Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 37
“It is a useless endeavor to fight the ego with intellectual arguments, since like a wounded hydra it produces two heads for every one cut off. Reason alone is incapable of forcing the soul to love or of saying why we ought to love for no profit, for no reward. The great battle for integrity must be fought by aiming at the very heart of the ego and by enhancing the soul’s power of freedom.”(Man is Not Alone pg.141/2).
We spend so much time in our intellectual arguments within our own brains and with another person(s), that we get lost in our need to be right, our need to prove, our need to win, our need puff ourselves up, etc. What is sad to/for me is that we have seen what these intellectual arguments can and do lead to: war; extermination; destruction of democratic ways of governments; family separations; prejudice; hatred of women, LGBTQI, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, foreigners, people of color; inner anxiety, depression, addiction, etc. When we look back at our human history, we see how our intellectual arguments have bastardized God, spirit, religious tenets, etc. God is not asking us to fight wars anymore, not since the battle for the Promised Land in the 2nd Book of the Hebrew Bible, “Na” for the “history” of the Judges, Kings, Prophets. Yet, how many wars have people said they are fighting for “god”, how many terrorists have wreaked untold damage on innocent people in the name of their “god”? All of this comes from our egos and our intellectual arguments that the ego creates and our minds numbingly go along with.
Germany had an immense intellectual community and it did not stop Hitler, et al, Russia has always had a large creative community within in and it hasn’t stopped Stalin, Putin, etc. America has always had a rebel spirit and openness to new ways of seeing and thinking and creating and it did not stop Trumpism, Tea Party, etc. We are seeing one of two people control what our government can and cannot do, not from any ideological stand rather from a power grab. The Republicans are not ideologically opposed to helping the needy and fairness-it is just their egos demand they decide how, who and what help is and they want to define fairness in their terms. The same is true of today’s Democrats as well. It is true in business and even in helping organizations, our intellects and egos get in the way of serving another(s) in the ways needed and with all of our beingness.
In our personal lives, we are constantly confronted and controlled by our egos through needing to be right, afraid of looking foolish, our old wounds, trying to be #1, etc. We are using our intellectual arguments to bolster our egos, not fight them. While ego is an important quality for our survival and our endeavors to grow our purpose and engage in our passions, it is also the reason that we get so depressed, anxious, addicted, overbearing, etc. It is also the reason that we feel like we have to go to war/battle each and every day with the world to be heard, seen, powerful and insecure. Our egos tell us lies and we believe them, our egos help us stay in self-deception and mendacity. Our egos are the hydra that keep fueling our incessant need to dominate and rule another person(s), our ‘world’ and they fuel our fear of being dominated and ruled by another person. Fighting these unchecked ego urges and actions with our intellects only lead us deeper and deeper into the abyss. Fighting our egos with intellectual arguments leads to parents ‘knowing’ what is best according to their standards for their children and not truly seeing who their kids are. It leads to bullies believing they have the right to bully another human being, it leads to organizations being obsessed with the bottom line and not caring about the people who buy, use, depend on the goods and services they are selling.
Intra-personally, our egos use our intellects to fuel our lies about ourselves such as we are not “good/good enough”. This leads us to constantly measure up to some false standard and not be real. Our egos fuel our false selves, sometimes to the extent that we are constantly adopting new personas to fit in with whatever crowd we are with. Our egos tell us our falseness is a good thing and we have the right to what we can get by any and all means because everyone else does it, ie cheat on taxes, portray ourselves as someone we are not, etc. Our egos force us into a life of one-upmanship and/or servitude, go it alone or go along to get along, etc. Our intellects are constantly telling us to assert ourselves and insert ourselves in matters where we don’t necessarily belong. The combination of ego and intellect drives us to silence the call of our souls. Our intellects and egos, when they are in charge of us, lead us to be concerned for another person’s situation only to the extent that it serves us by being seen as caring and kind, all the while really seeking credit, not service for the sake of another(s).
In recovery, we know that we need our egos, we know that our egos can propel us to be the person we were created to be; decent, kind, loving, caring, truthful, just, compassionate. We also know that unchecked, fueled by our intellects, our egos take us to the other end of the spectrum and we stop being human and care about ourselves only. In recovery, we are well aware of the sentence; “enough about me, what do you think of me” and how insidious this way of thinking and being is.
More tomorrow on how I live in this constant battleground of ego, intellect and soul. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark