Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 41
“For integrity is the fruit of freedom. The slave will always ask: What will serve my interests? It is the free man who is able to transcend the causality of interest and deed, of act and the desire for personal reward.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 142)
Rabbi Heschel’s words are ringing so loudly in my mind, and even more so in my soul. “Integrity is the fruit of freedom” is so pregnant with understandings and with images, it is almost too much to even process. Yet, process it we must:) Integrity comes from the latin word meaning “intact” as I said yesterday and the Hebrew for Integrity is Shlemut, wholeness. Fruit, I believe is being used as reward/result. Here is a way to understand this first sentence: Wholeness and being intact is the reward/result/logical consequence of freedom.I am blown away by a new thought: we cannot get whole and be intact until we achieve freedom, not the other way around.
Many people think that once they get whole, they will achieve freedom and I hear Rabbi Heschel telling us it is the other way around. We have to get free of our unhealthy egos, our falseness, our selfishness, our need to be right/seen, our entitlements and our arrogance in order to begin to achieve freedom, as I understand Rabbi Heschel. While he was criticized for cancelling a class in order to take a stand against an injustice like racism or a stand against the killing of 1000’s of innocent Vietnamese children, he did this because he had to stand up for the interests of another. In the Torah we are commanded at least 36 times to take care of the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor and the needy to drive home the teachings of Rabbi Heschel. We keep trying to find wholeness in and of our self and we cannot find it, as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel, until we join with another, until the interests of another become our concerns. All of the ‘alone paths’ to wholeness, intactness, freedom are self-indulgent and self-serving which is why we are always left feeling enslaved and angry.
We are slaves to ourselves so often that we become oblivious to our self-centeredness, according to the way Rabbi Heschel’s words pummel my soul and mind. When we need to be seen as philanthropic, when we need to be seen as helping, when we need to be seen as author, expert, etc, when we need to have our names on buildings, when we need to _____(fill in the blank) in order to be whole, we are enslaved to our egos, to our self-image and to societal norms/notions. Reading these first two sentences through the prism of Radical Amazement allows us to see the path to freedom is to let go of the self-serving actions and thoughts that we disguise as altruistic, that we disguise as concern for another. The self-serving ones are the ones where we need/have to be seen as. All of us fall into this path, all of us visit here, we are human after all. The danger becomes when we are oblivious to this way of being, when we actually believe the lies we are telling ourselves and we get more and more enslaved to our false selves each and every day.
“What will serve my interests” is a common refrain among people, within a person. It is so subtle and so blatant at the same time. Asking this question is the precursor to finding the way to deceive another and to convince another self to become enslaved through being oblivious because the subtlety allows another self to believe the deceiver. We see this in the political realm, we see this in the stories about Purdue Pharma and other drug-makers, just look at the ads on TV, people smiling while they are telling you about the ways the drug could kill you! We see this in the religious realm, spiritual leaders being anything but spiritual by serving their interests, political and personal, rather than God’s interests and/or the interests of the people they are supposed to serve. We see this in business and education, entertainment and sports, in all walks of life, “what will serve my interests” is a looming question that the people in charge are constantly asking themselves and, in all fairness, they care about their shareholders, their fellow deceivers, their bottom-line needs.
In recovery, we know that we have to be free of our false ego, false self, we are so aware of the self-deception we have engaged in that we are hyper-vigilant to the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we spread to another. We review our day each evening to see where we achieved freedom from “the bondage of self” as the AA Big Book talks about and where we are still stuck on ourselves and our lies. In recovery, we are seeking to improve our spiritual condition a little more/one grain of sand each day, thereby being able to taste, enjoy and live better by knowing we are more whole than yesterday, more intact than yesterday and more integrated than yesterday. It doesn’t get better than this.
I taste this fruit of freedom most of my time in my recovery. I have also tasted the bitterness of being enslaved to my false ego at times in recovery as well. It is the taste of the bitterness that propels me back to freedom. I am blessed to have a conscious contact with God each day. I am blessed to hear the voices of my ancestors ringing in my soul every day, especially when I am being a slave to my interests. I am blessed to be able to root out the lies I tell myself and the ways I engage in self-deception quickly, knowing that I will fall into the trap of them if I don’t recognize them early on. I am grateful to everyone who holds me accountable, asks for my assistance and allows me to serve them because each time I am lucky enough to serve, I take another step towards freedom. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark