0 responses to “Being centered – if we are unbalanced which really means too exuberant or too sad (called depressed) we are not centered – now as a good friend of mine a psychiatrist (with actually three medical degrees – he is not one of those psychiatrists who need one) says,there is no such thing as a stable person – we are all going to always go through ups and down – the problem is, that as Dr. Twersky one of the preeminent psychiatrists and founders of the twelve step rehab centers teaches, all of us by nature are addicts – we are addicted to pleasure – this is why people take drugs – however if we are “too exuberant” we lose rationality – you see, feeling good is the opposite of thinking – ironically, thinking is a down – for thinking means you are, well thinking, which means you are subdividing- in other words getting into details (which as the famous saying, the devil is in the details, for it isn’t fun… – in fact this is why we find twice the amount of depression (and anxiety which is related – I believe an 80% correlation) in women – You see women have binah brains – quite simply, as John Grey who wrote a book on his research of male female scientific researched differences writes, the left and right brain in a woman has a super-highway – this connects them to details (this is why men can switch off, while as he puts it, their to do list is non negotiable – in other words, if reality is real …)) In conclusion, what pretty much all of Jewish mysticism teaches us, obviously you should not be sad – we do this by believing in God (hence quelling anxiety) believing in Moshiach (hence quelling fear – for the person in a prison getting free, is far more hopeful than the reverse) and of-course by seeing positive (as the Baal Shem Tov says – if you see the good in the bad, the bad turns to good) but – and this is very important, simultaneously we must never become too exuberant – so ironically when we find ourselves getting too exuberant we must introduce sad thought (think about suffering.)”