership with the Creator and King of the universe.

How my experience of parallel parking a stranger's car reminds me of the power of building a vessel for God's blessing.

There is wealth to be had in this moment by being loyal to the truth of gratitude.

When I see the true source behind my difficulties, I leave stuckness and move toward growth, opportunity, and rejoicing.

Set boundaries for that lovable and somewhat immature guy but without the shame/guilt trips!

It's exciting to be in a relationship in which you know your attention is wanted and waited for. We can initiate such a relationship with the Source behind life. But that relationship can only be initiated from the place we stand in now.

Don't resist your downs. Rather take action to use them to reveal what is whole in your life and beyond.

How fortunate the person who knows that stormy thoughts are a part of being a healthy and safe human being!

The intensity of our need to connect - to a spouse, to our Creator - can be frightening and hard to face. If we can see past the surface of our complaints to that core vulnerability, we will find a path to real redemption.

Every human being is endowed with natural, hardwired preferences, comforts, and triggers. To what extent do they run our lives and how does one find his way past that hardwiring?

Knowing that there are places and times in life to labor and times not to labor is an essential ingredient in tasting true freedom.

Another look at the preciousness of unconditional acknowledgement.

The first thing to thing to know about discovering self esteem is where not to look.

Sometimes our motivations and feelings are not visible - even to ourselves!

There is no way to tap our unseen potential without unconditionalness. And there's no way to live unconditionally without the soul's deep affection for the body and its strengths and weaknesses.

A precious reminder about who we are and the significance of even "small" actions.

The Talmud presents us with two approaches to dealing with accumulated negativity.

We each possess within a wise and nurturing leader, and a follower that can accomplish great things - with love and acceptance.

It's not only the case that good things come to those who wait. It's also true that waiting can create good things.

Seeing what's missing in our path to change is an essential ingredient in the change process. Acknowledging that I'm not on the hook to generate the whole change process allows me to face and embrace 100% of my part.

There is a tension between where we are now and where we want to be. Freedom lies in understanding and navigating that tension.

You have experienced points and places in your life stuckness. It was bitter. And now it's not. Touch that memory and you will find more room in your life for the opportunity of your current lacks. This is a great part of the opportunity of Pesach.

How would you efforts to break free of some difficulty differ if you knew your part was being matched and augmented by a Divine partner?

Purim takeaways that can help expand our sights year round.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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