Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 100
“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91).
I have been immersed in this paragraph for years and I realize that Rabbi Heschel is calling to us as the Prophets of the Bible called to the people of their time and, just as their message is timeless, so is Rabbi Heschel’s. We are being called to regain our integrity and our authenticity by Rabbi Heschel. His words above: “we have almost forfeited our face” are calling to us to return to our essential, authentic, integrated self. We are in danger of losing what makes us human and unique by wearing “masks” and “mental make-up”, as I understand Rabbi Heschel’s call to us. He is calling to us just as God calls to us, he is telling us that we are not alone, we do not have to live a life of loneliness and pain, we do not have to continue to hide and try to ‘look good’ for another person. We can, and I would add, must remove our masks, take off the “mental make-up” and “stand face to face” with our true self and with “the ineffable beyond us”.
Standing “face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us” is an act of courage and of necessity. It is an act of surrender and power, fear and awe, love and connection. While most of us are afraid to take this stand, afraid to be real and authentic, Rabbi Heschel is calling us to overcome our fears and stand face to face with our true self and with the Ineffable One.
The first step to doing this is to surrender, to allow ourselves to be confronted and defeated by a Higher Truth. One of the higher truths we have to confront and allow ourselves to be defeated by is that what we have been doing, the ways we have been hiding, acting, etc, have left us lonelier than ever, more disconnected from our self, from truth and from each other and we are bereft and miserable. While most people have become accustomed to living in low-grade misery, Rabbi Heschel is telling us that we do not have to stay in this state, we do not have to believe the lie ‘life is hard and then you die’. I hear him calling us to live a life of vibrancy, excitement, service and connection. Rabbi Heschel is giving us a solution to our sense of aloneness and disconnection, to our imposter syndrome and fear that we will be found out, to our disgust with our self and with life, to our zero sum attitude and our false sense of security and control.
Part of the solution is to come face to face with our unique Image of God and with the Image of God we can apprehend in the world. It is to come face to face with our unique Image of God and the unique Image of God in another human being. It is to stop hiding from ourselves, appreciate our uniqueness and the gifts/talents we bring to the table that help us live well and share them with humanity so we all live a little better, as well as accepting the talents/gifts of another human being so we and the rest of humanity can grow, flourish and enjoy life a little better each day. Part of the solution, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s words today, is to allow our light, our brightness, our hope, our brilliance to radiate inside of us and outside of us, to stop putting a blanket on our souls, on our uniqueness in order to ‘fit in’ with everyone else. Instead of competing to be like someone else, instead of comparing our self with another self, instead of buying into society’s control and pigeonholing of us, part of the solution to our aloneness, loneliness and disconnection is to be the truest and most authentic self we can be in this moment, knowing as we engage in cleaning the schmutz off of our souls, we will grow in authenticity. We are not alone in this world, we do not have to wallow in loneliness and disconnection, we are connected to one another and we are connected to the Ineffable One, to the universal force of the cosmos. Loneliness, aloneness, disconnection is a choice we make, not something forced upon us by the Ineffable One, rather it is something we learn, we have the power to unlearn it, we have the power to stop teaching it to younger generations and we have the power to make the choice to be connected to our authentic self, humanity, and the universe.
In recovery we spend the beginning of our journey cleaning out the schmutz we created, accumulated, inherited. It is a difficult task, one that is excruciatingly painful and exhilaratingly joyous. Seeing how we have hidden from our authentic self and the pain we caused so many people, including ourselves, is almost unbearable, I am shuddering as I write these words. Our competition, our comparing, our “mental make-up” almost killed us and wounded those who love us so deeply. We also become aware of the ways we can make amends, repair the damage, restore dignity to the people we have harmed and those that love us as well as to ourselves and make a different plan for living well and surrendering the lie that we are alone and lonely for the truth that we are connected and we matter.
For the longest time I felt alone no matter where I was and whom I was with, except when my father and I were together, the two of us. When I was at my lowest, knowing I was going to prison again, disappointing Heather, I heard the Ineffable One call to me and I have not been alone since I began to follow Rabbi Heschel’s formula. More tomorrow. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark