Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom- A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 111

“God is not an explanation of the world’s enigmas or a guarantee for our salvation. He is an eternal challenge, an urgent demand. He is not a problem to be solved but a question addressed to us and individuals, as nations, as mankind.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 92)

We are failing in our response to the eternal challenges and urgent demands that God is presenting to us, as individuals, nations, human beings. We can see our failures in the number of unhoused people there are in the United States and beyond. We can see our failures in the number of incarcerated people and formerly incarcerated people there are in our country. We can see our failures in the amount of anti-depressants that are prescribed in this country daily. We can see our failures in the way we treat strangers and poor people, like criminals! We can see our failures in the ways we bully people into our way of thinking. We can see our failures in our need to deceive our self and everyone else as well as our need/desire to be deceived.  We can see our failing to respond to God’s challenges and demands in the way we treat each other with disdain, mistrust, uncaring. 

Every one of us has been called out by God’s demands, the demands of our higher consciousness for those who don’t believe in God. There are people who suffer from illnesses that we could find a cure for, develop a treatment for but the pharmaceutical companies don’t think they can make enough of a profit on the drug/treatment to warrant the cost of research and development and their Boards of Directors agree, ‘take care of the shareholders, not the people’ seems to be their mantra. We see this in their advertising, we see this in other business as well. Shareholders are more important than the general public, profits are more important than people’s lives. This is an accepted practice in our world and this is a failure to respond to God’s demand and challenge to treat each soul, each person with dignity, respect and reverence. 

We are engaged in senseless hatred of one another because there are people who believe if they can find a scapegoat for people to blame all their troubles on, these so-called leaders can control the masses and amass power for themselves. We see this in politics, we see this in business, we see this in religious charlatans as well. When a person of the cloth preaches hatred, bigotry, anti-semitic tropes, fear of “the other”, they are engaging in and promoting this senseless hatred. As Rabbi Heschel said in 1963, “prejudice is an eye disease, a cancer of the soul” and there are people right now, who are the victims of this eye disease and this spread of cancerous poisons. Yet, people are wiling to go unvaccinated, blame the government for some unknown control that is in the vaccine when it was developed under the watch of “their fearless leader”! This is the power of mendacity, the power of deception, the lure of self-deception. This is the power of senseless hatred, the need to blame and shame another person and the inability to be responsible for our own actions, our part in this drama called living. 

We are able, however, to respond to these challenges and demands differently. We have the power, the inner strength to be respond in the ways Rabbi Heschel responded. He left his study to advocate for the “mission to the Jews” be taken out of the Catholic Catechism teachings and was successful. He was a friend of and to Rev Martin Luther King Jr and left his study to speak at conferences, march in Selma and speak at Rev King’s funeral. Rabbi Heschel left his study to protest against the Vietnam War and remind us that “some are guilty, all are responsible”! He did this as a Polish immigrant fleeing the Nazi war machine, he did this as a Jew who knew he couldn’t pray to God if he couldn’t see the Tzelem, the God-Image in another human being. We have the same opportunities, we have the same wherewithal as Rabbi Heschel, as Dr. King, as Moses, as the Israelites who left Egypt, as the runaway slaves, as the survivors of the Holocaust, as the survivors of the Rwandan Genocide, as… We have to begin to respond to God’s demands and challenges with Hineni-Here I am instead of hiding and lying and deceiving. 

In recovery, we “turn our will and our lives over to God as we understand God” very early on and then we begin to learn and differentiate our will from God’s will. While nothing ever happens in God’s world by accident, we also know that not everyone is living in God’s world nor are we all the time. In many ways, like the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, in recovery we make the commitment, take the action and then we understand both the logic, the reasoning for the actions and this illumines the path in front of us a little more. In recovery, we are constantly seeking to respond in a positive manner to God’s call, demand and challenge. 

For the past 33 years, I have heard, sometimes clearly and sometimes not so clearly, God’s demand and challenge for me. I have answered this call all the time, sometimes in ways that are not easily accepted by another(s) and in ways that harm God’s message to another(s). For these times, I am deeply sorry and remorseful.  Mostly, I have responded in my unique manner and brought a message from God, a challenge to all of us, including me and I do it without prejudice, without a need to be right, without a need to deceive and with a passion to help, save, and care for my fellow human being. 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 110

“God is not an explanation of the world’s enigmas or a guarantee for our salvation. He is an eternal challenge, an urgent demand. He is not a problem to be solved but a question addressed to us and individuals, as nations, as mankind.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 92)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above certainly goes against conventional notions and the mental cliches of many people. Enigma comes from the Greek roots ‘fable’ and ‘speak allusively’. Salvation means ‘to save’ from the Latin. I hear Rabbi Heschel disturbing our sense of calmness, our inner peace, our meditative state with this teaching and the bright light he shines on truth from his own inner light. Going against popular belief and demand, Rabbi Heschel is telling us to stop bastardizing God, stop saying that our faith is based on God being the answer to all of life’s enigmas, things are not necessarily happening because God wants them to! We all hear and some of us say, ‘there must be a reason, it is God’s Will’ when it is clearly the self-will of a human being and/or a group of human beings! The abdication of Godliness and Faith by many of the Clergy in Nazi Germany is an example of this truth. Please read Dr. Susannah Heschel’s essay on this subject in the book “On Being Adjacent to Historical Violence”.  The Crusades were not God’s Will, the terrorist attacks are not God’s Will, rather it is human’s will, human desires that people try and paint with the brush of God’s Will so it is acceptable to more people and the leaders can enlist many to be their foot soldiers. 

Today, as in the past, some charlatans are telling us God’s Will is to hate, yet in the Bible, the Israelites are told not to hate the Egyptians, who enslaved them! How is it possible for these good leaders who claim to have “God on their side”, as Bob Dylan sings about, to preach hatred, preach violence, support the people who attacked our Capital and our Democratic Way of Life, support the people who chanted “Jews will not replace us” at Charlottesville and call them “good people”, support the racist viewpoint of denying voting rights to minorities, believe that it is right to hate/be suspicious of the immigrant/stranger in our midst? The Bible tells us to do the opposite of these actions that are being spoken about with reverence in Churches, Mosques, Temples, Synagogues across our country. We are surprised by what happened at Congregation Beth Israel last Shabbat while preaching these types of actions are good and holy when ordered by my leader/preacher in the name of the False god they are praying to.  It happens because they are not good leaders, because they are not people of faith as Rabbi Heschel and Biblical tradition and teachings define faith. 

Faith is not a cure all, it is not the answer to everything in life, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel. Faith is a beginning to responding to God, not a guarantee of our being saved. We hear a lot of ‘being saved’ and many of us know we have been-yet our salvation is not guaranteed by God just because we ask for it, just because we finally surrender to the fact that God exists! Salvation occurs when we begin to respond to the demand and challenge that God confronts us with daily. We have become so focused on either denying God’s existence because of the way the world is and/or exhorting God to finally bring the “end of days” and destroy all the ‘unfaithful’-meaning anyone who doesn’t believe like I do. Rabbi Heschel is calling us to stop with our childish faith, let go of our using God to embellish our self/our reputation, and cease our willful and wanton disregard for the truth that there are many ways to hear/serve God’s call. Rabbi Heschel is not telling us what the demands of God are, what the challenges of God are, he is reminding us that faith, belief in God is not a walk in the park, it is an obligation rather than a free ride. 

In recovery, we are aware that we have to find a “God of our understanding” so we have a path to follow. We pray to God for strength to carry out God’s will, not the will of our lower self, not the will of our addict self, rather the will of our soul, the will of a “power greater than ourselves” that has no beginning nor end. We want God to be the guarantor of our salvation, we want God to save us, yet we know that it is an inside job as well as a change in our actions and a partnership with God. We cannot act ungodly and think it is okay because God is on our side, our belief in God is enough. In recovery, we are painfully aware of the descent into hell and death that believing God will save us no matter what and God is the explanation for all the allusive things in life will bring. 

While my belief in God is a cornerstone of my living, I also know that I believed in God prior to my recovery/transformation. The difference is that the demand and challenge of God was never taught to me in the way that Rabbi Heschel teaches me. It seemed like God was just another controller, “God says so” meant an end to questioning and delving into any deeper understanding of the demand and challenge God presents to us. This way of being left me bereft and unsatisfied, not disbelieving, just not knowing how to believe and how to hear the demands and challenges God was giving me with clarity. When God opened my heart and my hearing in a jail cell in Van Nuys, Ca in 1986, I began to clear out the wax in my ears, have angioplasty done on my spiritual arteries, and respond to the challenge and demand God gave/gives me. I don’t always respond well to the challenge, I am not always able to meet the demand, and I am constantly listening for both and to improve my responses. I hear the challenge and demand as a love song and a statement of faith in me. 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 109

“Responsiveness to God cannot be copied; it must be original with every soul. Even the meaning of the divine is not grasped when imposed by a doctrine, when accepted by hearsay.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 91)

I am, once again, trembling inside from Rabbi Heschel’s words. Seeking the “meaning of the divine” is a lifelong journey and search that most people do not engage at all and those that do, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, don’t search very far or deeply; they just take the doctrine and dogma that an authority figure, usually clergy and/or parental, give them. Rabbi Heschel calls to us to remember that the “meaning of the divine” is truly different and the same for each and every one of us. Since each of us are created uniquely, each of us has a different divine message and way to bring the divine’s message to the world. Given our wondrous unique experience of the divine, how can we understand, engage with and/or accept what someone else tells of what the divine means, forces us to be imprisoned by a doctrine of the divine rather than seek our own meaning of the divine and relationship with the divine? 

I believe in the Mitzvot, I believe in the Torah being God’s Eternal Truth, I also believe that, as the Sages teach, it has 70 faces so no one can impose their doctrine on another, only share their understanding and the ‘face’ they see knowing it’s not the entire picture and their sight can be impaired. Living a life of decency, caring, kindness,  compassion, justice and truth is the path to grasping the meaning of the divine, I believe. Yet, to achieve this way of living, I have to let go of my preconceived notions, I have to let go of the doctrines and ‘absolutely sure’ ideas that I have accepted and worshiped because what is decent and kind in one situation may not be decent and kind in another. Whenever I hear the words “because the Torah says so”, or “this is what is in the Bible” or any such reasoning, I know the person saying it is using a doctrine, a supposed certainty, to ease their own uncertainty, to ensure they ‘get it right’ and fit in to their groupthink and/or trying to control me/us. 

When we accept “the meaning of the divine” by hearsay, we are denying ourselves the beauty, the experience, the infusion of energy that we desperately need and desire. Yet, we are afraid to ‘go it alone’ or join with other seekers who are not bound by the conventional notions, the doctrines, the dogma which seek to crush our own curiosity, our spiritual quest/journey, our unique gifts and talents from the divine. Today, we see hoards of people who accept the “meaning of the divine” by indoctrination and hearsay and the mendacity of another(s). Accepting these doctrines, this hearsay evidence, these mendacities are a surrender to idolatry, a statement of laziness, an act of fear and an affront to the divine, as I understand Rabbi Heschel’s words today. Immersing ourselves in the Bible, in the Torah, in the Koran, the New Testament, allows us to see the eternal divine message and apply these principles to today’s experiences, not by dressing and living as they did 2000+ years ago or 500 years ago or even as they did in 1860 America. We use the wisdom, the divine messages to make today better than yesterday, we make a Covenant with the divine, with ourselves and with our fellow human beings that is relevant for how we can personally live the 10 Commandments, We all engage in soul enhancing and soul destroying activities daily and they are different for each of us. We have to develop, engage with our own unique understanding of the divine so we do not continue to murder our own souls and we do not allow another to murder our souls by succumbing to their doctrines, their hearsay evidence and their mendacity, self-deception.

In recovery, we say: “the God of our understanding” and I believe this is in keeping with Rabbi Heschel’s teachings above. It has to be an original and unique understanding of the meaning of God in each life, otherwise we can’t be fully nor truly connected to it and all we are doing is paying lip service to an idol we have created. In recovery, we are constantly seeking to improve our “conscious contact with God as we understand God” so we never rest and think that we ‘know’ God. 

I have rejected most doctrines that require me to walk in lockstep and not have my own interpretation. This is one of the reasons I can follow Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and use him as a guide to improving the ways I live. Rabbi Heschel is not demanding I follow a certain path, he is disturbing and demanding that I find my own path to the divine, to living well through my soul, my spirit and my inner life. I am in agony each time I find myself walking lockstep in a dogma, doctrine, and/or the hearsay evidence of another because I am being lazy and not investigating/seeking the truth for myself; even if it is my own way of being from a day ago, a year ago, etc. Just because I did this then, doesn’t mean it is right and good to do now. I have experienced this agony too many times and I have also experienced the “thrill” of developing and following my own understanding and meaning of the divine. I know how far and wide the impact of teaching these ways of individualizing the meaning have extended. I know finding my own meaning of the divine has encouraged, allowed, inspired many people to find their own and help many more people find theirs and live these unique meanings. Can’t get any better than this and how blessed am I for Rabbi Heschel showing me the way and so many others including God helping me not give into the hearsay, mendacity and doctrines of the authoritarians and the enslavers. 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 107

“Responsiveness to God cannot be copied; it must be original with every soul. Even the meaning of the divine is not grasped when imposed by a doctrine, when accepted by hearsay.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 91)

Rabbi Heschel is calling to us, in this first sentence, to a) be aware that God is calling, b) respond to God, and c) respond in an authentic personal manner. I believe this sentence is a call/plea to all of us to stop seeing life, the world, our texts, one another through someone else’s lens, through the “conventional notions” of society, family, tribe, etc. This call goes unanswered by many of us because of our fear of being different, being made fun of, being shamed in public, having egg on our faces, being ostracized and exiled, being not acceptable to anyone/someone/society.

We can begin our original responses to God, to life in the way we teach and study texts/Torah, the way we pray, the way we engage with the world around us, etc. As Rabbi Heschel says in his interview with Carl Stern, we have to immerse ourselves in the text, not just pick it apart as ‘critical thinking’. I believe Rabbi Heschel was reminding us we cannot have an authentic experience of the Bible, of the Torah, of life without immersing ourselves in them and then we can use ‘critical thinking’ to understand how to use the text, our experiences, our spirit to enhance our life and the lives of the people around us. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us to stop copying someone else’s thoughts and ways to God, to life. This is so important a teaching for us as many of us feel like frauds because our responses are just copies of someone else and, at times, copying an original response we had in the past, kind of like ‘mailing it in’. 

