Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 234
“It requires a great effort to realize before Whom we stand, for such realization is more than having a thought in one’s mind. It is a knowledge in which the whole person is involved; the mind, the heart, body, and soul. To know it is to forget everything else, including the self.” (God in Search of Man pg. 407)
I have been thinking about this piece of wisdom for a while and especially since I wrote about it yesterday. The last sentence is the key to living into “know before Whom you stand” and it is not easy to accomplish nor maintain, in fact, we will never be consistent in our maintenance and effort “to realize before Whom we stand.” Given this truth, I recall Rabbi Tarfon’s teaching: “we are not commanded to finish the task and we are not free to not engage”. We are 3 days until Erev Rosh Hashanah and 12 days till Kol Nidre and We the People will not finish the work of TShuvah, utilize the gift of Elul completely-we are not perfect and that is not the goal of this moment, it is not the goal of the TShuvah process.
The goal of this moment, this month, this period of “spiritual audacity” is to engage, to be in the work of looking at oneself, seeing what is true and what isn’t, letting go of the resentments that keep us enslaved to blame and shame, to forget the slights, the traumas, the dashed dreams, the grudges, the unfairness of life, the mental cliches and conventional notions, the societal pressure to measure up to some inane and insane standard of perfection that NO ONE ever measures up to. The goal of this period of time is to look as deeply inside ourselves as we possibly can, and then go a little deeper-one grain of sand- to see the beauty of our living, to realize the purpose we are created for, the divine need we fulfill, to hear the call of the stranger, the poor, the needy, the friend and the foe; responding to each in ways they can hear and “to forget everything else”, especially the lies we have told ourselves for years and the deceptions from another(s) that have chained us to mediocrity either emotionally, physically, and/or spiritually.
“To know it (before Whom we stand) is to forget everything else, including the self” is an outrageous statement, it is an audacious statement, it is a statement of great “moral grandeur” as well. It is almost too much to take in and yet, in the Bible, we see over and over again people doing this and then screwing up big time! These examples, hopefully, give us the strength to strive for the 30 seconds of seeing our own holiness on Yom Kippur. When We the People “forget everything else, including the self”, we rise to meet our authentic self, our vision is better than 20/20 because the universe shows itself to us and we are able to see what the next right action is, we are able to appreciate the path we have taken to get to this moment, and we let go of recriminations for not ‘seeing’ this sooner, for not ‘being better’, and we accept the words that are spoken on Kol Nidre: “I have forgiven as you have spoken”! Once we accept the forgiveness of another, the forgiveness of God, we can, finally, forgive ourselves. Upon reaching this level of forgiveness, we achieve “to forget everything else, including the self” for this moment and we will not stay in this state and we will lose it and keep returning to this place so we can improve our vision, lessen the harms, and live a little more authentically and joyfully.
The only path to achieving this is TShuvah, amends, confession, whatever the path to wholeness is your spiritual tradition. Facing oneself, without blame, without being judgmental, without needing to make excuses is a terribly difficult journey. It is a journey that society has ignored and the powerful jettison immediately upon taking power-hence “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. We see this with King Saul and with King David-both succumbed to the corruption that power brings; with King David doing his TShuvah so he could once again retake his moral high ground and spiritual place in the world. We are witnessing this with the people in power in the United States who are going against the 1st Amendment-Freedom of Speech! We see this in the abuse of power they are committing and the going along with this bullshit, with this destruction of the Constitution by the Supreme Court! This is an example of people who do not “realize before Whom they stand” no matter how much they brag about their ‘faith’, no matter how much they proclaim their loyalty to Jesus while doing everything that he railed against. We the People in doing our TShuvah, in knowing “before Whom we stand”, in staying loyal to the principles of the Bible, can stop these wannabe Pharaohs, these wannabe dictators, these idolators and liars. WE HAVE THE PATH, THE POWER, and THE WILL to do this once we take the dive into our inner life, into our spiritual powers.
I have been knowing “before Whom I stand” forever, actually. I ignored this knowing from ages 15-35, by ignoring what I knew to be true I sent myself into more and more internal anguish and confusion that took more and more booze to quiet and more crime to have ‘enough’ money to buy me peace. It DIDN’T WORK! It was in a jail cell, in a prison Rabbi’s office, Rabbi Mel Silverman, that I was turned on to the truth about me, the power of TShuvah and the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel among others. It was with my friend and teacher, Rabbi Ed Feinstein that I learned the text, with my teacher Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man that I learned about my inner life through spiritual counseling. It is with great humility that I “realize before Whom I stand” and am able to forget everything else, including my self”, especially myself so I can serve another(s) in ways they need and know it is only through being mostly clean that I can hear another(s), love another(s) and be present with another(s). It ain’t easy and it is doable! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark