Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 34
“Rules are generalizations. In actual living, we come upon countless problems for which no general solutions are available. There are many ways of applying a general rule to a concrete situation. There are evil applications of noble rules. Thus the choice of the right way of applying a general rule to a particular situation is “left to the heart,” to the individual, to one’s conscience.” (God in Search of Man pg. 327)
I find myself in awe of the wisdom above and in sadness over how we have ignored training our heart, raising one’s conscience and one’s consciousness to be able to fulfill the last sentence of this brilliance from Rabbi Heschel. We are in a situation where our religious institutions have failed us, where our clergy have failed us, where our parenting has failed us, where our psychology has failed us, and where we have failed ourselves.
We no longer teach our children the words and ways of our faith traditions as they were originally conceived through Divine Revelation or Divine Intuition, we teach them the words and ways of faith as a weapon, as a tool to ward off ‘those people’, to put fear into our children and give them the erroneous ideas of being saved by a deity, being rewarded for martyrdom, following the ONE way. Our religious institutions have failed us by not training our hearts, not growing our souls, only appealing to our minds and our emotions. Our religious institutions have failed us because they are willing to sacrifice what is right for what is expedient, what is holy for what will keep the doors open, ‘on advice of counsel/optics’ for what is true. Within each of us is a soul yearning to be heard, a spirit pushing to be utilized and a heart waiting to be circumcised, hoping to be broken so the power of knowledge, the beat of a different drummer can be free and the light from outside can come in to strengthen our hearts.
Our secular schools are not supposed to be teaching morality, they are not supposed to be training our souls, our hearts. Yet, we leave it to them because our religious institutions have failed us so greatly. We are in need of a revolution, a spiritual revolution as Rabbi Heschel describes elsewhere in his writings. We are in desperate need of a rebellion to love, to wholeness, to raising our consciences, and our consciousness!
This rebellion has to begin at home, however, not just in our religious institutions. At our dinner tables there is more to talk about than grades and sports, more to engage in than social occasions. There is the ‘arguing’ over what is truthful and what is moral, what is correct in this situation and how to keep our moral compass in the midst of lies, deceptions and mendacity. There is the conversations around our own self-deceptions, our own imperfections and our spiritual development. How are we raising the souls of those around us and our own souls at our dinner tables, in our backyards, in our get-togethers with friends and family? How are we holding our selves and one another accountable for maturing our souls a little more each day? How are we raising our consciousness towards our Divine Intuition one grain of sand more each day? How are we lifting up our conscience to meet the needs of any and all situations we find our self in daily?
These questions are imperative to ponder and consider if we are going to grow our free will. The solutions to these questions and more will determine our progress on our journey to the Promised Land, on our journey towards true freedom and our journey towards wholeness. We are in desperate need of asking the right questions for the situation at hand. The world is in dire need of us “enobling the common” and being human as Rabbi Heschel teaches and as he lived.
Having immersed myself in the paragraph above for the past few days and many times over the years, I have such respect, admiration, love and joy for the way my father, z”l, taught us all to think for our self, to grow our souls and mature our spirits as well as teaching us how to act morally no matter what our emotions and/or mind told us. Of course, I went off the rails for 20+ years from this path and, because of his teachings, I had a path to return to. I know that I have to apply my spiritual nature to my daily living, that separating them, compartmentalizing my life always leads to negativity, to incompleteness, to feeling like a fraud. I was always faulted for saying that I was great when asked how I was, I came to believe that what people did not/do not understand that being alive, being teachable, being grateful, being excited for what lies ahead infuses me with the desire and the strength to have my heart broken, because more light will come in and I will see errors in my thinking, areas where my intuition needs to mature and the places/times my neediness overtakes what is true, real and right in front of me. It helps me realize the willful blindness I have/do practice. I am great every day because God has returned my soul to me for this day. In recovery, we say we live one day at a time and this is a joyous experience for me. I plan for tomorrow and I live in today-how can this be bad? I keep recalibrating my moral compass and making sure I am heading true north each day, I continue to ‘argue’ for the sake of heaven and my soul as well as for yours. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark