Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 26
“It is not true that man is condemned to life imprisonment in a realm wherein causality, struggle for existence, will to power, libido sexualis and the craving for prestige are the only springs of action. (Man is Not Alone pg.140).
Rabbi Heschel is puncturing the mendacity that so many people live in with these sentences. He is calling the societal/conventional norms out as lies we tell ourselves, the ways we hinder our gaining of more knowledge, the reason so many people who have “made it” are suffering an inner conflict which they cannot reason out. This inner conflict is because they have forgotten there is more to their life than goals and achievements for self.
Rabbi Heschel smashes the idols we have worshiped/served: prestige, sex, power, causality, etc., in the first sentence above. The wording is reverberating inside of me; “it is not true” begins this first sentence to call attention to the ways we have deceived ourselves into believing these idols are actually in service of God for some of us, believing there is no God, so it is all about me, and, what I am practicing, self-satisfaction/indulgence/care is the path to freedom. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, calling to us, speaking as a prophet to us, that these ways of being are actually imprisoning us, not freeing us. We are the ones who condemn ourselves by giving in to the deception of ‘conventional notions’; the deception of another(s) like the ads we see; and our own self-deception!
The word power comes from the latin meaning ‘able’. Power means we are able to do something in its original form. Yet, we have always confused power with domination, power with control, power with strength to subdue something and or someone. We have become imprisoned by our need for power over another person(s) and our society is suffering greatly because of it. We are told we have power and every spiritual discipline, at its core, teaches us how to use power for the greater good, not just for our own good. It is not true that one race, creed, religion, country, way of being should have power over another, yet we base our self-esteem, our self-worth, our self-dignity on how much and/or how little power we have over another person/people and believe that power is and/or should be the prime motivator for our actions. Rabbi Heschel is calling this inaccurate belief a lie we tell ourselves.
The origin of the word prestige is ‘illusion’. Rabbi Heschel is telling us that we are not stuck in the prison of illusion. We do not have to “keep up with the Jones’”, we don’t have to worry all the time about “what will the neighbors think” and we can leave the obsession of “how do I look to the world”. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc are today’s roads to the imprisonment we are in. They are not the causes, we are the causes. Buying into our self-deceiving notions and mental cliches have made billions for the creators of these and other social media outlets. We are able/have the power to let go of our illusions and seek truth and connection. We have the ability/power to respect, enjoy and grow our inner core, our inner life, our self-esteem and respect so we don’t have to give in to the illusions-positive and/or negative that society puts on us and we put on ourselves.
Teen suicides are on the rise, addiction, depression and anxiety disorders are on the rise because of our inability to leave these self-imposed prisons. Anger, resentment, prejudice are on the rise because of our inability to leave these self-imposed prisons. Our democracy, our ability to serve more than ourselves are on the rise because of these self-imposed prisons. It is time to hear the call of Rabbi Heschel, it is time to hear the call of the prophets, it is time to hear the call of Jesus, it is time to hear the call of their disciples and leave these self-imposed prisons of illusion, power, sexual immorality, etc. It is time to stop using and believing the excuses and mendacity we use to promote imprisoning another person(s) based on their race, color, ethnicity, religion, etc and it is time for us to unlock the doors to our own imprisonment.
In recovery, we leave the illusions we have lived with and in at the door as we enter into recovery. We allow our euphoric recall to slip away from us and we strive to see the truth of what was and what is-neither denying the good nor the not good action we took. We don’t deny the fun nor the pain we engaged in prior to our recovery and we dedicate ourselves to staying out of the prison we put ourselves in before. In recovery, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly, we embrace the truth of service, love and joy.
I lived in this prison for many years prior to my recovery. I see, in hindsight, how I fell back into some of these prisons in my recovery. I have, for the large majority of my recovery, been able/used my power to serve another person(s) as well as myself. I have let go of most of my illusions in the pursuit of truth and service. I see people’s God-Image most of the time and work hard to help them live from there rather than their illusionary self. The core and foundation of my “springs of action” are in service to God and another person(s). It is messy, the way I do this and sometimes misunderstood, yet I know where my life springs from since recovery this allows me to continue to live in the face of scorn, betrayal, and my own errors. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark