The Spiritual Foundations of Mental Health
By Rabbi Henry Harris
The Spiritual Foundations of Mental HealthOct 13, 2022
Touching Your Own Holy of Holies
The opportunity of Yom Kippur reminds us that there is an inextinguishable, incorruptible space within us that yearns to grow.
The Blessing of Partnering in a New Year
Small choices are not small when they share a partnership with the Creator and King of the universe.
My Story of Building a Vessel
How my experience of parallel parking a stranger's car reminds me of the power of building a vessel for God's blessing.
Gratitude Uncompared
There is wealth to be had in this moment by being loyal to the truth of gratitude.
The Circle of Forgiveness
When I see the true source behind my difficulties, I leave stuckness and move toward growth, opportunity, and rejoicing.
Patience for the Little Kid In You
Set boundaries for that lovable and somewhat immature guy but without the shame/guilt trips!
Relationships Happen Where You Are At
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.
Keep the Broken Pieces with the Whole
Don't resist your downs. Rather take action to use them to reveal what is whole in your life and beyond.
The Greatness of Storms
How fortunate the person who knows that stormy thoughts are a part of being a healthy and safe human being!
"If I Forget Thee Jerusalem..." & Attachment Theory
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.
Are We Living Based on Preference or Character?
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?
Six Days You Shall Labor and the Seventh Rest
Knowing that there are places and times in life to labor and times not to labor is an essential ingredient in tasting true freedom.
Celebrating Inner Wealth
Another look at the preciousness of unconditional acknowledgement.
Discovering Self Esteem & Why It Matters
The first thing to thing to know about discovering self esteem is where not to look.
What's Behind Our Complaints?
Sometimes our motivations and feelings are not visible - even to ourselves!
Body, Soul, & the Power of Unconditionalness
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.
We Count, Our Actions Count
A precious reminder about who we are and the significance of even "small" actions.
Worry in a Man's Heart: Ignore It or Speak It Out?
The Talmud presents us with two approaches to dealing with accumulated negativity.
Your Teacher, Your Student
We each possess within a wise and nurturing leader, and a follower that can accomplish great things - with love and acceptance.
Waiting As a Creative Force
It's not only the case that good things come to those who wait. It's also true that waiting can create good things.
Awareness of Lack, Awareness of Help
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.
Freedom to Live Forward
There is a tension between where we are now and where we want to be. Freedom lies in understanding and navigating that tension.
We Also Say Thank You for the Lack
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.
Stuckness Is the Place Where the Gift of Life Begins
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?
Many Ways to Expanded Consciousness
Purim takeaways that can help expand our sights year round.
F.E.A.R. - An Important Doorway
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.
You Are a Specially Designed Divine Vessel
Divine presence is everywhere but potentially inaccessible. You are the vessel that makes it accessible.
Your Distress Is Precious
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.
The Big Two: Believe in God, Don't Do Idolatry
These two commandments for the basis of all Jewish thought and practice as well as all peaceful and productive living.
Being With Pain, Not Explaining It, Is What Helps
A meaningful story about how we can most be of help to ourselves and others.
There Are No Results Without Lack of Results
A championship season and life is filled with failures, and is still a championship life.
A Healthy Inferiority Complex
Are we resisting or making peace with the inferiority - that will make all the difference.
We Need Someone With Us in Our Pain - Who?
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.
There Are Places in Our Life We Don't Have a Say and That's Ok
We don't need constant good feelings to know that life is safe, healthy, and a wonderful place to learn and grow.
Your Pain Is Real & There's No One to Blame
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.
Can You Disagree without Getting Angry?
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?
An Overview of the Basics of Change
Change is possible! It's helpful to review how it does and does not work.
What to Do If a Bad Habit Returns?
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.
The Liberating Gift of Boundaries
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.
The Myth of Shame
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.
The Power of the Next, Small, Good Choice
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?
The Bully Within
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.
The Main Part of a Test Is to Accept the Test
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?
We Get to Add Light!
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?
Authority vs. Control
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.
Be Permeable - The Sukka Shows Us How
Our imperfect efforts are designed not to create results but to be permeable to Divine insight and power.
Moving from Fear to Love
How Elul/gratitude leads to the 10 Days of Tshuva/fear to Sukkot/love and healthy vulnerability - with such unbelievable opportunity!
How We Exhaust Ourselves
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.
Finding and Leaving A Safe Space
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?
The Problem Behind Everything
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?