In this lecture we are going to discuss what I call the Non-Medical Bipolar Disorder, where it comes from and how to overcome it. By Non-Medical Bipolar Disorder I am referring to the average person’s shifts between feeling empowered and inspired to be able to overcome all obstacles and succeed, to the weakened feeling of, you can’t fight city hall, that feeling that there are superstars amongst us, but the rest of us in reality can only achieve mediocrity.
I am clearly not talking about the medical Bipolar Disorder or Clinical Depression, which has to do with chemical imbalance and should be treated medically. This lecture is exploring why we have these sudden strong feelings of empowerment, where they come from, and how we can hold on to them, making them our natural disposition and attitude in life. In every inspirational, self-help and life-coaching book out there the emphases is on attitude, that there is the winning attitude and the losing attitude. Many of us turn to religion and spirituality for this very reason, in search of inspiration, which in other words is an attitude change.
The problem with externally suggested inspiration is that our insides are fighting this external inspiration, if for no other reason than that of the habitual patterns in our mindset, and therefore, we keep on needing to turn to the external inspiration. Eventually, the novelty of the external inspiration, which took our internal mindset by surprise, loses its novelty and its power over the decades of our engrained mindset.
Thus, we must not rely on the external inspiration to carry us through the long-term overhaul of self. Rather, the external inspiration is but a shovel handed to us in order to dig deep within ourselves in order to find our inner-wellspring of empowerment, inspiration, and winning attitude.
It is precisely this inner-wellspring, and the earth that covers it up, that we are going to explore. It is precisely the shovel and the digging that uncovers this inner-wellspring, bringing it to our day-to-day life surface that we are going to define in this lecture, based on the mystical teachings of Judaism.
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Here is a link to the written notes of this lecture, which will be available until October 15, 2016, after which you can email TheJewishMind@icloud.com to request them:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4614078/49.%20Ki%20Thavo%20Parsha%20Class%205777.pdf