When we are responding to God as an original, without copying the ways, thoughts, actions of another we can have a spiritual awakening and a spiritual experience. This does not mean we are not performing the Mitzvot, the commandments, the ways of living well that God/Torah/Sages have given to us. Rather, it means that we are not trying to copy someone else’s practices. When we are responding to God from our soul, in an original manner, we are totally in the moment, we are unable to even know what a former response was because we are in awe of this moment, we are engulfed in our experience of being seen by the Ineffable One/another soul, seeing beyond what is in front of us, seeing the light, the brilliance, the solutions, the questions, the demands and our unique abilities to respond to all of these mini-experiences in the larger experience of being called to by God, by another human being, by our higher consciousness. 

Seeing ourselves in the texts we study and live by is an awesome and frightening experience. We get to cross the Red Sea, stand at Mt. Sinai, enter the Promised Land; we get to engage in sibling rivalry, build Golden Calfs, continually bitch about what we don’t have and whine for what we want! Well, I guess one could say we do immerse ourselves in the Torah as we have sibling rivalry, senseless hatred and comparisons between people, when we copy/use the ways of another to respond to God we are creating our own Golden Calf, when we bow down before money, power, prestige, another person we are creating our own Golden Calf, and when we constantly complain and only see what we don’t have, what we think we ‘deserve’, we are following the ways of our ancestors in the Desert. The purpose and reward of Rabbi Heschel’s call to us is to stop practicing the negative paths of our ancestors and our own prior negativity, to stop putting up walls and covering ourselves with make-up and masks. It is also to appreciate the wonder, beauty, importance, need, talent, gifts we each have to change, to learn from the errors of our ancestors, the errors of previous moments in our life, to learn how to live lives that are compatible with being in relationship to the Ineffable One as well as compatible to being human, to being a part of the solution that we are created for. 

In recovery, this is an issue also. Many people want to copy what someone else does and believe they will have the experience of that person if they do the same things. Yet, it rarely happens this way. We all have to have our own experience of recovery, we all have to follow the guidelines of the 12-steps, etc in our own unique manner, otherwise relapse is waiting to happen and, usually, does. In recovery, we all have an opportunity to be original, we all receive the tools and learn how to use them to peal back the layers of the onion that have been blocking our original response to life. 

Immersing myself in text, in life has brought me to where I am today. I am an original and I only have been upset with myself when I have tried to be a copy of someone else, when I have tried to calm down in the face of injustice, mendacity, etc. I have gotten into altercations with people over my responses, which when they are original I am at peace with me and when they are copies, I fight from my ego instead of from my soul/spirit. I am sorry for the inauthentic responses to God and to another human being I have engaged in from fear, expediency, fitting in, etc. I feel the tears and sadness of my inner life as I reflect on these times. I also am elated with my usual way of being-original, helpful, engaged, advocating for the soul of another, an organization, a way of living. I commit to being more original each and every day-hope you will also! 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 107

“Responsiveness to God cannot be copied; it must be original with every soul. Even the meaning of the divine is not grasped when imposed by a doctrine, when accepted by hearsay.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 91)

In a world dominated by social media copycats, celebrity impersonators, wanna be famous for doing nothing culture, the first statement above is anathema. In a world where politicians continue to curry favor with the “boss” so as to not hear “you’re fired” by imitating the “boss”, copying his cadence and words, promoting his lies and bowing down to kiss his ring, these words have to be denied. Yet, some 70+ years ago, Rabbi Heschel was warning us about precisely this moment, which is not a new moment of course, it is a moment, a way that has repeated itself over and over again throughout our history-copying the ways of another, worshiping of authoritarianism and authoritarians, bowing down at the feet of ‘the current stars’ and fads of the moment. What most of these idol worshipers don’t realize is how far away they are and are going from truth, from God, from authenticity, decency, kindness and their own spiritual core.

Rabbi Heschel’s solution is simple and so difficult, at times, to fulfill. We are taught in Religious Institutions how to pray, how to learn, what to pray, what to learn, etc. We are taught the ways of acting, thinking, worshiping and loving God and another human being of our ancestors, of the Bible and either explicitly or implicitly told this is the ‘only way’ to do it right. In 1951, when this book was published, very few were aware of their inauthentic way of responding to God, even fewer were aware that God was still calling “Ayecha”(where are you”) every day to all of us and, a handful of people, were brave enough to speak out about this sameness that was happening in Churches, Temples, Mosques, etc. Rabbi Heschel was brave and willing to stand up to the ridicule he may have gotten, the anger he may have encountered from the people who just wanted to maintain the status quo, ‘don’t rock the boat, Rabbi Heschel’ may have been on many people’s minds, the membership numbers grew and people were bored and felt it a chore to go to many houses of worship as is still the case now. 70+ years later, even the ‘innovations’ are being copied by everyone else! We have to stop trying to be like someone else and appreciate our unique being and be responsive to God, to another human being, to nature, to animals in our own unique way. We have to appreciate and be responsive to all of these entities because God is in all of them, they all contain the Ineffable and we have to meet the ineffable in each of these entities with the ineffable in us, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us, so our response has to be our own. Otherwise, we are lost, we are adrift and we are in danger of dimming the light, the brightness and the brilliance of our spirit and soul. 

I am not speaking of changing the prayerbook for everyone, although I learned that the prayer book originally had the opening idea, the closing blessing and space in-between for each person to add their personal prayer/conversation with God, with their inner life. Doing this ensured that everyone’s response was original. However, to ensure uniformity, to keep control of what was happening, the Rabbis codified the prayerbook, the Talmud, the Bible, so it would be somewhat unchangeable, everyone would have the same text to recite in the same melody and we could become good soldiers for God. Rabbi Heschel is blowing that way of being up, to me, with this first sentence above. He followed the Halacha (the law) and made sure to integrate Agada (intention). He prayed the prayers in his own unique manner and intensity, I believe, and he was an original thinker, scholar, human being. He saw the unique humanity in every soul, he was responsive to the moment, to the call of God in each moment and his activism was not for his ego, rather it was his unique response to God’s call for all of us to be more human, to see the ineffable in each and every human being, in nature, in the animal kingdom and respond to the needs of people rather than using their vulnerabilities against them! We need to respond to God, to God’s call to us, to the call of another human being in an original, kind, caring, loving, just, etc manner, otherwise we become robots and automatons, no longer being human. 

In recovery, we are told that the 12 steps are suggestive only. It is also suggested to choose a sponsor who has what you want and go through the steps with them in a manner that works for both of you. Yet, as with everything in life, there are many people who say: “The Big Book says” when it doesn’t. There are people who want unity to mean sameness, who are afraid to not be in a narrow pathway of recovery for fear of ‘using’ again. What they don’t realize is they are still living in an addictive manner. In recovery, we can, and I believe we must, experience the freedom of expression, the freedom of a unique response to God, to life; gratitude as a personal and unique action. 

When I first read this passage so many years ago, I made a commitment to follow Rabbi Heschel’s guidance. I have worked diligently to keep everything fresh, to keep myself fresh and I have succeeded mostly. There are times when my response is similar/the same on more than one occasion and these are times when I am not being original. Today is new so my response has to be new, different, nuanced otherwise I am being stale, even copying my yesterday self is not good, as I understand Rabbi Heschel this morning. More 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 106

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect it. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91)

The last sentence haunts me daily! I woke up this morning at 2:30am thinking about it and each time I read it, immerse myself in it, I understand it a little more. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, calling to us and reminding us that the experience of faith, the experience of being seen for who we truly are, the experience of seeing our true and authentic self as well as the Divine Need we are to fill in this world, to share our wounds and our healing, to “stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us” cannot be a mental exercise! We can never think our way into any of these experiences and, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel, our mind will make us impervious, help us make and wear a mask, and is the source of our “mental make-up” when our soul is not alive in our mind. 

Just as Mitzvot, Religious Doctrines, Dogmas, Rites, etc done from a performance aspect miss the spark of the Divine that is necessary to infuse these actions with meaning, purpose and our self; just as we run the risk of falling into religious behaviorisms and spiritual plagiarisms, when our thoughts and actions are determined solely by our mental thoughts and our lower consciousness, we miss the human connection and the connection with the ineffable in us and beyond us.  We have within us, three centers of control: our minds/intellect, our emotions/feelings, and our soul/higher consciousness/spirit, I believe. We live in a society that tells us “what the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve” according to Napoleon Hill and it is a mantra that people have used since he said it and even prior to his coining this phrase, society, especially since the Renaissance, has lived this. We have forgotten how much our spiritual life matters, how much knowledge and brilliance as well as foresight our souls have and we waste it because we have inherited and promoted as well as added to society’s erroneous belief that “mind over matter”, etc is the only way to live well. We see the results each and every day and they are scary, they are deadly, they are destroying the fabric of life and the fabric of community, democracy and freedom. 

“The soul must be alive in the mind” is a way of being that acknowledges and demands our integration of mind and spirit. It is a way of being that acknowledges the importance of our inner life, the need for our soul to be the arbiter, the controller of our actions and beingness in the world. Our minds and emotions have votes, have important information and wisdom to add to our ways of being, our actions and our souls become the decider of what is good, what is right, how we are able to  bear seeing our authentic self-warts and all-how we are able to see the soul/ineffable in another human being, how our next action is going to impact us, another, and the Ineffable One. This is why the education, maturation and freeing of our soul and living from the inside/out is so crucial to making our world more whole(holy) and we, the people, more in sync with the call of higher consciousness/Ineffable One. 

We are in a Spiritual Crisis, I believe worse than, in Rabbi Heschel’s lifetime and it was not good then either. His rallying for Civil Rights, for getting out of Vietnam, for stopping the indiscriminate death of innocent Vietnamese, etc is well-known and, at times, misunderstood. What his teachings and thinking are focused on, to me, is encapsulated in this last sentence above: growing/maturing our souls, being aware of and educating our inner lives so we infuse our actions with the proper measure of respect, awe, love, intention, etc to reflect the rays of the Ineffable in us and beyond us, to respect and carry along the people in our community and to open our wounds to healing and love. My soul says YES, this is the path to living well. Yes, this is the pathway out of the Spiritual, Moral crisis we all face and Yes, this is the path to ensuring dignity, democracy and freedom to all people of our country.

In recovery, we learn to ‘trust our gut’ as clean out the our spiritual arteries and reconnect our souls and our minds. We are constantly engaged in educating our inner life and listening to the Ineffable in us and beyond us through waiting for the second thought, checking our thinking and decisions with another trusted person, and deepening our connection to the universe, to our higher consciousness and to our self. 

This last sentence is one of the many sentences that envelop me in the love and being seen by Rabbi Heschel and God. I live them to the best of my ability each day. I also see how I have gotten off track by at times because I could and I was blind and deaf to my soul’s call. I also know that I have been accused of being off track, when my soul was speaking to me, I was screaming from my “soul being alive in my mind” and seeing what was and what would happen if we stayed the false path, gave into the deceptions/optics we wanted to see and believe. It is a difficult way to live, sometimes unpopular, always humbling and, after the rejections and exiles, connection to self and the Ineffable One comforts and envelopes me in love. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom- Special MLK Edition

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 105

“The challenge we face is a test of our integrity. We are all on trial, we are all under judgement. The issue is whether we are morally strong, whether we are spiritually worthy to answer God’s demand…The problem we face is to be or not to be human. The situation of the Negro is the test, the trial, and the risk.” (The Insecurity of Freedom, pg. 104)

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I was drawn to this passage in the paper Rabbi Heschel wrote in March of 1964, titled: “The White Man on Trial”. It is frightening that almost 60 years later, we are all still on trial. We are facing God’s demands and deceiving ourselves that we are meeting them, that we are spiritually worthy to consider ourselves people of faith, while watching the corrosion of rights; the imprisonment of Black and Brown people at alarming rates and for many crimes that White people get lighter sentences for; getting angry at the homeless people who have no home to go to because of addiction, mental health issues, traumas suffered defending our country; and putting money and power over the health and well-being of human beings and our democracy. 

The issues that Reverend King fought for have not been solved, in fact, I would say they have gotten worse. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is being eroded, slowly but surely. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been demolished, decimated, and found to be not needed by the Supreme Court, a majority of whom believe in the inferiority of different races, creeds, etc evidently, because immediately after their decision, many states began to limit the voting rights of people of color, poor people (except for poor whites who vote their way of course) and allowed the legislatures, the vote counters to decide the outcome of elections, not the voters themselves. Sounds a lot like King George to me. 

One of the trials we face today, I believe, is the penultimate sentence above, “The problem we face is to be or not to be human.” The “good church going, god-fearing” are the people who are imprisoning people of color at an alarming rate, who are dismantling our democracy so they can get and hold power in their authoritarian manner, who continue to advocate for their “Christian Nation” and “Christian Values” while trying to scare people about “sharia law” and promote the White Supremacists’ values and insurrections as well as their Anti-Semitic, Anti-Muslim, Homophobic tenets! They are upholding and revering the leaders of the Confederacy as heroes instead of the treasonous villains they were. These “good church going, god-fearing” people falsely believe and engage in the self-deceptive ways  that allow them to believe they are the true humans and everyone else is vermin. How ridiculous, how sad and how scary! 

God is calling all of us to stop these charlatans, to end their constant denigration of God’s Name through their worship and devotion to their “god-fearing” ways, their idol worship and their inhumanity. We need to stand up to their lies, their insurrection and their desecration of God’s Name through their mistreatment of God’s Children-everyone who isn’t them. We do this by demanding our elected officials act in accordance with their oaths of office, we censure and evict the members of Congress who participated in the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021; we put the Trump family in jail for their crimes instead of being afraid of them. We support the human rights of all citizens and we find ways to properly and safely reform our immigration system. We vote, vote, vote and we help all people who qualify to vote get to their polling stations, apply for Mail-In ballots, without suggesting how they vote, only that they do vote. We need to organize a March on Washington, Austin Texas, Columbus, Ohio, Tallahassee, Florida, Jefferson City, Mo. and all the other states that are engaged in stopping vote in order to promote the stealing of our democracy. 

Rather than stop the spread of Covid-19, these “good church going, god-fearing” deceivers have convinced true people of faith, true God-Fearing people that stopping the steal of democracy is real and truthful. They are taking the strong belief that people have in God and in our system and using this belief to lead them into the Red Sea, as Pharaoh led the Egyptians, only for all of them to drown-not Pharaoh of course, just the people he could convince to lead. Jim Jordan, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, et al will not suffer from their actions, it is all of the rest of us who will. They are the ones who believe they are the Oligarchs and their worship of Vladimir Putin is so great, they are emulating all of his actions. Rather than tell the truth, they continue to obfuscate the truth so they can continue to fleece the government, the people they deal with, the entire country out of our money, our freedom and our spiritual worthiness and moral strength. 

We have to stop the stealing of our democracy, the stealing of the soul of America, the stealing of our dignity and the stealing of our humanity. We have to stop letting our humanity be determined by the loudest, most deceptive, most cunning and conning voices of our time. We have to stand up as the real People Of All Faiths, People dedicated to Honoring God’s Name, People of Integrity and Compassion, People who live our Humanity out loud, for and with everyone. We have to say NO to the mendacity of these deceivers and YES to “God’s Demands”! 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 104

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect it. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91)

Rabbi Heschel is reminding us to commune, receive and reflect is part of our human/divine nature, I believe. It is one of the gifts that God has given to us as a response to our basic need for belonging, connection and love. Receive can be understood to mean ‘take again’ from the Latin, which supports the myth that we receive all of God’s instructions in the womb and then just prior to birth, the angel who taught us touches us above our lips, causing the indentation between mouth and nose as well as making us forget everything in our conscious mind. This myth has been used to explain Deja Vu, among other things, and I am reminded of it now because we every time we choose to bear our selfs to be seen, we take again the light, strength and connection of “the ineffable in us: and “beyond us” and turn it inward to grow our inner lives and outward to help another part of God’s creation and creatures grow. I am understanding Rabbi Heschel to be reminding us that we already have the answers to the challenges of today, we just have to connect to “the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us” to access these solutions and put them into practice.

Reflecting the light, wisdom, solutions, strengths of our inner lives, our inner wisdom from the ineffable in us and beyond us is our way of ‘bending back’ towards God, towards our higher consciousness, towards another human being(s), It is not enough, as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel, to “suffer” and “receive”, these rays from the ineffable, we have to give it back, we have to not hoard for our own good, rather we have to ‘bend it back’ as the Latin origin of the word describes. Too many of us are not willing to reflect back to people our inner wisdom, inner chaos, inner strengths and inner weaknesses, as Rabbi Heschel reminds us in the first sentence above. We know that we are capable of reflecting the rays of the ineffable back to another human being(s) and yet, we get afraid of how we will look and sound, how vulnerable we will make ourselves and how our transparency will be used against us. Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us to let go of our fears enough to experience the joy of reflection, the fulfillment of the need we were created to fill and the ecstasy of connection through reflecting and receiving, receiving and reflecting throughout the day, week, months, years. 

So what do I do with my fears of my vulnerabilities being used against me? Vulnerable comes from the Latin meaning ‘wound’. Using the myth I wrote about above, we are born wounded and, as Leonard Cohen says, “There is a crack in everything and that’s how the light gets in”. We all are wounded spirits, we all have ‘suffered’ numerous wounds, cracks, etc, this is part of the human condition, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel and life. And, we have a choice what to do with our wounds; some of us lick our wounds and retreat into a shell that makes us “impervious to what He longs to show”, some of us lash out and ‘get even’ by wounding as many other people as we possibly can, and, some us use our wounds, our vulnerabilities to grow closer to the Ineffable One, grow closer to our authentic self, grow closer to humanity and seek a shared healing and response to our wounds. We will never completely heal all of our wounds, we will never completely know and understand all of God’s wisdom, however, using our vulnerabilities to take back the wisdom, strength, light and love we have in our subconscious and use it in our daily life; using our vulnerabilities to see the wounds and character of another human being(s) and connect with them on a soul to soul level and responding with love, compassion, kindness, truth and justice to all of the challenges and situations life gives us is the goal of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching and words today. It is only fitting and proper aka Kosher for all of us reflect what the light of God that resides in our souls and open our wounds to and for the light that heals. 

In recovery, we are in a daily quest for solution and more inner knowledge and real connections to another person(s). We grow in our awareness of the inner wisdom and inner wounds we have as well as the wisdom and wounds of every human being. Rather than protect ourselves, rather than hide our wisdom and light, using it for our gain only, in recovery, we share, we reflect our wisdom onto all the people around us as well as show our wounds with fear and trepidation AND hope and healing. This is how we create and/or join a community of sharing, taking of wisdom and bending that wisdom/light back onto the entire community. 

56 years ago, last Friday, we buried our father and he was a man who reflected light, strength, could see the inner lives of his children and, at times, hid his own wounds. Yet, his experience of anti-semitism, being a Jew in the Army Air Corp in WWII, made him more sensitive to the plight of minorities and he did not feel superiority, only compassion and empathy. After years of hiding my wounds, my inner life and light, I proudly follow my father’s example of reflecting God’s light, my soul’s light onto my community, I take in the light and the arrows of another human being(s) and I use my wounds to heal another and me, I use the inner wisdom to honor my lineage and God. 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 103

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect it. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91)

Rabbi Heschel is calling us to hear, understand and acknowledge our need to “suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect it.” It is, after all, what makes us human! Yet we spend so much time dehumanizing ourselves and so many people around us, people we have never met and people we want to control. We dehumanize them and ourselves by not being believing we can ‘bear’ to be seen. Many people believe that they are being seen when another person appeals to their basest instincts, then they become fanatics for this person and ‘drink the kool-aid’ and lose their own humanity because they are not being seen, they are being manipulated. They are not seeing their ‘leader’ they are seeing the facade he/she is putting up. If we are hiding from the Ineffable One, who is constantly calling for us and loves us unconditionally; warts and all, we have to hide from our true self and the self of another person. 

Commune comes from the Old French meaning: “to share”; receive in Latin means: “take back” and reflect comes from the Latin meaning: “bend back”. Rabbi Heschel is speaking to us not only about faith, but about life itself. He is teaching us that we have to share what we are given, not hoard everything. The 1 percenters in our country have to share their wealth through paying their fair share of taxes, supporting the charities that are engaged in helping people through the stress and strain of life, creating economic opportunities for more people to grow their ‘nest egg’. The rest of us, I hear Rabbi Heschel saying, must give our fair share as well to the charities, taxes and give each other a leg up in living instead of seeing the success of another as an assault on our security, our opportunities, etc. Sharing is what is called for in the Torah when we are commanded to bring tithes to the Priests for their welfare, to give to the poor and the needy and to share in the Passover Meal if there is too much food for one family to eat. Sharing includes helping people who are stuck in their self-deception, mesmerized by the phony facade of a charlatan, grifter, con person, who only wants power for their own selfish needs/desires. Sharing means to engage in truthful conversations and have what is best for another person’s interests the forefront of our minds, souls, hearts. We all have been guilty of hoarding, looking out for number 1, believing the lies of another because they make us feel good, validate our worst fears and give us an enemy to hate and blame. This way of being is the exact opposite of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching and the opposite of what God is calling us to be. 

We saw great examples of sharing during the beginning of this Pandemic. States were sharing information, doctors and nurses, equipment with each other, when their outbreak was over, they sent their expertise to another place. Our Federal government, on the other hand, hoarded supplies, information and put out disinformation. Donald J. Trump suggested that swallowing bleach would cure/protect against getting Covid-19, he forgot to tell the people he got the vaccines as did his family, he kept hosting events that spread the virus and denied the science of masks, social distancing, etc. Instead of behaving as South Korea, Donald J. Trump convinced a large minority to keep the spread of Covid-19 going, thinking it would help him and/or the drug companies whose cure/medicine he was pushing. We are seeing the effects of our lack of sharing and seeing the truth of our situation, both with Covid-19 and the state of our democracy. What was set up as a system of checks and balances has become a grab for power, control and authoritarianism! We, the people, need to share our fears with each other, we need to share our hopes with each other, and most of all we need to share our humanity with each other. We need to not only ‘bear’ ourselves to be seen, we have to actually see and share our strengths and weaknesses with one another so we can build stronger bridges to help everyone live well. Without our seeing one another, we cannot call ourselves people of faith, we cannot swear allegiance to the Ineffable One with any truth. Without seeing and sharing our self, our beingness with another human being and all humanity, we are just like Trump when he held a Bible upside down and didn’t know it nor did he care. 

In recovery, we go to meetings, we share with one another our “experience, strength and hope” in order to be seen and to see another person. We are constantly seeking to be seen and, when we are unable to discern truth, we seek out another person to help us uncover the truth. Sharing our being is our way to connection with people and with the Ineffable One, our path to wholeness and being a loving, kind, caring human being. 

I have shared my story so many times in order to help another person. I have sought to share and engage with another person/group of people in truth, in the discovery of truth and, on occasion, to decompress by gossip and foolishness. I know that sharing me will give another person ammunition against me and I know it is the only way to connect, love, be loved, experience joy, truly care and be cared about, and the greatest kindness I can show to me and to you. 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 102

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91)

I am trembling at the impact of Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, demands, and prophecy above. His use of the word suffer is so interesting to me, of course his choice of words are poetic, meaningful and thoughtful, Suffer comes from the Latin meaning: to bear from below; the dictionary also uses the word tolerate as a definition which comes from the Latin: to endure. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, hopefully, is causing psychic disturbance for all of us! Rabbi Heschel is speaking about how/when faith comes into our lives and I would add “when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect.”, are the only times we are truly alive, truly able to relieve our inner conflict between who we are and who we present to the world, truly able to fulfill our Covenant with God, our Covenant with another human being and be true to our authentic self. “Suffer ourselves to be seen” is the first step to achieving any of the above. What are our hesitancies, what are our fears, what are our roadblocks to know that we are able to ‘bear’ ourselves to be seen, that being seen is not embarrassing and/or threatening, it is not shameful nor demeaning, it is the only path forward to faith, to real connection, to growing our humanity and our dignity! 

To “suffer ourselves to be seen” is a lifelong task and journey, we are always uncovering new and old hiding places, parts of our self that we were unaware of and parts that we hid so long ago we had/have forgotten about them. Being seen by the Ineffable One is much easier than being seen by our significant other, our children, our parents, siblings, friends, co-workers, people we interact with. Being seen by the Ineffable One is always happening, we can’t hide from God, we just can ignore the call to change, to interact, to serve, to respond to the demand to be our true self that the Ineffable One calls to us each and every day. The problem for most of us arises when we have to interact with another human being and we deceive ourselves into believing we are not able ‘to bear’ to be seen as we are, so we engage in the inner conflict of hiding parts of our self that we think/know someone else will find unacceptable. We do this to ‘fit in’ to ‘be part of’ to be ‘accepted’ all the while knowing “if they really knew who I am they would leave me”. This intentional split that we create has long lasting effects and we get so used to doing this, we are so addicted to showing the face we think someone else will accept/like, it doesn’t seem like a choice, it just seems natural. 

These are the lies we tell ourselves in order to engage in this type of self-deception. We are unaware of the vulnerability we have to then believe the deceptions of another, because we don’t want to be ‘outed’ for our deceptions we will hold the deceptions of another; and because we become so deep in our own deceptions we become unable to tell fact from fiction. We see this in the political realm all the time across the world, otherwise authoritarianism would not be able to flourish as it has in history and is now. We see this in our spiritual realm when we witness the people that are unable to ‘walk their talk’ and admit their foibles, their errors and do T’shuvah for them.

In recovery, we are afraid, at first, that we cannot bear ourselves to be seen, we will be rejected by even more people if we allow ourselves to be seen, hell-we can’t even bear to see our self at the beginning of our recovery. What we do see is not necessarily our true and authentic self, we are usually only seeing the negative parts of our self and wrongly believing our negative deeds/actions/thinking define us. Our ability to “suffer ourselves to be seen” is a slow and steady process, which is why the fourth step of AA is only the beginning, we have to continue to ‘take our own inventory’ and allow ourselves ‘to bear’ and ‘endure’ more truth about our self-usually having the most problems with our good attributes. In recovery, we uncover, see and allow ourselves to be seen in order to be more whole as a human being, be of service to another human being and fulfill our task/demand from the Ineffable One. 

I spent much of my first 35 years of life hiding from everyone, sure people were able to discern my cons, my lies, yet only my father discerned my being and saw the real me. It was a painful existence before and, especially, after my father died when I was 14+. Now, at 70 years of age, I can say I have spent the past 35 years bearing to be seen, coming out of hiding, fearful of being seen and more fearful of hiding, more fearful of letting my father down again, more fearful of not following the teachings and path the Ineffable One has laid out for me, more fearful of losing the covenantal connections I have with my brother and sister, daughter and grandson, Harriet-my wife and partner, my friends and the world. This passage reminds me I can “suffer” myself to be seen and the people who want to use my authenticity against me-oh well-aren’t they pathetic and in need of Divine Pathos. I offer my pathos to the people who used me for being me when it was convenient and needed by them and used my authenticity against me when it suited them. 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 101

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91).

I am stuck on Rabbi Heschel’s phrase “when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-“ because of the power it gives to each and every one of us as well as the faith Rabbi Heschel has in the human spirit. We all, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, have the power, the yearning, the drive to face the ineffable within us, to see the spark/image of the Divine we are created in and the Divine need we are created for. For most people, this yearning and drive is tamped down from the age of 2, when speech, rules, etc come into our consciousness from parents and society. While rules, speech, being taught morality, compassion, are important and necessary to living well, they can also be stifling, paralyzing and suffocating when they are used to control our drive to face the ineffable within us and live our uniqueness, our spark of the Divine out loud. Political correctness, go along to get along, comparisons, optics, fundamentalism, anarchy, etc enhances society and individual power to control ‘the masses’ and make good foot soldiers for the generals who want to deceive, wear their own “mental make-up” and never face the ineffable within themselves. We are bombarded by social media, cable TV, newspapers, neighbors, with their own need to hide behind their self-deceptions and the mendacity of another(s) to hide our own ineffable spark, to imprison our yearning and power to face our ineffable self and use our power to effect real change in our way of living and the way the world lives. We are capable of using our ineffable self to drive our lives and influence people towards living a life compatible with being a partner of the Ineffable One. 

As we remove our “mental make-up” we are able to discern, nurture and grow the ineffable spark within us and connect with the ineffable spirit beyond us more and more each day. We do this through prayer, through meditation, through our actions, no longer performing actions rather being the actions we take. As Rabbi Heschel teaches, we learn how to be immersed in the Bible to learn the next right action to take and how to be immersed in our living, immersed in each day, living in wonder, awe, joy as well as experiencing sadness, heartache, loss, etc. Being connected to the “ineffable in us” as well as “the ineffable beyond us” changes our state of being. We live in wonder, awe, joy, connection, truth, confidence and we experience sadness, loss, heartache, never getting stuck in our experiences, only learning and returning home to “the ineffable in us “and “the ineffable beyond us”. 

Society and the people in power are afraid of ‘us common folks’ tapping into the power of “the ineffable in us” because then their control is lost, they would have to face their own spark of the Divine and come face to face with their true selves and be responsible for the death of spirit they have caused within themselves and within another(s) human being. Since each of us are supposed to do T’Shuvah(daily inventory of how we hit the mark and how we missed the mark, making amends, etc.) one day before we die, and none of us know the day of our death so we need to do T’Shuvah every day, I believe it is imperative and incumbent upon each one of us to show compassion and empathy as well as make amends to our spark of the ineffable we have ignored, imprisoned and covered up. This is another of the challenges I hear Rabbi Heschel giving to us in these teachings. 

In recovery, we are constantly seeking “to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God” so we can better do God’s will. This daily action allows us to face “the ineffable in us” and use the light of our soul, the radiance of our divine spark to see and face “the ineffable beyond us”. This is how we can come together for the common good of our group, our family, our community, our world. The better “our conscious contact with God as we understand God”, the better our seeing another person(s) as deserving of respect, kindness, compassion, etc rather than seeing an enemy, a danger, a label. In recovery, we are engaged in seeing the divine spark in another person(s) so we can retain our own. 

I am so aware of the ways I cover up “the ineffable in me” at times, it is painful as I am writing this today. I do it when I am afraid of not belonging. I wear my “mental make-up” from fear of not being accepted and not being ‘one of the gang’. I apologize to the people I have hidden from, it is wrong and harmful to them and to me. Recent experiences have shown me that living from “the ineffable in me” doesn’t necessarily make me acceptable to some, it can and has gotten me shunned and exiled, and as I thought I was alone on a deserted island, I realized that I was enveloped by “the ineffable beyond me” and found both my places of belonging and gratitude for the many people who embrace me. The “mental make-up” will always lie to me, the ineffable in me and beyond me always tells me the straight story, gives me power and yearning to be connected and shows me the light and the love of fellow human beings and of the ineffable one. 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 100

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91).

I have been immersed in this paragraph for years and I realize that Rabbi Heschel is calling to us as the Prophets of the Bible called to the people of their time and, just as their message is timeless, so is Rabbi Heschel’s. We are being called to regain our integrity and our authenticity by Rabbi Heschel. His words above: “we have almost forfeited our face” are calling to us to return to our essential, authentic, integrated self. We are in danger of losing what makes us human and unique by wearing “masks” and “mental make-up”, as I understand Rabbi Heschel’s call to us. He is calling to us just as God calls to us, he is telling us that we are not alone, we do not have to live a life of loneliness and pain, we do not have to continue to hide and try to ‘look good’ for another person. We can, and I would add, must remove our masks, take off the “mental make-up” and “stand face to face” with our true self and with “the ineffable beyond us”. 

Standing “face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us” is an act of courage and of necessity. It is an act of surrender and power, fear and awe, love and connection. While most of us are afraid to take this stand, afraid to be real and authentic, Rabbi Heschel is calling us to overcome our fears and stand face to face with our true self and with the Ineffable One.

The first step to doing this is to surrender, to allow ourselves to be confronted and defeated by a Higher Truth. One of the higher truths we have to confront and allow ourselves to be defeated by is that what we have been doing, the ways we have been hiding, acting, etc, have left us lonelier than ever, more disconnected from our self, from truth and from each other and we are bereft and miserable. While most people have become accustomed to living in low-grade misery, Rabbi Heschel is telling us that we do not have to stay in this state, we do not have to believe the lie ‘life is hard and then you die’. I hear him calling us to live a life of vibrancy, excitement, service and connection. Rabbi Heschel is giving us a solution to our sense of aloneness and disconnection, to our imposter syndrome and fear that we will be found out, to our disgust with our self and with life, to our zero sum attitude and our false sense of security and control.

Part of the solution is to come face to face with our unique Image of God and with the Image of God we can apprehend in the world. It is to come face to face with our unique Image of God and the unique Image of God in another human being. It is to stop hiding from ourselves, appreciate our uniqueness and the gifts/talents we bring to the table that help us live well and share them with humanity so we all live a little better, as well as accepting the talents/gifts of another human being so we and the rest of humanity can grow, flourish and enjoy life a little better each day. Part of the solution, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s words today, is to allow our light, our brightness, our hope, our brilliance to radiate inside of us and outside of us, to stop putting a blanket on our souls, on our uniqueness in order to ‘fit in’ with everyone else. Instead of competing to be like someone else, instead of comparing our self with another self, instead of buying into society’s control and pigeonholing of us, part of the solution to our aloneness, loneliness and disconnection is to be the truest and most authentic self we can be in this moment, knowing as we engage in cleaning the schmutz off of our souls, we will grow in authenticity. We are not alone in this world, we do not have to wallow in loneliness and disconnection, we are connected to one another and we are connected to the Ineffable One, to the universal force of the cosmos. Loneliness, aloneness, disconnection is a choice we make, not something forced upon us by the Ineffable One, rather it is something we learn, we have the power to unlearn it, we have the power to stop teaching it to younger generations and we have the power to make the choice to be connected to our authentic self, humanity, and the universe. 

In recovery we spend the beginning of our journey cleaning out the schmutz we created, accumulated, inherited. It is a difficult task, one that is excruciatingly painful and exhilaratingly joyous. Seeing how we have hidden from our authentic self and the pain we caused so many people, including ourselves, is almost unbearable, I am shuddering as I write these words. Our competition, our comparing, our “mental make-up” almost killed us and wounded those who love us so deeply. We also become aware of the ways we can make amends, repair the damage, restore dignity to the people we have harmed and those that love us as well as to ourselves and make a different plan for living well and surrendering the lie that we are alone and lonely for the truth that we are connected and we matter. 

