Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 34
“The self is not evil. The precept: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” includes the care for one’s own self as a duty. It is as mistaken to consider the duty to oneself and the will of God as opposites as it is to identify them. To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.” (Man is Not Alone pg.141).
Rabbi Heschel is again teaching us to see the nuances of living, engage with them and find the proper amount of self-care/regard that leads to care/regard of another self and God. “The self is not evil” is a radical statement for some religions, some sects, some people. When one believes one is born in sin, the self has to be evil by its very nature. Yet, Rabbi Heschel is confronting us with God’s words and our deep inner truth, we are not evil by design, by nature, nor by birth. This idea negates the idea of self-flagellation, starving oneself, being obesely overweight, taking unnecessary risks with our being in search of thrills, any addictive behavior, etc. Since our self is not evil, we need to stop treating our self as if it is! I am hearing a deep plea from Rabbi Heschel to see ourselves as imperfect, by design, partners with God in making our corner of the world a little better for our being alive. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching, if adopted by all of us, would lessen the hatred, anger, depression, anxiety, addiction, and other spiritual and mental/emotional maladies we currently suffer from and see in another(s). “The self is not evil” frees us from our self-loathing, our less-than/better-than thinking, as well as our comparative and competitive/win at all costs ways of being. “The self is not evil” is freedom from the chains of conventional notions and mental cliches, it is freedom from the self-deception and mendacity we live in and put our to another(s), and it is freedom to serving God with our whole self in joy, gladness, and harmony.
The freedom that we can gain from this teaching is not meant to be exclusive nor to overfeed our egos. This freedom is for us to “love thy neighbour as thyself”; in other words, this teaching frees us up to truly care for our self, which is our duty according to Rabbi Heschel and care for another self; a both/and not and either/or. We are living in a world that is so bifurcated and separated, we forget that the people we disagree with most, are the same people Rabbi Heschel is speaking about and the Torah is speaking about. We are not living in some bubble, we are not in a cocoon, we live in the world and our neighbors may hold different political views, they may even believe in bunk science, they may be vaxxers and/or anti-vaxxers, they may believe in mendacity and engage in self-deception to a greater extent than we do AND they are still our neighbors, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel. While we may vehemently disagree with some people, while we may be acutely aware of how some people have hurt us, not cared about our concerns, not loved us as they love themselves, we still have to love them, we still have to see them as human beings, not clogs, not idiots, not hate them in our hearts if we are to live today’s teaching. While we can make up all the excuses in the world and we can justify our anger and our disagreements, this does not allow us to consider another self as less than human, no matter what their actions may say.
When we engage in seeing another self as less than human, when we engage in treating another self as less than human, we are giving up our freedom to live well, to live as a partner of God and our freedom to live in joy, gladness and harmony. While it makes ‘sense’ in a perverted way of thinking, I realize that all of our hatreds of another self(s) is going against God, going against our best interests even. We can ‘hate’ the sin, we can feel really badly about the hurts that another does to us, we can be devastated by the betrayals we experience from another(s), we can be afraid of being around people who make choices that could endanger them and us, we just can’t hate the self of another human being. While schadenfreude is an experience that just happens, when we dwell in the joy of seeing another person experience the consequences of their behaviors we are imprisoning ourselves and relinquishing our free will and our freedom to choose to “love thy neighbour, as thyself”, because we are not caring for our self, we are caring for our false ego.
In recovery, we learn to not hate the parts of our self that are underdeveloped, immature, that have led us to ‘evil actions’. We learn/relearn what it means to love our self and to love another self as well as not confusing the two. We are constantly growing our true self and shedding the false self/ego that propelled us into bad actions, selfish actions. In recovery, we care for our own self by being in truth with our self, with another self(s), and with God. We no longer act as chameleons, we no longer hide behind false pretenses, we no longer imprison our true self(s), rather we let it all hang out for everyone to see us as we are, imperfect and growing each day.
I am blown away by today’s teaching. I see where I still consider my self as evil, forgetting to separate my negative actions from my self. I also see how I have given up my freedom because of what some people think of me and how they have treated me. I see how I became obsessed with proving something that these people just did not want to believe and how it caused me to not care for my self nor the self(s) of those nearest and dearest to me as well as I could have. I have let go of resentments, released any ‘debts’ owed me and now I leave the obsession of proving myself to people who just don’t get me, nor want to. God Bless them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark