Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 5 Day 21
“Right living is like a work of art, the product of a vision and of wrestling with concrete situations.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 87)
I am thinking of Michelangelo’s statement: “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” Since it is true for the greatest sculpture we have known, since most artists will tell you similar stories, it is probably true that We the People have a vision that is compatible with our higher angels, our higher consciousness, aka intuitive mind, as well as the vision most of we the people are very familiar with, from our lower, baser, consciousness, aka rational mind.
Hence our daily dilemma: which mind, which consciousness is going to prevail in any given situation. While the intuitive mind has vision, brilliance, and, in the best of times in any individual’s life, sets the course; it is the rational mind that has to carry out the duties to move closer to the vision, to ‘do the dirty work’ and to live into the “concrete situations” Rabbi Heschel is speaking about.
Just like the David was already in the Marble, Moses’ rays of light from God, were in the Marble, the Virgin Mary holding her son, Jesus, after his crucifixion, with the love and pain was already in the Marble, so too is our purpose and passion already within We the People! Our job is to chisel away the bullshit and the schmutz that keeps covering up our essence and our connection, our wisdom and the brilliance of the light within us that is “yearning to breathe free”!
Yet, we the people continually miss our opportunity to chisel away at the lies we tell ourselves, the armor we believe is necessary to ‘meet the day’, and, our deep-seated belief that when the truth is inconvenient, don’t say it! The degree of self-deception that we the people engage in to avoid truth, freedom, finding the authentic human being we are beneath the trappings of poverty, of wealth, of egomania, of low self-esteem, of power, of powerlessness, is stunning when we consider and immerse ourselves in the sentence above! Yet, we the people continue to engage in our self-deceptive ways so we do not ever have to come “face to face” with our true self and this is the reason we are in the situation we are in right now!
Donald Trump is not the problem, even though he is a BIG FUCKING PROBLEM, the real problem is that we the people refuse to leave the warmth and comfort of the Marble that surrounds us, eschewing each and every opportunity to chisel away at what hides us, not picking up the hacksaw to saw our way out of the prison bars we have erected, and absolutely refusing to allow anyone else to be our Michelangelo, our sculpture. Being seen for who we truly are is just too frightening and too many of we the people continue to go to great lengths to avoid this. The reason being, of course, that too many of we the people do not want to be held accountable, do not want to be obligated, do not believe in the Bible’s they read, the tenets of the faith they proclaim to love and the way of being that is in the Bible, in Jesus’ words, in Mohammed’s way, in the Buddha’s vision. It is not only sad, I would posit it leads to the greatest crime of all: spiritual rape of another, bastardization of the Truth, the Word, the Voice on Sinai.
We the People who have allowed someone else to wield the chisel, who have chipped away at the crap that keeps us hidden and inauthentic, are aghast at the level of hiding, the mendacity, the trained seal behavior of so many of we the people. Beit T’Shuvah’s tagline, thought up by Avi Reichental and Harriet Rossetto was/is: “Recover your passion, discover your purpose” . One cannot do either without “going under the knife” of a skilled spiritual surgeon, the Spiritual guide, the spiritual friend who will keep reflecting the authentic you back to you, giving suggestions as to how to let the marble that no longer serves you fall away, stop holding onto the ‘comfort’ of your prison, the ‘joy’ of your hiding. I know the difficulty of doing this, I know the blessing of having spiritual guides and friends to help remover the schmutz, and I know the joy of bursting out of prison, out from behind the ‘walls’ I cultivated for so long. There is nothing like it and wrestling with “concrete situations” is a privilege and an honor, because it leads to my “work of art” that I call life, being brighter, better and lovely.
ACTION STEPS:
Find a Spiritual guide, engage with a spiritual friend in a spiritual discipline that chisels away at the lies, the marble, the prison you have created/kept
See another person for who they truly are and tell them what you see
Continue to look in the mirror and search for the authentic you.
Each night write down what you did because your “intuitive mind” told you to and what you did to hide, to go along to get along, to have power.
GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark