Question:

One of my family members was injured on the job and has had multiple spine surgeries since. He is partially paralyzed and this has affected him not only physically but mentally as well. He is depressed and has been taking a lot of sleeping pills, pain pills and muscle relaxants every night. I am very worried about his health but don’t know how to approach the situation. I want to make sure the outcome is him getting help, not getting upset. Do you have any advice how to approach this situation?

Answer:

We know that prayer has the power to alter negative situations. For instance, if a person is very ill, through the power of prayer they can be healed. The question is, how to pray?

Now, before I answer this, it is essential that we understand that prayer deserves a lengthy discussion. Obviously, there are many rules to this concept. For instance, we know that prayer does not always guarantee that the outcome the person desires will necessarily occur, and this can be for a myriad of reasons.

Having said that, we can gain great insight by turning to the words of the great 18th century kabbalist, Rav Elimelech of Lizensk. He writes,

“When a tzadik [the righteous part inside each one of us] prays for another person, he includes and invests in his prayers his entire being, all of his 248 limbs and 365 sinews, thinking of nothing else but desiring to help the other person in need. He bonds that person for which he is praying to his own 248 limbs, and he thereby makes him holy, and therefore, he is answered in his prayers.

For why does a person lack? Certainly, it is because he has done a negative action with one of his 248 limbs. And when the tzadik embraces him and envelopes him with himself, then the limbs of that person become one with the limbs of the tzadik. Through this he is healed and mended from the negativity that he had brought upon himself. And being as his negative action is corrected, then the cleansing that he was supposed to go through is eliminated.”

Rav Elimelech gives us a beautiful understanding of the power of praying for others. He explains that when a person prays for somebody else, he must have in mind to spiritually embrace the person in need, thereby making him one with himself. By doing this he changes the other person and makes him as complete as himself.

We understand now how deep and strong a person’s thoughts must be when he prays for others. For if he is simply mouthing a prayer, there is not much chance that his prayer will be answered. Only when he includes his whole body, his whole soul and essence in his prayer, will he be able to achieve what has been explained above. For when we pray for others, we are actually embracing them and giving them of our completeness.

What a beautiful way to understand prayer!

We now have a true insight into the power of prayer. Hopefully, after understanding this lesson we will invest more of our being into the prayers that we pray for others. For as explained above, in order to truly influence positive change in another person, we must invest our entire being into the prayer, thereby completely enveloping and healing them.

Blessings and Light,

When Moses took the Israelites out of Egypt, they received freedom, liberty, and liberation without any effort. For that reason, the Light of Pesach disappeared, in order to give us the opportunity to work and earn all that Light that we received for free.

This time of work is known as the Counting of the Omer. It began April 21 and continues through the month of Taurus and ends on the holiday of Shavuot. These 49 days are also called "Days of Smallness," and are infamous for their low energy. That is why we do not make any decisions or actions, like buying a house, signing contracts, opening new businesses, getting married etc. until this period is over.

It's a time when we tend to feel a lot of judgment, towards ourselves and others. The best thing we can do to counteract this heaviness is to exude the spiritual quality of love.

But what is love, really? The Hebrew words for love, ahavah, and one, echad, have the same numerical value [Hebrew letters also have a numerical value.] This teaches us the great secret that real love is when I am one with someone else. If my finger gets burned because it touches a hot stove, do I get angry at my finger? No, because I feel it is a part of me and I am concerned about its pain.

True love is when we can feel another is part of us the same way we feel our finger is part of us. To help us better understand love, we can look at the qualities that are the opposite of love:

Judgment
Impatience
Intolerance

The opposite of love is when we don’t have awareness of this oneness, when it's all about me. Things must be my way and it’s not OK for the other person to evolve in their way.

This month, it's all about injecting love into our lives. This means paying attention to how many times we find ourselves in a place of judgment, lack of patience, lack of tolerance, or simply lack of allowing others the room to grow and go through their process.

During the Omer, in this period more than any other period, without expressing love we will draw judgment. But if we give love, we will draw love.

All the best,

(excerpted from Yehuda Berg’s 72 Names of God)

As I focus on unconditional love
for all people around me
the dark forces within are cast out.
In the past I have felt hatred for certain people
but now as I picture those people in my mind
I feel only love.
Light washes over them and me
and I recognize the common thread that we share –
the spark of the Creator.
My heart opens as I wish them joy and fulfillment
peace and greater understanding.
We are one soul.
Greater compassion and humanity awakens within
for those around me - my family, friends, neighbors.
Those positive feelings fan out towards all humanity.
Love washes over everyone
bringing greater peace, understanding and harmony throughout the world

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