Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 6
“Spiritually we cannot live by merely reiterating borrowed or inherited knowledge.”
In the depths of our being, in the root of our soul/spirit, we are starving ourselves and putting our being into a prison when we stunt our ability to learn and grow each day, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s sentence above. Rabbi Heschel is also making a bold statement/reiterating the human/divine need for radical amazement. He is, in my understanding, reminding us/telling us that we need to live at the level of spirit in order to learn, know and actualize our human/divine connection. He is asking us to look at our living right now: are we living with radical amazement as our foundation and/or are we living with doubt/adjustment to conventional notions, etc. as our foundation? It is a fearsome question, a bold request that we live our true nature, as spiritual beings, not just animals! We have to tremble with awe, excitement at the prospect of living life as spiritual beings and immerse ourselves in the activities of a spiritual life.
These activities begin with connection to the Ineffable One, connection to all of humanity, connection to our work, connection to our family, spouse, nature, etc. Once connected, I am able to see how and where my way of being, my unique gifts belong in the grand scheme of our world. Living from the foundation of spirit means that I live life on God’s terms, not mine or society’s. Rabbi Heschel’s life is testimony to this truth. He did not ‘go along to get along’, he was never recognized enough (in my opinion) for his brilliance, depth, commitment to his fellow humans, prophetic voice, etc. during his lifetime. Yet, he continued to pursue justice, righteousness, kindness, truth, and loving kindness no matter what anyone said to him in order to get him to stop. He was an activist for God, he teaches us all how to live life on God’s terms and in a manner that is “compatible with our sense of the Ineffable One” as he says in God in Search of Man.
As Rabbi Heschel’s daughter has written and said; Rabbi Heschel had no time or patience for religious behaviorism and/or spiritual plagiarism. In the sentence above, we hear him call out to us to stop recycling old spiritual maxims, stop behaving in the same ways that people did 20, 50, hundreds of years ago. Grow our own spirits according to the needs of our spirits and the call of God today, not the needs of mendacity nor the false needs of our society today. When we reiterate knowledge it becomes dead, lifeless. We usually do this to use this inherited knowledge to gain and/or retain power. If it was true then, it must be true now thinking gets us stuck in old ways and patterns. Being stuck in old ways and patterns doesn’t allow for growth, new insights and growing our spiritual life!
We are seeing this stunted way of living in our politics of “return to the good old days”, “return our country to its Christian Values”( that are not Christ’s values), “make America great again”, etc. We see this stunted ways of living in our religious institutions. These institutions have taken a dynamic experience, God’s speaking to us, calling to us in the here and now, and turned it into a static experience of 2000+ years ago. We see people using reiterated and/or borrowed knowledge in child rearing, marriage, business, etc. We see the ruin that has come from it. The rates of depression, anxiety, suicide, addiction are skyrocketing in our young people because they cannot live on this borrowed and inherited knowledge and we are stunting/killing their spirits by demanding they do.
In recovery, we know that our recovery is dependent on our spiritual condition. When we ignore our spiritual condition, when we try and live someone else’s knowledge, we are heading for and/or are already in a lapse/relapse. In living there is no standing/running in place-we either move forward or backward. We are given the gift of understanding the texts we read in our own way, seeking guidance and input, yet not needing to adhere to the dogma of someone else. In recovery, we “trudge the road of happy destiny” through our spiritual living.
I have used the learning, teaching of our tradition and my ancestors to enhance my knowledge and used my spirit to put my knowledge to work in my own unique way. I am guilty of many things and living on inherited or borrowed knowledge is not one of them! I am excited each day to learn, to explore and to explode my knowing from the days, weeks, years before. Not only do I freshen up my knowledge everyday, I also have my own unique delivery system that is not for everyone. I also know that being real, transparent, and loud gets me into trouble and sometimes I am definitely inappropriate. Yet, the cost of hiding, being “appropriate” and two-faced, like many people unfortunately, is spiritual death for me. I was saved from this death by Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi Silverman, family, etc in 1987 and I am not going to flirt with spiritual death again. I have to keep it fresh so I honor my teachers, especially Rabbis Heschel, Shulweis, Silverman, Omer-man and Feinstein. They have given me/give me the key to my own new and fresh ways of interpreting texts, events, and this moment. I am grateful for these keys and grateful to God for giving me the gifts and the power to unlock the doors to my soul and enhance my soul’s knowing. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark