Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 96
“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).
Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that only some of us blush, only some of us are willing to be seen in our entirety by another person, by God, even by our own self. What does this say for the majority of people? The majority are not willing to blush, the majority wear a mask to veil themselves and the harm this does is immeasurable. Looking into a mirror, how often are we blind to what is in front of us, how often do we hide from the true reflection in the mirror? There is a famous poem titled: “The Man in the Glass” that speaks to our attempts to hide from our self and we can’t hide from the reflection in the mirror. The final stanza reminds us that heartache will be our true reward if we “cheat the man in the glass”.
This sad truth that the majority of people wear a mask to veil themselves is what causes the chasm in our society, what causes pain and war, depression and addiction, racism and anti-semitism, anxiety and hopelessness, senseless hatred and polarization. Wearing of a mask is to hide from another, to change our appearance so we can either “fit in” or not. We wear a mask to hide our faces from another because we know what we are doing is not the next right action to take. The terrorists who behead people on video never show their faces, supposedly so they don’t get identified and hunted and arrested. Yet, taking Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above to heart, immersing ourselves in it, it seems to me that these terrorists know taking another life goes against God’s will and their supposed allegiance to their god, is actually idolatry and self-serving. If they believed they were serving Allah, as they claim, why would they hide their faces? They don’t want to face themselves in the camera as they commit such heinous acts as well as not facing anyone else.
People veil themselves to cover, conceal and/or disguise themselves according to the dictionary definition of the word from the Latin word; vela-curtain covering. We are told as boys to ‘shake it off’ when we get hurt in a game or in life and ‘get back in the game, give them what they have coming’ etc, which only teaches us to make someone pay for our pain, physical, emotional and/or spiritual. This is the cause of most wars, hurt feelings, a poke in the eye, a denial of the spirituality of another human being. We engage in these behaviors not because God wants us to, not because our Higher Consciousness tells us to, because our veils force us to. If we don’t exact payback, we have to see ourselves and another can see us as ‘weak’ and vulnerable and we can’t have that happen because the veil would fall away and we would see our true self.
This veil that most people walk around with tries to cover up, conceal and disguise personal agendas that they have when talking about larger topics. Examples are the ‘quick fix’ pharmaceutical companies that got our nation addicted to pain killers and, even worse, believing that pain is not a prerequisite of living authentically. Their motive was not the welfare of people, it was to line their pockets with money and power. The leaders of January 6th, 2021 who knew/know the election was not stolen, who know that allowing all Americans the right to vote is what is right, who know that the vaccines work(and take them themselves) and they continue to hide these truths from the people who listen to them, not to serve the people, but to serve their hold on power, to serve their hatred of ‘the opposition’, to serve their self-aggrandizing view of themselves, to serve their idol worship.
In recovery, we are continuing to remove the layers of the veil we wore/wear. We call it ‘peeling the onion’, because these layers are so thin like the membrane of an onion skin and as strong as this membrane. We are so used to the veil, we are so accustom to our masks and to our myopic sight, it is with great determination we remove one layer after another, not all at once, slowly and steadily so we can adjust our sight to what is and remove these layers/blinders completely. These membranes are on our eyes, our hearts and cover our souls/spirits as well and our removal of each layer brings a new sense of living, a new vision of life on life’s terms and a deep appreciation of being alive and connected.
I realize the veils get thinner and thinner as we grow in wisdom, age, spirit and love. Being able to blush doesn’t mean I don’t still have veils, I do. The veil that I am peeling off is the veil of seeing another person as I need/want them to be rather than see them for who they truly are. It is how I changed according to what the other person needed me to be prior to my recovery and I realize today that I would change who another person was in my vision according to what I needed/wanted them to be and this was hurtful and harmful to the person, to me and to those around me. I reversed my conman way of viewing a situation to harm me, to serve me and it always blew up in my face. This is not the same as giving a person the benefit of the doubt, it is not seeing them for who and where they are in the moment and this is not serving God, them or myself. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark