How Jewish Spirituality Outsmarts the Anxious, Stressed Brain

The Limitations of The Human Brain

Many centuries ago (before there was scientific proof), certain rabbis and teachers explored the limitations of the human brain and whether people could connect with a joyful, expansive level of reality that went beyond their mind’s anxious, dissatisfied first reaction to daily events. These ideas and suggestions are at least two thousand years old (some scholars say twenty-four hundred3), and there are indications that they were spoken by the leaders of the Great Assembly in Jerusalem more than two millennia ago, when the sacred Temple was still standing.

Reconnect with a Sense of Awe

What the rabbis and teachers recommended then (and it remains true today) was that people should outsmart their worried, dissatisfied brain by reconnecting frequently with a sense of awe and appreciation for the many gifts and wonders that their anxious mind tended to forget or overlook. To avoid being bogged down in fears, insecurities, and feelings of sluggishness, the spiritual teachers came up with daily blessings that people could say when they faced difficulties or felt uncertain about the future. These scholars (who had stressful lives of their own) designed a series of specific, short phrases to overcome the heaviness and moodiness of the human brain and allow the soul and inner energies to rise to higher levels each time the words were said.

Renew Your Soul

Instead of letting yourself become chronically stressed, burned out, or exhausted by the pressures and responsibilities of your daily life, you can renew your soul and your body at crucial moments during a busy morning, afternoon, or evening with this Jewish practice of saying a sincere, heartfelt word of appreciation. Rather than dismissing what’s going right in your life (and only noticing what’s going wrong or what’s incomplete), you essentially send your nerves, muscles, and arteries a healthy dose of joy and vitality each time you stop for a quick moment to notice something wonderful or awesome as you offer up thanks to the Ultimate Source of that wonder and awe. Or in the words of the twentieth-century Jewish scholar and teacher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., and wrote several highly regarded books on how to live each day with greater purpose and joy), you begin to practice “Radical Amazement.”

Override The Mind

If you want to experience a glimpse of how to live each day more awake, alive, and healthy, you can begin right now by experimenting with a highly effective method for overriding the constant problem-seeking tendencies of your brain. There is a remarkable blessing phrase that seems to encompass all the other blessings. Many times in my own life (and in those of individuals with whom I’ve shared it), it has transformed anxiety or stress into a renewed sense of mindfulness, strength, and happiness. This 2,400-year-old blessing consists of six profound Hebrew words that I will translate and explore with you so you can decide which meanings and interpretations feel most empowering for your daily life.

The Creative Source

You will notice that the six Hebrew words don’t try to define what God is or isn’t. They simply alert us to the fact that there is some Creative Source, which in this particular blessing is called “the One that is constantly expressing.” And this Creative Source—whatever you call it—is continually infusing the energy flow that keeps the world around us and inside us alive.

In Judaism, there are many ways to imagine the One that is constantly expressing and creating. Please don’t think that you need to settle on a particular limiting image of God that some insistent teacher or family member has told you must be “the only one.” In fact, in Judaism, there is a strong emphasis on humbly admitting that any image or concept of God you might be temped to think is “the entire answer” is probably far less accurate than what the Eternal Creative Source truly is.