.Torah and Psychology, correction of spiritual qualities, practical work on themselves. The book includes an audio CD with 60 exercises!
2nd edition, revised and enlarged, with MP3-audio CD (over 60 exercises)
The book tells about the psychological aspects of emotional perception of the Torah, and the transmigration of souls that say about the Jewish sources, are exercises of the spiritual training.
Chapter One
HOW TO GET TO THIS LIFE,
or the whole point of information
First of all, I want to introduce myself.
I was born and lived until seventeen years in Moscow. After finishing the biological school, and in 1972 he moved with his parents to Israel. But after two and a half years, he moved to Canada. It took another seventeen years old, and I returned to Israel - already with the family. By profession, psycho, hypnotherapist plus the many years he worked in the field of manual medicine, doing the manipulation of the bones of the skull, intracranial membranes. In general, it is a rare specialty - joint physiology and psychology.
When people find out about it, looking at my pile, beard, black suit, asked: "Well, look, and how you came to such a life?" It is interesting to understand how the people involved in medicine, psychology, come to Jewish tradition - and do not ever, and now, at the beginning of the XXI century.
I answer in one word: "Information."
When you and I hear the word Judaism, we have by association occurs word religion, followed, of course, there is the word of faith. We know that there are people of faith, and there are non-believers. Here is that somehow believed, and I am ... I find it hard, I do not believe ... Such an approach - a product of stereotypes associating in our minds the notion of Judaism with the concepts of religion, belief, inherited from the Soviet atheistic society, fought with Christianity.
At the heart of Christianity, indeed, very much associated with the belief clarify: blind faith. Christians themselves say that they can not prove their fundamental postulates (eg, Immaculate Conception) - and the person has to take on faith. At that fought declared atheism to Christianity: see - they just faith alone, and we have pure knowledge.
Judaism has always maintained the same: the fact that God exists, you need to know, DO NOT BELIEVE AND KNOW.
What distinguishes the blind faith of knowledge that can be rationally comprehend, double-check to use in everyday life?
Knowledge presupposes some information.
My problem is this - to give you the information that you have not managed to get (due to the nature of education, because it concealed from us), to try to help you understand the things that I have been able to study due to the fact that, after leaving the Soviet Union and spent half his life in the West, I got my current knowledge, that this information here.
Especially because most of the things described in this book are not purely theoretical knowledge. This is the path that I was walking, I go and who helped and help others to pass.
Our intellect is often implicitly controlled by our emotions. We'll talk about this later. In the meantime, if you have difficulties with reading parts of the book, there is a disagreement, ask yourself whether it is really an intellectual disagreement (which is quite possible), or those objections are coming from emotion. You get to be interesting and important to solve this.
As an example, remember the answer given by Rabbi Noah nbergom Wai, head of the yeshiva, "Ash ha-Torah," the question of a purely rational proofs of God's existence. "I will bring these rational evidence - he said - on one condition: you have a life after this, nothing will change." - "How, - said questioner - in my life will change everything!" - "Then - smiled Rabbi Weinberg - no purely rational evidence for you can not exist."
What did he mean?
All the emotions and habits of the audience will shout, stomp their feet and be outraged. If equal rights, then the man will have to change. What kind of cold rational approach here is all about ...
Chapter Ten
Indescribable CIRCUMSTANCES IS A COINCIDENCE
The fifth group of exercises: Hanukkah
Hanukkah - a celebration of the victory over spiritual assimilation.
'll Do some exercises related to this holiday
Exercise number 23. The miracle of Chanukah
Introduction:
Everyone knows that Maccabi *, * defeating the Hellenists and the Greeks and Syrians freeing Temple, tried to light a menorah to be lit. But then they found that not only polluted by oil in a small sealed container seal first high priest, but he missed just one day of burning menorah. And Maccabi decide to ignite the oil from this single vessel: let it burn at least daily, but will burn. It also burned for eight days!
In connection with this question (people who do not know the Jewish tradition, without even asking): Why, in fact, had to be a miracle?
First, according to Jewish law, open, profane May scrap can be used for public purposes. For personal sacrifice it does not fit, and for the public, fires luysta. And this oil was plenty. This is - again.
Secondly, let's Maccabi worried ritual impurity associated with a dab of butter to the unclean person, including touch the dead body. But after the battle they were in a state of spiritual impurity. And as soon as people locat dyaschiysya in the status of spiritual impurity touches to the vessel with oil, at the same moment it becomes ritually unclean. So this sense, and oil, which they found and lit, it was no better than any other oil found in the Temple.
Then why all this joy in connection with the discovery of the closed vial? Maccabi excited impurity vessels and oil, associated with its use in idolatrous purposes. This oil can not consecrate. Sealed with the seal of the high priest guarantee the non-use vial of oil idolaters.
But there is one question. Using the find on the first day, Maccabi could squeeze out a new batch of oil suitable for lighting the menorah in the coming days. What is the meaning of what the oil burned for eight days? Why was a miracle where, like, it can be avoided?
It is very important that the holiday of Hanukkah, after all, celebrates the possibility of a miracle. According to Greek philosophy, for all its seemingly superficial beauty and logic of this world - a closed system. He does not allow things to feed a miracle, and the meaning of the miracle is that it demonstrates the need to revise our knowledge. As we can see, modern science is regularly confronted with the wonders that causes a person to reconsider the whole view of the world, and it turns out that the world is much more complicated, much more interesting than we thought. One explanation for the miracle of the eight-burning daily portion of oil is that it was necessary to show that miracles exist in principle.
Moreover, if there is infinity, then the existence of the finite in the infinite in itself is a miracle. That is the very existence of the material - it's a miracle. And so, say our sages, we must learn to see miracles in everything that happens.
So, do exercise on a sense of wonder. In everyone's life, at least one miracle, as happened before. For example, there was something that should not have happened, and the coincidence was quite indescribable, or - on the contrary - something did not happen, although it could happen, and the man suddenly felt that it was a miracle. That's the feeling we are with you, and now want to find with the exercise.
Exercise:
So, time to relax.
Close your eyes, take a deep breath. We go into a deep, deep relaxation.
Relax, please, shoulder muscles, back muscles, leg muscles, relax your toes and feet. A deep, pleasant relaxation.
Relaxation is coming up on his feet in the abdominal muscles, chest muscles. Relax your shoulders and arms. Relaxation is coming up on his hands in the neck, head. Relax the muscles of the head and face. Relax the muscles around the eyes, nose, mouth, ears.