Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 299
“To celebrate is to share in a greater joy, to participate in an eternal drama. In acts of consumption the intention is to please our own selves in acts of celebration the intention is to extol God, the spirit, the source of blessing.” (Who is Man pg. 117)
Once we are able to let go of our self-centered need to please our selves only, once we are willing to surrender to the basic spiritual truths of being human, we are then ready and able to “extol God, the spirit, the source of blessing”. The basic spiritual truths of all humanity are: love, kindness, truth, justice, being needed, needing another, community, connection, compassion and service. Immersing oneself in the ending words of the last sentence above, understanding the word intention in the Latin meaning of the word; purpose, celebration takes on a new meaning as does consumption. Truthfully making the extolling of God; the love of mercy, justice, and walking in God’s ways, fulfilling our need to be in truth and to be needed, engaging in authentic connection and needing another(s), living with compassion towards self and another(s) as well as being of service to humanity, to nature, to God/Universe. We are learning/re-learning from Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above to stop these foolish flights of fantasy into consuming as much as we can, having as much as we can, in order to ‘win’, in order to please our false self, in order to satisfy the urges and cravings of our authoritarian leader, because we have become a slave to our consumption urges and always need to be feeding it with more and more stuff.
Making service our purpose, making serving something greater than our self our purpose is the path back to our basic goodness of being, the path back to living the foundational spiritual values, principles and truth that live within us. Making truth our purpose and path, seeking justice as a matter of course, authentic connection seems to miraculously happen and we are more fulfilled because of connection, truth, and justice to the world around us, to the world that the Ineffable One inhabits as well. When seek to be kind rather than nice, when we seek to be compassionate rather than greedy, when we fulfill our calling to make our corner of the garden that we inhabit a little better than it was before we were here, then we live with an ease and a knowing that is indescribable. We are no longer looking over our shoulder and worried about who is trying to take something from us, we are looking forward and around us to see who we can share our bounty with. We bless God before and after we eat to remind us that all that we have is not of our own doing solely, we acknowledge that we have had so much help to be where we are, parents, friends, teachers, co-workers, the universe, etc and being able to sustain our bodies, minds and spirits is a gift.
Prayer is not to ask for something, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, it is to praise, to thank, it is a song and it comes from our souls, not our minds. We pray each morning, afternoon, evening as well as before and after every meal, ending with our bedtime prayers not as a chore, not as a petition, we pray as a song of gratitude and acknowledgement of the blessings and gifts we receive each and every day. Upon arising, being grateful to be alive and committing to be compassionate and faithful is our action of gratitude. Helping another human being just by saying hello and acknowledging their existence is an action of gratitude that we are awake, aware and alive.These suggestions are ways to make extolling of God, the spirit and the source of blessing our purpose. These are the ways we can allow ourselves to be confronted and defeated by a higher truth when consumption, self-deception and the deception by another(s) tries to overwhelm us.
In recovery, we reject our past ways of consumption for the sake of more, for the sake of escape, for the sake of faux protection. We are at least 51% committed to engage in acts of celebration rather than self-centeredness, rather than self-aggrandizement. We have a practice, unique to each of us, for praise, for gratitude, for blessing and to be of service, to be compassionate, to make truth, justice, kindness, mercy the address we now live at. In recovery, we surrender each day, sometimes many times a day, we set our purpose/intention on connection, service, and love.
My life in recovery has been about extolling God, the spirit and the source of blessing. I know that without God’s help, I never could have gone from being in prison 35 years ago to being in retirement after the humbling joyous experience of being of service to God, to humanity, to my family, community. I am acutely aware of my flaws, I am reviewing them as I write and I have made my amends and searching for ones I still need to make. I am content in ways I never understood before, I am not interested in licking old wounds, in dealing with people who have betrayed me, in trying to figure out what someone’s motive is. I am more interested in celebration, in taking actions that extol God, not me; extol the spirit within me, not my false ego and pride; the source of blessing, all the people who touch my life with love, with lessons, with guile and with truth. It is no longer about getting even, figuring out someone’s motives, it is about engaging in the connection, in the experience, learning from both and making this day one grain of sand better than the last day. My purpose is based in the spiritual truths above and I get to live them each day-how great is this! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi
Mark