Guarding our Minds

Throughout the ages, there have been so many people who devoted their lives to "the pursuit of wisdom." But if we really want to achieve pure wisdom, and to live the Divine wisdom that G-d is making available to us all the time, then we need to protect our mind and guard our eyes from things that could damage us. The eyes in particular are commonly known as "the window of a soul"; you let something nasty in through your eyes, and your soul gets zapped with it and instantly damaged. So if you're in the presence of something that it's forbidden to look at – close your eyes! G-d gave us eyelids for a reason! We need to close our ears too, even though in some ways, that's even harder. I know people who carry earplugs with them to block out "damaging" sounds; but we could also use an MP3 player that's full of our favorite holy tunes, such as Rabbi Brody's latest CD, or an inspiring torah lesson, that we can plug into when we need it.
 
Remember, our minds are compared to the Holy of Holies. That was the holiest room in the holy temple, when it still existed, and it was a special chamber that only the chief kohen, or High Priest, could go into, and even He was only allowed to go into that room one day a year, on Yom Kippur, when he was required to perform a special service to atone for the sins of the Jewish people. In the days of the corrupt, politicized High Priests, that occurred a few decades before the temple was actually destroyed, they had to keep pulling dead High Priests out of that special chamber by a rope attached to their foot, because not one was sufficiently holy enough to survive the experience.
 
No-one could go in there to drag the dead High Priests out, because it was the holiest place on earth, where G-d said: "You can't look at Me and live!" Just like the Holy of Holies, our minds are also that holy, and also that precious. That's why we have to make every effort to sanctify our minds, and to pursue holiness. The rewards, if we do this, are simply indescribable. Imagine a life where we actually feel happy, or calm and content, or "relaxed". When was the last time you could really just sit and feel all these things, without a million different worries and pressures trying to crowd in on you, to rob you of your peace of mind?
 
In my work as a psychotherapist, I used to do a number of "de-conditioning" procedures to help people who were struggling with phobias or panic attacks, or other high-anxiety issues. One of the things I came up with was a visualization exercise, where I'd encourage them to see their nervous system as a bunch of intricate wires with rubber coating.  Every additional second that you relax, you put another layer of protective rubber on to those wires. The more you practice relaxation and calmness, the thicker the protective cover gets, until you reach a point where the stress of life can't even penetrate any more, and just bounces right off.
 
Now, I'm seeing the same phenomenon happening with Emuna Coaching. So many of the people who are committed to the principles underlying Emuna Coaching are getting to a level where stress simply can't touch them, like it used to. They're not even noticing the regular, silly stresses that everyone has day-to-day. But even when the Evil Inclination is coming at them with the bigger, scarier issues and stresses, they're still reacting in a very calm, collected way. How? Because they know that they're together with G-d, and once they're unified with G-d, it doesn't matter how big, or nasty the "monster" is that's out to get them. Just like David and Goliath, we know that when we're with G-d, like King David was, you need only the simplest weapon – a slingshot and stone – to finish off the worst bad guys in the world.
 
There is pain in life; there are things that we have no control over, and that's the way G-d wants it to be. But when we're with G-d, we don't need anything else, because G-d can do anything, and He really wants to help us. The mind is the manifestation of, and the seat of, the soul. The more we purify our minds, the more we purify our souls, and the purer our souls get, the easier it is for us to understand and recognize what the ultimate purpose of this life really is.  This world is just a corridor. The more we develop ourselves spiritually, the more we'll see that that is the reality, and the less time we'll want to waste on leisure pursuits and nonsense that aren't going to add to our ultimate happiness.