Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 104
“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 it. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91)
Rabbi Heschel is reminding us to commune, receive and reflect is part of our human/divine nature, I believe. It is one of the gifts that God has given to us as a response to our basic need for belonging, connection and love. Receive can be understood to mean ‘take again’ from the Latin, which supports the myth that we receive all of God’s instructions in the womb and then just prior to birth, the angel who taught us touches us above our lips, causing the indentation between mouth and nose as well as making us forget everything in our conscious mind. This myth has been used to explain Deja Vu, among other things, and I am reminded of it now because we every time we choose to bear our selfs to be seen, we take again the light, strength and connection of “the ineffable in us: and “beyond us” and turn it inward to grow our inner lives and outward to help another part of God’s creation and creatures grow. I am understanding Rabbi Heschel to be reminding us that we already have the answers to the challenges of today, we just have to connect to “the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us” to access these solutions and put them into practice.
Reflecting the light, wisdom, solutions, strengths of our inner lives, our inner wisdom from the ineffable in us and beyond us is our way of ‘bending back’ towards God, towards our higher consciousness, towards another human being(s), It is not enough, as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel, to “suffer” and “receive”, these rays from the ineffable, we have to give it back, we have to not hoard for our own good, rather we have to ‘bend it back’ as the Latin origin of the word describes. Too many of us are not willing to reflect back to people our inner wisdom, inner chaos, inner strengths and inner weaknesses, as Rabbi Heschel reminds us in the first sentence above. We know that we are capable of reflecting the rays of the ineffable back to another human being(s) and yet, we get afraid of how we will look and sound, how vulnerable we will make ourselves and how our transparency will be used against us. Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us to let go of our fears enough to experience the joy of reflection, the fulfillment of the need we were created to fill and the ecstasy of connection through reflecting and receiving, receiving and reflecting throughout the day, week, months, years.
So what do I do with my fears of my vulnerabilities being used against me? Vulnerable comes from the Latin meaning ‘wound’. Using the myth I wrote about above, we are born wounded and, as Leonard Cohen says, “There is a crack in everything and that’s how the light gets in”. We all are wounded spirits, we all have ‘suffered’ numerous wounds, cracks, etc, this is part of the human condition, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel and life. And, we have a choice what to do with our wounds; some of us lick our wounds and retreat into a shell that makes us “impervious to what He longs to show”, some of us lash out and ‘get even’ by wounding as many other people as we possibly can, and, some us use our wounds, our vulnerabilities to grow closer to the Ineffable One, grow closer to our authentic self, grow closer to humanity and seek a shared healing and response to our wounds. We will never completely heal all of our wounds, we will never completely know and understand all of God’s wisdom, however, using our vulnerabilities to take back the wisdom, strength, light and love we have in our subconscious and use it in our daily life; using our vulnerabilities to see the wounds and character of another human being(s) and connect with them on a soul to soul level and responding with love, compassion, kindness, truth and justice to all of the challenges and situations life gives us is the goal of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching and words today. It is only fitting and proper aka Kosher for all of us reflect what the light of God that resides in our souls and open our wounds to and for the light that heals.
In recovery, we are in a daily quest for solution and more inner knowledge and real connections to another person(s). We grow in our awareness of the inner wisdom and inner wounds we have as well as the wisdom and wounds of every human being. Rather than protect ourselves, rather than hide our wisdom and light, using it for our gain only, in recovery, we share, we reflect our wisdom onto all the people around us as well as show our wounds with fear and trepidation AND hope and healing. This is how we create and/or join a community of sharing, taking of wisdom and bending that wisdom/light back onto the entire community.
56 years ago, last Friday, we buried our father and he was a man who reflected light, strength, could see the inner lives of his children and, at times, hid his own wounds. Yet, his experience of anti-semitism, being a Jew in the Army Air Corp in WWII, made him more sensitive to the plight of minorities and he did not feel superiority, only compassion and empathy. After years of hiding my wounds, my inner life and light, I proudly follow my father’s example of reflecting God’s light, my soul’s light onto my community, I take in the light and the arrows of another human being(s) and I use my wounds to heal another and me, I use the inner wisdom to honor my lineage and God. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark