Internal Struggle

I have been struggling with not becoming depressed over the past few days as my family's financial situation has been quite precarious. I have been looking for a job, tried to start a business; nothing seems to be working. I have been turning to Tehilim (Psalms) for some solace and direction. At the moment, I have been finding Psalm 51 to be meaningful to myself.

I can relate to King David's struggles as he looks to find forgiveness for his faults, and not be be rejected by God. I find comfort in that I am not the only one who has feared rejection.

In verse 12 he says לב טהור ברא לי אלקים ורוח נכון חדש בקרבי. A pure heart create for me, O Lord, and a proper spirit renew within me. He continues in the next verse by saying אל תשליכני מלפניך ורוח קדשך אל תקח ממני. Do not reject me from before You, and Your holy spirit do not take from me.

As I read that last verse, I thought to myself that in this respect I am certainly not like King David. After all, I don't have the holy spirit to begin with. Subsequently I was looking at a wonderful anthology of commentary and it quoted something very meaningful to me from Rabbi Nachman of Breslev.

He says that any time a person engages in a personal dialogue with God, that is רוח הקדש, the holy spirit, speaking within him. The entire book of Psalms is all the dialogue of King David, it is the holy spirit that emanated from within him. But it is not limited to King David. Each of us can find that holy spirit within.

He suggests beginning by contemplating God and one's desire to relate to God. The more one thinks about it and focuses on this topic the more it will fill his heart. After some time it will manifest itself in the person speaking to God with his own holy spirit.

Black Hole

Sometimes I can get down; I can pretty much feel like giving up. It can take a lot out of me to keep pushing myself to go on despite all the obstacles that are before me. The Ishbitzer Rebbe suggests that this attitude is what the Torah is addressing when it writes about Chilul Hashem. Conventionally, this is understood to mean acting in a manner that desecrates the name of God, but he takes it one step further. He says that the word Chilul (חילול) shares the same Hebrew word as Chalal (חלל) a hole, or depression.

He explains that the root cause of giving up is the feeling that it is beyond God's ability to assist the person out of his predicament. The person lacks the ability at that time to find the light of God in his situation, and feels that God is absent.

In that sense the person ready to give up is saying that there is a hole, a void, where God is absent; whereas in truth, God is omnipotent. It is that attitude of there being a hole in God, so to speak, that the Torah is telling us is the root of depression and the ultimate desecration of God.

This is very much a Breslev type of approach wherein it is understood that being down and depressed is the greatest possible sin. I have seen that Rabbi Aruosh writes that the cause of frustration and depression is that the person feels that he is on his own and he needs to accomplish the task, and finds himself wanting. In truth any person doesn't have the tools needed to complete the task. Everyone needs God's help to accomplish. Getting out of the frustrated frame of mind requires the cognizance that it is God who will get the task done, and leaving it up to Him to do so. By bringing God back in, the void is filled, God is back, and the problems go away.