I am at a loss. Each time I write, I find holes in my logic. This is my third attempt. Let's see where it goes. 
 
It seems to me, that despite the obvious discomfort one is in, the target of any valuable inquiry, will not get distracted by the presenting feeling. The feeling is never really the problem. The very same feeling can occur, both to the enlightened and to the unenlightened. 
 
So, let us not try to change the feeling, but instead, let us compare the unenlightened to the enlightened. 
 
The unenlightened mind does not understand. The unenlightened mind has questions. The unenlightened mind has answers to those questions - answers which are binding, limiting & blinding.
 
The unenlightened person asks: "Where is this feeling coming from? Why do I feel this way? This feeling must be generated by something in this world. Maybe it is generated by me - big me, my behavior, my power to act. The unenlightened 3 Principles student might settle on - my feeling comes from my power to choose what to think."
 
The unenlightened mind takes the blame and thus the responsibility to control it all. The unenlightened mind must think: "there are many ways to feel right now, and yes, I chose this one, and logically, I could choose a better one. Even if, say, I feel pretty good, but I could feel so, so much better."
 
"There is always more. Like Esav who claims, יֶשׁ לִי רָב (Genesis 33:9). I have a lot, but I could have so much more. I am in control of my destiny and the sky's the limit. There is no Divine orchestration, there is no direct control by G-d. He had handed me the reins. Even a G-d fearing person might speculate, although I cannot control my finances or my health, but I can choose my psychology.
 
"I could and should be much better than who I am. G-d has given me that right. G-d is calling on me to make myself feel better with the tools he has given me."
 
To a person who is of such a mind, suffering is inescapable. It is the outlook itself which guarantees psychological angst. The blame has shifted, from pointing at circumstance to instead pointing at oneself – and embedded in this perspective is ego and control. Pain is almost inevitable whenever this person finds themselves falling short of a self-determined finish line. 
 
And while this person, with this kind of mind is also truly a manifestation of a Divine Will and not self-created, still we can see just how mired one becomes while in this state of mind. Within such a mindset, in the most literal sense, there is no way out. 
 
And saying so, to such a person, will likely not do anything but provoke further despair and depression, "I'm supposed to control my mind and now you're telling me I'll never get myself there!"
 
So clearly, what we are proposing here is not an intervention technique. We are just comparing - comparing an unenlightened mind to an enlightened mind. 
 
An enlightened mind does not have questions in the same way. To an enlightened person, all of life is a divine dream suspended within the boundaries of the time/space experience. G-d, His Divine Will, is the source of all that exists. He is the formless and He is the form. He says, and so it shall be and is. The planets, the animals, the people and all their knowledge and emotions and experiences - there is no place devoid of His sustaining energy. He fashions them, He causes them to exist.  There is no reason, there is no explanation. There is only One. The Allness declared that the Isness shall be in this particular way and that's the perfect and only explanation.  There are no questions, there is only one answer. One answer, over and over again.
 
There is no other place to exist, but in this Divine Will. He has “placed” us in this form, in this particular physical and psychological form, with these surroundings, and this family, in this city, at this time in history, with this IQ and this set of challenges, with this knowledge and with this attitude, with this Torah. 
 
While all the forms of life change and change and change again, the One Key which unlocks every single variation of life never changes. He is the origin, He is the energy, He is the unification, the ever present, ever involved, ever immediate essence of every leaf, every breeze, every war, every hiccup, every victory, every idea, every tingle and on and on and on. 
 
Yes, an enlightened mind sees the individual trees but does not lose sight of the forest. There are many trees, but just one forest. 
 
The enlightened mind does not dismay over the momentary changes in experience. Whether they feel good or bad, high, or low, they are all the same - a divine energy manifest. Each feeling is seen as just another platform at which to see and experience the authorship of the Divine. 
 
An enlightened Jewish mind sees all feelings as the same – opportunities to serve Hashem. Urges to refrain from, inspirations to capitalize upon, uncertainties to wade through, challenges to fight through, heights to soar, storms to weather and a darkness too dark to do anything but call out to our Divine Parent - to maintain our faith of His Omnipresence. 
 
We are all sometimes enlightened and often not. Maybe instead of trying to be more of one and less of the other, we would be better served in recognising both enlightenment and backwardness are the same Divine Energy showing up in different states, different forms. 
 
It's best to recognize what state you are actually in because it is only in that humble recognition that you get the best chance to follow Wisdom instead of your ego. 

One of the reasons why there is a lot of suffering in our lives, is not because of the circumstances or the unsettling feelings that we may have, it has very little to do with that, in fact it may have nothing to do with that at all.

