Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 12
“Insights are the roots of art, philosophy and religion, and must be acknowledged as common and fundamental facts of mental life. The ways of creative thinking do not always coincide with those charted by traditional logicians; the realm where genius is at home, where insight is at work, logic can hardly find access to.” (Man is Not Alone pg.17).
Over 70 years ago, Rabbi Heschel was speaking to a generation that had just experienced man’s greatest inhumanity to man, World War II, and was trying to both forget what had happened and be suspicious of our former allies. We were already involved in the Korean War and the breakthroughs that scientists had brought were being hailed worldwide, nuclear energy that could be used for bombs, medical advances, etc. Here comes Rabbi Heschel to remind us what is at the root of all important discoveries, creations, and, I would add, mental health: Insights and the connection with the Ineffable because they come from this connection to the Ineffable, the universe, God, whatever descriptor one wants to use.
What has happened in these 70 years, unfortunately, is we have become more polarized, the logicians seem to win more often that the people who relish their insights and work to bring them to fruition. Yes, of course, we see celebrity status given to some artists in music, some philosophers, some religious leaders, what we are not seeing is status and follow through from each and every one of us on our insights and our creativity. Every human being has insights, everyone of us is able to connect with the universe, the Ineffable One and see and hear our souls’ speaking to us and pointing us in the correct path for us, as individuals, families, communities, country. Yet, we have allowed the logicians to overrule what our insights are telling us. We see this in the ways the news is spun, we only listen to the people we want to believe, the people who use polls, etc to tell us what we want to hear with little regard to truth, the whole story and/or our own mental health. We see this in the way politicians speak to us, the lies they tell us and they are good because they use a perverted logic that we have come to believe in. The logicians want us to never activate our insights precisely because they would then lose their power and control over the masses. They would lose the power they wield so swiftly and discriminately, they would have to come face to face with their mendacity and the wreckage they have caused and they are unwilling to do this. It is too fearful so they continue to belittle the people who speak and share their insights, who speak and share the value, worth, dignity of our mental life and spiritual life.
Rabbi Heschel is calling on us to break the yoke these logicians have put on us. I hear him calling us to tap into our insights, stop putting our inner dialogue down. I hear him telling us to end our mental illness of denial of the Ineffable’s voice and message to us, end our denial of longing to gain the strength from the universe to create, to worship, to live a life compatible with being in the realm of the Ineffable One. Rabbi Heschel is speaking to those of us who put down our own brilliance and cripple ourselves by trying hard to fit in, to explain the unexplainable and, unfortunately, join with the worshipers at the alter of ‘if its not logical, it isn’t real’. Rabbi Heschel is giving us the courage, the strength, and, most of all, the validity to develop and listen to our insights and to follow them to their ‘higher’ logical end. Rabbi Heschel is being our cheerleader, our guide, our coach, our teacher in pursuing our unique and individual creativity.
Living with a heightened sense of insight, a greater vision of the value and necessity of insight, and strengthening our ability to follow them through will change our life and the lives of so many others. Religious leaders, musicians and artists, movie makers and philosophers and authors and so many more, did and do follow through on their insights and teach all of us how to do this in the face of ridicule, scorn, fire hoses turned on them, jail and/or prison. We can and must take the time to explore our insights for the greater good of ourselves and another. We love to listen to music that is created and how do we use that music to gain our own insights? We need to ask ourselves the same question with any of the arts, philosophies/philosophers, religious/spiritual texts we read/study/listen to. When we don’t gain our own insights, when we don’t gather strength from the insights of another, we are creating an inner war, a mental health crisis for ourselves. God has implanted in us the gift of insight and we have the power to use our insights. Will we?
In recovery, we are so aware of the need to be insightful, to honor our insights and to learn from the insights of another(s). This is why we are constantly seeking our spiritual texts and paths in order to find spiritual solutions, creative solutions, solutions that are uniquely ours to our daily challenges. We drank, used, gambled, gave into depression and/or anxiety before recovery because we were bombarded by logic and we knew that the logic just didn’t make it for us, so we used substances and behaviors to escape. In recovery, we are constantly and consistently seeking out the Ineffable One for insights on what the next right action is for us in this moment, in this day.
I am overcome with so many insights and emotions right now. I know in my bones, in my soul the truth of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching. I will write more on Sunday. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark