Permit me to explain. J.L. was given over for adoption by her mother at birth. Her sense of abandonment was profound, and as an adult she meandered aimlessly through life. A couple years ago she discovered her biological sister. This would have been a joyful meeting, except that J.L.’s sister was dying from M.S. Her sister’s illness compounded J.L.’s sense of abandonment, as, through death, she was about to again be abandoned by the only relative with whom she had a connection. When J.L. came to me for psychotherapy, she was psychologically more dead than her dying sister.

One of my major therapeutic tools is bibliotherapy. Psychology is, after all, the study of the psyche, which is Greek for “soul.” Just as the body can be healed by the proper medicine, so the soul can be healed by the proper idea, because wrong ideas and concepts that fester in our psyches are pathogenic.

For years I have been requiring my patients to read certain books, for example by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Alice Miller, Flannery O’Connor, and John Bradshaw, as part of their therapy. Recently I discovered, The Secret Life of G-d by Rabbi David Aaron [Shambhala Publishers]. Rabbi Aaron presents deep Kabbalist concepts in a coherent system that addresses and redresses the worst contemporary psychological syndromes.

When J.L. started to read The Secret Life of G-d things started to fall into place for her. She began experiencing love for herself, for her sister, and for her life. For most people, the parent is the prototype of G-d. Since J.L. had been abandoned by her parents, she entirely lacked a sense of G-d’s presence and love (indispensable components of mental health, as I’ll show below). The Secret Life of G-d enabled J.L. to build a relationship with herself through a healthy, loving relationship with G-d. It became clear to J.L. that her life was purposeful and that suffering can have redemptive meaning. She decided, as the book indicates, that the purpose of her life is to grow and unfold, not in spite of her sister’s suffering, but through it.

Now J.L. spends four days a week tending to her sister. And she knows that her sister’s eventual death will not leave her abandoned yet again, because the human soul is a spark of the infinite, eternal G-d. The Secret Life of G-d provided J.L. with a paradigm to emerge from a state of woundedness to a state of health.

While The Secret Life of G-d was obviously written for healthy individuals, I have found that the book is a powerful antidote for three debilitating syndromes:

1.   Fear of death
2.   Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
3.   Father hunger

1. Fear of death

Description of the problem: Fear of death is a syndrome as old as the human race. We humans realize, at the very dawn of our conscious life, that we’re lost, that eventually, sooner or later, we’ll be food for worms. This fills us with existential dread.

In a more innocent age, young people felt invincible and immortal, and fear of death was reserved for those who were realistically approaching death due to age or illness. Today, by contrast, I have many teenaged patients who are filled with fear of death and as such are depressed.

This syndrome manifests as a feeling of ever-present dread or impending catastrophe, especially post 9/11. Contiguous to this sense of dread is a pervasive feeling of emptiness that afflicts many people. Even patients who are successful in their careers and prospering materially often complain to me that they feel lonely and empty. This occurs, of course, when they realize that the American dream turns out to be the American lie: that prosperity leads to happiness. People experience the opposite of this—that the more stuff they have, the emptier they become.

The book ameliorates the fear of death by convincing the reader that s/he is part of the Divine, and the Divine is infinite and eternal. The alienated individual becomes part of the cosmic Divine process.

While Hinduism speaks of the whimsical Divine lila or play, where G-d created humans for sport, the view of Kabbalah is that humans have intrinsic importance to G-d. After explaining the two states of Divine perfection, the static state of being perfect and the dynamic state of becoming perfect, Rabbi Aaron notes:

And once you understand the depths of what Kabbalah is teaching, you begin to realize how significant you are. G-d needs us—or, to be more accurate, G-d chooses to need us. G-d doesn’t need to manifest dynamic perfection, though He is free to do so. However, once G-d chooses to manifest this possibility, then imperfect you and I—struggling in this imperfect world in a process of becoming, striving toward perfection—are necessary to G-d. [p. 14]

Is Rabbi Aaron's approach a better solution than Berne’s? From my clinical experience, it’s the only solution, because any system not based on G-d does not work to counteract ever-present dread or feelings of emptiness. We experienced on 9/11 that no material security can protect us and that catastrophe can strike at any time. Only a quantum leap to the spiritual level can counteract those physical realities. Feelings of emptiness and dread dissipate when one sees one’s life as eternally significant. As David Aaron explains:

When you realize that you are part of G-d’s life and G-d is part of your life, you will discover your holiness, your ultimate meaning and significance. When you realize that you exist within the Endless Light of G-d, you will discover that G-d’s Endless Light is also inside of you. … Your divine privilege is to be a human being who serves as a vehicle for G-d. When you serve the ultimate, then you’re part of the ultimate. [p. 30]

Description of the problem: Incest and sexual abuse are more prevalent problems than most people recognize. The statistics are that one out of four women and one out of seven men in America have been raped. Add to that the number of people who grew up with one or both alcoholic parent or who were physically or emotionally abused by a parent, and you’ll have some idea of the tremendous scope of the syndrome of PTSD.

Of course, this syndrome ties into the problem of suffering in general. All humans suffer—rejection, disappointment, loss, etc. Suffering usually leads to a sense of resentment, grievance, and injustice. These are the “cultures” that sour the milk of life. They counteract the joy and contentment that are integral to mental health.

How The Secret Life of G-d counteracts the problem: The book lends a redemptive meaning to suffering. It shows that even our woundedness has a place in our growth. Whereas we had thought that life was supposed to be perfect and painless, The Secret Life of G-d explains that the entire purpose of life on this planet is to grow through challenge, struggle, and pain. Using the ancient Kabbalistic paradigm of the “broken vessels,” the author explains:

Now you can understand why you and I exist. We are the imperfect vessels. G-d created imperfect human beings who struggle to become better and gradually work their way toward becoming more and more perfect. We are the broken vessels, and it is through us that G-d fulfills His desire to express and participate in a process of becoming perfect. [p. 13]

Any system that aims to heal the human psyche must make sense out of suffering. David Aaron joins the ranks of Martin Buber, Victor Frankl, and Ernest Becker in having created a timeless book that illuminates the redemptive meaning of suffering.

Yet The Secret Life of G-d goes even further than the above-mentioned classics. It provides an antidote to the widespread resentment against G-d for allowing innocent children to suffer. How? It makes a radical claim: that G-d suffers with us!

Kabbalah teaches us that G-d takes the journey with us. G-d is intimately involved in our daily challenges and struggles, in our ups and downs. G-d shares our pains and troubles as well as our pleasures and successes. Knowing this makes difficult experiences more manageable and more meaningful. [p. 21]

This is a sublime, powerful concept, beyond the scope of this article to explain in full.

2. Father hunger

Description of the problem: In my thirty-five years of clinical practice, I have discovered that our society is suffering a tremendous father hunger. People yearn to feel loved and protected.

The problem is not only that a high percentage of Americans are growing up without a father present in the home or with an abusive or alcoholic father. Even children who grow up in healthy families experience the damage done by the educational process. From their earliest years children are scolded: “Don’t throw food on the floor!” “Don’t make in your panties!” The message they get is: You’re bad. And the only way they can redeem themselves in their own eyes is to distance themselves from their parents.

It says in the Bible: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I say: “Don’t do that!” because most people hate themselves. And they hate the parent that gave them this negative self-image.

How The Secret Life of G-d counteracts the problem: The book invites its readers to have an intimate relationship with themselves through G-d. It satisfies the Father Hunger by providing a sublime, new concept of G-d, the true source of love and protection.

I use this book a lot with my patients who are addicts. The Twelve-Step-Program starts with the first step: surrendering oneself to a Higher Power. This is particularly difficult for addicts because, as we’ve said, G-d and the parent are interchangeable in most people’s psyches. If the parent was the one who wounded the child, how can that now-adult child surrender to a Higher Power?

The Secret Life of G-d provides a totally different concept of G-d than the one that intimidated most people in Sunday school. It provides a concept of G-d that the addict feels safe surrendering to, and that all people who were intentionally or unintentionally wounded by their parents can embrace with love. The book is an invitation to closeness and intimacy.

One of my patients, D.S., is the adult child of an alcoholic father who abandoned him. D.S. is a golf pro. He has two sons. After therapy, including reading The Secret Life of G-d D.S. has a new, healthy relationship with his own sons. They go out every week for a father-son night, and D.S. says, “It’s like the four of us go out, because G-d is there playing with us.”

In a recent golf tournament, D.S. exercised his new The Secret Life of G-d paradigm of thinking. On the second hole, he said, “I’m going to let G-d hit the ball.” D.S. swung his club, and the ball flew, hit a tree, and rolled right into the hole. Looking heavenward, D.S. asked G-d, “Do you want to play golf or do you want to fool around?” D.S. won the tournament.

If everyone read The Secret Life of G-d and understood even half of it, we would have discovered fire for the second time in history.