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The Sitra Achra vs Kavanah Kards--a true story!

4/17/2018

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BS"D

We know, of course, that the sitra achra opposes everything we do to grow in kedusha, but recently, I got a big glimpse of it.  Here's what happened...
While I was in Eretz Yisroel for Pesach (a glorious time, by the way, Baruch Hashem), I got a website contact form from someone who wanted more than 1000 Kavanah Kards, Mindful Mitzvahs Pamphlets and Kavana of Mitzvohs cards in English and Hebrew. He wrote that he runs the Pirchei there and that his wife is starting a wonderful new project in their shul for mothers and daughters.
I was thrilled, of course, at the opportunity to help someone who would be bringing so many people closer to Hashem!  I emailed him back that I was excited to send them when I returned to NY after Pesach.
Last week, before Shabbos, I received a follow-up email--had I had a chance to send them out?
Enough jet lag. It was time.
I emailed him that I would take care of it that day, b'li neder then looked in my email for the original Contact Form for the list of what he requested and address to send them to.
Not there.
Hmm.
I searched for "Pirchei", "Pennsylvania", everything I could think of.
Nothing.
Hmm.
Then I looked in the email trash, thinking perhaps I had inadvertently pushed some sort of link that sucked it out of my inbox.
Nothing.
Hmmmmmm
I searched in the computer file where I keep notes on every request.
Nothing.
Hmmm
I checked my text messages. Nothing...
Looked in another email account inbox & trash. Nothing...
I sent him an email apologizing, explaining the mysterious disappearance of his contact  form and requesting that he please resend it so I could put the package together.
Two days with nothing, nothing, NOTHING.
Hmmm.
Then I started getting worried. Was I hallucinating? Losing my memory? My mind?
I even started to imagine that maybe it was a prank..
None of that helped, of course.
Finally I gave it over to the Boss with emunah and bitachon (Hashem is having this happen for a reason), hakores hatov (Thank-You, Hashem for the opportunity to have emunah & bitachon), kavei el Hashem (Hashem, I really want to do this mitzvah, but I can only do it with your help)
Suddenly, "I got an idea" (thank-you Hashem): maybe it's somewhere on the website. But where? I do all the design and maintenance now, but didn't know how to find where that information was stored. 
I finally gave credit to the sitra achra for doing such a superb job and showing me, once again, how big a threat Mindful Mitzvahs and Kavanah Kards are to his "job" of separating people from kedusha.
Suddenly, there it was tucked away in a link I don't know if I can even find again.
Immediately I copied the needed information, put together the package and took it to the post office with a ride from a friend (my car had a dead battery from an energy drain--encore from the sitra achra?).
Fifteen pounds of closeness to Hashem on it's way, at last!
What a lesson on how much the sitra achra can interfere with our positive intentions.
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BE AWARE "How the internet is altering and 'messing with' our brains, and our children's psychological development,"

3/8/2018

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BS"D

A major problem today leading to many tragedies R"L in the frum community is the issue of addiction--no matter to how it is manifest. Addiction can exist in any area, it becomes a way to mood-alter.  We can help ourselves and our loved ones avoid or escape the life limiting effects of addiction through Hashem's help and with healthy, positive emotions and beliefs. (For more about the Emotion Code & the Body Code--uniquely effective methods of helping this--please contact me or see www.SuccessfulPerception.com--my professional site)

Dr. Norman Doidge, author of two excellent books on brain neuroplasticity, & Jim Balsillie, developer of the first successful smartphone, discuss below how technology is a culprit. I put in the entire article because it's of such importance to you and your loved ones--especially children. The most impacting part is that the underlying intention of manufacturers is to create addiction.  Read further...We need to be vigilant 
Dr. Norman Doidge & the developer of the first successful smartphone discuss below how technology is a culprit. I put in the entire article because it's of such importance to Klal Yisroel.

                                             THE GREAT DISCONNECT
Digital technology is changing almost every facet of our lives, from the way we work to the way we parent. Our brains are changing, too. What does it say when we can't go more than a few minutes without reaching for our phones, or give our private information to faceless corporations without a second thought? Below, tech titan Jim Balsillie, and psychiatrist Norman Doidge wonder whether we'll ever kick this addiction, and what the internet is doing to our brains. Jim Balsillie is former chairman and co-CEO of Research in Motion (now known as BlackBerry Ltd.) the company that brought the world the first smartphone, and co-founder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

They held their discussion, by phone and over e-mail, in January and February.

JIM BALSILLIE: Will we ever kick our smartphone addiction?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Kick it? We're just getting started. Google's Project Loon is working on bringing wireless to the four billion people not yet online by using balloons in the stratosphere to carry signals to the remotest parts of the planet. And unlike other addictions that are opposed by mainstream institutions, screen time is being pushed by educators, governments and businesses. Not a chance we can kick it the way things are currently organized.

BALSILLIE: What's causing this addiction?

DOIDGE: Simply put, the chemistry and the wiring of the brain can be manipulated. There are all sorts of behavioural addictions - gambling, online porn, shopping - that take hold because they trigger the same areas of the brain as drugs. People are unsuspecting of digital addiction. That's because each addiction - cocaine, heroin, alcohol, video games - has a slightly different form and effect, so it takes a while to recognize any new addiction as such.

BALSILLIE: I recently experienced something fascinating that made me see smartphone addiction in a different light: I attended a dinner that included a young teenager. He was constantly engaging with his smartphone. His parents saw that it was poor table manners, so they took it away. The teenager then started to fidget.

His eyes darted everywhere. He couldn't calm down and was visibly uncomfortable for the next 45 minutes. I could see the kid was in pain and was manifesting it physically. I know there is always moral panic about technology, but this incident told me that, in the case of smartphones, it might be coming too late. Seeing this kid suffer and not say a word to anyone stayed with me. People now spend on average more than 10 hours a day on their screens.

This is no longer an attention economy, but an addiction economy.

DOIDGE: Digital tech is especially good at changing our brains without our awareness. The brain is neuroplastic, meaning it has a property that allows it to change its structure and function in response to mental experience. Digital technologies are uniquely "compatible" with the brain, because both are electric and also work at high speeds. Marshall McLuhan figured this out. He argued that all media extend us - the microphone extends the voice, the radio the ear, the computer the brain's processing power. In 1969, he said, "Now man is beginning to wear his brain outside his skull, and his nerves outside his skin." At the time it seemed like one of his more bizarre aphorisms. Few believed the brain was plastic and that the media could work by, in some way, connecting to and rewiring our neurons.

BALSILLIE: Are you saying that by using screens 10 hours a day we are, by definition, addicted?

DOIDGE: For some, "addiction" is just a metaphor meaning "too dependent on" or "a compulsion."

But for many, it is literally true, and they show all the signs of addiction: compulsivity, loss of control of the activity, craving, psychological dependence, using even when harmful. Everywhere we see people who must check their phones every few moments - according to Adam Alter's book Irresistible, the average office e-mail goes unanswered for only six seconds. That's compulsive! They check while driving - that's harmful - and feel agitation when they can't. They stay up late, stuck on their computers, and then can't sleep. In online-porn addictions, people develop tolerance and need ever more stimulation for excitement, start to crave the porn, without liking it, and feel withdrawal when they try to stop.

Addicts always underestimate the time spent on the activity because they're under a spell.

If you think of addiction only in quantitative terms, you worry about, "Am I spending too much time online?" But our brain is sculpted by whatever we do repeatedly, and 10 hours a day also drives huge qualitative changes. The most important factor in any technology is what it does to our brains. In this case, it's plummeting attention spans, patience, memories or how social media is creating insecurity. So there are significant mental health issues involved.

BALSILLIE: What do you think about personal responsibility?

Have we alone made ourselves addicted? Because I definitely don't think the blame should rest solely on users, especially since big tech companies now hire teams of hundreds of neuroscientists to teach what applications will have the "stickiest" effect on the brain, so they become deliberately addictive to their users. As a brain guy, does that make you feel guilty?

DOIDGE: Is it guilt we feel when we find out our relative is a snake?
These people are behavioural psychologists and behavioural neuroscientists whose focus is not therapeutic, but on manipulating behaviour to create craving and anxiety if we try to resist it.

BALSILLIE: So we should believe James Williams, the former Google strategist, when he said in The Guardian: "The dynamics of the attention economy are structurally set up to undermine human will." What are the techniques these behaviourists use?

DOIDGE: Originally, they mastered moulding complex behaviours incrementally by giving animals rewards. Doing so, they discovered important things about learning and even how to treat phobias and aspects of anxiety.

Now, they guide software engineers to layer each new pop-up or message or interaction with "juice" and clickbait - colour or novel stimuli - that connect to the brain's "orienting reflex" so that we involuntarily turn our attention to that thing. It also triggers chemicals that put the brain in a state that maximizes our readiness to attend to that thing. So, when something novel appears, it's pure neural "bling." You can't not look at it. These scientists are the true masters of the art of distraction. We look because this brain circuitry evolved over millions of years to make us reorient our interest to something novel, because it might be a predator or prey - our next meal - or a mate.

Then, if a quick reward is attached - such as buying a product with a click, a seductive image, a "like" or reading that some rival has just been humiliated - dopamine, another chemical, is released, consolidating that circuit. Our brain reward centre lights up and we feel a thrill. These behaviourists carefully engineer the timing of the stimuli they present. Neurons that fire together wire together, so that over time, links are moulded and we form new circuits and get addicted. Data gathered from our keystrokes can be used to further addict us, in a tailor-made way, and sold to advertisers and even to politicians, who use it to personalize their message to us, to get us to buy what they are selling.

BALSILLIE: But why would behaviourists do this?

DOIDGE: Not all do, but those who do would probably say, "For the reward." That's a joke, by the way. I would say that as their science became an "ism" - behaviourism, in this case - many leading behaviourists concluded that human beings are little more than a suite of reflexes and conditioned responses, determined by previous stimuli. And therefore we lack free will. And when you have such an impoverished view of people, what is to restrain you from doing what you did in the lab every day to those habit machines also known as human beings?

BALSILLIE: CEOs of big tech companies are simply capitalists doing what capitalists are supposed to do: maximize profit within the rules set by legislators.

And of course if you lobby those legislators, you get rules and regulations that help you increase profit. In an economy of intangibles, the marketplace frameworks are everything - absolutely everything. These companies benefit enormously from addiction so they build it into their products wherever possible.

DOIDGE: I have a colleague, perhaps the best known psychiatrist in the United States, who went to work for Google, to help them analyze all their data in terms of what it reveals about mental illness. I asked him what he thought about the industry leaders and their motivations. One of Google's founders told him, "I'm 40 years old and I'm worth $40-billion, and believe me, I really don't need more money. I want to make the world a better place." Perhaps they both wanted to believe that.

BALSILLIE: Don't ever believe a rapacious capitalist when they tell you they are not a rapacious capitalist. The joke is on those who take these "noble" pronouncements to heart. Global tech is a predatory, vicious game that very few people are built to play. It's a lot easier to virtue signal and say things such as "Money isn't that important to me" when you've got billions in your pockets. If you want to figure out the motivations of tech capitalists, look at the outcomes and infer from there.

DOIDGE: How did these companies position themselves so we can't do without them?

BALSILLIE: These companies are called "multisided platform businesses" because they bring together different groups of customers and suppliers in a way that would not be efficiently possible without the internet platform in the middle. Think eBay, Airbnb and Uber. Without any additional production costs, they attract more participants and become exponentially more valuable and entrenched. This is called "Metcalfe's Law of Network Economics." There was a common misconception that RIM's business was smartphones, but we made virtually all of our money - more than $1-billion profit per quarter - on our multisided service platform that made the whole BlackBerry system work.

We enabled mobile users to seamlessly connect to their chosen application using 600 carriers globally. But there's an important twist when services are free: Without paying anything, you're not really a customer any more - you are now the product being sold. These compelling free apps you're addicted to? They're what's needed to bait you in order to generate valuable data for an internet company.

DOIDGE: Well, how do you feel about this, as the rapacious capitalist who was there at the start? You ran the company that created the BlackBerry, often called the CrackBerry. I am a shrink. Help me to help you deal with all the guilt you must feel.

BALSILLIE: No guilt here! Our specialty was security and protecting individual privacy. We didn't take people's private data and sell it to advertisers so that they could then target them. And we certainly didn't have any professional behaviourists on staff or on retainer.

This is a totally, totally different realm. Today's smartphones are designed to be highly addictive and extract whatever information they can. I am still troubled by the sight of that vulnerable teenager I told you about.

DOIDGE: It's sad. He probably had FOMO - the fear of missing out - if not constantly connected to social media. Hooray for us - we've created a new social-anxiety neurosis! But, to be fair to you, you are not in that "we." The fact that there were no brain scientists at RIM explains why I was never really "addicted" to my BlackBerry any more than to a landline. Some people were perhaps co-dependent-lite on them, but not like on today's smartphones. I think that's because the original BlackBerry wasn't a fullblown computer. It was truly a "smart" phone, so I, like most, used mine to connect with people of my own choosing.

BALSILLIE: People are paying such a heavy price for their screentime addictions, with all the attendant issues: anxiety, depression, envy, etc. And everyone is losing their privacy, too. Because I've never used social media and am not addicted to my phone, I have very little understanding of why people are exposing their lives and their kids' lives online.

DOIDGE: Privacy and mental health are inextricably linked, especially for young people. You need periods of privacy to form a self and an identity, a task not completed until at least the late teens. Having an autonomous, spontaneous self is the result of a long psychological process where you have time to "step back" from the crowd, and from your parents, to reflect. It requires time to let that self - your true feelings, your own quirky, uncurated reactions - emerge, spontaneously. The new phones foster enmeshment with parents, and the world, and hamper individuation, the process of becoming a unique individual, because kids are overconnected. And peer groups at that age can be Lord of the Flies cruel - and often love to mercilessly hunt down, expose and denounce the eccentricities of emerging individuals.

The "wisdom of crowds" is overrated; many crowds are far more regressive mentally and emotionally - and stupider - than the individuals who make them up. Kids know this, but lacking a solid sense of self, still long for the mob's approbation and are terrified of its censure.

And so they keep checking for and fishing for "likes" and now are compulsively virtue signalling to avoid being disliked, instead of developing actual virtue. Fear is one reason that virtue signalling is our chief vice. Social media is a 24/7 hall of mirrors, with everyone watching themselves - and everyone else - and making comparisons, all the time. This hugely exacerbates the ordinary painful self-consciousness, insecurity, narcissistic vulnerability and drama of young people's lives. How can anyone not become thin-skinned living in a round-the-clock panopticon of peers, all competing with each other for attention in an electronic colosseum? Depression has increased since 2005, most rapidly among people 12 to 17. That's not all caused by screens, but if we're spending 10 hours a day looking at screens, it's definitely a factor. Leaked documents show that Facebook told advertisers it can now track teenagers who feel "insecure," "anxious," "nervous," "worthless," "stupid" and "useless." Great. Now we have people exploiting a kid's "confidential" data by selling it to businesses that will further exploit the kid's depression. Everyone knows that social media is a world of show: masks and advertisements for yourself. It develops what psychoanalysts call the persona, a false self or facade in which one is just playing a role to impress others. But kids know they can't live up to that role and therefore fear they are imposters. It also teaches kids precisely the wrong way out of the mess: grow your vanity.

Post selfies of your best underwear pic on Snapchat; airbrush your opinions to get likes. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher, pondered the soul of the modern bourgeois as affected by social life. He observed - as beautifully summarized by Allan Bloom - that the bourgeois "is the man who when dealing with others thinks only of himself and in his understanding of himself thinks only of others." That is many kids today.

BALSILLIE: But if it's unpleasant, why do kids keep coming back?

DOIDGE: Because that is the world they know - and because it has a shiny surface. But you see what it hides when you take it away. Kids become insanely anxious when they don't have their phones, like that teenager you mentioned. They freak out if they go on a camping trip: Not bears, but wilderness without wireless is their nightmare. Parents increasingly discipline kids by taking away the phones, because that's the best way to get their attention. Then the kids have a meltdown and feel they've just had a part of themselves amputated. They have a point, in a cyborgian kind of way.

BALSILLIE: Actually, I know many people in Silicon Valley who deliberately constrain their children's use of the social-media applications that they, as parents, created at their companies. They send their kids to low-tech, or no-tech, Waldorf-like schools, complete with rolling hills and wildlife. They know smartphone addiction is a problem - they intended it just as it's playing out, but protect their families from it.

The Silicon Valley elites deeply value their privacy. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, bought four houses around his home because he wants to ensure he and his family have privacy.

It's not a trivial matter to be the pioneer of surveillance capitalism as he is and still maintain his family's total privacy. As I said earlier, the joke is on the users ... But why do people sell their privacy so cheaply?

DOIDGE: I think one of the problems in a mass communications-based society is that we develop mass tastes, and then the meat grinder of globalization further homogenizes us, and the more similar we become, the more interchangeable and expendable we feel. We don't feel we matter as individuals. So, for the insecure, it's nice to know someone is watching, someone is taking notes, tracking my irrelevant existence online! But what terrifies me, Jim, is that this generation, which has never known much privacy, is understandingly indifferent to its loss. They don't understand that there can be no liberal democracy without privacy.

The whole idea of liberal democracy, going back to John Stuart Mill, is that the liberty of the individual is our best bulwark against authoritarianism and the tyranny of the democratic majority, or government, or the powerful, because they have the numbers, or wherewithal, and historically seek to dominate others and determine how they must live.

Liberal democracy is thus the form of government that is expressly designed to protect the individual's liberty against that authoritarianism. It does so by dividing life into a limited public sphere, for government, and a private sphere, where government cannot infringe and which it is also duty bound to protect. It is the idea of the private sphere that made us into a free people.

But these new technologies, as currently organized, are creating a generation indifferent to privacy, and giving governments, business and others tools to monitor it. And privacy monitored is privacy destroyed.

BALSILLIE: One of the things I've learned from you is that, in medicine, when you use drugs, there are no "side effects," only "effects." Drugs go everywhere in the body. While they might target an organ and do some good there, they also affect other areas. What we call "side effects" are just the drug doing what it does in places we don't want that to happen.

The designers of digital devices set out to addict users and there has certainly been more and more publicity on this lately. But are we fully aware of the consequences that they didn't intend?

DOIDGE: No, because they unfold incrementally, beyond awareness, and sometimes involve losing awareness, as the "specs" of our brains change. For example, our brain maps in relation to our bodies in space seem to be changing. Because we spend all day staring 18 inches ahead, we are losing bodily and peripheral visual awareness. People are walking down the street in a more disembodied, ungrounded way, bumping into others. Body therapists tell me they are seeing 20-year-olds with the posture of 75-year-olds now, stooped, with heads way forward, from screen time.

BALSILLIE: You've also talked about how exposure to screens affects infants and toddlers - how digital technologies that claim to be connecting people are also disconnecting us in important ways.

DOIDGE: They overenmesh and disconnect at the same time. A few years ago, I was at a lecture with clinicians, discussing visual changes, and a preschool teacher there observed that, increasingly, kids weren't looking at other people when speaking with them.

Another teacher there reported the same loss of eye contact. At first it seemed to them like these kids might have Asperger's, which is on the rise, and involves a discomfort with eye contact.

But as the teachers watched the parents picking those kids up, they saw they were constantly on their smartphones, not looking at their kids - or the teachers, either, for that matter. As cute as these people's own kids were, in the moment, the kids couldn't compete with an entire virtual reality engineered to keep their parents distracted.

BALSILLIE: Were they imitating their parents' bad manners, or is it something deeper?

DOIDGE: Possibly deeper. A big brain task of the first two years of life is wiring up the right hemisphere modules that allow us to read other people's faces to learn about their emotions and, in turn, about our own. This is learned by the rapid-fire exchange of glances between infant and mother when there is so much holding and leisurely gazing into each other's eyes. You know, baby swallows milk, grimaces, mother sees it and unconsciously makes the same face back - she mirrors the baby - showing the baby the distress it is expressing, then sweetly says, "There, there, honey, the milk went down the wrong passage, you're upset in your tummy, let me burp you. You'll feel better." Now, that feeding interaction does more than soothe the baby. It actually teaches the baby about emotions, and that facial expressions show emotions, and ultimately that you can read the internal states of others. That is how we learn about other minds. The same happens when a baby smiles: A healthy adult can't not smile back. You need thousands of those exchanges to develop that emotion-reading right hemisphere, and these exchanges, when they happen, occur very fast. If you are not paying close attention, you miss the baby's smile, or grimace, and your face won't mirror the right emotion back. Good studies show that when the parent doesn't mirror in real time, the baby gets extremely anxious, and if the face is "still" when it should move, babies actually freak out.

BALSILLIE: So, if parents are distracted, either by a screen or even waiting for a message - i.e., they are multitasking - and not giving the undivided attention required to wire up the brain in this period, you can't do it to your full potential. Because humans are born without a fully developed right hemisphere and we need parents to complete our development, right?

DOIDGE: Exactly. In brain terms, infants need people bonded to them so closely that they make the requisite sacrifices of attention. My fear is that we are slipping into a new kind of split-attentional-neglect, in a critical period of brain development, because increasingly parents, although physically present, are psychologically online. A large University of Texas at Austin study shows that even having a phone that is off within reach lowers your cognitive capacity, because it still steals your attention. You're so wired into it. If living in virtual reality means living in something that is a simulacrum of reality, we might say that we, by being psychologically online, are making ourselves into virtual parents.

BALSILLIE: Being mindful of these effects and limiting screen time definitely helps.

DOIDGE: Definitely, but only partially. Even if you limit your child's screen time to what you think is high-level educational television, if their school is pushing computers and pushing down attention spans, that is way more important than a hundred hours of Sesame Street. McLuhan's whole point was the medium is the message, meaning it isn't the content of the medium - Sesame Street - or even the time spent on it, but the way the medium sculpts the brains of an entire society, and now, the planet. Media gurus in our time are merely mouthfuls of praise for what high tech will do for you - and silent on what they will take away.

BALSILLIE: So when it comes to the brain, it's basically use-it-or-lose-it?

DOIDGE: Correct. McLuhan said that each medium can "step up" one sense and step down another. This has huge consequences. Reading books stepped up sight and created a linear habit of mind that valued logic: You go down the page line by line, then turn to the next. This gave rise to a habit of thinking in terms of logical progression of argument. The logician asks of any statement in an argument or conversation, "Does this follow?" But in the digital age, linearity is stepped down. We now ask, "Does it grab you?" Because now information comes at us from many competing directions all at once. Our so-called "great communicators" are those who can best distract us from all the other distractions. When you leave linearity and logic behind, life becomes a Twitter feed: a series of hyper-emotional non sequiturs. That's manifest in our deteriorating, increasingly ignorant public discourse. It's no accident that our education system - itself desperately FOMO - is both computer-crazy and in favour of dropping history, a linear discipline par excellence. That is exactly the wrong move. What we need are schools that teach what screens can't do - to immunize students from the medium's faults. They should get back to teaching the most important books ever written. But that's not enough, Jim. Where are the various levels of government on all these issues?

BALSILLIE: Canada lacks leadership on these issues. We need more people stepping up and engaging intelligently, with integrity and public-mindedness. For goodness sake, we have all three layers of government closely partnering with all of these companies, even at the expense of domestic firms and our national prosperity. They are all advancing foreign tech on a daily basis. So let's not confuse moralizing with either intelligence or commitment.

Just look at the recent "deals" our government made with Facebook, Google and, maybe soon, Amazon. I've never seen anything like this in all my business career by any developed nation. When that leaked memo showed Facebook pitching companies their ability to target kids with ads when they are feeling insecure, depressed or worthless, Australians freaked out. For the issues of data collecting and selling, privacy and transparency breaches, Germans investigated and litigated, the EU started regulating in earnest, and the United States began holding Senate committee hearings. And Canada? We rush to partner with them! Our public officials have to stop sucking up to big foreign tech and start regulating them. Who is governing who here?

DOIDGE: What are the governance tools policy-makers can use to address this?

BALSILLIE: First, we must begin regulating the dominant internet companies in areas such as transparency of their advertisers, the ethics embedded in their algorithms and anti-competitive practices. This is what responsible governments do.

DOIDGE: And then?

BALSILLIE: We must create sovereign laws regarding data ownership, which is a defining issue of our time. More than six years ago, the European Union presented detailed proposals in this realm called GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which becomes law in May, 2018. European policy-makers have been working on this for almost 10 years. In Canada, all of our political parties and policy-makers have let Canadians down with their inaction on this issue. Like the citizens of the EU, Canadians could exercise our sovereign right to ensure we own our personal data, set clear rules on the collection of personal data and for governing how the rights to our personal data are transferred to others. Big foreign tech companies will lobby hard against these measures, but I would argue our governments have the duty and the power to protect Canadians, especially our young. Canada would be in a much better place than where we are today if we copied what the EU policy leaders are doing.

DOIDGE: I'd vote for a politician who would support this, because it would actually be getting a liberal democratic government to enhance liberty by protecting the private sphere. What else?

BALSILLIE: We can support an alternative technology architecture. Much of the root problem with these apps is their centralized corporate control, where company profit is based on selling more ads to addicted eyeballs. We can lessen this dominance by supporting emerging rival applications that use blockchain. Blockchain is a new kind of transparent and incorruptible internet system that allows you to better control your own content because it's designed in a way where there's no centralized database or point of control. No one individual or one company can control it. The trust is built within the system architecture.

And trust in the system matters especially now, when there is so much mistrust in centralized power structures. If Canada strategically embraces blockchain for social media and other important applications, we can address issues of privacy and manipulation. Plus, this creates an opportunity for our domestic innovators to generate inclusive prosperity. It sounds like a complicated thing to do but it's not. It's actually very feasible.

DOIDGE: We may be the last generation that understands that privacy is worth defending. But how will we know when we are on the right track?

BALSILLIE: People won't just click "like" when they read this. They will call their MPs, too.

Copyright 2018, Norman Doidge and Jim Balsillie
This originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.


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Hashem isn't always so "hidden"

2/4/2018

0 Comments

 
BS"D
There have been many occasions in my life where Hashem might have been considered "concealed", but was as "obvious" to me as could be. 
Right from the very first time I was "inspired" to go to a Friday night dinner and became frum, (which turned out to be Shabbos Shuva), to the seeming "coincidence" of the first Kavanah Kards after asking Hashem's help with my great problem of focusing during davening, Hashem has been a wonderful "partner", and not at all "hidden" to me.
The new French Kavanah Kards is no exception. French has been on my mind since it was requested by someone in Montreal over a year ago, yet somehow I couldn't "make it happen"--the same as with the Yiddish Kavanah Kards. 
Several times I told Hashem that I wanted to do it, but needed His help. 
Suddenly, last week, a wonderful Ambassador in Montreal sent me an incredulous email: "someone" had made French Kavanah Kards! She saw them when she was in a school there and emailed me about it. Then she sent a picture. 
Sure enough, it was the same layout as the Hebrew men's Kavanah Kard, down to the Kavana of Mitzvohs wording on the back!
WOW! What a beautiful demonstration by Hashem how much nachas ruach (happiness) He has from Kavanah Kards and Mindful Mitzvahs! In fact, probably the reason I couldn't get it done was just so that He could cause it to happen!
I have emailed with one of the woman involved, and hopefully she will be able to see the fruits of their labor of love, BE"H.
It is impossible to express my gratitude in again being able to fulfill the mitzvahs of hakores hatov (gratitude), l'hodos u'l'hallel es Hashem (praising and thanking Hashem) and ain od milvado (acknowledging that there is none besides Hashem)!
If you or anyone you know would like to use, help sponsor or spread these wonderful "gifts" to the French-speaking community, please contact me.
Tisku l'mitzvohs to the WONDERFUL, precious Montreal people who made this happen!
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It might not be for everyone, but....

10/30/2017

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Mindful Mitzvahs is an initiative for an approach to doing mitzvahs that might not be for "everybody". It is for the person who wants spiritual "sparkle"--to vividly experience dveikus (connection to Hashem) in their daily life.  Is that what you want?
Does feeling uplifted and excited about Yiddishkeit make you happy?
Do you want to experience Hashem lovingly, encouraging you on your path?
Then it's for you!
What's wonderful about Mindful Mitzvahs is that you don't have to "change your life", and still your life will change--and happily.
To do that, you don't have to plunge into the rapids of trying frantically to cram every minute with more and more mitzvahs so that you can't stop and "experience" them--all you have to do is to take the first step to upgrading all your mitzvahs and Hashem will lovingly hold your hand through growing until it is "who you are".
Want support, encouragement, caring? 
Try Mindful Mitzvahs
Want spiritual satisfaction?
Try Mindful Mitzvahs
Want closeness with Hashem?
Try Mindful Mitzvahs
Convinced? Why wait?
Start RIGHT NOW with saying, "With Your help Hashem, I am fulfilling the mitzvah of closeness to You as You commanded. Please help me!"
Then spend 1, 5 or 10 minutes thanking Hashem for all of your problems. 
Stuck? Say to Hashem, "I really want to do this, but I need Your help!" and "give" your stuckness to Hashem. Then try again.
After you can do that step, add another step from the Mindful Mitzvahs pamphlet, which you can download online and print or get from us.
Use the same approach as above.
For more hands-on help also try getting a "buddy" to do it with you, And, of course, contact me for any help I can give!
Keep doing it a little at a time, and watch your very own "miracles" happen! 



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In which direction is your nose pointed?

10/26/2017

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BS"D

Below is a question and answer from a Thursday night lecture of Rabbi Avigdor Miller (zt"l) which I'm inviting you to consider.
If anyone you care about is not fully on "the way in" or is, HV"Shalom, on "the way out", please consider doing Mindful Mitzvahs and dedicating it to them--the only "cost" is your time. 
And please share this with others, as you also will also receive great schar for the mitzvah of bringing others closer to Hashem for whatever they do!
The Mindful Mitzvahs and materials can be downloaded here. For more information and support, please contact me.
Rabbi Miller's question and answer:

QUESTION:
 
Was Lot a tzaddik? If he was, then wasn't he just as good when he left Avrohom?
 
ANSWER:

Lot was a great tzaddik even when he left of Avrohom, no question about it. You know that when Lot went to Sodom, and the malochim came to him and Lot welcomed them into his home, he was risking his life! He was a big tzaddik.Would you risk your life for hachnasas orchim? Lot did it! But you have to know even the greatest tzaddik, when he takes a step in the wrong direction, we don't care what he is, we look where he's headed too.

     You know, there are a lot of people who are not frum, not religious, not observant, but they are on the way in. There are a lot of people that are observant but they are on the way out. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu is going to judge a man for the direction where his nose is pointing. Here is an Orthodox man with two long payos, with a kapoto. He looks like a real, genuine chossid, but his wife tells me that he's on the way out. Here is a young boy, doesn't know anything yet, he just put on a yarmulke, he walked in from the street, but his heart is turning towards Hashem; he's on the way in. Now if they would be matched together, he's a nobody, he doesn't know a thing! This man is knowledgeable, this man practices everything, this boy comes from a home where nothing is practiced, he barely keeps kashrus.

     No. It depends in which direction you're headed, the man who's headed toHakadosh Baruch Hu, that's the one who's going to be chosen. Everything depends on the direction where a man is headed..

Mindfully yours... 

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Who's holding the stick?

10/24/2017

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​RABBI ASHEAR TRANSCRIPT

One Boss
The Bet HaLevi wrote a pamphlet on the Mitzvah of Bitachon- a feeling in the heart of total reliance on Hashem. There he says that Bitachon could only come after a person has engrained in himself the Emunah that nobody in this world has any say over any matter other than Hashem. A person cannot give a benefit or take away something from another individual, if it wasn't decreed by Hashem first. When we sit down in a meeting to try to make a sale, we have to know, the buyer has absolutely no say on whether or not we are going to make money there. It is only up to Hashem. The buyer is just a puppet. If somebody made a decision that caused him a loss of money, that was also 'מאת ה-from Hashem.
Our financial position is in His hands. Our free will is limited to areas that have to do with Averot and Mitzvot. A person cannot receive something, even one moment before he is decreed to have it. And nobody could delay giving him something that he's decreed to have now. If someone is wondering why didn't he get a raise yet, and he's thinking, "Maybe the boss forgot or maybe he's not noticing me," that could be true, but it's only because the time for the raise did not yet arrive, so Hashem didn't bring it about. The moment the person is supposed to get a raise, the boss will remember, or the boss will take notice.
The same is true in every area. There is only one Boss in this world, and He has all the say. If a person is being harmed by another individual, and he's trying every which way to free himself from that harm, if he doesn't also ask Hashem to stop the harm from coming, says the Bet HaLevi, he's like an individual who is getting beaten with a rod, and he's pleading with the rod to stop hurting him, never once asking the one who's holding the rod to stop.
Everything that happens to us is a manifestation of Hashem's will. How fortunate are we that Hashem is always doing everything for the best. When a person knows this, he'll feel at ease wherever he is, because he knows he's in Hashem's hands.
At the same time, we're obligated to make our own efforts and do what is necessary in the normal way of the world to obtain our needs. Hashem controls everything, but he put the obligation of Hishtadlut upon us. As the Chovot HaLevavot writes in the Shaar HaBitachon (Ch. 4) man is obligated to take care of his food, drink, and clothing according to his needs; he shouldn't throw that on Hashem and say, "if it is decreed for me to have food then I'll have it."The reason is because Hashem told us that's our part-to live in this world in a natural way. It has to look like we're the ones making the money. But the entire time we have to believe that it has nothing to do with us.
There was a man who refused to take medicine for his weakened condition saying he's a Ba'al Bitachon and doesn't need medicine. The Chazon Ish told him, "You're obligated to take care of your health the same way you would do for your friend. Overcome your will now and listen to the doctors. That is your Mitzvah."
When a person knows that he is just going through the motions, and the results are out of his control, he'll be able to do everything with a sense of calm, knowing he's just making an effort because Hashem wants him to. He'll have less second guessing, less regret and less heartache when he doesn't see the results that he wanted. He'll say, "This is what Hashem wants, so I'm happy with it." Furthermore, when he knows Hashem is in full control, he won't fear people, he'll never do something wrong.
The Midrash says in Devarim Rabba (Ch. 4) that Hashem tells us, "Listen to Me, do My will; nobody ever listened to Me and lost as a result." When someone knows he only has one boss to please, he'll be a man of principle. And this knowledge, says the Bet HaLevi, is the stepping-stone for having true Bitachon in Hashem.
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Say "thank-you" for what you don't want?

10/17/2017

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We all know that hakores hatov is a good thing. When we get or have something good happen, gratitude shows good character, makes us feel we're good people and encourages more of the same for us. But the concept of having gratitude for what we DON"T want in our life? How does that make sense? Shouldn't we avoid  the unpleasantness? Gratitude is almost like REWARDING it!
At least, that's what I thought until I heard about the concept and got a book containing 180 stories of "miracles" that came after people expressed gratitude for problems ranging from finances to infertility.  The book, Say Thank-you and See Miracles, is written by Rabbi Shalom Arush of Yerushalayim. The stories in it range from impressive to unbelievable, but they are first-hand accounts of what people experienced when they said thank-you for their problems. 
Rabbi Arush instructs people to say thank-you for half an hour a day, and for emergencies to do it for six hours! He says to really connect to the gratitude using prayer, singing and even dancing! What a concept!
Impressed by so many positive accounts, I decided to give it a try.  The next day, during a 20 minute walk to a friend for Shabbos lunch, I expressed thanks for a list of issues that even included things from my childhood.  I did it again the next day as "pauses" in my day allowed for it. And again. And again.
After a week, I realized the phone was ringing more with clients, including some who had no longer been coming and referrals from people I had worked with years before!  One person got my name from a vitamin company whose products are among the few I deal with as the only location to get that product in my area. I didn't sell it to him because he didn't need it yet, but after talking with me, he became a client!
Hmm. This thanking has got something! Plus, it was a perfect addition to Mindful Mitzvahs.
Amazingly, as always, Hashem sent the refuah before the makah. For "some reason" I had been inspired to leave an extra place in the Mindful Mitzvahs pamphlet. Perfect! People could write it in as part of their Mindful Mitzvahs program.
I did sense that, since people would be doing it as part of a total Mindful Mitzvahs effort--combining it with doing the Kavanah of Mitzvahs and focus on Hashem's name during davening and brachos (kind of like a spiritual "chemical reaction) --it might be "enough" to do it for 10 minutes a day and increase the amount of time if necessary.
Always being one to incorporate anything that can improve client results, I also started recommending that my clients say thank-you at least ten minutes a day for their problems--even non-Jewish ones (what could it hurt to acknowledge that there is a Borei Olam who has a plan for every aspect of our lives?) 
Interesting.
One frum man, who did the Mindful Mitzvahs program as his part in our work on his family's issues, told me that a co-worker was so amazed by HIS transition in just a few weeks, that she asked for my number!  She said he stood up straighter, spoke more positively, and  smiled for the first time in the more than seven years she had known him! He himself reported vast improvements in his family situation, in addition to the problem he initially sought my help for, B"H!.
So, dear reader, my advice to you is simple--start saying, and making every effort to feel gratitude for what you don't want in your life. It acknowledges that Hashem is perfect and does everything for our highest good out of His love for us, so there must be an important reason that we have it happening. Saying thank-you acknowledges that and helps strengthen our "emunah" muscle, if you will.
Combine that with Mindful Mitzahs (Kavana before doing mitzvahs & focus on the meanings of Hashem's names during brachas--materials on the Mindful Mitzvahs Campaign materials page). Stir in a generous portion of teshuvah for NOT doing all this before (even if you didn't know about it), and Abra cadabra, your spiritual "chemical reaction"!
What have you got to lose? Your problems!
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Mindful Mitzvahs "Miracle"

9/7/2017

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Last night I returned from a wonderful Mindful Mitzvahs event in Baltimore Maryland. It was so heartening to see the people who came to learn about how to get closer to Hashem!
One especially meaningful experience was that of a woman whose son was in the path of the Category 5 Hurricane Irma that was raging toward Florida.  He was stuck in Tampa, in precisely the area it was headed for and couldn't get away from it. She was beside herself with worry, of course, and came to see me to help.  
Although I was happy to support her, I'm not a rebbetzin or in a leadership position, I guided her through the Mindful Mitzvahs process.  
First she pledged tzedaka, stating her intention to do it "as Hashem commanded". Then I helped her do the Guided Teshuva Process for the issues of the danger to her son and her worry, also stating first all of the mitzvahs she was fulfilling.  After that, I  set a timer for 10 minutes and told her to thank Hashem without stop for everything she was worried about.
As she was doing the thank-you to Hashem, I stepped into another room, to give her the opportunity to be fully present doing it without my presence.
In that room was the friend who hosted the weekend. She was watching updates of the storm on the internet. As I was watching, a newscaster announced that the hurricane had slowed to a category 3 and had shifted direction and would be farther away from Tampa! 
I could hardly believe it myself, but it was true!
I returned to the woman doing the Mindful Mitzvahs process, beyond excited to tell her about what had happened. She was just finishing up, and looked and sounded much better, Baruch Hashem!
When I told her the news about the hurricane, she could barely contain her  joy. 
Later that day, she called to say how good everything was and how grateful she was to Hashem for sending such a yeshua.
Of course, I take no credit or responsibility for what someone experiences when they become closer to Hashem. Nor is it possible to assume what will happen for someone who does the Mindful Mitzvah Process.
What I can assure you is that Hashem will help--either immediately or later, but you will change your state of being and relationship with your issue, and so in come way, it will change BE"H.
Everyone can do the Mindful Mitzvahs Campaign on their own level. Why not do it now?
​Wishing you a k'siva v'chasima tova!

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What a SUCCESS!

8/4/2017

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The Mindful Mitzvahs Campaign, which officially started on Tisha B'Av with our banner in the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation video and ad in their magazine, is a huge success, baruch Hashem!
There were more than 300 visitors to the website that week, plus emails and calls. People from all over the United States, Canada and England reached out in response to the ad. The desire of people to connect more fully with Hashem was beautiful!
Many people told me things like "I've been praying for this.", "This is just what I need." and so much more! Heartfelt expressions of their realization and longing for closer connection to the Ribono Shel Olam.
Baruch Hashem thousands of Kavanah Kards and Mindful Mitzvah pamphlets are already on their way to the people that contacted me. Several asked for 50 and even 100 of everything, in order to spread them in their communities.
And the wave continues with emails and calls daily!
Even some wonderful people have taken it upon themselves to keep cards on them and pass them on to people they meet.
There's no mistaking Hashem's great pleasure from the Mindful Mitzvahs Campaign, with Him inspiring so many, many people to contact us.
Would you like a closer relationship with Hashem? 
It's no "coincidence" that you're reading this.
Why not answer His call and join us in your 40 day commitment to honor Him? Also, please consider sharing Kavanah Kards with others and making whatever donation you can to help us expand to others.
​Thanks!
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Mindful Mitzvahs Campaign

7/22/2017

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It's amazing to retrospectively look at the "happening" of the Mindful Mitzvahs Campaign.  It all just "seemed" to happen--
Having the Kavanah Kards weekend in Baltimore.
The concept of the perfect combination of Kavanah Kards with Kavana of Mitzvahs.
The name "Mindful Mitzvahs" spontaneously "coming to mind".
The idea "catching on" with the hostess, Sarah Storch, and the women who attended.
The writer who attended the final "unexpected" presentation and wanted to help.
On and on...
This is so obviously something that Hashem "wanted" to happen and orchestrated, but, in retrospect it was so elegantly assembled.

Mindful Mitzvahs is a concept that can create a huge wave of elevation, one mindful bracha and mitzvah at a time by one person, then another, then another. And anyone can do one a day. It's something that can spread and expand as more people see they can be successful at it, with Hashem's help.

That's why the idea of a campaign is so powerful. People can partner and encourage each other. It's not an overwhelming "head in the clouds" obligation. No, it's something everyone can do on any level--even children!

Help it catch fire. Join the Mindful Mitzvahs Campaign and see what happens in your life. It has totally changed mine!

Go to MINDFUL MITZVAHS for more info.



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