Mind Body Balance
Powerful desires were instilled in the human being in order to perpetuate
the species. Hunger drives a person to eat, which in turn provides the
nutrients needed to fuel the body. The strong attraction for the opposite
gender promotes behavior that yields offspring. Even the desire to
accumulate wealth - greed - was created so that people would compete and
create products and services to improve the human condition.
It is not easy to control an urge. Heavenly wisdom also provided brakes to
limit the speed of the human engine - one's intellect. The human intellect
can rule over desire and emotion. Common sense or sometimes deep analysis
can cause a person to pause and think: "Is this really what is best?"
before one commits a major faux pas by submitting to an unhealthy dose of
desire.
Last week while driving through a business district in heavy traffic I
passed the time by reading the various signs and awnings that advertised
and informed each establishment's wares. One caught my eye. "Mind Body
Balance Spa" was the name over the door of an unassuming storefront. I did
not stop and I did not get a chance to enter and investigate what exactly
goes on in that place but it did start my mind buzzing.
"Isn't that what life is all about? Finding the right balance between
desire and intellect -- balancing the wants and needs of the body with the
high ideals of the heavenly soul?"
Just like an automobile is designed with adequate breaks a person is
provided with good sense. Just like the driver who does not choose to step
on the break pedal will head into a crash so too a person who does not use
his or her brain will end up in disaster. Human judgment is fallible and
mistakes do occur but the biggest mistake of all is not to use the tools
given to us to control the course of our lives. Mind body balance is the
path to happiness and use of the mind to control the body is the road to
achievement of the elusive goal.
DID YOU KNOW THAT
If a person has some doubt as to whether or not he or she has said a
blessing correctly one does not say the blessing again [except in the case
of Bircat Ha Mazon which is biblical in nature and must be repeated].
If someone has a doubt as to whether or not he or she has fulfilled a
Misvah D’Oraita a commandment mandated in the Torah—one must repeat the
performance of the Misvah, however, even if the Misvah is accompanied by a
berakha—blessing—the blessing is not said when the Misvah is repeated.
If a person doesn’t remember if he or she has said the correct blessing on
a food, one may continue eating but is to recite the blessing just in order
to be “safe”.
[Source, Bircat Hashem, Chap 2, 1,2].
CONSIDER THIS FOR A MINUTE
If one has wisdom one can distinguish anything.
Berakhot 5:2 - Talmud Yerushalmi
Text Copyright © 2003 Rabbi Raymond Beyda and Project Genesis, Inc.
