They become the emotional world your nervous system has to live inside.
You choose the kind of life your nervous system has to practice.
The nervous system has patterns that can act like a two-year-old inside the personality, and certain beliefs can make fight, flight, freeze, or fawn (people pleasing) show up more often.
1. Fight may carry the belief: “I have to protect myself.”
2. Flight may carry the belief: “I have to avoid this.”
3. Freeze may carry the belief: “It is pointless to try.”
4. Fawn may carry the belief: “I have to please others to stay safe.”
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If you believe life is random, nobody is guiding reality, suffering has no deeper meaning, and the universe has no relationship at its root, your nervous system has to live inside that.
It still wants safety, meaning, purpose, and love, but it has to search for those things inside a world you believe has no ultimate source for them.
That matters because healing from generational trauma requires the courage to face inherited sadness, shame, fear, confusion, numbness, blame, control, people-pleasing,
and the survival patterns your personality learned before you knew how to choose differently.
You cannot face that much suffering without a lot of meaning.
The deeper the suffering, the deeper the meaning has to be.
You’ve got to find depth to suffering, to heal from generational trauma.
This is why belief in The Creator is not only religious.
It is psychological.
You find the deepest meaning through belief in a Creator and trusting He is good.
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There has to be one cause for the universe, because if there were no first cause holding existence in being, nothing would have the power to exist at all. – Maimonides
But the deeper question is not only whether there is a cause.
The deeper question is what kind of cause reality comes from.
If the cause is blind, random, empty, or indifferent, your nervous system has to live in a universe where pain is not guided, goodness is not ultimate, and responsibility is something humans invented to survive.
And even if a belief system says there is a Creator, replacement and rejection theology will still train the nervous system to live inside insecurity, because the relationship is built around replacement, or rejection.
But if the one cause of the universe is The Creator, and The Creator has intelligence, free choice, goodness, a desire to give, a desire for revealed goodness, and a desire for healthy relationship, then your nervous system gets to practice living inside a very different reality. – Chassidus
Life is not random.
Life is relationship, responsibility and about repair.
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Healthy spirituality helps you feel that your personality matters, which gives you more inner strength to practice compassion, boundaries, and self-forgiveness.
And trusting The Creator is good, means physical suffering is not the deepest reality.
In the world of souls, there is no physical suffering; you feel emotions, you continue as the personality you built here, some souls (your consciousness) have shame and loneliness to face, and some feel more connected, you move through thought. – Based on Chabad Chassidus
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That is where the 13 Principles of Faith explained by Maimonides become so powerful, when they are explained through Chabad Chassidus, because they are not random beliefs a person invents for comfort;
they are a structure that teaches the nervous system how to live inside a reality with one Creator, purpose, guidance, responsibility, reward, repair,
resurrection of the dead for all nations one day, some will have shame and reparations to deal with, individuals who live more selfishly resurrect decades later, and revealed goodness one day.
And these principles do not come from emotional imagination.
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Judaism is built on the idea that after centuries of slavery, the Jewish people, including 600,000+ men together with women and children, stood at Sinai and experienced The Creator revealing Himself.
They felt deep awe.
Awe is a blend of sadness because His goodness can always be more revealed, fear because our choices matter and wonder.
Those children grew up and taught their children what the nation experienced.
Those children taught their children too.
That became an unbroken tradition of parents, teachers, and communities passing down the encounter the Jewish people had with The Creator at Sinai.
So the 13 Principles are not private comfort beliefs.
They are a structure for living inside the reality the Jewish people were taught at Sinai.
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When they are understood through Chabad Chassidus, they tell the nervous system:
You are not alone inside random pain.
You are not healing for no reason.
Your choices matter.
Your responsibility matters.
Your suffering can become part of repair.
Your life is happening inside relationship.
Faith does not make healing easy.
It gives healing enough meaning to become possible.
Unhealthy beliefs cause one to feel more toxic guilt, shame and fear, healthy beliefs allow one to feel more awe, joy, bliss and deeper love.
Belief in an Infinite Creator and trusting He is good has a psychological benefit.
Belief gives meaning, but generational trauma also needs body-based practice, like daily breathwork, nourishing food choices, and exercise.
“You choose the kind of reality your nervous system has to practice living inside.”
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Based on a talk of the Lubavitcher Rebbe on a Midrash, one way to understand human relationship repair is this:
When one person does real relationship work with another human being, it is kind of like bringing an atonement offering on behalf of the Creator for the suffering built into creation.
Why doesn’t the Creator reveal more goodness? https://nextself.ai/spirituality/humanity-becomes-a-co-partner-in-creation-by-figuring-out-the-emotional-skills-needed-to-receive-the-creators-goodness/
Psychology of healthy prayer explained, how it increases emotional maturity: https://nextself.ai/spirituality/emotional-numbness-is-often-not-emptiness/
Why is suffering built into creation? Psychology explained: https://nextself.ai/spirituality/infinite-creator-wants-creation/
