Daily Lessons from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Day 1
“The greatest hindrance to knowledge is our adjustment to conventional notions, to mental cliches.”(Man is Not Alone, pg.11)
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel is a gift that we all can receive, experience and grow from/with provided we are willing to immerse ourselves in his teachings, in sacred texts, in our own lives. He was, to me, one of the greatest Spiritual Leaders of the 20th Century and may be more influential now than when he was alive. Rabbi Heschel has, like his description of the Prophets of Ancient Israel, “a painful rebuke, a powerful dissent, a deep love and unwavering hope” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Appendix). Rabbi Heschel was friends with and a teacher for many of the Civil Rights leaders of the 60’s, Christian theologians and ministers, Catholic Priests, Rabbinical Students and Rabbis, etc. His writings have inspired and changed so many of us who were not fortunate enough to know him personally.
The first sentence above is a very radical one. Rabbi Heschel, in my understanding, is saying that as soon as we become adjusted to a conventional notion and/or a mental cliche, we are prevented from obtaining any more knowledge about that particular aspect of living. Be it our understanding of history, our understanding of life, our understanding of God, religion, another human being. The root of the word hindrance is, hinder. This means behind, at the rear of, so anything that hinders us puts us behind and prevents us from moving forward. I ask you to think of the ideas and notions that we have accepted that keeps preventing us from moving forward as a country, as a community, as a family, as individuals. The truth of this statement begins to reverberate within us and within our different affiliations when we immerse ourselves in what the words mean and Rabbi Heschel’s unique way of writing poetry and prose in the same sentence and with the same words.
The word adjustment means to alter and/or adapt. We alter and adapt our thinking, our living according to some conventional notion that most people just accept as true and valid, some inner mental thought that we heard, imagined and are staying with. Rabbi Heschel is telling us that we cannot attain/grow our knowledge, a deep understanding and knowing of what is truthful, by adjusting to the what we knew yesterday. Rabbi Heschel believed, according to my reading of his interview with Carl Stern in 1972, that being stale was the worst “sin”/experience that could happen to a human being. Yet, we have become stale in so many ways. We long for the “good old days”, which allows us to stay stuck in the past. We say “here is the way we do this ____” not realizing that progress is made every moment. We are willing to buy the latest technology, yet we still believe having the newest, the shiniest, the best will tell people who we are, how smart, successful, etc we are. These are some of the conventional notions we have all accepted and this stops us from seeing past the surface of life. The mental cliches, the words we use to describe ourselves are stale as well. As soon as I say something, it has become obsolete, just like a new car loses value as soon as you drive it off the lot, so too do our descriptions of ourselves, our life, our surroundings, etc become stale once we think them. Yet, we hold on to these old ideas and they stunt our growth, they hinder our ability to deepen our knowing and, in many cases, become fertile ground for racism, hatred based on race, color, creed, religion, etc.
These old ideas have become so insidious that we adorn our parks, state capitals, US Capital with statues of people who committed Treason! We get angry at US Flag burners and people who kneel at the National Anthem, yet we celebrate people who fly/wave the Confederate Flag which represents the attempted overthrow of our country! These old ideas have allowed the ‘persecuted white supremacist’ to recruit decent people, who are unaware of their being duped and deceived because of their adjustment to the altered “facts” of another. On a personal level, we have become so inured to these mental cliches that we believe the most negative things about ourselves and/or we run from the negative ones and become enamored with ourselves. We become stale and stuck because of our belief in these mental cliches in our inner lives and we become stale and stuck as individuals and family/community/country because of the conventional notions we hold onto.
In recovery, we are aware of how our old ideas “availed us nothing” as the Big Book of AA says. In fact, we because so stuck in our old ideas that we could not hear the call of the people around us, the people who loved us that we were ruining our lives and theirs. We were so stuck in the mental cliches that we held onto to we were unable to see the destruction we had caused, were causing and about to cause to ourselves and anyone who was around us. We took hostages and prisoners, all the while feeling that we were the ones being treated poorly, we were being misunderstood, we were the victims! In recovery, we become aware of these lies we have been telling ourselves and another(s), we tremble with tears and hope when we begin to recount for ourselves how powerless we are over the ideas and mental cliches that brought us to our knees and how grateful we are to finally begin, grow, enhance our live in recovery. In recovery, we are so aware of our ‘stinking thinking’ that these ideas and cliches will save us and realize they will kill us.
I was always a smart kid and my ‘smarts’ led me to doing some of the stupidest things one could imagine. I read this sentence about 5 times a week, either in study with another person, in conversation with someone and/or just to remind myself to get out of being stuck and stale. I continue to read/study/meditate on this sentence so often because I am able to deceive myself into thinking I have let go of these cliches and ideas, yet, my yearly inventory has shown me how I hold on to old and new cliches and ideas for too long, accepting their truth once and for all. Every time I do this, I become a caricature of my true self and I am disappointed and disappointing. I am susceptible to the lies and mendacity of another(s) and I put my trust in people who have their own agenda’s without my realizing it. When I hold on to old ideas and cliches, I become spiritually, mentally vision-impaired and this has led to hurt, pain and loss for me and some of the people I love the most. I know that I have to see what I know new each day and not just accept something because it was true yesterday. This is my learning and doing in all my affairs, study, work and relationships. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark