Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 210
“There are moments when we are all awake to the grandeur of cosmic reality, in the face of which the unworthiness of self-centered thinking, the speciousness of rewards, and the eagerness of vanity fill us with shame…Shame, shocked at the misery of an overloaded ego, we seek to break out of the circle of the ego.” (God in Search of Man pg. 402)
It is evident that Rabbi Heschel is an optimist! After being in Nazi Germany during the rise of Hitler and his gang of thugs, seeing what was happening in the Soviet Union, witnessing the Anti-Semitism, Racist way of being in America, he still believed in the words, the experiences, the teaching above! It is also evident that he believed greatly in the power of We the People to “break out of the circle of the ego”! Maybe because he witnessed the remorse and repentance of the German nation, maybe because he knew of the resilience of the survivors, maybe because he believed in the goodness of being that is to be found in every human, he was able to know and believe that “there are moments when we are all awake to the grandeur of cosmic reality”.
This first sentence above is the experience that every recovering person knows well and is incapable of truly describing. Becoming “awake to the grandeur of cosmic reality” is the moment when we no longer need to use anything to escape, when all our escapes, money, power, drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, prestige, fame, etc don’t help us anymore. It is the moment when we are overcome with both “the unworthiness of self-centered thinking” and the awe, power and beauty of ‘seeing’ the source of “cosmic reality” face to face. Be it Moses, or Jacob, King David or the Prophets, Jesus, Mohammed, and/or any one of We the People coming face to face with the “cosmic reality” is a cause for consternation and elation-the truest and most exquisite both/and experience! Yet, too many of We the People make the fatal decision to ignore this “grandeur” to buy into the societal lies and mendacity that the “cosmic reality” isn’t true in the ‘real world’ because of the fear of the people in power losing their control, much like Pharaoh in the Bible, much like King Saul, and all of the Kings the prophets railed against. For many of We the People coming face to face with our own “unworthiness”, with our own “speciousness”, with our own “vanity” is too hard a pill to swallow, so, like Bibi and Donny, Vlad and Viktor, we blame everyone and anyone else for what is happening, we “accuse others of what we are guilty of” just like Josef Goebbels taught and did. Forgetting where this way of being led the Nazis and Germany to, forgetting that the BIG LIE is a paper tiger and will eventually fail.
It is up to us, We the People to end the reign of terror that people who are unwilling to have the experience of “the grandeur of cosmic reality” affect them. It is up to us, We the People to look in the mirrors, to come face to face with, admit, and change our own “unworthiness of self-centered thinking” and remember the ways of the Bible which teach kindness and love for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, which teach care and compassion for the hungry and the poor, which teach justice for all, which teach that freedom, holiness, connection are the basics for living well and all of us are endowed with “unalienable rights” and none of us are meant to be slaves to another! It is up to us, We the People to let go of the false rewards being dangled before our eyes by society. We the People have learned throughout history that these rewards are both fleeting when we ‘receive’ them and, usually, are only dangled and never given to us lowly servants of the powerful.
When We the People “awake to the grandeur of cosmic reality”, it is imperative to build on these moments, not have them continuously as that is just not reality. The goal is to build upon these moments, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, loyalty to the experience of “cosmic reality” and loyalty to our response to this experience are what makes up faithfulness. We all are faithful to some experience, most of us are faithful to the lower experiences of self-centeredness, rewards, vanities, power, hate, fear rather than being faithful to the experience of “the grandeur of cosmic reality”. It is hard to stay in this game because of the pulls of the ego, the pulls of society, the fear of looking stupid, the reality of being alone, the disdain thrown at one who is loyal to the prophets vision and actions, to the ones who stand out and above the people wanting power and prestige, fame and fortune, who are not willing to “break out of the circle of the ego”. Each of us falls prey to these ways of being and it takes a spiritual discipline to help us return to “the place our soul was meant to be” as Thomas Merton says.
I know both of these experiences well. In looking back, I can say that I stayed loyal to my own experience of “cosmic reality”, not perfectly and I never allowed it to fade into the ether. I have an ego/drive that I have used for good most of the time, sometimes falling prey to “vanity”, “unworthiness”, and “speciousness”. Each time I have fallen prey, however, because of my own spiritual work or the love of someone telling me I have erred, I have been able to return to the the ways of being able to “break out of the circle of the ego” that work for me-study, writing and other forms of action-which always entail helping another human being. It is a lonely road at times for me, I know I am not an easy person to be with or be around because I hear a call and am unable to ‘tone it down’ so I am loud, abrasive and, to many obnoxious. To me, I am just living my soul’s calling out loud. I walk this road not because I ‘want to’, but because I am “awake to the grandeur of cosmic reality” and this is the road that has my name on it. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark