by Abraham J. Twerski
«I have come to believe that the root cause of this condition is what I have termed Spiritual Deficiency Syndrome (SDS).
As Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen explains in My Grandfather's Blessings: Perhaps the root cause of stress is not overbearing bosses, ill-behaved children, or the breakdown of relationships. It is the loss of a sense of our soul. If so, all the ways in which we have attempted to ease stress cannot heal it at the deepest level. Stress may heal only through the recognition that we cannot betray our spiritual nature without paying a great price. It is not that we have a soul but that we are a soul.
What Dr. Remen calls "soul," I call the human "spirit." And I believe that the neglect of the human spirit is not only the cause of stress, but also of enduring unhappiness. Just as a lack of essential bodily nutrients results in a deficiency condition, failure to provide the spirit with its essential nutrients results in Spiritual Deficiency Syndrome, whose primary symptom is chronic discontent.
That leads us to the core question: What is essential to the human spirit? Within the answer lies the key to happiness.
To me, the human spirit is an integral part of being human. The human body makes its needs known dramatically through hunger, thirst, anger, sex drive, pain, weariness, and more. The human spirit, however, is intangible. We cannot see nor touch it, and it is much less emphatic about what it needs.
Still, it is present in these attributes:
The ability to be self-aware. We as human beings can be introspective, analyze our psychological composition, know our strengths and weaknesses, work to develop desirable traits, and seek to eliminate the undesirable ones.
The ability to be humble. We as human beings can know truths about our knowledge, skills, and talents, yet not think of ourselves as superior to or more worthy than others.
The ability to choose. We as human beings can defy gratifying a desire when we believe it to be morally wrong....»
Reform Judaism Magazine - Healing "Spiritual Deficiency Syndrome"
http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=2931
Best Regards,
RRW
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