Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 37

“It is a useless endeavor to fight the ego with intellectual arguments, since like a wounded hydra it produces two heads for every one cut off. Reason alone is incapable of forcing the soul to love or of saying why we ought to love for no profit, for no reward. The great battle for integrity must be fought by aiming at the very heart of the ego and by enhancing the soul’s power of freedom.”(Man is Not Alone pg.141/2).

We spend so much time in our intellectual arguments within our own brains and with another person(s), that we get lost in our need to be right, our need to prove, our need to win, our need puff ourselves up, etc. What is sad to/for me is that we have seen what these intellectual arguments can and do lead to: war; extermination; destruction of democratic ways of governments; family separations; prejudice; hatred of women, LGBTQI, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, foreigners, people of color; inner anxiety, depression, addiction, etc. When we look back at our human history, we see how our intellectual arguments have bastardized God, spirit, religious tenets, etc. God is not asking us to fight wars anymore, not since the battle for the Promised Land in the 2nd Book of the Hebrew Bible, “Na” for the “history” of the Judges, Kings, Prophets. Yet, how many wars have people said they are fighting for “god”, how many terrorists have wreaked untold damage on innocent people in the name of their “god”? All of this comes from our egos and our intellectual arguments that the ego creates and our minds numbingly go along with. 

Germany had an immense intellectual community and it did not stop Hitler, et al, Russia has always had a large creative community within in and it hasn’t stopped Stalin, Putin, etc. America has always had a rebel spirit and openness to new ways of seeing and thinking and creating and it did not stop Trumpism, Tea Party, etc. We are seeing one of two people control what our government can and cannot do, not from any ideological stand rather from a power grab. The Republicans are not ideologically opposed to helping the needy and fairness-it is just their egos demand they decide how, who and what help is and they want to define fairness in their terms. The same is true of today’s Democrats as well. It is true in business and even in helping organizations, our intellects and egos get in the way of serving another(s) in the ways needed and with all of our beingness. 

In our personal lives, we are constantly confronted and controlled by our egos through needing to be right, afraid of looking foolish, our old wounds, trying to be #1, etc. We are using our intellectual arguments to bolster our egos, not fight them. While ego is an important quality for our survival and our endeavors to grow our purpose and engage in our passions, it is also the reason that we get so depressed, anxious, addicted, overbearing, etc. It is also the reason that we feel like we have to go to war/battle each and every day with the world to be heard, seen, powerful and insecure. Our egos tell us lies and we believe them, our egos help us stay in self-deception and mendacity. Our egos are the hydra that keep fueling our incessant need to dominate and rule another person(s), our ‘world’ and they fuel our fear of being dominated and ruled by another person. Fighting these unchecked ego urges and actions with our intellects only lead us deeper and deeper into the abyss. Fighting our egos with intellectual arguments leads to parents ‘knowing’ what is best according to their standards for their children and not truly seeing who their kids are. It leads to bullies believing they have the right to bully another human being, it leads to organizations being obsessed with the bottom line and not caring about the people who buy, use, depend on the goods and services they are selling. 

Intra-personally, our egos use our intellects to fuel our lies about ourselves such as we are not “good/good enough”. This leads us to constantly measure up to some false standard and not be real. Our egos fuel our false selves, sometimes to the extent that we are constantly adopting new personas to fit in with whatever crowd we are with. Our egos tell us our falseness is a good thing and we have the right to what we can get by any and all means because everyone else does it, ie cheat on taxes, portray ourselves as someone we are not, etc. Our egos force us into a life of one-upmanship and/or servitude, go it alone or go along to get along, etc. Our intellects are constantly telling us to assert ourselves and insert ourselves in matters where we don’t necessarily belong. The combination of ego and intellect drives us to silence the call of our souls. Our intellects and egos, when they are in charge of us, lead us to be concerned for another person’s situation only to the extent that it serves us by being seen as caring and kind, all the while really seeking credit, not service for the sake of another(s). 

In recovery, we know that we need our egos, we know that our egos can propel us to be the person we were created to be; decent, kind, loving, caring, truthful, just, compassionate. We also know that unchecked, fueled by our intellects,  our egos take us to the other end of the spectrum and we stop being human and care about ourselves only. In recovery, we are well aware of the sentence; “enough about me, what do you think of me” and how insidious this way of thinking and being is. 

More tomorrow on how I live in this constant battleground of ego, intellect and soul. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 36

“The self is not evil. The precept: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” includes the care for one’s own self as a duty. It is as mistaken to consider the duty to oneself and the will of God as opposites as it is to identify them. To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.” (Man is Not Alone pg.141).

Today, I want to focus on the last sentence of this paragraph: “To serve does not mean to surrender but to share”. I believe Rabbi Heschel is reminding us, teaching us, cajoling us, smacking some of us upside our heads as to what is important in living and how to truly engage in life, with God, with our whole self and with another self. 

Applying this truth to any aspect of living and we can see how it enhances, elevates, and enables common everyday activities. When I seek to share with my wife, daughter, siblings, nieces, nephews, family, friends, co-workers, strangers, I do not have to be right, I am not under any “pressure to perform”, I am not governed by the edicts of another, I am able to and privileged to present the real, authentic me, sharing wisdom, battle scars, holding out my hand for them to grab hold of, etc as well as learning from them, taking their outstretched hand and together, truly making a “fence around the Torah”, a connection that helps all of us live better, a connection that states we are responsible for and to each other, a connection that enables each other, and a connection that screams YOU MATTER. 

Many people have a terrific problem with the word surrender, I am reminded of Rabbi Harold Shulweis, z”l, screaming at me to never surrender when we were having a debate about the word in the context of recovery. Re-reading Rabbi Heschel’s words today, I understand better what he was saying. Sharing in and with another human being allows us to retain our individuality, our dignity, our freedom and our self-worth. Surrender, to Rabbis Shulweis and Heschel, as I am understanding these words today, was a negative because of the Shoah, because, to them, surrender meant slavery, becoming like another, a loss of dignity and self-worth. Even in relationship to God does surrender sound like the wrong word, as I am reading it today. Sharing with God, sharing in God’s bounty for and to us, sharing with God our soul’s desire, our sadness, our pain, our joy and our health, is a much different experience than surrendering/giving up and not being an active participant in the relationship with God. 

All of the prayers we recite at different times have a new meaning in immersing myself into Rabbi Heschel’s thoughts. We recite prayers to share our soul, our questions, pour fears, our  hopes with God and us. We pause between the words to hear and share in the words back from God. We pause between the words, prayers to hear and share in the dreams, hopes, questions, pain, fears, etc from the people in our prayer community. We pray as a people for our self and for the self of another human being(s). We share in the tragedies, pain, loss, victories, joys, healings and connections of one another in prayer, in community, in life as well as with God. As I am reading this, we do not come to God as a supplicant, with our hats in our hands, rather we come to God as a partner, as one who has something to share and something to receive. 

When we experience service as sharing, we no longer need to have power struggles with one another. We no longer have to force another person to surrender to our will and do what we want to do or want them to do in our to serve. Service is no longer about a hierarchy, it is about equality. Someone serving us is not longer something we are entitled to, rather it is something we are privileged to receive, it is a gift from another person and from God. Service as sharing means that we are gifted with the opportunity to share with another our gifts to compliment, enhance, fill a gap in their life so they can share with another, maybe us maybe not us, their gifts to do the same for another. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward and/or, as Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man taught me 30+years ago, it is the reciprocity of generosity that fuels the world and our souls. 

In recovery surrender is not a bad word, we have to surrender our false egos, our “drug of choice” in order to be able to share with another. In recovery, service is all about sharing our experience, strength, and hope. We find ourselves on both the giving and receiving end of these shares, the speakers at meetings don’t lecture, they share and in sharing we are able to express our humanity and receive the humanity of another, no matter their background, faith, race, socio-economic status, etc. In recovery, we share our secrets and our gifts in equal measure fearlessly so someone else can benefit. 

I have been blessed to be able to share my experience, strength, hope, joy, pain, sadness, betrayals by me and against me out loud to a community of seekers and sharers. In the 33 years I have worked at Beit T’Shuvah, my service has been all about sharing in the lives of 1000’s of people. I realize from today’s reading that my way of being is to share my ego’s energy with my soul’s vision and this is the path of maximum service to God, to my self, to another self(s). It is the path of to experience the maximum joy, comfort, dignity and self-worth possible. It is the path to the inner peace that we all seek, not the “ohm” inner peace, rather then inner peace of being an active partner with God, with another sharing soul(s) to make our corner of the world a little better and us a little more responsible. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path for living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 35

“The self is not evil. The precept: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” includes the care for one’s own self as a duty. It is as mistaken to consider the duty to oneself and the will of God as opposites as it is to identify them. To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.” (Man is Not Alone pg.141).

I find myself being so immersed in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom that I have to engage in the same few sentences over and over again. This is how I first began to read Rabbi Heschel, I would read a page, turn to the next page and have to turn back to re-encounter the mind-blowing, soul-opening wisdom of Rabbi Heschel. I hope you keep turning these pages over and over.

In the second major idea of this paragraph, Rabbi Heschel is again blowing up so many peoples’ ideas about the duty to oneself and the will of God. He is reminding us that caring for our self is following the will of God. This does not mean that our will is God’s will, that selfish desires, power plays, deceptions, denials, mendacity that we as people engage in daily, weekly, sometimes minute by minute, are God’s will. Rather the duty to oneself, the obligation we have to care for our self:  not our false egos, not our prestige and power, not our money-hungry deceptions, rather our true and authentic self. While we cannot say that our self is the same as God, we can say we are reminders of God, we are created to fulfill a divine need, we are capable of “nullifying our will before God’s will so that God’s will becomes our will” as we are taught in Pirke Avot. 

Caring for our self is so misunderstood by most people. I believe Rabbi Heschel is speaking about physical well-being for sure and, more importantly spiritual and emotional well-being. Using the phrase above about loving one’s neighbor, speaking about life being holy earlier on the same page, all point to his deep concern with our spiritual life, our inner life and, if we are not duty bound to care for our spirit, our soul, our inner life, our emotional life, then we will sink into an illness that no pill can bring us out of. We see this all the time with people we know and love, people we have never met and, in some cases, the people who lead cities, states, our country even. 

The illness of which I speak is the illness of mendacity, deception of another and self-deception. Just as someone of medication who is feeling better will decide to go off their medication and then all hell breaks loose, so too when we stop caring for our spiritual life, our inner life, does all hell break loose inside of us. We begin to blame everyone else for our issues, we point fingers at another(s) without taking responsibility for our part. We engage in the depravity of willful blindness about our self, we engage in the misbelief that something/someone will fix us. We are stuck in a bottomless pit and we seem to be incapable of getting out of it so we sink further and further into the mud of retaliation, being deceived by another and ‘victim’ mode. 

When we are not caring for our inner life/our spiritual life, the rest of us begins the descent into the hell of selfishness, the descent into the purgatory of blame and shame, the descent into the ruin of losing our humanity, our ability to see the worth of another person as equal to our own. We see these descents all the time, we hear the words of the people who are suffering this spiritual/inner life sickness and we do nothing for them because we are afraid to, lest we have to deal with our own. Actually worse than doing nothing for another person who is suffering from these spiritual/inner life maladies, we extol them, we buy into their mendacity, we follow them, make them our leaders as well as make them our followers. We have perfected the art of hiding so well from our spiritual/inner life maladies that we make fun of, demean, take advantage of those of us who wrestle with them every day. How sad, how terrifying. 

In recovery, we are aware that ‘our recovery is dependent upon the nature of our spiritual condition’. Each and every day we wake up, grateful to be alive, we write/think gratitude lists, we let the people around us know how much we love them, need them and shower them with the love they deserve and need. Each day as we start and continue on through the day, we “turn our will over the care of God…” so we stay out of self-centerness and self-obsession. We say the serenity prayer often during the day to remind ourself of our powerlessness over people, places and things so we can add our unique gift from God to our current situation and not need someone else to ‘do it our way’. In recovery, we know that our will isn’t the same as God’s AND caring for our self is part of God’s will for us as well. 

I know this teaching from both sides of the coin! I have made the mistake of identifying my duty to myself as God’s will by caring only for myself pre-recovery. I have made the mistake of not considering “the duty to one self” by caring too much for my job, the people I was/am helping, etc. What I am sure of is that I have not stayed in self-deception nor mendacity once my eyes were opened by me, God and/or another person. I have been blinded over the years by the duty to help another, more than the duty to my self and this has been a disrespect of God and me. I am not the center of the universe and no one is more valuable or less valuable than me. I have been gifted with a connection to God, an ability to hear Rabbi Heschel and Torah speak to me and honoring this as well as my spiritual life/inner life is the way I repay God for all the gifts I have received. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 34

“The self is not evil. The precept: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” includes the care for one’s own self as a duty. It is as mistaken to consider the duty to oneself and the will of God as opposites as it is to identify them. To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.” (Man is Not Alone pg.141).

Rabbi Heschel is again teaching us to see the nuances of living, engage with them and find the proper amount of self-care/regard that leads to care/regard of another self and God. “The self is not evil” is a radical statement for some religions, some sects, some people. When one believes one is born in sin, the self has to be evil by its very nature. Yet, Rabbi Heschel is confronting us with God’s words and our deep inner truth, we are not evil by design, by nature, nor by birth. This idea negates the idea of self-flagellation, starving oneself, being obesely overweight, taking unnecessary risks with our being in search of thrills, any addictive behavior, etc. Since our self is not evil, we need to stop treating our self as if it is! I am hearing a deep plea from Rabbi Heschel to see ourselves as imperfect, by design, partners with God in making our corner of the world a little better for our being alive. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching, if adopted by all of us, would lessen the hatred, anger, depression, anxiety, addiction, and other spiritual and mental/emotional maladies we currently suffer from and see in another(s). “The self is not evil” frees us from our self-loathing, our less-than/better-than thinking, as well as our comparative and competitive/win at all costs ways of being. “The self is not evil” is freedom from the chains of conventional notions and mental cliches, it is freedom from the self-deception and mendacity we live in and put our to another(s), and it is freedom to serving God with our whole self in joy, gladness, and harmony. 

The freedom that we can gain from this teaching is not meant to be exclusive nor to overfeed our egos. This freedom is for us to “love thy neighbour as thyself”; in other words, this teaching frees us up to truly care for our self, which is our duty according to Rabbi Heschel and care for another self; a both/and not and either/or. We are living in a world that is so bifurcated and separated, we forget that the people we disagree with most, are the same people Rabbi Heschel is speaking about and the Torah is speaking about. We are not living in some bubble, we are not in a cocoon, we live in the world and our neighbors may hold different political views, they may even believe in bunk science, they may be vaxxers and/or anti-vaxxers, they may believe in mendacity and engage in self-deception to a greater extent than we do AND they are still our neighbors, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel. While we may vehemently disagree with some people, while we may be acutely aware of how some people have hurt us, not cared about our concerns, not loved us as they love themselves, we still have to love them, we still have to see them as human beings, not clogs, not idiots, not hate them in our hearts if we are to live today’s teaching. While we can make up all the excuses in the world and we can justify our anger and our disagreements, this does not allow us to consider another self as less than human, no matter what their actions may say. 

When we engage in seeing another self as less than human, when we engage in treating another self as less than human, we are giving up our freedom to live well, to live as a partner of God and our freedom to live in joy, gladness and harmony. While it makes ‘sense’ in a perverted way of thinking, I realize that all of our hatreds of another self(s) is going against God, going against our best interests even. We can ‘hate’ the sin, we can feel really badly about the hurts that another does to us, we can be devastated by the betrayals we experience from another(s), we can be afraid of being around people who make choices that could endanger them and us, we just can’t hate the self of another human being. While schadenfreude is an experience that just happens, when we dwell in the joy of seeing another person experience the consequences of their behaviors we are imprisoning ourselves and relinquishing our free will and our freedom to choose to “love thy neighbour, as thyself”, because we are not caring for our self, we are caring for our false ego. 

In recovery, we learn to not hate the parts of our self that are underdeveloped, immature, that have led us to ‘evil actions’. We learn/relearn what it means to love our self and to love another self as well as not confusing the two. We are constantly growing our true self and shedding the false self/ego that propelled us into bad actions, selfish actions. In recovery, we care for our own self by being in truth with our self, with another self(s), and with God. We no longer act as chameleons, we no longer hide behind false pretenses, we no longer imprison our true self(s), rather we let it all hang out for everyone to see us as we are, imperfect and growing each day. 

I am blown away by today’s teaching. I see where I still consider my self as evil, forgetting to separate my negative actions from my self. I also see how I have given up my freedom because of what some people think of me and how they have treated me. I see how I became obsessed with proving something that these people just did not want to believe and how it caused me to not care for my self nor the self(s) of those nearest and dearest to me as well as I could have. I have let go of resentments, released any ‘debts’ owed me and now I leave the obsession of proving myself to people who just don’t get me, nor want to. God Bless them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark 

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel- a path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 33

“If life is holy, as we believe it is, then self-regard is that which maintains the holy. Regard for the self becomes only a vice by association: when associated with complete or partial disregard for other selves. Thus the moral task is not how to disregard one’s own self but how to discover and be attentive to another self.”(Man is Not Alone pg.141)

I have spent the 3 days on 3 sentences, which may seem excessive to some and, for me, it is my honoring of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching to “immerse” ourselves in text study. While Rabbi Heschel’s words, wisdom, teachings are not “Torah from Sinai”, they give me the same strength, embarrassment, hope, rebuke and love that the prophets gave to Israel and to us today-if we experience them. This, for me, is the key to Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, to experience the teachings by immersing ourselves in them and in all areas of living, breathing and being human. The last sentence above is, of course, the solution and the problem/challenge for all of us. While Rabbi Heschel calls it a moral task, I believe it is a spiritual task as well. 

This sentence brings up one of the great challenges of being human: How do I allow my ego to be defeated by my morality and my soul/spirituality? Most of us have been raised in a moral atmosphere, we know right from wrong, we know the 10 Commandments, etc, yet we are, at any and all times, subject to an assault from our ego to go against our moral fiber, our spiritual calling to, in this case, ignore what is right in front of us-another self. How is this possible? Living in a ‘dog eat dog’ world such as we have since the CavePeople, misinterpreting the phrase from the Bible to ‘have rule and dominion over the  animal world’ to mean we have to rule other selves, we have to make other people serve us, as pack animals, animals raised for food and pleasure do. How disgustingly egotistical and it is the way of the world since humans began to populate the earth, it seems. We have perpetuated this way of thinking/being for the millennium and it impedes our ability to “discover and be attentive to another self”. When we realize there is another self with needs, wants, desires just like us in the room, we are shocked many times. I have heard people say: “who does he/she think they are to drive the same car as me, live in the same neighborhood as me, etc.” We have Country Clubs that blackball people from joining if one member doesn’t like them! Yet, they will defend their fellow club members/friends for doing the same thing they blackball someone else for! We have many opportunities to engage in this “moral task” and, all too often, we fail to, enhancing the anger, the separation, the turning our backs on God and morality as well as thickening the wall around our souls/spirits. 

Rabbi Heschel is not telling us to have no self-regard in this sentence, he is telling us that we have to engage in and surrender to the moral task God has given to us. We have to let go of our puffed-up ego, our self-deception, our deception of another, and our desire to be a chameleon. We have to see another human being as that, a human being who needs connection and assistance at times, who needs to be recognized and exalted rather than ignored and enslaved, just as we do. 

To “discover and be attentive to another self” is to also discover and be attentive to one’s true self. Jacob, when he met Esau, was unable to do this, sadly. He could not truly embrace Esau because, in my opinion, he would have had to embrace his true self and been responsible for the harms he caused as well as the good he had done. Rabbi Heschel’s words point out the challenge of keeping a healthy, true sense for oneself while also seeing and holding a healthy true sense of “another self”.  There can be no prejudice, racism, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, hatred of any kind when we accept, engage and ‘win’ this moral challenge. When we “discover and be attentive to another self” we are unable to engage in senseless hatred and prejudice, we are unable to engage with another self from race, color, ethnicity, creed, religion, etc- we can only engage on a self to self level. 

In recovery, we realize how we gave up on this challenge and moral task prior to being in recovery. We are also acutely aware that what we are recovering is our integrity, our moral compass and the power to live a life based on spiritual and moral principles instead of ‘what’s in it for me’. In recovery, each day is measured by how we were attentive to another human being, how we were attentive to God and God’s will and how we were attentive to our self, remembering, realizing and relearning that these three seemingly separate actions all mesh with each other to make us better human beings today than we were yesterday. 

I have been engaging in the war between my ego and my soul for almost 70 years. In the first 36/37 years, my ego won out more often than not and in the past 33/34 years, my soul has won out more often than not. I hear my ego try to win whenever I begin to think that I have to “win” an argument, a negotiation, and/or ‘why don’t I have 1million followers, etc. This still comes up and being attentive to another self, also means being attentive to both selves that I am comprised of. I have to be attentive to my ego, as it helps me take the action that my soul directs me to, I have to be attentive to my soul so it can direct my ego and I have to be in attentive in proper measure to both of these internal parts so I can be of maximum service to another self and God! Oy!! God Bless and stay safe.  

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 32

“If life is holy, as we believe it is, then self-regard is that which maintains the holy. Regard for the self becomes only a vice by association: when associated with complete or partial disregard for other selves. Thus the moral task is not how to disregard one’s own self but how to discover and be attentive to another self.”(Man is Not Alone pg.141)

Rabbi Heschel is speaking to us in a language not all of us can hear, not because the words are unintelligible, not because there is any hidden or secret meaning to them, rather because we are deaf to them! Like our willful blindness to see what truly and authentically is, we also practice willful deafness. We purposely have not heard nor do we can to hear now  this teaching of Rabbi Heschel for doing so would change our responses to life, to the interests of another(s), to ensuring the freedoms of our Declaration of Independence, the four freedoms FDR articulated, the freedoms of our Holy Torah, the New Testament, the Koran, the myriad of Eastern philosphies/religions. As long as we stay willfully deaf to the cries of pain, sorrow, joy, laughter of ‘those people’, we can continue on with the lie we tell ourselves that we are engaging in “self-regard”; all the while engaging in self-centeredness. 

This is not a progressive rant nor is it a conservative bashing. This is a truth that I hear from deep inside my soul, I experience Rabbi Heschel speaking to me at this moment. There is a tension between conservative and progressive and our duty, according to Rabbi Heschel, is to live in the tension. Just as the sentences above, speak to us of the tension of taking care of oneself and one’s family and taking care of, being attentive to  the interests and the presence of another self. We have become so attuned to our own needs and how someone else can fill our needs, we have come to not see another human being for their Divine Image, for their separateness from us, for their humanity. We have come to regard another self as a tool for our gratification, an excuse for our ‘missing the marks’, the cause of all troubles we have and we cause. We engage in the vice described above, often. 

Every time we speak of ‘those people/you people’ we have “complete or partial disregard” for another human being. Every time we spread a lie to someone because it makes us seem smarter, bigger, gains us money, prestige, power, etc we have “complete or partial disregard” for another self. When we flex our muscles just because we/to exert power and get what we can rather than seeing how our strength can imbue another self with hope, purpose, a path to joy; we are in “complete or partial disregard” for another human. We see our leaders on both sides of the aisle engaging in this “complete or partial” disregard by not truly seeing each other as another self, seeing the followers of our opponents as ‘despicable, seeing the people with whom we agree as pawns and tools to raise money from (I get an obscene amount of political fundraising solicitations), etc.

In our personal relationships, when we are in transactional relationships, we can still have regard for another self, yet we have become deaf to the calls and cries of the people we transact ‘business’ with. The use of the word ‘business’, here, is any interaction we have with another human being. We see the regard for another self in companies who have decided to ensure a minimum living wage for workers, we see it in the amount of volunteering that happens across the world, we see it in the scientific research and discoveries that lead to vaccines and cures/remissions for the diseases that are trying to kill us, we see it in the work of organizations and business that help and interact with people regardless of their ability to pay. Transactional relationships do not mean a lack of self-regard nor a lack of regard for another self. 

This lack of regard, complete and/or partial, happens when we engage in willful blindness and willful deafness. When we hear someone with our ears attuned only to what they can do for us, we are in “complete or partial regard” for that self/those selves. When we see another human being and hear another human being as merely some object that we can step on to feel good about our self, some object we can step on to achieve our goals, some object we can step on to ‘get even’ for all the hurts we have suffered, some object we can step on, laugh at, deny their right to be human and treated humanely, we are in “complete or partial regard” for another human being and for ourselves. More on this tomorrow. 

In recovery, “having had a spiritual awakening… we carry the message to alcoholics who still suffer”, from the 12th step of AA. We are recovering a way of having regard for our selves and regard for another self/selves. We know we are not in this thing called living alone and, in recovery, we learn and practice service for the sake of both parties, I receive more than I give and my giving allows another to receive.

I am looking backward and forward, seeing how the best of times have been when I have served another’s interests and found myself by doing this. Sure I have had “complete or partial disregard” for another at times, however they were few and far between. I have been misunderstood, mis-attuned, in some of the times I have seemed to have disregard. Every human life is important, mine and yours I commit to continue to display this. More tomorrow on this. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 31

“If life is holy, as we believe it is, then self-regard is that which maintains the holy. Regard for the self becomes only a vice by association: when associated with complete or partial disregard for other selves. Thus the moral task is not how to disregard one’s own self but how to discover and be attentive to another self.”(Man is Not Alone pg.141)

Rabbi Heschel is reminding/teaching us how to be in the world and who we are in the world in today’s quote. “Life is holy” is a phrase that we forget to honor so often in our own daily living. We forget that we are already holy beings, infused with the spirit/breath of God and we have the opportunity to grow our holy life as well as impact the holy lives of every human being we come into contact with each day. “Life is holy”  hits us right between our eyes, it rings in our ears and opens up our hearts when we allow it to. We have to take seriously this phrase, “Life is holy” in order to have true self-regard. 

What passes as self-regard to many people is actually self-centered profanity, as I am reading Rabbi Heschel today. We keep trying to amass fortunes, fame, prestige, power, thinking that this is how we value our selves, this is how much self-esteem we have, this is how we engage in self-regard. I am calling BS on this idea as I am understanding the quote above. Our attempts at making ourselves look good by putting another person down, being puffed up proud of how we ‘beat the competitor/friend/human being’, forgetting those people who helped us in our time of need and making them our ‘enemy’, power for the sake of power-not to help another person; are some of the paths of false self-regard. Actually these are paths to self-destruction. We are actively working to tarnish if not destroy our innate holiness, we bastardize the truth: “life is holy” and turn it into: life is profane and I revel in profanity. We jump on people who use ‘four-letter words’ while reveling in the way we live profanely. 

Self-regard is, in my opinion, any and all actions which honor my being and are compatible with my being a creation of, child of, partner with the Ineffable One. In this vein: proper amount of sleep is self-regard; eating appropriately is self-regard; proper measure of work and home life’s self-regard; friends who are transparent and real, seeking truth and shunning falseness is self-regard; appreciating family for our connection to and encouragement to be me they give us is self-regard; continued learning and growing-welcoming our failures as opportunities to learn is self-regard; daily T’shuvah/inventory of where I missed the mark and where I hit the mark each days self-regard; not giving in to the false needs, manipulations, lies, mendacity of societal norms is self-regard; leaving relationships and jobs when they are as good as they can get and/or we realize the self-deception we bought into and we leave with our dignity is self-regard; to name a few of the many paths of true self-regard. 

“Life is holy” and maintaining the holy is a full-time job-which we know and need to be reminded of. I think of all the ways we become oblivious to this obvious truth! Maintaining the holy within us takes awareness, acceptance, respect, compassion, creativity, practice, community/connection and independence in my experience. We have to stay aware of our holiness and accept that we are holy and need to maintain our holiness. We have to respect our selves as holy beings and with respect we have to include compassion for our imperfections. We need to be creative in our thinking and actions in order to have a practice of maintaining our holiness each day. Community, connection and independence is the path of honoring the need we all have to connect and be a part of with our need to bring our unique vision and gifts to our world is necessary for maintaining our holiness and having self-regard. We all have been given the tools, the opportunity for true and real self-regard and it is our ‘job’ to take advantage of these opportunities.

In recovery, while we don’t necessarily say “life is holy”, we take holy actions in order to maintain and grow the spiritual awakening we experienced. We continue to grow our ‘program’ and we know that our recovery is dependent upon our spiritual condition! We seek ways to care for our self truly, honestly and with reverence for God each and every day. We continue to improve our conscious contact with God and turn our will and lives over to the care of the Ineffable One each day. We establish a daily routine that is never done routinely-staying fresh and open to hearing God’s call. In recovery, we know that maintenance is the key to living well. 

I am overwhelmed by today’s quote and will continue to use it on Sunday! “Life is holy” is a belief I have held continuously for almost 35 years, since I was arrested in 1986. I am thinking of all the ways I have maintained my holiness and the ways I have profaned it in these years. While I have profaned my holiness at times, I know that I live more holy today than I did when I began this journey, prior to my recovery, etc. I am also aware that my profaning is more nuanced because of how much I have grown in holiness and I don’t always realize this. I am aware that people will use my dips/profaning of my holiness against me as a “gotcha” and most of the people who do this either are guilty because I have helped them or jealous that I have succeeded in living holy. “Life is holy” is giving me the power to let go of resentments and have rachmones for the people who need to use my vulnerabilities against me. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 30

“That he forgoes the approval or favor of those who dominate the financial, political or academic world for the sake of remaining loyal to a moral or religious principle.” (Man is Not Alone pg.141).

This is the second half of the sentence I began yesterday’s writing with and it is sending pulsing throughout my body. When one of the two parties of our two party system is trying to, and may accomplish, the demise of our democracy as we have known it for the last 100+ years and the spirit of the inception of our democracy, and the other party has people who are more interested in their self-interest, their drunkenness with power and their joining with the destroyers, this fragment from Rabbi Heschel is so poignant, so powerful, so scary and so true. We are living in a time when we must “yield to the coercion to brood over purpose, meaning or value of living”. We must “forgoe the approval or favor of those who dominate…” in order to stand for and with what is right, true and loyal to the principles of spirit this country was founded on. We have to stop our seeking approval from those in power and join with the evil they are perpetrating onto a country, a state, a county, a city, an individual. All of this was unleashed by the election of Donald J Trump. Some of the people who are at the top of the food chain in politics, finance and academia used the election to let the tiger out of its cage- on both sides of the political and academic spectrum while the financial people just made more money and screwed over any and everyone else. 

In this mix, comes Rabbi Heschel’s words/teaching. Rabbi Heschel’s belief in humanity is so strong, so connected to God’s belief in humanity that he utters these words and teachings in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the trial of the Rosenbergs, which was about anti-semitism and anti-communism, and the Korean War. We are living in the aftermath of 9/11, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, two financial meltdowns, prejudice, racism, anti-semitism, anti-asian, anti-immigrant, anti-muslim, anti-LGBTQI, etc and reading these words. I hear the prophetic voice telling us to say NO to the people who are dominating these different spheres of our living: financial, political and academic and, I would add, religious. We are witnessing the “banality of evil” as Hannah Arendt spoke about. Most of the people who are engaging in this war on everyone who isn’t WASP are just “doing their jobs” without any or little awareness of the evil they are perpetrating and perpetuating. We are witnessing the effects of ‘evil flourishing while good people do nothing’. There are no good people who do nothing in the face of evil-one can’t be good and allow evil to flourish. To not allow evil to flourish, one has to stop participating in the banality of evil, one has to be aware of the impact of our actions and the actions of the “people in charge”. This is what makes the charlatans who bastardize Christ’s teachings such evil men and women. It is what makes these politicians who cater to the lowest animal instinct in humans to gain, regain, keep, grow their personal power-never giving a damn about the needs and or interests of another. 

It is into this arena Rabbi Heschel is telling us, reminding us and cajoling us to wade into from the coercive force of love, the coercive power to brood over meaning, purpose, values more than kissing the asses of the political liars (not limited to one extreme), the academic intellectual elitists (again on both ends of the spectrum) who theorize and can’t actually do anything but tear down everyone else and the financial elite who could care less about human beings, their god is the almighty dollar. We can and must use our forces of love, meaning, purpose to stay loyal to the principles of our faith and our morality. We do this in all areas of our lives, we stop compartmentalizing our living. We don’t have one moral/religious principle for ‘our kind’ and not ‘their kind’; we acknowledge God’s truth and God’s vision that we all come from Adam and each and every human being has infinite worth and dignity that we have to respect, nurture and grow in our own self and in other selves. We have to stop pointing fingers and, instead, reach out our hand. We have to follow Bobby Kennedy’s example of sitting, listening and finding solutions/commonalities with all peoples, especially the peoples we don’t know.

In recovery, we are hyper-aware of our need to stay loyal to principles, not personalities. We are hyper-focused on helping another person suffering and being a contributing member of our society, our community and our family. This happens because we see the damage we created in family, community and in the spiritual fabric of our world with our non-recovering actions. We experience the pain, the destruction and the fear we engendered in everyone who was in our orbit. In recovery, we place principles above everything else, we know that we cannot live well if we aren’t staying loyal to God, to God’s ways and to God’s will. 

I am a believer and practitioner of these words and not all the time. I fall short and I am guilty for the times I have, I have done T’Shuvah for those times and they are less and less. I know the cost of being truthful, transparent, passionate (at times too passionate), standing firm for principles and standing up to power. It is a mere pittance to the cost of selling my soul, having to face God, self and another(s) for not being all of these things. Do what I say not what I do just doesn’t work and for the charlatans/hiders among us who use us to feel good about themselves, I send pity and compassion. Stay loyal and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 29

“It is against his selfish interests that man yields to the coercion to brood over purpose, meaning or value of living;… that he often resists the tempting rewards of wealth, power or vulgar popularity;…”(Man is Not Alone pg.140-41)

The reverberations of these words can, should, must be experienced by all people. In fact, as Rabbi Heschel teaches being human is our task and this sentence above is the path to dignifying our humanness, acting in accordance with our being human, and the goal that we all have, whether we reach for it, whether we sustain this way of living or not. “We are engaged in a great civil war” both internally and externally today as we were at the time Rabbi Heschel wrote these uplifting hopeful words. The coercion spoken about here is the coercion to love I wrote about yesterday, and Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that this coercive force to love leads us to purpose, meaning and is the true value of living. This “great civil war” did not end in 1865, it has continued on for these past 156 years in many different disguises with the same goal: to see if our selfish interests are going to defeat the coercive force to love, find meaning, purpose and value the gift of life we have been given. All people are created equal, according to President Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address and to Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. This is a truth that the Talmud recognizes and our Holy Torah as well as all spiritual disciplines and foundational teaches give us the path to fulfilling this truth. None of us are better than another, no matter what we may think or hear from another person-each of us has infinite dignity and those who deny that are pathetic small people who yield to their “selfish interests” rather than their coercive love, purpose, meaning, etc.

It is time for us to all rise up and resist the “tempting rewards of wealth, power or vulgar popularity” and, instead, use our power to dignify each and every human being in our realm/orbit. Ensuring a living wage to those who work hard to make ends meet and can’t, welcoming the stranger as our ancestors were welcomed (whether they came ‘legally’ or not), caring for the poor and the needy who are unable to care for themselves, redeeming the captive, etc is within our power if we choose to follow our coercive force to love rather than hate, our coercive love to make meaning instead of comfort for ourselves, our coercive love to serve God and another instead of giving into our selfish indulgences. Using our popularity to spotlight an issue that needs to be brought to light, using our popularity to affirm the rights and the spirit and the dignity of another human being is the affirmative way to use our popularity within our small circle  and for those whose circle is wider-God Bless them for winning their internal war between selfishness and caring for another human being. Using our wealth to serve another human being doesn’t mean not pampering oneself; if you can have a private Jet or JetCard, God Bless you! This issue is what else are you doing with your money? I have a friend who is very wealthy and he has built one school that is up and running and is not building another school in an area that is underserved. He has donated to Charitable Causes for a lot of years and taught his children to do the same. He is always available to listen to someone and give advice and support. This is the proper way to “resist the tempting rewards of wealth”.

None of these achievements are bad, as I read Rabbi Heschel today. The question for us is how are we going to use/celebrate our achievements? Are we going to use our ‘legal prowess’ to overpower decency and rightful claims by using our wealth to continue to harass and browbeat someone else into submission just so we can “win”? Are we going to use the ‘bully pulpit’ we have to bully another person into slavery, just to win? Are we going to find the strength to say no to the forces of selfishness, need to win, how can I get mine, hiding from truth and seeking to gain on someone else’s back? We can, and I believe must, through strengthening and growing, acknowledging and rejoicing in our coercive force to love, to serve and to be human. 

In recovery, we are acutely aware that yielding “to the coercion to brood over purpose, meaning or value of living” is paramount to our continued growth; spiritually, morally and in our recovery. Without using the gifts we have been given by God/Higher Power we know we will go back to the days of selfishness and utter demoralization. In recovery, we are dedicated to not going back to this way of existing. Rather, in recovery, we are dedicated to growing our humanness, learning how to be more human, and serve another with joy, passion, humility and grace. 

I am saddened that these words, this teaching from 70 years ago have gone unheard and unheeded so I find myself in a space that seems ridiculous to some: giving into the coercive force to love and going beyond my selfish interests, brooding over meaning and purpose, resisting the impulses to “get even” etc. I am overwhelmed with joy also knowing that my actions have brought more people help and assistance and I don’t feel stupid when people who can treat me with dignity and respect don’t. I just feel sad and have compassionate pity for people who give into the temptations of power, money, etc. to rule/crush another human being, forgetting that none of us own another. I am gladdened for all the people who do rise above their selfish interests and add more meaning, purpose, love and concern to our world. More on this tomorrow. God Bless and Stay Safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 28

“In every soul there lives incognito a coercion to love, to forget oneself, to be independent of vested interests. (Man is Not Alone pg.140). 

Rabbi Heschel is teaching us a truth that many of us try and hide from, run away from, imprison, deny, deceive ourselves about! Each one of us has within us the desire, the need, the calling to love, to lose oneself in the concern and care for another, to serve higher purpose than self and higher goals than money, power and prestige. Yet, this desire, this drive, this coercive power is unknown to most of us, as he teaches above, it is incognito. How can something unknown be so forceful as to be coercive? Herein lies the root of our religious/spiritual experience: our souls are the arbiter between spirit and matter. Our souls are the arbiter of what is the next right thing to do, the arbiter of our living because our souls know more than our brains ever could. Our brains can only amass facts, data, wisdom, maybe even understanding; our souls put all of our experiences, all of our facts, data, wisdom, and understanding together and add in what is impossible to express and define, the spiritual wisdom of the universe, a eureka experience. Putting everything together happens in our souls and this is what forces us to love, to care for and to serve more than our vested interests, our selfish interests.

Rabbi Heschel is writing this in the shadow of the Holocaust, where most of his immediate family died. He is writing this after witnessing and being subjected to the anti-semitism of Germany in the 1930’s. Yet, he believes so deeply in our spiritual nature, he believes so strongly in our ability to rise above our selves, to forget ourselves in service of another(s), in service of God, in service of humanity. I am struck by his belief because we are in similar situations now. It is not just anti-semitism that we are witnessing, it is racism, senseless hatred between people, it is ME ME ME, it is a lack of concern and care for the poor, the needy, the stranger among us. We see this every day, we see the utter disdain of truth in favor of “alternative facts” by 68 +/- million Americans. We see that communism did not have to conquer us militarily, they have sown enough disinformation and we have become so polarized as a people that each soul’s incognito coercion to love has become so quiet, many of us cannot hear it. People at each end of the opposing poles are unable to, unwilling to hear and follow this deep call and coercion of our souls. 

Two friends of mine, Pastor John Pavlovitz and Dr. Lisa Miller, have written books about love, about our desperate need for connection, about God’s need for us to connect. In each of them, from different points of view, one religious, one scientific, they come to the same conclusion: spiritual care, spiritual growth leads to spiritual, physical, emotional health as well as care and concern for another(s). Yet, the majority of people work hard to drown our their message, the call of their own souls and the call of the needy, poor and stranger among us. How is this possible, one might ask if Rabbi Heschel’s words are true?

It is possible because there are many people who, for the sake of their power and prestige, are willing to kill the voices of their souls. They have developed a path of self-deception that is so strong they are able to bastardize the words of God, of Jesus, of Buddha, Mohammed, etc. The Jews were strangers in the Land of Egypt so we are told not to hate the Egyptians because they took us in, Jesus preaches against the money-changers that these ‘good christians’ who preach prosperity gospel have become. Islam means submit to God and God is love, hatred is never love. It is time for all of us to surrender to the coercive power of our souls to do good, to go beyond our vested interests, to forget ourselves in order to serve God, to serve another, and, ultimately to truly serve our souls.  In Chapter 2 of Genesis, we are taught: “It is not good for Adam to be alone, I will make him an Ezer K’negdo”. Ezer K’negdo being a helper when we are doing well/right/good and someone to grind against us when we are straying from the path. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that we have within us the ability to hear that person and act on their suggestions with power, courage and passion because of this unknown forceful drive within our souls. 

In recovery, we learn to access this unknown forceful drive and, some of us call this drive God. For many of us, this unknown coercive force is the force that brought us to recovery in the first place. We work each and every day to clear out the selfishness, the prejudices, the hatred and resentments that stand in the way of hearing, following and reveling in this coercion to love ourselves and all of humanity. In recovery, we know when we begin to drown out truth, when we give in to our self-deceptions, when we imprison the call of our soul, we are on the path to relapse and self-destruction. 

I know this incognito drive, this coercion to love and in me it is loud, passionate and messy. Yet, it is here for all to see, I don’t have to hide, I don’t have to make myself more or less than I am. I let go of the “con” and I hold on to my soul, growing more and more aware of it each day. I have compassionate pity for the people who still are hiding from their soul’s coercive power and need to control another rather than love and be in truth with us all. God Bless and Stay Safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 27

“It is not true that all men are at all times at the mercy of their ego, that promoting their own prosperity is all they can do. It is not true that in conflicts of honesty and expediency the first is always defeated.” (Man is Not Alone pg.140).

I am enthralled with the ideas presented above. Rabbi Heschel wrote these words after the Holocaust, after Hiroshima. Being a witness to the cruelest treatment of fellow human beings that had ever happened; Rabbi Heschel, a survivor of the horror, still has hope and sees truth. How easy is it to paint everyone, everything with the paint of their worst actions. We see this all the time when public figures make errors, it is front page news and the spotlight rarely speaks about the good they have done, only the negativity. Rabbi Heschel is telling us that we, the people, can stop being at the mercy of our egos that revel in the schadenfreude of someone else’s downfall. We, the people, can instead rise above our egos and remind ourselves and another(s) of the good this public figure has done. 

How much more do we need to stop being at the mercy of our egos when we have felt hurt, betrayed, abused by another person’s egocentric behaviors? How much more do we need to stop promoting our own prosperity and see the needs of the people around us and the people we don’t even know? I am thinking about the kids who are impoverished because parents have to/choose to work so hard to make ends meet/live in luxury. I am thinking of the times we fall for the deception by another, fall into our self-deceptive thinking and believe mendacity is the best path. I am thinking about the times we contribute to the hurt, betrayal, etc of ourselves through inaction, co-dependency and/or a belief that we deserve it because we are lesser human beings! There is no such thing as a lesser human being in God’s world ergo-we have to cease and desist from seeing ourselves and/or another as lesser. This is another way we can stop being at the mercy of our egos. We get to stop being at the mercy of our egos when we can own our part in our interactions; take our responsibility, do our T’Shuvah and not need to blame and shame another. Not being at the mercy of our egos is a simple thought, a holy action and is really hard to accomplish at times. 

We live in times where expediency seems to trump truth and honesty is for suckers. While this experience was true when Rabbi Heschel wrote these words, it was true before Rabbi Heschel’s time and it seems true today. With social media, “alternative facts” people spewing out anything that they think people want to hear to make money, get elected, feel important, etc, honesty/truth seems to have lost to expediency. Yet, it hasn’t, we are blessed with modern day prophets, in Rabbi Heschel’s shadow, in Rev. King’s shadow who are reminding us of truth/honesty and the dangers and perils of falling into the clutches of expediency. We are blessed with people who are willing to reach across the aisle to meet someone face to face and discuss with civility our similarities and our differences. We have a majority of people who vote for truth, who are willing to give their fair share to the poor and the needy as the Bible teaches us. We have a majority of people who believe the search for truth goes hand in hand with the search for God. I believe Rabbi Heschel is correct, I believe in the power of the human spirit to triumph over ego, need for prosperity and expediency. 

In recovery, we know and base our lives on this teaching, albeit we don’t know the teaching per se. We are constantly seeking out our self-seeking and egotistical thoughts and actions in our daily affairs. We look for the nuances that cause us to hide from the insidious nature of giving in to false ego and expediency. After a while, in recovery, what was glaring before becomes very subtle and we have to search fearlessly and truthfully for the ways we are at the mercy of our egos, living lives of expediency and seeking prosperity at any and all costs. We get to, in our recovery, keep growing along spiritual lines so we can connect with another person, especially our family and friends with truth and love. In recovery, we are victorious each day in our path of not being at the mercy of our egos, giving in to expediency, etc. 

What a relief to read this today, in this time and to give another person the benefit of the doubt that they can rise above their egos, own prosperity, and expediency to do the next right thing. I think about my own need to serve another human being because I am called to, compelled to do this-not for their gratitude, not for accolades (though they are nice), but because I cannot live with myself when I don’t fulfill this need. Over these past 33 years, I have been blessed to be able to rise above ego, prosperity, expediency to honor truth, the soul of another person and God. I realized a long time ago, turning my will and my life over to the care of God, nullifying my will before God’s will so God’s will becomes my will meant I have to serve God by caring for and about another human being(s). I also have made a decision in the past and do so now again, to leave the prison of resentments and release forgiveness and love to those who I feel have hurt me. I do this because it is a way of me not being at the mercy of my hurt ego, not being a martyr and owning my part. Not always perfectly, not always cleanly and always working to serve God and another has been the way I have lived this teaching of Rabbi Heschel. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 26

“It is not true that man is condemned to life imprisonment in a realm wherein causality, struggle for existence, will to power, libido sexualis and the craving for prestige are the only springs of action. (Man is Not Alone pg.140).

Rabbi Heschel is puncturing the mendacity that so many people live in with these sentences. He is calling the societal/conventional norms out as lies we tell ourselves, the ways we hinder our gaining of more knowledge, the reason so many people who have “made it” are suffering an inner conflict which they cannot reason out. This inner conflict is because they have forgotten there is more to their life than goals and achievements for self.

Rabbi Heschel  smashes the idols we have worshiped/served: prestige, sex, power, causality, etc., in the first sentence above. The wording is reverberating inside of me; “it is not true” begins this first sentence to call attention to the ways we have deceived ourselves into believing these idols are actually in service of God for some of us, believing there is no God, so it is all about me, and, what I am practicing, self-satisfaction/indulgence/care is the path to freedom. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, calling to us, speaking as a prophet to us, that these ways of being are actually imprisoning us, not freeing us. We are the ones who condemn ourselves by giving in to the deception of ‘conventional notions’; the deception of another(s) like the ads we see; and our own self-deception! 

The word power comes from the latin meaning ‘able’. Power means we are able to do something in its original form. Yet, we have always confused power with domination, power with control, power with strength to subdue something and or someone. We have become imprisoned by our need for power over another person(s) and our society is suffering greatly because of it. We are told we have power and every spiritual discipline, at its core, teaches us how to use power for the greater good, not just for our own good. It is not true that one race, creed, religion, country, way of being should have power over another, yet we base our self-esteem, our self-worth, our self-dignity on how much and/or how little power we have over another person/people and believe that power is and/or should be the  prime motivator for our actions. Rabbi Heschel is calling this inaccurate belief a lie we tell ourselves. 

The origin of the word prestige is ‘illusion’. Rabbi Heschel is telling us that we are not stuck in the prison of illusion. We do not have to “keep up with the Jones’”, we don’t have to worry all the time about “what will the neighbors think” and we can leave the obsession of “how do I look to the world”. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc are today’s roads to the imprisonment we are in. They are not the causes, we are the causes. Buying into our self-deceiving notions and mental cliches have made billions for the creators of these and other social media outlets. We are able/have the power to let go of our illusions and seek truth and connection. We have the ability/power to respect, enjoy and grow our inner core, our inner life, our self-esteem and respect so we don’t have to give in to the illusions-positive and/or negative that society puts on us and we put on ourselves. 

Teen suicides are on the rise, addiction, depression and anxiety disorders are on the rise because of our inability to leave these self-imposed prisons. Anger, resentment, prejudice are on the rise because of our inability to leave these self-imposed prisons. Our democracy, our ability to serve more than ourselves are on the rise because of these self-imposed prisons. It is time to hear the call of Rabbi Heschel, it is time to hear the call of the prophets, it is time to hear the call of Jesus, it is time to hear the call of their disciples and leave these self-imposed prisons of illusion, power, sexual immorality, etc. It is time to stop using and believing the excuses and mendacity we use to promote imprisoning another person(s) based on their race, color, ethnicity, religion, etc and it is time for us to unlock the doors to our own imprisonment. 

In recovery, we leave the illusions we have lived with and in at the door as we enter into recovery. We allow our euphoric recall to slip away from us and we strive to see the truth of what was and what is-neither denying the good nor the not good action we took. We don’t deny the fun nor the pain we engaged in prior to our recovery and we dedicate ourselves to staying out of the prison we put ourselves in before. In recovery, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly, we embrace the truth of service, love and joy. 

I lived in this prison for many years prior to my recovery. I see, in hindsight, how I fell back into some of these prisons in my recovery. I have, for the large majority of my recovery, been able/used my power to serve another person(s) as well as myself. I have let go of most of my illusions in the pursuit of truth and service. I see people’s God-Image most of the time and work hard to help them live from there rather than their illusionary self. The core and foundation of my “springs of action” are in service to God and another person(s). It is messy, the way I do this and sometimes misunderstood, yet I know where my life springs from since recovery this allows me to continue to live in the face of scorn, betrayal, and my own errors. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom- a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Day 25

“Distant ends, religious, moral and artistic interests, may become as relevant to man as his concern for food. The self, the fellow-man and the dimension of the holy are the three dimensions of a mature human concern.”(Man is Not Alone pg.139)

The beginning of this paragraph, which I began writing about this past Monday, teaches us that we can reach the dimension of the holy, we can rise above our self-centeredness and, in the dimension of the holy, we meet the Ineffable One, I believe. The ingredients that go into a mature human concern are not unattainable, they are not so far off that we can’t get there on our journey of living and we have the path to living a mature human concern: Torah, Bible, Spiritual disciplines are the roadmaps God gives to us to grow our self; our concern for ends, religious, moral and artistic interests, the interests of another(s); and to rise to the holy dimension. 

Mendacity is at the root of our problems today and, truth be told, the problems the world has faced forever. We have allowed ourselves to believe the lies that society has been speaking forever and we allow ourselves to be deceived by the mendacity of society, of another(s) and we fall into despair, depression, addiction, etc. On the other hand, we use the lies society has been speaking forever and we become the deceivers and use this deceit to bring ourselves to power and use that power for our self-aggrandizement, fame and fortune. Religions pit themselves against each other, many of them saying:”follow me and you will find inner peace.” They put down the faith and path of another religion as a way of feeling good and sure of their own. How ridiculous!! 

Rabbi Heschel is calling to me, to us to GROW UP! To do this, we have to have a developed self, a self that knows our worth, our strengths,  our  weaknesses,  our ability to connect, to care, to ascend to the holy dimension, to engage in moral, artistic, spiritual interests, to know we are imperfect and no longer hide from our imperfections, no longer engage in covering them up, blaming another(s), etc. A developed self is not in conflict with God, with another(s); rather without a developed self we cannot have real connection with God, with another(s) and, instead of covenantal relationships we have transactional relationships that we deceive ourselves about. Without a developed self, we cannot really find and/or give love; we cannot find, give nor receive comfort; we live a life of means not ends; a life of emptiness and loneliness. With a developed self, we experience joy each and every day-even when the days don’t go so well-because we are connected to another(s), to God and our lives have meaning and purpose. 

We GROW UP when, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, we see the Tzelem, the God-Image of another human being. When we realize the person across from us, next door to us, on the other side of the globe from us is similar, is in need of something we can give and we get to serve their interests for their sake, for God’s sake, not for our gain and exploitation. When we recognize the strengths and the weaknesses of another human being, help them strengthen themselves and help with/for their weaknesses we are approaching a mature human concern. When we let go of our need to be right, our need to control, our need to use another human being for our purposes and then engage in destroying them or at least “standing idly by the blood of your neighbor”, we are growing up. This isn’t the norm, I know- we all see how people, institutions (which are made up of people) hide behind some lower rationales, yet we can and must make Rabbi Heschel’s words, teachings a reality or we forfeit our ability to be human and revert to the animalistic nature we have inside of us. 

Reaching the holy dimension is the antidote to the animalistic nature we have. This nature is not bad nor evil, as I understand Rabbi Heschel and our sages, it is a part of us that we can use to save lives, to care for our selves and, used appropriately, propel us to the dimension of the holy. To live a life compatible with the Ineffable One, we have to take the actions the Ineffable One teaches us: Care for the stranger, etc is mentioned at least 36 times in the Torah! Going beyond our self-centeredness, reaching out to help another human being, engaging in moral, artistic, covenantal ways of living is the path to the dimension of the holy and we all can do it, as long as we let go of our love of mendacity, our love of self-deception and our love of willful blindness. 

These two sentences have been the cornerstone of my recovery, they encompass all of what recovery is to me and to most of us in recovery. I have been helped by many people and organizations over the past 34+ years, beginning with the state prison system of Ca.! I have stayed loyal to the Ineffable One, to the people I have been privileged to serve, serve with, to the people who helped me, to the moral, religious, artistic interests that are at the heart of good living, to the covenants I have made and to my inner self/my soul most of the time. I know that my way is not everyone’s cup of tea and I know that being me, being real, is so foundational to my serving your interests, God’s interests and my own interests. I cannot have a mature human concern without being me, warts and all. Transparency and authenticity are cornerstones of self-care, care for another and ascending to the holy dimension. Otherwise, I hide and hiding leads to very dark, very negative places and I am unable to serve anyone else, God nor my own self. God Bless, Good Shabbos, and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 24

“Distant ends, religious, moral and artistic interests, may become as relevant to man as his concern for food. The self, the fellow-man and the dimension of the holy are the three dimensions of a mature human concern.”(Man is Not Alone pg.139)

Finishing the paragraph we began on Monday leads us to a powerful conclusion, statement, goal and truth. As we rise vertically to the dimension of the holy, we are more aware of the distant ends that our soul is seeking and God has called us to. In this journey of ascent, these ends become clearer to us and whether we can see their fruition in our lifetime or not is less important than furthering our work towards them and leaving the rest of the journey to the next human being. This idea reminds me of the same story told many different ways in different spiritual/faith traditions: an older person is planting a tree, a younger person notices and asks the older person: “do you think you will live long enough to enjoy the fruit of your planting?” The older person replies: “ I don’t know” and the younger person asks: “Why bother with it then?” The older person explains: “Maybe I won’t enjoy the fruits of my labor, however, my child, my child’s child, etc will enjoy them and this is my legacy.” In this story, we see how distant ends have become as relevant as food to many of us. We forget this truth, this goal in our pursuit of false self drives. We all have a legacy to leave, we all have the power and opportunity to leave our corner of the world a little better than when we found it. We all are divine needs and divine reminders, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, these distant ends set a path for us to follow, for us to fulfill and for us to teach another(s) what is important in life. 

Without religious, moral and artistic interests becoming as relevant to humanity as our concern for food, we will stay in hunter/gatherer mode. In this mode, the “survival of the fittest” is the distant end. Creativity, covenantal community, works of art that give us joy, make us think, etc are irrelevant to the hunter/gatherer unless it can make them money, give them power and bring them prestige. 

Yet, some people have become so aware and so clever they have made it seem as if they are pursuing/supporting moral, religious and/or artistic interests and in actuality they have bastardized them. When religious leaders speak in the name of self-interest, self-preservation, extolling mendacity and lies, giving cover to the rich and not caring for the widow, the poor, the stranger and the orphan; they fail God and all of us. We see different personal issues being decided by a small “religious” minority who do this for power, not for Jesus, not for Buddha, not for Mohammed, and certainly not for Adonai/God. 

Morality has also become for sale to the highest bidder. Our college institutions have been “selling” admissions way before the College Admission Scandal. We have seen over the last hundred years or so the decay of many institutions that were created to uplift the living condition of those in need and they did for a long time. Until they became more interested in perpetuating the organization than perpetuating the mission. We have see this over and over again; we hear about it in the scandals that we read about, the collapse of 2008/9 was due to such moral decay. The ways people are being routinely disenfranchised, continually silenced is an example of our moral decay. When we cannot talk with one another, when we have to speak at one another, when we are willing to throw the baby out with the bath water, when everything becomes about gender, race, religion, discrimination, someone getting up in arms about something, when white supremacy is validated and extolled by political leaders, we are not reaching up to/for the holy dimension. 

There are many religious leaders who speak out against the charlatans getting the most press, giving religious exemptions, etc. People like Dr. Susannah HeschelJohn Pavlovitz, Father Greg Boyle, Reverend William Barber, Rabbis Jill Jacobs, Sharon Brous, Aryeh Cohen, and so many more are fighting the fight some of us have fought before, fighting the fight that Rabbi Heschel has left to us as his legacy. We have a solution to the charlatans: TRUTH. We all need to and are able to influence the people around us by patiently, kindly and firmly spreading truth, teaching people about the distant ends we are privileged to serve. We all need to stop the “on the advice of counsel”, the sue anyone about anything mentality, the stealing of ideas and ways from another as well the disavowing of responsibility and placing blame and shaming another human being as a way of being powerful and rewarded financially way of being that is so prevalent in our world today. Instead we all need to admit our foibles, ask for help from people who can help us, help those people we can help, take responsibility for our success’ and our ‘missing the marks’ so we can ascend to the holy dimension and bring another(s) with us. 

In recovery, we are seeking to reach out to another human being who is in pain, suffering, and lost. We see reaching out, answering the call of another human being as the only path to the holy dimension we desperately need to live in. In recovery, we are aware of what happens when we stop ascending, we crash and burn our lives and the lives of so many people around us. Not only are we unable to add to our corner of the world, we take away from our corner of the world.

I am going to write more about this tomorrow, stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom- a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 23

“Man reaches a new vertical dimension, the dimension of the holy, when he grows beyond his self-interests, when that which is of interest to others becomes vital to him, and it is only in this dimension, in the understanding of its perennial validity, that the concern for other human beings and the devotion to ideals may reach the degree of self-denial.”(Man is Not Alone pg.139).

This sentence haunts me and I wanted to explore the 2nd half of it today. Only in the dimension of the holy, of our rising in our spiritual, moral and active living where the interests of another(s) becomes vital to us, or as I like to say, they become our concerns can we reach self-denial. Only in understanding that the truth of this seemingly outrageous statement is infinitely true and valid, can we attain the status of human, as I am reading Rabbi Heschel today. Without reaching this dimension or at least reaching for this dimension of “concern for other human beings and the devotion to ideals” we live at the lowest common denominator, our animal instinct. Animals, to the best of my knowledge, do not make free-will moral choices. Our fight or flight instinct is a very important one and left unchecked, left at its infant stage, we see danger all around, we are unable to discern true friendship and true danger. We either run away too soon and too often and/or we fight too much, too hard, and too long. Both of these ways of being wear us out physically, emotionally and spiritually. Both of these paths make authentic human connection impossible. When we have to “make a killing”, “beat our competitors”, etc so much so that we are unable to see the human being we are competing with, the cost of ‘making a killing’ to ourselves and another(s), especially family members, we are being animals instead of being human. 

When we are judgmental about people, when we categorize people, when we self-identify in opposition to another group/person, we are not showing nor practicing devotion to the ideals of God, of being human, of faith traditions, of concern for another(s). We are living in another time where we separate according to ‘identity group’, where cancel culture, religious and racial hatred are reaching their old and maybe surpassing their old highs, which are really lows. We are in times where people talk at each other instead to and with each other. We are in times where truth has become irrelevant to a large minority of our country and a majority of people in the world. We are living in times where the concern for another human being is based on “what can I get from them/use them for” not for the soul, the dignity, the love of another human being. We are living in times where suspicion abounds and real concern is waning. 

We need to revolt against these false separations, we need to stop with ‘identity politics’ ‘competitive traumas’ ‘holding onto the hurts of the past’ etc and see ourselves new today. We have to acknowledge the pain and the hurt, we can, however, stop identifying through it and have the concerns of another become vital to us. We can and, I believe, must see ‘our enemies’ as human beings. According to a Midrash, as the Egyptians were dying in the Red Sea, God told the angels to stop rejoicing because God’s children were dying. We all come from the same lineage, so the charlatans who believe they are better because of their race, their religion, their history are liars, cheats, indecent and unable to reach the degree of self-denial necessary to reach this new vertical dimension. We have to shout NO to the lies we tell ourselves, NO to the lies another tells us, NO to the senseless hatred and false divisions we have created to be better than/less than another human being. We have to shout YES to the call of another who is in distress, YES to the call of God to care for God’s world, YES to the brotherhood and sisterhood of all people regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc! 

In recovery, we seek to rise to this dimension each and every day. We are constantly seeking to repair our past ways of treating the concerns of another with disdain and unimportance, when we did care about them it was only for our own gain/get the heat off. Our amends/T’Shuvah is based on restoring the dignity and humanity that we robbed another of when we used them, ignored their concerns, harmed them in any and every way. In recovery, we know that getting “stuck on me” is dangerous, therefore we grow in our self-denial because reaching the dimension of the holy, being devoted to ideals and growing beyond our self-interests are the only ways to staying in recovery, being more human each day and serving God; all the ingredients to living well. 

A purported friend told me: “see people for who they are, not how you want them to be nor how they can be.” While on the surface this makes sense, he was speaking from a transactional perspective, not a covenantal one. This is why he is/was a purported friend. I realize I put too much on another, their interests in being human was of more concern to me than to them. I know that when I am reaching for the holy, I live well. Every time I have been in fight/flight mode, I have screwed up royally. I know that my concern for the interests of another has been based on what their spirits needed, not necessarily their minds wanted. This also has gotten me into trouble. Immersing myself in this text has validated my reaching for the holy dimension, even when another thinks it is foolish, even when I fall short, I fail while daring greatly as Teddy Roosevelt said. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 22

“Man reaches a new vertical dimension, the dimension of the holy, when he grows beyond his self-interests, when that which is of interest to others becomes vital to him, and it is only in this dimension, in the understanding of its perennial validity, that the concern for other human beings and the devotion to ideals may reach the degree of self-denial.”(Man is Not Alone pg.139). 

Rabbi Heschel’s words are shivering through me at this moment. I realize this vertical dimension, this dimension of the holy, to be the dimension from which all addiction, depression, anxiety, and other physical ailments are relieved and healed. It is precisely this dimension that also causes depression, anxiety and addiction as well as other psychosomatic illness’, etc.

In our search for this vertical dimension, for the dimension of the holy we become frustrated when we are not able to reach it, when we have lost our way and when we become self-obsessed. Yet, even in these experiences, there is a call we hear, an unsettling in our souls, a dull ache in our hearts that is calling us to this vertical dimension and our frustration in not reaching it causes depression, anxiety, addiction, inability to heal illness and wounds. 

What is it about self-interests that is so powerful they override the call of our souls, the call of the Ineffable One, the call of those in need? It is an overwhelming sense that we will be fools if we grow beyond our self-interests. It is an overwhelming sense of ‘not getting ours’ that have if we grow beyond our self-interests. It is an overwhelming fear that we will be hurt again and again if we grow beyond our self-interests. We hear the first line of Rabbi Hillel’s teaching: “If I am not for myself who will be for me” and we forget the second line: “If I am only for myself what am I?”

We are continually bombarded and, over the millennia, have learned that ‘no one else cares, some say even God doesn’t care, it is a dog eat dog world, no one will help me, etc.’ Yet, in the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, we are told 36 times to care for the stranger, the poor, the widow and the orphan; we are reminded to redeem each other and to return lost objects to their owner, to care for the animals of our enemies and to not murder, steal, lie, etc.  We have the technology to go beyond our self-interests, it is our willingness that seems to be lacking.  An interpretation of the first sentence of Rabbi Hillel’s teaching was taught to me by Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man: “If I not for myself, God will with me.” What a difference this would make if used this interpretation! The clergy and “religious” people who are preaching only one way to God, only one way to be saved, only one way to vote, only one way to live, and to do this you have to go beyond your self-interests and serve mine! This is the way all charlatans and authoritarians work, they seem to be serving the self-interests of their followers, all the while using mendacity and their followers desire to be deceived to serve only their own interests. No where in their scenario are they trying to serve God, to reach the vertical dimension of the holy. When anyone will deny a person their humanity because of an action, their sexual orientation, judging them by their worst actions and not their best actions, their lack of status, their lack of  wealth, their lack of power; they are not serving God, they are not living a faithful life and they are going against the Bible which is a roadmap to giving power to the powerless and voices to the voiceless as well as hearing aids to those too deaf to hear the call of the vertical, the holy and sight to those who are too blind to see the path upward. 

In recovery this is the goal to keep rising to this vertical dimension, to recognize the holy within ourselves, within another(s) and in the world itself. We are constantly searching for ways and opportunities to go beyond our self-interests because we know where our self-interests lead us-depression, anxiety, addiction, harmful actions towards another(s), towards ourselves, physical ailments, etc. In recovery, we are recovering our own unique path to the holy dimension and we are grateful to be able to serve another human being. 

I have experienced this vertical dimension and been able to live here as well. Not all the time, yet much of my recovery has been based in this dimension. I am thinking of the ways I have made the interests of another(s) vital to me and what it has gotten me. I am realizing that living in this vertical dimension is a double-edged sword. Reaching this vertical holy dimension opens me/us up to being taken advantage of, the exact experience many people are so afraid of they don’t go on this vertical journey, as I mentioned earlier. When being taken advantage of, when my/our humanity, vulnerabilities, and frailties are denied, laughed at, and used against us, we often suffer a depressive and anxious episode. I have reacted poorly at times with loud outbursts, my experience is that I will vanish if I don’t stand for myself, living the usual interpretation of Rabbi Hillel’s teaching, not the one I learned from Reb Jonathan! At the same time, when I am reactive, when I go into my protective shell only-I am lost, I hear my soul, God, another(s) human being, my family calling me up to the holy dimension and I am able to ascend back home, because the vertical dimension is the home we all belong to and in. It is where we meet God through going beyond our self-interests. More on this tomorrow. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 21

“The concern for others is not an extension in breadth but an ascension, a rise.” (Man is Not Alone pg.139). 

Learning Rabbi Heschel anew each day is a blessing. Each day brings new riches in inner/spiritual knowledge and how to live better each day. While he is relentless in his call to us to rise up to our humanness, as he has been in the past few days, he also has deep faith and unwavering hope that we can and will. In today’s writing, we can see an ulterior motive for the “concern for others” because it is “an ascension, a rise” in our level of living and being. And I am reading this rise as a goal we seek in order to be more human. Of course “concern for others” is defined here by me as intervening when someone is doing wrong/evil, calling people to their higher selves, engagement in helping people succeed in doing well and being a help to them in their own ascension. It is not to help them do evil to another human being!

Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that our ‘need’, ‘call’ to be human creates in us a thirst that cannot be quenched or drowned out. Even the evilest of people found ways and paths to be human, to have concern for others, at different points in their lives, even while perpetrating evil and inhumanity, the German Soldiers/leaders cared for their children, for their families and the concerns of theirs were of interest to them. It is too easy to label some people as not having this quality in order to hate them, to marginalize them, to rally people around ourselves, and it just isn’t true! Once we begin this ascension, we realize that there are more people on this journey, more people beginning, continuing, slipping on this ladder to the holy. Of course the problem with this way of living is that we can no longer live in either/or, good guys/bad guys, etc. We have to truly live in God’s world, doing God’s work, acting Godly by welcoming the stranger and the enemy, caring for the spiritual health of the rich and poor alike, being concerned with the physical, moral, emotional, spiritual health of all around us and those far away. Wearing a mask is not a political statement, it is an act of ascension. Not wearing a mask is a spiritual statement of descending, as well as a political statement,  however.

While it is true that we do a lot to drown out this thirst to be human: drugs, alcohol, power, money, gambling, business, etc. and, in the end, we find that we are unable to escape ‘the call’ to be human, our ‘need’ to be human so we don’t go out of our minds/ want to jump out of our skin. This call to ascend never leaves us and, unfortunately, it is not explained to us as children or adolescents or teens or adults by parents, mentors, clergy, etc. Our religious and spiritual education is lacking, we are not honoring the call of people to be human, we are not teaching all the signs of inner turmoil over not ascending, not having true “concern for others”. I know all about Tikkun Olam, I know all about the many marches, etc. Yet, what we must hear from Rabbi Heschel is to have concern for all people, concern that is personal and immediate, concern for the people we disagree with, etc. I am amazed that Rabbi Heschel could have a cordial/good relationship with Cardinal Be’a who was father confessor to Pope Pius XII! He met with him during Vatican II and worked to have the Church remove “Jews killed Christ” and Conversion of the Jews from the Catechism. Here Rabbi Heschel was, working with a man who knew of the Pope’s atrocities against the Jewish People, his support of and for Adolf Hitler and Rabbi Heschel could rise above because of his concern for Jews, for Catholics and for Cardinal Be’a. This call to reach across the table to the people who are against us, to hear and see their concerns and those concerns become vital to us to help with and, at least, acknowledge and respectfully disagree with is what this sentence is saying to me today. 

Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us to release the harmful selfishness, the fear of being seen as a “Freyer” as the Israelis call being a sucker, release our concern with how we look and become more concerned with our humanity and the humanity of another(s). Rabbi Heschel is calling on us to rise above the pettiness and pride, envy and enmity that seems to permeate our living situation and connect with our own humanity by being more human in all of our affairs and, by ascension, living a life more compatible with being a partner of the Ineffable One. 

What we recovery in our recovery, is our humanity, our integrity. In recovery we know that we have to be concerned with the interests of another. We know we cannot hate another and we have to pray for them. In recovery, we are constantly searching our inner life to embrace our call and need to be human, to ascend to a place worthy of being God’s partner. 

I am overwhelmed with awe, joy, rebuke and faith right now. I see how Rabbi Heschel is lovingly rebuking me with a powerful dissent and painful rebuke. I have not always had “concern for others” in my recovery years, never mind the ones before. I realize that when I was hurt by another, I dropped my concern and became barricaded in and put on my armor. This is/was wrong as I am reading today’s writing because I stopped being human and the person(s) who hurt me so deeply became objects of my scorn and anger. I also know how much more I have lived these words and have ascended. I am more holy today than yesterday, than 30 years ago! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 20

“It is an act of de jure or even de facto recognition of other human beings as equals, as a result of which he becomes concerned with their concern; what is of importance to them becomes vital to him.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 138).

In this continuation of yesterday’s writing and of Rabbi Heschel’s teachings on “the transitive concern”, we find our being both caressed by Rabbi Heschel’s words and brilliance as well as having cold water thrown in our faces to wake us up to the reality that is being human! De jure, de facto represent two sides of a coin. The first being what is legally recognized whether practiced or not while the latter describes what is happening in reality.

In today’s quote, Rabbi Heschel is telling us that both legally and in reality, we have to recognize the equal worth of every human being in order for us to be human! This is such a radical thought for when Rabbi Heschel wrote it and for us today. We are in a situation where people are denying the equality of another human being because they are not ‘like them’ ‘not part of their crowd/group’, etc. just as Rabbi Heschel saw happening in the late 1940’s, early 1950’s here in America and he experienced in Germany and Poland in the 30’s. “The more things change, the more they stay the same” is a French quote and, in Wiktionary it says: “Turbulent changes do not affect reality on a deeper level other than to cement the status quo and a change of heart must accompany experience before lasting change occurs.”

We have made hatred, power-grab, putting someone else down to make myself good/higher/more important into the status quo! We have made racism, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, discrimination based on gender, control of women’s bodies, only white people can rule because the rest of you are not capable, etc,  such a part of the fabric of our country and the world, these are the de facto principles many people live by, no matter what the laws say. We are incapable of concern for another when we fail to see them as equals, when we continue to see ourselves as saviors, as rulers, as “right” and/or “righteous”, fighting the fight for the ____,(fill in the blank), putting on the mantle of self-righteousness, etc. All of these are noble endeavors and to be truly noble actions we hav etc change our vision, we have to change our way of seeing another human being.

In my understanding of Rabbi Heschel’s words above, there is no “other person” only another person! When we use the word ‘another’ we are saying we are equal with one another. In the Talmud we are taught that every soul is worth an entire world, meaning we all have infinite worth and dignity as Rabbi Yitz Greenberg taught our Rabbinic School class one summer. This is one of those principles that is de jure and has not become de facto, even to many of the Talmud teachers and students who learn this principle. We have to see one another as equally worthy and dignified, we have to see each other as siblings and, yes we will have sibling rivalry, and no more fratricide.  Living a life where the concerns of another are of no importance to us leads to hatred, fratricide, war, disdain, etc and Hillul HaShem, desecration of God’s Name.

We all are created in the Image of God, we all have something important and unique to add to the world, not as slaves/servants rather as human beings who are of service to and for one another and God. This is a guiding principle of being In Recovery! We are constantly seeing to restore the dignity we stole from another person when we have harmed them, we are rebuilding the dignity we gave away from ourselves when we were not in recovery. We are listening attentively to the words, the spirit of another person in recovery and their concerns become vital to us and we engage with one another to solve, heal and fulfill these vital concerns. 

From the first time I read these words to today, they jumpstart my heart, bring tears to my eyes and fill my soul with joy, light and power. I have made the concerns of another(s) my concerns and I have made “what is of importance to them” vital to me. Not always and not perfectly, and mostly and as well as I could in the moment. I have fought for the dignity of many along this journey I have been on for the past 34+ years, since my spiritual awakening in a jail cell in Van Nuys, Ca. In December of 1986. It was this awakening that led me to study Rabbi Heschel with Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, and begin this amazing journey of living life and being human. While many people believe and spout the words of Rabbi Heschel de jure, I have found that living them, de facto, is much rarer. While my grandparents were not learned people, they lived these words de facto and taught this way of being to their children their nieces, nephews, siblings, etc. and to us and we to the next generation. It is time for all of us to live these words in all of our affairs. I have been an observer of people forever and I observe myself. No matter how much someone has hurt me, my wife, my daughter, siblings, those closest to me; when they call out with concerns, when they call out for help, I respond. I have to see them as equal in their humanity, I have to see another person as equal in God’s ‘eyes’ in order to be human myself. I am tired of hearing so many people think their ‘sh$%&t doesn’t smell and mine does, yet even towards those people, I have to see them as equal to me. It is a tall order and we can all fulfill it. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 19

“At first other selves are considered as means to attain the fulfillment of his own needs. The shift from animal to the human dimension takes place when, as a result of various events, such as observing other people’s suffering, falling in love, or by being morally educated, he begins to acknowledge the other selves as ends, to respond to their needs even regardless of person expediency.”(Man is Not Alone pg.138).

Rabbi Heschel is giving us the problem and the solution to the ills of today’s world in the sentences above, and, truth be told, in all of his writings. Today’s first sentence is at the crux of our current state of affairs, in my opinion. We continue to see other selves as a means to our ends, a way to fulfill our “needs” and to not really see them as anything but objects. We see this everyday in the ways the Homeless Population is treated, as some issue to be solved rather than as human beings in deep and abject suffering. Rather than look homeless people in the eyes, we avert our eyes from them, we shield our children from looking at them. Some people use them as weapons, to get elected by promising to help them and promising to “rid our streets of them”. As I am using the pronoun ‘them’ I know it can be used to objectify an entire group of people, like “those Jews” “those Blacks”, “them people”, etc are used. We condemn people who commit crimes without seeing them as human beings who have lost their humanity and are in need of moral, spiritual and emotional education and healing. We are so concentrated on revenge, on punishment that we fail to see the suffering of another human being, the lack of moral, spiritual and emotional education of another human being. Just as the person who commits crime no longer sees another human being as anything as a means to their ends, so too is a society so intent on punishment, so intent on blaming and demeaning another doing the same thing they are condemning the ‘criminal’ for. It is time for us to find ways to rehabilitate the criminal and the victim, the criminal and the “state”, the judge, jury, prosecutor, defense attorney to see the humanity, the suffering, the needs of the other self in reaching decisions, rather than running the criminal justice system as a ‘Monty Hall-let’s make a deal’ revolving door. 

Business’ only see money when a customer walks in, goes online to shop, etc. Very few business’ know a customer’s name or remembers us when we walk back in. We are a means to them making a living, making a killing, making their lives better, not human beings. Back in the day-stores had regular customers that they treated with a smile, knowing their sizes, their likes, etc-today everything is a transaction, not a relationship. Our politicians could care less about the individuals, they make it look good and then they go back to business as usual-catering to the crowds they want to instead of looking for compromises that can help everyone, respect everyone and see everyone, especially those with whom they disagree,  as human beings. They are still seeing other selves as “a means to attain fulfillment of his own needs”. 

Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that they shift from animal to human can only come when we “begin to acknowledge the other selves as ends, to respond to their needs even regardless of personal expediency.” What an order! Yet, this is the only way we can move from our animalistic behaviors, tendencies, reptile brain, to be human, to be in a relationship with the Ineffable One. Rabbi Heschel is telling us to allow “various events” to penetrate our shell of indifference, to pierce our armor of selfishness, to shatter our illusions of power, scarcity, needing more and more, etc. To see another self as a human, to respond to the needs of another human being regardless of personal expediency is to live a life compatible with being a partner of God, compatible and fulfilling the Divine Need we were created to fulfill. As we approach this way of being, we are approaching God, holiness. Living in the “human dimension” is the purpose and pathway of religion as it was created to be, not the lies, the power grab, the loss of seeing another self as anything but a means to their end that it has become to many. Rabbis, Imams, Priests, Ministers, Gurus, Leaders of many spiritual disciplines have forgotten to rise above their animalistic dimension and shift to the human dimension by responding to the needs of another regardless of personal expediency. We see this in so many of the movements that were started to do exactly this, help another people see the humanity of the ‘other’, and they have turned into a movement that is concerned with their own self-perpetuation, how sad. 

In recovery, seeing another person as human, caring for their needs regardless of our personal expediency is another foundational block of life for us. We do not turn down an opportunity to be of service, we answer the call of another person no matter the time of day or night. We find ways to be in the solution rather than in the problem and/or the result. In recovery, our amends/T’Shuvah process is all about restoring the dignity and humanity that we robbed from another human being back to them and restoring our own dignity and humanity. We live a life dedicated to seeing the humanity and God-Image of every human being we encounter. 

I will write my personal experience with this teaching more on Sunday. I know that in the past 33 years I have responded to the needs of another(s) self/soul almost every time I heard their call. I have become more human, more humane and more connected to God and my authentic self by responding. I hope you have also. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 18

“The peace of mind attainable in solitude is not the result of ignoring that which is not the self or escaping from it, but of reconciliation with it… A vital requirement of human life is transitive concern, a regard for others, in addition to a reflexive concern, an intense regard for itself.”(Man Is Not Alone pg. 138). 

What I am understanding from Rabbi Heschel this morning is that it is important to take time to oneself and for oneself in order to get over and out of oneself! So many of us seek solitude in order to find oneself and, while Rabbi Heschel seems to agree with this school of thought, I hear him also saying in order to find ourselves, we have to reconcile our self with another(s) self and with God. In solitude, I am realizing, is where we see our need for another self, our need for connection and caring for another self as well as needing another self to care and connect to us. In solitude, my “peace of mind” comes from this realization, from reconciling this truth with my self-deceiving beliefs that I, alone, must do everything, and from the deceptions that society perpetrates upon me to believe my self-deceiving thoughts. While “peace of mind” may not last long for some of us, it is a place to return to each and every time we pray, study, hear/play music, meditate, dream. I am hear Rabbi Heschel’s words call to us to engage in this reconciliation so we can envision the Divine Need we were created to fill, fulfill this need and welcome the fulfillment another(s) fill in us. 

To reconcile comes from the latin “to bring back together” and the Hebrew is “to cause wholeness”. The path of solitude, the path of reconciliation can and must be different for all of us and the destination is the same, bringing ourselves back together in wholeness, harmony, truth, and love. We spend so much time escaping this basic human need: to need another(s) and to be needed by another(s). We spend so much time believing the lies of the people who say: “I alone can save you” “I alone know the way” “Only through Christ/Torah/Koran/Buddha/etc and only the way I interpret them can you be saved” that we stop believing our own self/non-self. We have stopped hearing the call of our soul and the call of God because the other voices, both inside and outside of us are so loud. We need solitude each and every day to hear the self which is not me and reconciling the voices of negativity, mendacity with the truth that we hear during study, prayer, meditation, etc.

Rabbi Heschel is not denying the reflexive concern that we all have. In fact in the last sentence above, he calls it an “intense regard for itself”. I believe he is also telling us that the transitive concern is part of the intense regard for oneself. This vital requirement of “regard for others” is part of our spiritual DNA. This is why, I believe, Rabbi Heschel uses the word ‘reconcile/bring back together’. We see this when infants and toddlers share their toys, when they come to a parent or relative or stranger and touch them when they are crying, seem troubled, etc. “Regard of others” is part of the first directive from God in Genesis, care for the earth/world that I am giving you. Throughout the Torah, at least 36 times, we are told to;  Care for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor because you (we) were strangers in the land of Egypt. Yet, we forget these words, we deny what is in our spiritual DNA and we live lives of “quiet desperation” as Thoreau says. Yet we don’t have to live this type of life, we can follow what Rabbi Heschel is teaching us and begin/continue a daily practice of reconciliation, study, action, prayer, meditation, to begin to bring our whole self back together and join with another(s) whom are beginning to bring their whole self back together to reconcile/bring back together, humanity and the world. 

In recovery, we “seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God…”. The 11th step is a critical part of our continued recovery, our continuing growth as human beings, not homo sapiens. We are so very aware of the self-deception we perpetrate on ourselves and then on another(s) and we work hard to be constantly on guard to recognize and seek help from another(s) to not fall into the traps our self-deceptions set for us. We are also acutely aware of our propensity to fall into believing the deception of another(s). In recovery, we release our desperation to “be right” to “win at any and all costs” and embrace the caring for and from another(s) human being. 

One of the daily practices of solitude for me is this daily writing. I have found new meanings and new insights that have helped me reconcile the care I need to have for myself and the care I need to have for another(s). The “peace of mind” I have received began in my soul and came up to my mind. My experience is when I listen to my soul and reconcile my mind through the truth of my soul, I am bringing all of my parts back together. I also am able to help another(s) bring their parts back together and our mutual concerns are not transactional, they are covenantal. My regard for myself wasn’t intense enough in the areas that needed to be shored up so I mistakenly believed the people I cared for would always care for me and this just isn’t true, it is a delusion. I help another because God shows me the path to do this, it is in my spiritual DNA to do this and I have learned to have no expectations that they will reciprocate and I know the Universe will. This is my experience and it is my saving grace. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark