Bitachon
QUESTION: The Rav cited the Arizal the fears can be coming from a previous lifetime. Is this something we can figure out? Or do we need to relate to this as fear from an unknown source?
ANSWER: In most cases, it is a fear from an unknowable source....
QUESTION: There is a kind of therapy from trauma where the therapist asks the client to quiet himself and re-experience the traumatic event, guiding him through the process. Can this be done by the client himself without the help of a therapist? This really leads to a central question. The world of therapy today – the right-wing side – is founded on the basis of the therapist-client bond, which enables certain emotional pathways to become opened for the client. Although I’ve never heard the Rav say that there’s a need to include a therapist in order for one to help himself, and although there doesn’t seem to be any Chazal about how such a relationship can be effective in healing one’s soul – I would like to understand then why the model of psychology that’s widespread today (and which has already been in use for close to 120 years) is indeed based on the therapist-client relationship (and to understand how it is effective, being that Chazal never spoke the therapist-client relationship in emotional healing).
ANSWER: A similar concept, though far from the nature of the therapist-client relationship, is the relationship between a Rebbi and a talmid (Torah teacher and his student), or a Rebbe who is a tzaddik who is able to influence the chassid who connects himself to the Rebbe, etc. But there are even deeper levels of connection than this. The connection that a person can have with Hashem, and the connection that one can have with the Torah, the connection between one and another, and the connection that one can have with his own inner self are each able to offer different aspects of emotional healing for one’s soul.
QUESTION: The Rav said that a person can calm himself if he thinks “There is no reason to be afraid...” It seems from the Rav’s words that a person cannot naturally be harmed by anything, as if there is some nature protection for each person, and therefore getting attacked is actually not a natural occurrence. Is that true?
ANSWER: Certainly!!! A person is protected in the “shadow of the wings” of Hashem. “Clinging and attached to You” is the natural state for the soul, as long as he doesn’t sin. This is how a person is able to protected from all harm by believing in Aid Od Milvado, as described in Nefesh HaChaim shaar III.
QUESTION: The Rav explains how to overcome fears from danger and death through understanding how all of our life is an ongoing tahalich (process) and that we need to often contemplate our life from beginning until end, from birth to death. Can this also solve depression and other emotional difficulties? Also, can this heal one’s trauma from troublesome events in his past, when one sees how all the parts of his life are forming one bigger picture?
ANSWER: Yes.
QUESTION: If a person experienced something that was totally bad, how should he relate to it?
ANSWER: There is nothing that’s absolutely bad. There is always a spark of good contained in everything, even in something bad. When a person does teshuvah out of love for Hashem, he turns the bad acts he did into something good.
QUESTION: The Rav explains how the higher root of bitachon is the power to be willing to connect oneself to the will of Hashem. How does this power work?
ANSWER: The word fear in Hebrew is pachad, from the word peh chad, “here is one” [and the implication is that if you want to solve fear, “make one option” only]. Fear is when there are two sides, two options. That is why a sin creates fear – a sin is aveirah, from the word avra d’nahara, “side of the river” [implying that there’s another side of the river, because], through a sin, one creates two sides. But when one accesses the Higher Will of Hashem, there, everything is one and there are no two possibility, only one possibility – the will of Hashem. That is why there is no possibility of fear there.
