The Road to Happiness

Rabbi Daniel says:

Apparently there is a form of poverty that is even worse than not having enough money in your pocket; it is the poverty of not having enough in your soul. The pain we experience when we lack that deep, internal happiness can be only temporarily anesthetized by means of chemicals. Unfortunately, the aftermath generally leaves us feeling even more empty and hollow...


There is a better way out of depression, sadness, and self-loathing, and it had to do with growth. A sense of achievement is the natural, organic, nonchemical solution to our spiritual void...


(Buried Treasure, pp 125-126)


Share, if you care to, about your experience with spiritual poverty. What was the way out for you?

Rabbi Daniel continues:


First we should examine the source ... which is SiM-CHa, the Hebrew word for “happiness.” the three root letters shin, mem, and chet mean “happiness.”


We have a general principle in Hebrew that the two letters tzadde and shin enjoy a special relationship. The former stands for righteousness and represents a saintly individual [with its appearance of a kneeling saint (צּ)], while the latter, shin, with its appearance of three tongues of flame leaping upward (שּׂ), represents ultimate attainment of heavenly bliss through closeness with God. The special relationship I alluded to springs from the observation that we would expect the tzadde, the righteous person, to be seeking the shin, or heavenly condition. Thus, when we encounter any word that starts with either of those two letters we should also study its mate, the word that is otherwise identical but for its starting with the other letter...


In our case shin, mem, chet means “happiness.” The word that precedes it or leads us to it is tzadde, mem, chet, which means “growth.” That’s right. Growth leads to happiness! Our souls simply reject stagnation. (p 126)


When have you felt like you were stagnating? How has it related to your spiritual poverty?


Rabbi Daniel concludes:


Think of motion as a metaphor for growth. Our bodies can only sense movement if the velocity of our motion changes. With our eyes shut, we are quite incapable of distinguishing between being stationary and moving smoothly and steadily. Have you ever sat in a railway carriage and been unable to detect whether your own carriage is moving or the adjacent train has started moving? That’s because we cannot feel the difference between no movement and steady movement.


However, we can easily sense any change in our velocity. If our vehicle is picking up speed, even if we are blindfolded we feel ourselves being thrust backward ...The general rule is that we are acutely sensitive to any change in the conditions of our motion.


In similar ways, our spiritual beings are exquisitely attuned to any change in growth. If our condition is stationary and stagnant, we feel nothing. If, however, we experience rapid change in our spiritual condition, we feel it strongly and the sensation is basically pleasant. The problem confronting us is that negative change can masquerade as fun and in the short term can feel even more pleasurable than the early stages of positive change. (p 126, italics mine)


How does this relate to the fundamental human problem that what is bad for us often feels so good?


What Bible verses does this lesson bring to mind?


















Closing thought: According to Rabbi Daniel, there is no Hebrew word for fun. Perhaps we have not been created for random fun as much as we have been created for happiness.