Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 39
“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).
As I continue to immerse myself (and all of you reading this) in this paragraph, I continue to experience more wisdom, truth and strength. Continuing to engage with the second sentence above; when we love from reason and/or fall in love with reason, we are creating a transactional relationship rather than a covenantal relationship. This is why, I believe, “reason alone is incapable of forcing the soul to love” rings so loud, so true, so deep into our souls. Love from reason alone will usually bring about a love that is one-sided, a love that is based upon the needs of the one using reason and, in many cases, a love that is based in/on a lie. Reason is a wonderful path to self-deception and when we use reason alone to decide we are in love, we deceive ourselves and another into believing we are in a covenantal relationship, all the while creating the relationship from a transactional basis. We cannot create a covenant using transactional ways, transactional paths. Yet, many of us are so unaware of this truth that we do fool ourselves into believing we can; many of us are so concerned with only ourselves that we believe we are making a covenant because we take the vows that say we are.
Reason cannot force the soul to love because our souls are more knowledgeable than our reasoning can ever be. When we use our souls’ knowledge, we are using the higher wisdom of ourselves, the higher wisdom of the universe and the collective higher wisdom of our family, friends, community. We are able to combine all of these higher knowings precisely because all of our soul-to-soul relationships are covenantal, they involve more than our humanness, they involve the Ineffable One as well. While many people believe they can outthink, cajole, bribe, force the Ineffable One to do their bidding, they are just fooling themselves and those around them. While we can see how this mendacity, this self-deception harms so many on a grand scale, ie politics, business’, healthcare, etc; many of us are unable to see the harm we bring on a personal level. Whether we are aware of our deception/practice of mendacity and/or are deep into our own self-deception, when we convince another person that our love is covenantal, we are making a commitment that involves the Ineffable One, that involves making the interests of our partner our deep concern and covenanting to be in truth, kindness, love, etc with our partner. Using reason will never get us there because when we use reason we don’t care about love, kindness, truth, etc-we care about getting what we want in the moment. Love is not reasonable, love is spiritual! Doing something for no profit, for no reward doesn’t make sense to most people, I am going to spend my time, money, energy and get nothing back for it- how ridiculous, our reason tells us. “What’s in it for me” is a constant question when we use our reasoning faculty, “how do I serve, how do I connect” is the constant question when we use our soul’s knowledge/reasoning.
In his book, Insecurity of Freedom, Rabbi Heschel says: “Modern man continues to ponder: What will I get out of life? What escapes his attention is the fundamental, yet forgotten question, What will life get out of me?”(Insecurity of Freedom pg.4/5). Our reasoning is based on self, so to love is to get out of self, hence Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance in the sentence I am writing about. While many of us want to argue this point, we all know-somewhere inside of us- that when we ‘love’ from reason, it is a transactional love and if the other.person believes it to be covenantal, there will be a betrayal and we will deny it, etc. Yet, there has to be a betrayal when we use reason alone to love, when we use reason to fool another person into thinking we really care about them as a human being, when we are so uncaring as to abandon this person we “love” when they need us the most. This lie we tell ourselves that our love is covenantal when it is through reason, not soul, hence transactional is, in my opinion, the cause for divorce, business breakups, family feuds, etc.
In recovery, we are aware of how reason got us into trouble. We are aware of how reasoning alone caused us to wind up lonely, isolated, imprisoned in our own mind, paranoid, unable to live from our souls, etc. In recovery, we connect with a Higher Power, the Ineffable One, God, however one wants to label the Creative Force of the Universe, in order to be more that our reasoning tells us, to let go of the conventional notions and mental cliches so we can live in the wonder of now, the wonder of true love and the wonder of being human.
I have found that when I use reasoning alone, I am left alone in my skin, in my mind and in my heart. In these last 33+ years, I have worked hard to live from my soul’s knowledge, used my reasoning to serve my soul instead of using reason to shut down my soul. I have found that entering into covenantal relationships is much more fulfilling and comfortable for me and if another person is having a transactional relationship, I will get hurt, feel betrayed and move on because my soul is stronger for loving another human being and making the interests of another my concern. This is my way of living this wisdom today:) Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark