The Emuna Muscle

The last few months, I’ve been having an epiphany about the importance of food and a proper, nutritious diet. I was never someone that ate three donuts for breakfast; I don’t like the taste of coffee; I don’t smoke, I don’t drink; I hardly deep-fat-fry anything…and I thought, until recently, that I was pretty healthy.

All of the ‘big’ things they tell you not to do, if you want to be healthy, I was trying to do. For the last few years, I did all my baking and cooking with super-healthy olive oil; last year, I switched over from white flour to whole wheat; I haven’t bought a bottle of coke or diet coke in years and years and years; I cut out monosodium glutamate more than five years’ ago; and I never, ever, cook with margarine.

Ergo, I should have been really amazingly healthy, right? Err, not right. Why? Because while it was a great start to not be eating McDonald’s every day, and to be using the salt very sparingly, it was only half the equation: the half that we’ll call the ‘negative’ food commandments.

It meant that I was avoiding a lot of the chronic health issues that already start to dog really unhealthy eaters, like being overweight, or having a terrible complexion, or suffering from bad migraines from all the caffeine, sugar and chemicals – but I wasn’t really healthy.

Hashem sent me a wake-up call to pull my act together and to stop being so complacent about my diet, and after a few weeks of wondering if food really was such a big deal, I suddenly realized that it is.

It’s great that I was observing the ‘negative’ food commandments; but for me to really feel good, to have energy, to be running at my optimal level, I also needed to start observing the other half of the equation, or the ‘positive food commandments’.

We all know what they are: drink more water; eat lots of fruits and vegetables, including sprouting things; eat at regular times of the day etc etc etc.

Once I started to do both sides of the ‘healthy eating’ equation, I started to feel really so much better, thank G-d. But initially, I got a lot of comments and ‘resistance’ from the skeptics, who couldn’t really believe that eating seeds, and spinach, and sauerkraut, and avoiding sugar as much as possible, and caffeine, and chocolate were such big deals.

I understood where they were coming from – for a long time, I was also very wary of ‘healthy eaters’, and found all the stuff about only eating ‘whole grains’ and such bordering on fanaticism.

Until I learned more, and G-d showed me, and I tried a few things for myself, and I then I realized that these things DO make a big difference, after all.

Which is when it suddenly hit me: my experience with healthy eating (let’s call it ‘physical health’) is pretty much a carbon copy of so many people’s experience of religion (or, ‘spiritual health’).

There are so many fad diets out there, so many diets that either don’t work, or do more harm than good, or work, but only in the short-term. So what happens? People get very disillusioned with all the ‘quack’ health nonsense – and decide that it’s better to just plod along, and do whatever they were doing before, than get caught up with the latest ‘Atkins Diet’, or ‘South Beach Diet’, or ‘Grapefruit Diet’ idiocy.

Spiritually, there are so many ‘fad’ religions out there. All of them, except one, has been proven to either not work, or to cause more harm than good, or to work in a very limited, superficial, blinkered way.

So thinking people give up. They decide: “I’m not mugging grannies; I’m not cheating on my wife; I don’t steal – it’s enough.” These are the ‘thou shalt not’ of the spiritual commandments, but as we saw with the food and physical health, it’s only half the equation – and it’s simply not enough to sustain good spiritual health over the long term.

Judaism is G-d given; the 613 commandments for Jews, and the seven Noahide laws for non-Jews, were designed by G-d to give us optimal spiritual health: to keep us happy, worry-free, smiling, grateful, positive, calm.
Each mitzvah works on a different part of the soul; but if you want to keep your soul in tip-top condition, the most important spiritual ‘food’ is hitbodedut, or talking to G-d.

Hitbodedut is the spiritual equivalent of sauerkraut, and carrot juice, and alfalfa sprouts, and spelt bread, and beets – all rolled into one.

A person who is regularly talking to G-d develops great emuna, and emuna is the single most powerful guarantee of good spiritual (and physical…) health.

There are so many skeptics out there. They tell you that hitbodedut, and Rebbe Nachman’s teachings can’t do everything that people claim. They tell you that most people get along fine without them (just like most bad eaters get along fine until the first heart-attack, G-d forbid, or the first diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes…).

But you know what? The skeptics don’t really know what they are talking about. The skeptics never really tried it for themselves – or if they tried it, they lasted a week or two then gave up.

I realized, with the healthy food, what’s really behind all the skepticism: it’s very hard to change, even when our habits are killing us. In fact, it’s almost impossible for most of us to change, because we aren’t really in control of ourselves – our evil inclinations are.

And that’s a scary thought.

Most people know, even if you present them with 100% convincing proof of the need for daily hitbodedut, or the need to eat sauerkraut and to stop drinking coffee– they still can’t bring themselves to do it. They want to, but it’s just too hard, too complicated, too much like effort.

Think of all the ‘yo-yo dieters’ who want so much to be thin, but simply can’t keep it up for more than a few months. It’s no different spiritually – unless you ask Hashem to help you.

Asking Hashem to help us is the only way to stick to the program. Every day, when I finish my hour of hitbodedut, I ask G-d to help me do it again tomorrow. And He does, He really does.

The physical always mirrors the spiritual. The same thing that gets in our way when we want to eat healthy, or lose weight, is the same thing that gets in our way when we want to get closer to G-d.

Today’s society is so unhealthy in so many ways, it’s creating so many ‘sick’ people. But Rebbe Nachman teaches, there is no despair in the world. There is a cure for everything that ails us, both in our bodies, and our souls – and it’s called hitbodedut.

Healthy bodies don’t happen overnight; and neither do healthy souls. It takes time, effort, perseverance, and above all, clarity about where your choices really lead you.

If you choose to eat Mcdonald’s or smoke a packet of cigarettes every day, sooner or later, there is a price to pay.

Same with our souls. We can ignore their needs for years, and years and years. But sooner or later, we pay the price: with sadness and depression; with uncontrollable anger; with constant worry and anxiety; with knee-jerk reactions that scare the people we love away.

It’s hard to change – ask any couch-potato who went for their first jog; ask any junk food addict who suddenly had to start eating salad. But change IS possible.

Imagine yourself happy. Imagine yourself calm. Imagine yourself surrounded by people who love you, and who you love. Keep that image in your head, and pull on your spiritual sweatpants – it’s time to give the emuna muscle a workout.