Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 102
“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 am trembling at the impact of Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, demands, and prophecy above. His use of the word suffer is so interesting to me, of course his choice of words are poetic, meaningful and thoughtful, Suffer comes from the Latin meaning: to bear from below; the dictionary also uses the word tolerate as a definition which comes from the Latin: to endure. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, hopefully, is causing psychic disturbance for all of us! Rabbi Heschel is speaking about how/when faith comes into our lives and I would add “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.”, are the only times we are truly alive, truly able to relieve our inner conflict between who we are and who we present to the world, truly able to fulfill our Covenant with God, our Covenant with another human being and be true to our authentic self. “Suffer ourselves to be seen” is the first step to achieving any of the above. What are our hesitancies, what are our fears, what are our roadblocks to know that we are able to ‘bear’ ourselves to be seen, that being seen is not embarrassing and/or threatening, it is not shameful nor demeaning, it is the only path forward to faith, to real connection, to growing our humanity and our dignity!
To “suffer ourselves to be seen” is a lifelong task and journey, we are always uncovering new and old hiding places, parts of our self that we were unaware of and parts that we hid so long ago we had/have forgotten about them. Being seen by the Ineffable One is much easier than being seen by our significant other, our children, our parents, siblings, friends, co-workers, people we interact with. Being seen by the Ineffable One is always happening, we can’t hide from God, we just can ignore the call to change, to interact, to serve, to respond to the demand to be our true self that the Ineffable One calls to us each and every day. The problem for most of us arises when we have to interact with another human being and we deceive ourselves into believing we are not able ‘to bear’ to be seen as we are, so we engage in the inner conflict of hiding parts of our self that we think/know someone else will find unacceptable. We do this to ‘fit in’ to ‘be part of’ to be ‘accepted’ all the while knowing “if they really knew who I am they would leave me”. This intentional split that we create has long lasting effects and we get so used to doing this, we are so addicted to showing the face we think someone else will accept/like, it doesn’t seem like a choice, it just seems natural.
These are the lies we tell ourselves in order to engage in this type of self-deception. We are unaware of the vulnerability we have to then believe the deceptions of another, because we don’t want to be ‘outed’ for our deceptions we will hold the deceptions of another; and because we become so deep in our own deceptions we become unable to tell fact from fiction. We see this in the political realm all the time across the world, otherwise authoritarianism would not be able to flourish as it has in history and is now. We see this in our spiritual realm when we witness the people that are unable to ‘walk their talk’ and admit their foibles, their errors and do T’shuvah for them.
In recovery, we are afraid, at first, that we cannot bear ourselves to be seen, we will be rejected by even more people if we allow ourselves to be seen, hell-we can’t even bear to see our self at the beginning of our recovery. What we do see is not necessarily our true and authentic self, we are usually only seeing the negative parts of our self and wrongly believing our negative deeds/actions/thinking define us. Our ability to “suffer ourselves to be seen” is a slow and steady process, which is why the fourth step of AA is only the beginning, we have to continue to ‘take our own inventory’ and allow ourselves ‘to bear’ and ‘endure’ more truth about our self-usually having the most problems with our good attributes. In recovery, we uncover, see and allow ourselves to be seen in order to be more whole as a human being, be of service to another human being and fulfill our task/demand from the Ineffable One.
I spent much of my first 35 years of life hiding from everyone, sure people were able to discern my cons, my lies, yet only my father discerned my being and saw the real me. It was a painful existence before and, especially, after my father died when I was 14+. Now, at 70 years of age, I can say I have spent the past 35 years bearing to be seen, coming out of hiding, fearful of being seen and more fearful of hiding, more fearful of letting my father down again, more fearful of not following the teachings and path the Ineffable One has laid out for me, more fearful of losing the covenantal connections I have with my brother and sister, daughter and grandson, Harriet-my wife and partner, my friends and the world. This passage reminds me I can “suffer” myself to be seen and the people who want to use my authenticity against me-oh well-aren’t they pathetic and in need of Divine Pathos. I offer my pathos to the people who used me for being me when it was convenient and needed by them and used my authenticity against me when it suited them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark