Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 199
“We must burn the cliches to clear the air for hearing. Conceptual cliches are counterfeit preconceived notions are misfits.” (Who is Man pg.109)
I have been thinking about this teaching for days, as you can see, because I realize this teaching is the path to freedom, to authenticity, and to connection. We live in a world that is all about illusions, optics, cons and schemes, mendacity and self-deception. Rabbi Heschel’s words above show that this is not a new phenomena for humanity, it has been with us for a long, long time; I guess it is in our DNA. Yet, we do not have to live like this, we are not doomed to this life of deception, hurt, false appearances, living in fear of lawsuits and the “fairness” that passes as decency today, if we heed and live the teachings above. We have to burn these cliches precisely because they are so insidious and so dangerous. We burn them in order to tell ourselves we don’t need them anymore. We are not so destitute, so bereft of substance, so spiritually bankrupt, so morally corrupt that we need to engage in illusions, optics, cons, schemes, mendacity and self-deception! Our burning/sacrificing of these cliches and preconceived notions is our liberation and path to freedom. It is the only way to live lives that are authentic, connected, caring and compatible with being a partner with God/functioning member of the world.
We have all reaped what we have sown in this regard. We have become People of the Lie without any awareness. All of us, at one time or another, in one situation or another, are phony because we fall back on the counterfeit cliches to make ourselves feel vindicated/right/appropriate in our wrongful actions. I know of people who use “Founders Syndrome” to annihilate the good works of people who found, build, sustain an organization that helps people-there are volumes of papers about this cliche because people want to use one case where it may have been true and extrapolate it to everyone. False, mendacious, cruel are the hallmarks of this counterfeit way of living. Most of the people who live in this state are totally unaware of their actions, they have convinced themselves that they are acting in the greater good because this cliche has taken on the smell and ring of truth - when in fact the cliche is counterfeit, the main people promoting the cliche are acting out of a need to have power, crush the people who have helped them and/or family or friends. When the people in charge are counterfeit through their need to use cliches and the preconceived notions of people to convince them to go along with their mendacious plans, then the outcome has to be counterfeit as well.
As individuals, we have to burn these cliches for our own sanity, our own ability to live in our skin and connect with another human being, with God, with the Universe, etc. Very few people are totally counterfeit, totally run by the cliches and preconceived notions they were brought up with, yet the more we do not burn the cliches and the preconceived notions we have been buying into, that have been at the foundation of our living, the more of a hold they will have on us and we will not even notice them anymore. We have to burn them today and everyday as they will continue to creep into our actions in the subtlest of ways; money is an example. The Golden Rule has become: “the one with the gold rules” according to some people I know. I have watched people with money become dictators and demanders and, as Tevye says, “it will not matter if I am right or wrong, when you are rich they think you really know”. I have watched people who are involved in charities make themselves leaders of the charity while giving nothing, just getting others to give and in business be slumlords, treat the people working for them at their home and business like slaves and no one will call them out because they are part of the ‘country club’, the ‘money club’, etc. This is another way of how the cliches, the preconceived notions turn all of us into collaborators and part of what is ailing our world. When Liz Cheney called for truth about Jan 6, she was shunned, stripped of her role and power because she has the audacity to speak truth to power.
We are all original works of art and, while I myself have lithographs, artist prints, etc hanging in our home, I never confuse them with the original. The same is true for each and every one of us. We have to live our own life, we have to burn the cliches and the preconceived notions in order to be original, to “walk to the beat of a different drummer” walk to the music that is in our souls, in our kishkas/inner life. We admire this trait in the arts, business, oratory, etc and as soon as someone ‘makes’ it-the powers that be work so hard to co-opt them into some preconceived notion of how they should be now. I have fallen into this state at different times in my careers, I bought the lie of self worth=net worth, I bought the cliche of what a real Rabbi should be and rejected it. I have been original throughout my recovery and I have had bouts of fear that made me buy into the preconceived notions and cliches deep inside of me, the ones my parents had bought and the ones people put on me. At times, instead of burning them, I erupted like a Volcano and spewed lava and ashes onto the innocents around me, instead of on the liars, the mendacious ones who were trying to put me in a box and deny my originality. I am realizing this through Rabbi Heschel’s words and I pray you will stop the cliches that have been running your life and burn them too. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark