A complete and total understanding of humanity

The Arizal as well as the Baal Shem Tov extensively write on the open and closed state

Knowing this, reveals, well, just about all you need to know about people!

The Baal Shem Tov describes the open state as free from worry and the closed state, one in which there is worry!

In fact, a large part of the Bible of Jewish mysticism, the Tanya, goes to clarify how to get out of the worried state

Effectively he teaches, we need to redefine bad to good

There are three mechanisms how he suggests we do this within the Tanya and the Rebbe declares that the one coming from the Baal Shem Tov, namely, to see the good in the bad, is the highest

While this may seem very simple and it is in theory, the fact is, that it is all encompassing!

Let us just use male female relations just by way of example to illustrate how vital this is!

By way of introduction, John Grey writes, women and men keep score of their favors to each other differently; for example, a woman sees each and everything she does for her husband as a favor, so if she made supper, tided the room, took care of their kids etc. etc. she is now entitled to three favors in return!

Of course, this is why most women feel the deal of marriage isn’t really working in their favor!

However, Kabbalah, describes this paradigm difference differently: in Kabbalah, because women have more practical wisdom than men, hence they are more fearful, as is well known from psychology that women worry more – a lot more – than men; hence, they enter into the state of Din, which inaccurately translated is a judgmental paradigm.

When a person is worried, they lack joy, for worry, like a cold shower shocks the body into focusing on eliminating the source of the worry – in fact the human being who worries literally has a different body function as many many different organs in the body are altered, most notably in the brain, based on anxiety; with doctors teaching, it is the source of all illnesses – obviously mental disturbances – hence the person who is worried, sees a very very different reality than the non worried person

They see a reality in which anything bad may occur at any moment – hence they are not living, rather, busy protecting themselves from the or unknown potential dangers!

Such a person as Frued says, is willing to forgo joy for simple security and hence the brian makes a simple calculation that the mechanism to gain security is to offer someone something, say a salad, in which this person is now under obligation to return the favor!

This accounts for the incredible amount of favors women do for men!

Now another great researcher into marriage John Gottman writes that women are the source of 80% of divorces and in 80% of marriages what goes wrong quite simply is the woman doesn’t see the blessings in her life hence she begins to see the faults in her spouse.

But what’s the connection between not seeing blessings in your life to begin seeing the faults in your spouce?

The answer is simple – if you do see the blessings in your life, you are happy, and if you are happy, you are not in the judgmental state – then, as most men are, you get into the open state, and in the open state, you are happy, and in happiness you don’t see faults, because you don’t care about them – pretend you’re having a blast in Disneyland, will you notice some spilled ice cream next to a ride? – even if you do, you won’t care!!!

So in conclusion God gives men the task – especially the first year after marriage – to eliminate the closed state and help his wife to get into the open state through being romantic, hence having her perceive that as she is adorable, she will always be cared for! Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom – let your email find you!