Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 42
“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)
Who is truly free according to Rabbi Heschel’s description above and how do we get to freedom? I am realizing how many people, believing they are free are actually slaves. Many of us equate freedom with doing what we want to, what we think is best/right, etc. Yet, here comes Rabbi Heschel and he tears this way of thinking/being apart with this teaching. Freedom involves choice of course, yet it also involves what choices we make, whom we are serving with our choices, and which type of choices we are making.
We make choices each and every moment, from the time we get up till we lay down to sleep, yet making choices is not necessarily freedom, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel this morning. Rabbi/Dr. Abraham Twerski, of Blessed Memory, says being human means making “free-will moral choices”. Putting Rabbi Twerski’s wisdom with Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, we can see that to be free means ‘the what choices we are making’ have to be moral choices, they have to be choices where we are taking the next right moral action for ourselves and for another human being, for another animal being and/or for our planet’s well-being. The what cannot be about what is good for us only, the what cannot be for our desires alone, the what cannot be about the actions we take to gain power, prestige, reputation, etc, if we want to be free. The what entails transcending beyond our self interest, going beyond our desires, going beyond even the interests of a group, political party, leader, etc , to serve the interests of God, Higher Power, Higher Consciousness, Greater Good.
This is an important distinction to make. It is so easy to fool ourselves, to buy into the self-deception of freedom because we choose to serve the ‘interests’ of another person who is interested in only themselves, their power, their personal greater good and not the greater good of humanity. We see this with people who vote in authoritarian governments, we see this in elections in this country where people support people who care nothing about serving, only about having power. We see this with the gridlock that happens in state and federal governing bodies so often. We see this in the ways people have shielded a Jeffery Epstein, an Elon Musk, etc to gain favor and get wealthy and powerful. We see this in the ways our lobbyists serve the clients who give them the money and will go against their own moral compass to win. We see this type of behaviors in everyday people who defend the right to kill another, harm another, with guns, with Covid-19, with domestic violence, etc all the while denying the right to choose for women. The ends that some of us are serving are the ends that God, that morality, that being human calls for, they are the selfish ends and we fool ourselves by believing this makes us free people.
On a personal level, so many of us suffer from this self-deception that we have even distorted what is moral, what is transcending our desire for personal reward. Many people buy into the lie that the people leading the Confederate Army are American Heroes, when they tried to bring down the entire democratic experiment. Can you imagine revering people who are trying to bring chaos, anger, mendacity to you, your family, your country? Can you imagine revering people who state openly that all they want is power and they want to cater to the rich and that poor people are poor because God doesn’t love them? Can you imagine revering religious leaders who preach hatred based on color, creed, religion, socio-economic status? Can you imagine revering people who are so quick to be anti-Semitic and call it anti-Israel? Can you imaging revering people who want to upend our system to ‘help the poor like themselves’ while they are wearing designer clothes, making speeches, promoting themselves? I hope so because so many of us are doing just this. We are slaves to the words people speak, the emotions they engender in us and we don’t hear the truth of their words. We must be continually on-guard to recognize when we are deceiving ourselves and when we are hearing the lies/deceptions of another. This is the path to transcending our desire for personal reward.
In recovery, we know all too well how enslaved we have been and we are constantly exploring our actions and thoughts to root out the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we perpetrate onto another human being. We can only harm another person when we lie to ourselves about them even being human, we deceive ourselves into believing they are objects to serve our needs, rather than we are blessed to be able to serve another. In recovery, we are continually walking on the road of freedom, moving forward one step at a time each day.
I have been blessed and rewarded with freedom by transcending my own interests and desire for personal reward most of the time. While recognition is wonderful and I like it, what is and has been more important is: how do I serve another human being. How can my story, my wisdom help another human being live better. Being recognized for this is not a personal reward, it is an honor, a blessing and a ‘good’ report card to and for God. I have witnessed 1000’s of people achieve true freedom and I pray we all help more on this journey. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark