Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 303
“The mind is in search of rational coherence, the soul in quest for celebration. Knowledge is celebration. Truth is more than equation of thing and thought. Truth is transcendence, its comprehension is loyalty.” (Who is Man pg 117)
As Rabbi Heschel wrote about, taught about, spoke about and marched against the dis-integration of our souls, of our inner life throughout his life, so too we find our selves in a similar predicament. We are “sticking together” an irrational coherence of reasons and excuses for our current predicament. Just as Donald Trump is not the problem, neither is whomever we are blaming for the misery in our lives currently. It is not our parents, our siblings, our neighbors, our bosses, our competition, our co-workers, it is us! This month of introspection prior to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur gives us the opportunity to let go of our irrational coherence. And, it is hard!
We have spent a lifetime glueing together these excuses, reasons, denials, blames, etc. We have spent a lifetime fighting against surrendering our irrational coherence because we keep making it rational to ourselves. We have spent a lifetime running away from our inner life, running away from the call of our souls and the demands of God. All the while fooling ourselves into believing we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. I am not speaking about the evil dictator, I am not speaking of the authoritarian leader, I am speaking to and about all of us who are alive today, all of us who are determined to find reasons and/or excuses for what we are doing, for what is going on in the world, etc. I am speaking to every unique individual who still runs away from their uniqueness and denies their similarity with every other human being. I am speaking to the individual who knows they are in low-grade misery and is so comfortable in it they are afraid to leave it, afraid to be free, afraid to see their whole self and continue to hide, blame, explain.
Irrational coherence is, of course, an oxymoron and, I believe we live in it daily. We do “make our own beds” not with the circumstances of birth, or prejudice, or being born into a rich/poor family, or color of skin, faith we grow up in, etc, we “make our own beds” with the ways we respond and/or react to life’s ups and downs. We can’t change our genetics, we can’t change our ethnic background, our race, we can change the story we tell ourselves going forward in life, we can change the maturity of our inner life, we can change how we relate to the Creative Force of the Universe which infuses me with power, spirit and creativity, we can change our thinking from excuse to responsibility, blame to T’Shuvah/amends, irrational coherence to a “rational coherence” that is on the path towards “celebration”.
We do this by letting go of our “indifference to the sublime wonder of living” as Rabbi Heschel teaches in God in Search of Man, we do this be no longer being a bystander in our lives, we do this by letting go of our need to be right, surrendering our obsession with false ego and pride. We create a “rational coherence” that leads to “celebration” through commitment to the search for truth which entails hearing and taking in what another human being who is searching for truth is saying about us, about an issue, about life. It is through an acknowledgement of our own imperfections and rejoicing in them, it is through seeing our humanity and the humanity of another(s) through the lens of imperfection. It is through loyalty to principles, loyalty to one another, loyalty to God/Higher Power/Higher Consciousness, loyalty to the call of our inner life, our souls. We are able to create a “rational coherence” that leads to “celebration” through community and through covenantal relationships. We are in desperate need of this type of living, we are dying on our insides because of our irrational coherence, and like climate change, without doing surrendering to the “sublime wonder of living”, without living in radical amazement, soon, it might be too late to turn our ship called humanity around.
In recovery, we know all about irrational coherence, we know all about blame and excuse, we have PhD’s in all of these areas. Because we are so aware of our tendency towards irrational coherence, we do our inventory each and every day as guard rails against falling too deeply back into this soul crushing experience. Because we “continue to take personal inventory”, we rejoice in our errors and in our awareness of them as well as celebrate our victories and our “rational coherence”!
I have spent many years not blaming another, pointing out my part and someone else’s part and not making someone else the cause of my actions. I have experienced being blamed and vilified as well as extolled and uplifted and, truth be told, the latter feels much better than the former AND I have erred and done the next wrong action at times so the blame and vilification has led me to look deeper into my actions, my reasoning and helped me leave the irrational coherence that led me to think those actions made sense. The difference between blame and holding another person responsible and accountable is very nuanced and I believe we hear blame when it is about being responsible and hear blame as a way of deflecting my personal responsibility. To those who have heard blame from me, I apologize deeply and sincerely. I have been engaged in T’Shuvah and taking my responsibility for 35 years and I accept, take and announce my responsibility and my part in both the good and not so good much more each day. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark