Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 187
“Indebtedness is given with our very being. It is not derived from conceptions; it lives in us as an awareness before it is conceptualized or clarified in content. It means having a task, being called.” (Who Is Man pg. 108)
Rabbi Heschel, once again, describes the struggle between what our soul/inner life knows and what the world/society demands. Society wants people to owe the leaders, owe the rich, be grateful one has a job, etc. Society wants everyone to think their lives are dependent upon the graciousness, benevolence of the people in power, think of the Kings and Queens of old and the Authoritarians of now. Because of our self-deceptions, because of the mendacity of those in power, because of the need to be deceived, which we discussed earlier, human beings buy the wrong concepts, they are paying on their debt to the ‘wrong’ entity!
Indebtedness is not to any one person or thing, we do not owe our lives to our parents, to our friends, to mentors, etc, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today. We are indebted to the Ineffable One, to the “prime mover”, for our life. It is part of our spiritual and emotional DNA. In fact, as I am writing this today, it strikes me that our spiritual maladies and, possibly, much of what is termed ‘mental illness’ may just be the outward manifestations of the inner war between what our souls know and what society is trying to sell us, what our parents are demanding from us, etc. Indebted to people causes us great anxiety and we worry about what it will cost us in the long run.
There are people who lend “hard money” also known as loan sharks. They charge exorbitant interest and are very harsh in their collection techniques. We call them criminals. Why then, do we not condemn people for the emotional and spiritual blackmail, the emotional and spiritual exorbitant “interest” they charge when they help someone else? Why are they called leaders, parents, bosses, non-profit board members, etc and these behaviors are accepted as ‘business as usual’? We see in our current political state that any bill to help the poor, the needy, the stranger is met with an uproar from one side of the aisle and these same people rush to help the powerful, the rich and friend from overseas who can contribute to their hold on power! Conversely, we see the people on the other side of the aisle who want to help the needy, the poor, the stranger want to punish the rich, successful, people with over the top taxes, regulations, etc. When a person can be fired just because they speak the truth and a person can collect Worker’s Compensation because they screwed up on the job (like being under the influence while working in a treatment center) we are not living lives of indebtedness as Rabbi Heschel is speaking about, we are living “owing our soul to the Company Store”. This is what I am calling spiritual and emotional blackmail, extortion and is criminal in its very nature.
We need to say NO to this co-opting of spiritual principles by society, people in power in every level of existence. We have to say NO to this emotional and spiritual blackmail and extortion by the few to control the many. We have to say NO to the pull of our rational minds to go along to get along and say YES to the call of truth, the call of our souls. Doing this will lessen the existential pain we all experience, it will allow us to address the true pain and joy of living and will keep us focused on purpose and passion.
In recovery, we constantly acknowledge our debt to God, to the Universe and seek to make a payment on this debt daily. We know our debt because we engage in a spiritual and moral inventory daily to see where we have missed the mark and what we need to do to repair our errors along with seeing where we have hit the mark and how we can enhance and grow these attributes.
I am guilty of making people ‘pay their debt’. In looking back, I realize the majority of time was for the person to ‘get right’ with God and themselves for their minimizing the debt they owed. I do believe when we accept help we take on a debt to help another person, ie pay it forward, we are part of the great ‘reciprocity of generosity’ which Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man taught me means we will receive random acts of generosity from the Universe not necessarily from the person we have been generous to. I also know that I have succumbed to the demands of people to “owe them” and each time I have ‘paid them back’ it was never enough. I have experienced people being so distraught over ‘owing a debt’ to another person for their life-saving, life-affirming, life-helping actions that they have to then destroy the person who helped them out of fear, embarrassment and guilt. One young man told me years ago that, now that he was successful, he did not come around to Beit T’Shuvah or to see me because he was disgusted with himself that he needed the help! To anyone who feels my demand for them to ‘pay their debt of being helped’ was personal, I am truly sorry. I believe it was in the service of the greater good of my/our mission and when/if it wasn’t I humbly ask for your forgiveness. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark