Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 33
“If life is holy, as we believe it is, then self-regard is that which maintains the holy. Regard for the self becomes only a vice by association: when associated with complete or partial disregard for other selves. Thus the moral task is not how to disregard one’s own self but how to discover and be attentive to another self.”(Man is Not Alone pg.141)
I have spent the 3 days on 3 sentences, which may seem excessive to some and, for me, it is my honoring of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching to “immerse” ourselves in text study. While Rabbi Heschel’s words, wisdom, teachings are not “Torah from Sinai”, they give me the same strength, embarrassment, hope, rebuke and love that the prophets gave to Israel and to us today-if we experience them. This, for me, is the key to Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, to experience the teachings by immersing ourselves in them and in all areas of living, breathing and being human. The last sentence above is, of course, the solution and the problem/challenge for all of us. While Rabbi Heschel calls it a moral task, I believe it is a spiritual task as well.
This sentence brings up one of the great challenges of being human: How do I allow my ego to be defeated by my morality and my soul/spirituality? Most of us have been raised in a moral atmosphere, we know right from wrong, we know the 10 Commandments, etc, yet we are, at any and all times, subject to an assault from our ego to go against our moral fiber, our spiritual calling to, in this case, ignore what is right in front of us-another self. How is this possible? Living in a ‘dog eat dog’ world such as we have since the CavePeople, misinterpreting the phrase from the Bible to ‘have rule and dominion over the animal world’ to mean we have to rule other selves, we have to make other people serve us, as pack animals, animals raised for food and pleasure do. How disgustingly egotistical and it is the way of the world since humans began to populate the earth, it seems. We have perpetuated this way of thinking/being for the millennium and it impedes our ability to “discover and be attentive to another self”. When we realize there is another self with needs, wants, desires just like us in the room, we are shocked many times. I have heard people say: “who does he/she think they are to drive the same car as me, live in the same neighborhood as me, etc.” We have Country Clubs that blackball people from joining if one member doesn’t like them! Yet, they will defend their fellow club members/friends for doing the same thing they blackball someone else for! We have many opportunities to engage in this “moral task” and, all too often, we fail to, enhancing the anger, the separation, the turning our backs on God and morality as well as thickening the wall around our souls/spirits.
Rabbi Heschel is not telling us to have no self-regard in this sentence, he is telling us that we have to engage in and surrender to the moral task God has given to us. We have to let go of our puffed-up ego, our self-deception, our deception of another, and our desire to be a chameleon. We have to see another human being as that, a human being who needs connection and assistance at times, who needs to be recognized and exalted rather than ignored and enslaved, just as we do.
To “discover and be attentive to another self” is to also discover and be attentive to one’s true self. Jacob, when he met Esau, was unable to do this, sadly. He could not truly embrace Esau because, in my opinion, he would have had to embrace his true self and been responsible for the harms he caused as well as the good he had done. Rabbi Heschel’s words point out the challenge of keeping a healthy, true sense for oneself while also seeing and holding a healthy true sense of “another self”. There can be no prejudice, racism, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, hatred of any kind when we accept, engage and ‘win’ this moral challenge. When we “discover and be attentive to another self” we are unable to engage in senseless hatred and prejudice, we are unable to engage with another self from race, color, ethnicity, creed, religion, etc- we can only engage on a self to self level.
In recovery, we realize how we gave up on this challenge and moral task prior to being in recovery. We are also acutely aware that what we are recovering is our integrity, our moral compass and the power to live a life based on spiritual and moral principles instead of ‘what’s in it for me’. In recovery, each day is measured by how we were attentive to another human being, how we were attentive to God and God’s will and how we were attentive to our self, remembering, realizing and relearning that these three seemingly separate actions all mesh with each other to make us better human beings today than we were yesterday.
I have been engaging in the war between my ego and my soul for almost 70 years. In the first 36/37 years, my ego won out more often than not and in the past 33/34 years, my soul has won out more often than not. I hear my ego try to win whenever I begin to think that I have to “win” an argument, a negotiation, and/or ‘why don’t I have 1million followers, etc. This still comes up and being attentive to another self, also means being attentive to both selves that I am comprised of. I have to be attentive to my ego, as it helps me take the action that my soul directs me to, I have to be attentive to my soul so it can direct my ego and I have to be in attentive in proper measure to both of these internal parts so I can be of maximum service to another self and God! Oy!! God Bless and stay safe.