Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 148
“There is hardly a person who does not submit his soul to the beauty parlor, who does not employ the make-up of vanity to belie his embarrassment. It is only before God that we all stand naked.”(Who is Man pg 113)
These words of wisdom from Rabbi Heschel are haunting me right now. I keep wondering what the reason is for our spending so much time and money in the beauty parlor Rabbi Heschel is speaking of. It is so antithetical to the very nature of our soul to submit it to these beauty parlors we employ, yet we continue to do so. I am sitting at my computer writing this with tears in my heart and disturbances in my soul.
We experience the harm of these actions in the myriad of ways some politicians knowingly and intentionally speak untruths so they can get their followers to vote for and support them in their deceptions and mendacity.These people, whom we have trusted with the safety, security, vision of our country, are engaged in self satisfaction and in promoting a way of living that celebrates ‘white Christians’ while denigrating everyone else. The beauty parlors they go to are so insidious, these shops continue to reflect the wonder and awe of hatred, racism, protectionism, isolationism, etc. It is difficult to fathom the depths of self-deception that some politicians employ so they don’t have to face themselves and their actions.
Many in the media use the same beauty parlors as our politicians use. They continue to spread lies, deceits, speaking to the fears and the lowest of our animal desires, kill our ‘enemies’ or anyone who we deem a ‘threat’ to our emotional, physical, monetary well-being. Some media people, after taking the Covid-19 vaccines, kept spreading mis-information about the same vaccines to their watchers. Some media people, knowing full well the 2020 election was legitimate, still promote the lie it was ‘stolen’. Some media people speak to the fears of people with sensational headlines and take bits and pieces of what is said and done so out of context that they seem very believable. Some media people have made careers from their lies and deceptions to the point they themselves are unable to discern fact from fiction. Even worse, some of these people know they are lying and are proud of their fictions and their ratings. All for the sake of money, power and prestige. They continue to go to their special beauty parlors and see the false reflection of success in the mirrors provided.
Religious leaders and their followers, people of faith, are not immune to the lure of the beauty parlor. In following dogma rather than God, in promoting the lie that there is only one way to God, theirs, in defying truth and dignity for power and renown, we people of faith and religious leaders continue to extol one another and continue to reflect the rightness/whiteness of our way. When we use the vulnerabilities of our flock to promote our mendacity and our lies, we are engaging in evil. When we continue to help people hate, disagree and sow discord, we are taking the Name of God in vain. When we are more interested in how we look and how many followers we have, we are creating a false image of our self and helping to create a false image of God. In the Bible, there is no perfection, no perfect people, only people who keep moving forward to learn how to live together and find wholeness and peace. Yet, by submitting our “soul to the beauty parlor” we are living contrary to every ideal God stands for.
In Exodus, God says we are to build a Mishkan, a place, and God will dwell among us. It is impossible to experience God’s presence when we are constantly going to the beauty parlor of mendacity and deception. It is impossible to experience or espouse God’s teachings, love, spirit when we continue to engage in the lies that our trips to the beauty parlor promote. One of the reasons that religion is on the wane in our time, I believe, is because many people are seeing the roots of religious people’s being and then the false coloring religious leaders on putting on to cover up their souls, to cover up God’s truth and they don’t want any part of their mendacity.
In recovery, we reflect on the time, money, spirit we have left at the beauty parlors we employed so we could keep lying to ourselves. Seeing this accounting on paper leaves us ill with regret and begs the question, how could we fall so far away from our essence? Yet we did and our recovery is a daily challenge to walk by the old beauty parlors and not find new ones to go into. It is a hard habit to break and break it we must so we can enjoy the fruits, tasty and sour, of our recovery.
I find myself reflecting on the beauty parlors I have visited in my recovery and I am embarrassed. While these visits did not last long, usually, and I admitted to my false sense of self upon realizing the effects of these visits and/or upon being told of my visits, I see the damage I did and could have done to another human being and to my self. I am heartened by the fact that I have continued to minimize these visits, let go of my need to be right and allowed myself to know what is right, and I continue to learn and grow my soul each day. I also know that while the lure of these beauty parlors is great, the call of my soul has to be greater. My soul’s call to me gets greater through constant contact with God/Higher Power and through maintenance and attention. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark