Elay Amitay Halevi argues that tying your happiness to money, relationships, or other external things sets you up to crumble when they're taken away. He frames this dependence as worshiping another god and urges you to build inner wholeness that stays steady no matter what changes around you.
Money will come and will go. Relationships will come and go. We have an addiction to these other gods. How do we know if something were to be taken away? We crumble, we crash, we get sad, we get depressed. Our relationship is great. Now we believe in God. Everything is amazing. My life is amazing. And then when the relationship falters or the person steps away or shuts down or even betrays you, now your life is over. Now you feel miserable, you feel depressed, you feel sad. And of course, we all have a connection to this physical world in a way where we would be sad and we would go through mourning and we would go through loss. We all feel that. The question isn't if you feel a loss. The question is, do you feel like you can't even continue? Do you feel like you don't even know where to begin once you lose that thing, do you feel like without it you cannot be happy? That is the question. And if the answer is yes to any of those questions, it means that we are worshiping another God, as the Bible says. That is actually the true spiritual kabbalistic source of what it means to idol, worship or worship another God. You have to get to a place slowly but surely that you know whether this thing exists in your life or doesn't exist in your life. You are still whole and complete and satisfied. And it does not change what is going on inside of you, inside of your heart and your soul.