We live in a society that approaches the remedy to stress, or upset, or mental illness with just this one perspective: "I know why you are feeling the way you feel, it's got something to do with your circumstances, something to do with your thinking, and we need to get on top of that. We need to begin to move the pieces of your life around so that you can feel better, or introduce medication so you can feel better, or change where you live - so that you can feel better."

And this natural response derives out of our current way of understanding where experience comes from. "It comes from the outside. The outside, or my genes, or my biology or my past - all these things are responsible, they are catalysts of how I get to experience life in the way that I do."

So naturally, and logically, out of that perspective, there is going to be a philosophy that says there are good feelings and there are bad feelings; there are feelings that indicate wellness and mental health, and there are feelings that indicate mental illness. And you want to have one and not the other.

And that's the current state of affairs.

What we have been doing, and what's so profound for us, is not that we found a new way to feel better, it's that we've gone back to re-examine how we understand what human experience is in the first place.

We are having a conversation, an exploration, a self-discovery, for each of us individually, regarding what the human experience is. What does it stem from fundamentally? How does it work?

And what we ran into were these 3 principles. Over and over again, we saw that the only thing that was responsible for all human experience were these 3 principles. Nothing else, in the most literal sense! Nothing else that we examined, could we honestly say, was responsible for which particular experience was occurring within us.

So the way we found ourselves relating to our experiences, going forward, was that experience is, metaphorically speaking, for all of us, an expression of a Divine energy taking shape as us, and our mental lives, our psychological lives.

This was a huge breakthrough, because, for those evolved in this direction, it ruled out the possibility that anything else in this universe had the power to make us feel good or bad, bad or good. It ruled out the idea that particular feelings were a sign of mental illness. It's also ruled out that particular feelings were a sign of being right or true.

It ruled out the idea that I could enslave myself to a particular set of circumstances, because it will make me feel better. We kept coming back again and again to getting recentred to ... "Wait a minute! I know I've seen (and you've seen) that the way I'm experiencing my life at any given moment, has nothing to do with my life. It has to do only with how I happen to be experiencing my life, through these Divine principles.

And each time we reincluded that fact when relating to how we felt, it set each of us on a different trajectory, a different logic, a different come from, a different way to think about and relate to our experiences. And that, in turn, changed the way that way we responded to our feelings, and it changed the way we responded to other people.

But that's been happening to us on its own. This new relationship is a logical direction that flows from what we have learned about life. And the real leverage has come from appreciating, realising, becoming aware of, waking up to the fact that we are experiencing life through this singular system, this systemic fact, and we've found ourselves reincorporating a knowledge of this system when trying to make sense of our lives.

We've been waking up to that again and again.

We keep pointing back to the fact that there's something bigger going on here. There's something much bigger than "I'm depressed - it’s got something to do with my chemistry, or something to do with the water, or that maybe I'm broken, or maybe you are broken." These terms start to fade away.

Thus two colossal governing needs begin to wilt away in us. One - is the incessant need to mess with our circumstances, so that we can feel better; but better than that - way better than that, is the dissipation of this urge to want to feel differently than the way that we currently do.
​
That need starts to disappear.

During Bein Hematzorim, and particularly in the 9 days, we are sadly reminded once again, how we are still suffering due to the sin of Sinas Chinam, the lack of Eiyin Toiva, and the absence of compassion for others.

And yet, the question remains ... how can we elicit true change? How do we bring ourselves to love people who we deem to be unworthy of our love?!  ​

Not easy, right?

Destin makes some very profound statements, such as "Knowledge does not equal understanding" and "You're looking at the world with a bias whether you think you are or not". At first I was quite taken by this video as I had never seen such an obvious and undeniable demonstration of Thought in the Moment being the direct power behind an experience of actual ability and competence and then the loss of that ability. I found it it quite striking!

But Destin gets a bit distracted. He seems to be drawn into the idea that his 6 year old was able to master the Backwards Bike much more quickly because a child's brain is more elastic than his older, aged, fixed brain.

It may be true that some people learn more quickly than others. It may be true that some brains are more elastic than others, but the Power of Thought trumps all of those things because it creates and sustains them all in the first place.

Our brains are as elastic as the Power of Thought allows them be. 

Thank G-d, as long as we are alive, we are primed to perfectly feel Thought. And Thought is free. Free to present us with a new reality at any moment - no matter how old we are, no matter how long our reality has been a certain way and literally, no matter where or when you are.

That is awesome news! ​

Hi Rabbi,

I am repeatedly humbled, as I continuously find myself needing to go back to the basics of the 3 Principles. 

Here is just how I understand it today. 

All feeling is utterly and completely a product of my own thinking. The thinking (and feelings they create) I have at any given moment is free. Free from circumstances or the past. In other words, circumstances do not dictate what thinking I have. I can think/feel anything, anywhere, anytime. ​