Dramatic Change

I spoke to someone this week who used to have panic attacks, but who hasn’t had them for years, until a few weeks’ ago, when they started up again. He literally called me in a panic, trying to figure out what it all means. “I’m going backwards!! Why is all this happening again?”

I told him to slow down; “OK, it doesn’t feel good, it’s unpleasant, but you can still breathe and talk. Let’s get through it, understand it, and figure out the message from G-d that’s behind all the panic attacks.”

In less than 10 minutes, he had all of his answers. My friend realized that he needed to call his father, and have an important conversation that he needed and wanted to have. Once he worked out the message, the feelings of anxiety and panic completely subsided. He recognized them for what they really were: just propaganda from the Evil Inclination, telling him that he was turning back in to the emotional basket case he used to be before he started building up his emuna.

I tell people these stories, of how fast these “big”  “insurmountable” “unsolvable” problems can literally disappear in a second, and the people who don’t believe in G-d have a very hard time believing that changes can happen as fast as they can happen. They have a hard time believing that in just the course of a couple of seconds, a woman can fall in love with her husband all over again, like she was the first time she met him 11 years ago.

On another occasion I spoke to a woman with severe intractable stomach pain that wouldn’t let her live. She’s been going to doctors for 5 years trying to get relief from her agony, but she still has the pain. I asked her if she believed that there is a G-d and that there is also an Evil Inclination. Then she told me something that I’m 100% sure she hadn’t told any of her doctors: she said that there was a “bad energy” “on her” and it needed to be taken off. Within an hour and a half we got it “off.” She walked out smiling from the relief. As soon as I see that a person believes I know that they can be helped.

To a point, I understand the emuna skeptics. When I was a secular shrink, I never saw things happening so fast, either. But by learning about emuna and the absolute truths that govern life, and then seeing how emuna helps so many people, it’s made me a bigger believer.

How can a child be the wildest human being on the block one day, and then the very next day transform into someone who is much calmer, happier, more successful and easier to deal with? Only with help from Heaven. People suddenly realize that they don’t have to do it all by themselves, and that there are messengers that G-d has sent them to help them work things out. Once they get the message, and act on it, all of a sudden, they have so many more blessings in their lives.

With Emuna two people who have been fighting each other like cats and dogs for years, can turn and look into each other’s eyes and instantly re-establish a healthy, harmonious connection. Sometimes it can be as simple as just telling them that they are one soul and that G-d put them together for a reason, to learn from each other; and that everything they’ve already been through was just to get them to this point, where they can see how much they’ve really changed, and really grown. Nothing in our life, even our most painful, depressing experiences, is for nothing. Nothing is wasted; nothing is meaningless, or purposeless. Over and over again, I keep seeing that people “get changed” in proportion to how much they believe.

It comes back to the idea of “choice.” When we choose to look at things with emuna and faith, it’s a whole new life. It’s humbling to keep putting G-d in the picture, and to keep breaking our own will to give Him what He wants, but we can choose to be smart and miserable, or simple and humble and happy. So happy, that we can’t even remember being that happy before! Silly-happy, a happiness that’s filled with light, love, trust, and an ability to see the beauty of the world. I have that in me; you have it in you; we all have it! Sometimes, we need to look at our kids, and look at all their silly-happiness, and grab onto that feeling that we used to have in ourselves, when we were their age.

Maybe, that’s part of what irritates us so much, when we see them doing things that remind us of our happier, younger, care-free, selves. We’ve told ourselves that that “happy” feeling goes along with movies, or discos, or non-Jewish music, or baseball games, or whatever it is we used to do that now we can’t, don’t or won’t. But it’s not true. All of us have that silly-happiness in our souls, regardless of how “religious” we now are, and we can re-access it at any point.

It’s true that many of us may need a little help to get there, and this is another area where many people stumble. “What, I have to follow someone else’s instructions for how to live my life?” We like to think that we are thinking for ourselves, and we don’t want to give that up for anything, not even the promise of a blissfully happy, fulfilled life. But if we think that, we’re fooling ourselves. If we’re not making our decisions in line with the wisdom and advice that we receive from our wise men, we aren’t thinking for ourselves at all. Instead, all that’s happening is that our Evil Inclination is doing all the thinking for us. It’s slipped into our unconscious mind, and is making us think that all our decisions are the right ones.