For the longest time I felt alone no matter where I was and whom I was with, except when my father and I were together, the two of us. When I was at my lowest, knowing I was going to prison again, disappointing Heather, I heard the Ineffable One call to me and I have not been alone since I began to follow Rabbi Heschel’s formula. More 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 99

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91).

While “mental make-up” may seem to some people a good thing and it can be at times, it was, in 1951, something that worried Rabbi Heschel greatly and we can see why, given the result of decades of piling this “make-up” on. It has led to more mendacity in our daily living, it has led to more blame and shame, I believe. It has led to more self-deception and deception of another, it has led more of a loss of self-dignity and self-worth as individuals, it has led to an attitude of “let them eat cake” from the .01% who are super-rich and it has led to a loss of faith and, in the face of all the ‘new-age’ spirituality cults, it has led to more isolation, death, addiction, etc. 

These pounds and pounds of “mental make-up” we have caked on have caused us to lose sight of our real face, our real make-up as human beings, as direct partners with the Divine, as people capable of rising above their petty jealousies to help care for another human being in distress. The call for power, prestige, control is a false call-it is a call that comes from centuries of wearing “mental make-up” and only adding to it, never wiping it off. We have and are losing sight of the similarity of purpose each and every human being has, make a difference, make our corner of the world a little better than it was, use our unique gift to help another human being live better. 

We are able to and need to see ourselves as I describe above in order to remove the “mental make-up” that is so caked on. It has become part of our upbringing, part of our epigenetic inheritance. We may not be able to change our epigenetic genome quickly, we can however change the way we treat ourselves. To do this, we must begin with the premise that we are okay without our make-up on. To be au natural is to be proud, to honor what God created, to rejoice in what we have and who we are. It is to go back and change the Garden of Eden story from one of shame and blame to one of pride and connection. Beginning with our self, re-educating our minds and emotions to the song of our soul, to the beauty and wisdom of our spirits. When our souls become the arbiter of our actions, we learn new ways to handle old situations and we grow into the lives we are supposed to live, not the ones society, our parents and/or our self-centered, egotistical thoughts have set us on. We see the world through new eyes each and every day. We are able to better live in Rabbi Heschel’s “radical amazement” state of being. We are seeing everything fresh and new, not bogged down in yesterday’s morass and the trauma of years ago, rather we are seeking new solutions and to the morass and trauma we experienced and has been transmitted down to us. This is not a denial of negativity, this is a way of being that means yesterday’s negativity cannot stop me today from finding a solution to the challenge of living, finding a response to the demand of life/God today. When we remove the “mental make-up” we are able to see new possibilities, new solutions and new challenges. 

Once we take off our “mental make-up” we raise our children differently, we treat employees and employers with kindness and truthfulness, we realize the joy of serving people in need of what we have to offer and we reach out for the help we need because of our lacking expertise in the area we need help. Kindness, truth, loving, compassion, caring, justice, etc no longer are seen as weaknesses, they are strengths and connecters to all of humanity. We are able to see the soul/Divine Image of another clearer and brighter when our “mental make-up” is removed. 

In recovery, we are constantly working on not only removing the old “mental make-up” that has almost cost us our face, our lives and the lives of another(s), we are engaging each and every day in wiping clean the new make-up we purposely and inadvertently put on each day with our daily prayers, meditations, gratitude lists, review of our day. We are so aware of the danger of the lies we tell ourselves, the blaming of another(s) for actions we know are not right to take, and trying to defend the indefensible, and where these ways lead us that we constantly speak to our spiritual guides, sponsors, therapists, friends and seek guidance and advice to keep our side of the street clean and be the best self we can be in this moment. 

Having removed much of the “mental make-up” I had caked on, I thought I was done with it and, re-reading this passage and immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words as well as the writing I have been doing for this past 12+ months, I realize that I put some of this make-up on me and that blinded me to realities I didn’t want to see, fogged up my eyesight so I couldn’t see who was being a ‘Brutus’ to me and how I was harming other people. It has become painfully clear to me, which I believe I am conveying through this writing and I am more committed than ever to remove the make-up, not worry about where the chips may fall and speak my truth and my vision, allowing for my mind to be changed by a connection from another soul to my soul and my soul to my mind. I am committed to putting my mind in the passenger seat more and my soul/spirit in the driver’s seat. 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 98

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91).

What is the “mental make-up” we wear, as a religious community, as a secular community, as a Republican and/or Democrat, as citizen of a country, as an employee , employer, as a  child, sibling, parent, lover? We take on many different roles within our lifetimes and, in light of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, I wonder if we change our make-up depending on the ‘role’ we are in? Is it possible to go ‘au natural’ in our living? 

We have seen much bigotry, hatred, murder, etc  in the name of one religion or another and because of this, many people have written religion off completely. The religious leaders who promote these ugly, ungodly behaviors are wearing the “mental make-up” of self righteousness and power-seeking/hungry. They use the tenets of their faith to control people and, because of the heavy use of make-up, they actually believe and/or or convince themselves to believe these terrible actions, these lies and bastardizations of both the letter and spirit of Scriptures are in service of God. All the while, they are lining their pockets, the pockets of their benefactors, the pockets of their faith to exert more and more power over individuals, communities, governments, countries to bend to their will, not the Will of God. This is, of course, the large scale, long term effects of what begins a long time before. The “mental make-up” religious leaders, clergy, etc wear is put on while in their youth. We learn it in our religious education how we have been persecuted for our beliefs, how we have to stand with our people who believe the same as we do and see anyone who doesn’t accept our way as an enemy, etc. Religious leaders, clergy then learn in Seminary how they have to project an image of complete allegiance to the tenets and principles of their faith and this leads to the myth of perfection which leads to “Symbolic Exemplar” as Rabbi Jack Bloom writes about tin his book of the same name. We have seem the false self of many of our religious leaders and clergy and come to venerate them and learn from them to put on make-up ourselves. Some religious leaders need to wash their faces, have their eyes checked, change their hearing aids, clean the wax out of their ears, face their own imperfections, celebrate them, approach God and one another with openness and transparency so they and we can repair the damage our “mental make-up” has caused. As religious leaders and clergy, the power we possess is the power to draw nearer to God through our actions and helping another human being through spiritual crisis’ and using this power to enslave people to our will, to our way or the highway of religious experiences and devotion is proof of our “mental make-up” of power covering up our deep-rooted fear of incompetence. 

In our political realm, the “mental make-up” gets heavier and heavier. We are in an era where some of our elected officials are sounding more like King George than like Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and/or Ben Franklin. There actions are more like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee than Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and/or Harry Truman. What makes the make-up look even worse on these elected officials is they know the truth, they know better and are better than the lies they spout, the insurrection/civil war they are fomenting. When you listen to their earlier words, especially spoken when they were in power, and then the words spoken when they are not in power, it is easy to see the “mental make-up” of power over all, obstruction when not in power, lie and cheat to block anything meaningful and helpful to their own constituents! Yet, they pontificate and keep putting their make-up on with help from the media, social and traditional, the press and the people who themselves are engaged in their own self-deception, wearing their own layers of “mental make-up” who readily buy the deceptions of these elected officials. 

In recovery, we are continually wiping off the old “mental make-up”, taking it off layer by layer. We have been so engaged in our putting this make-up on, like everyone else, we don’t even know where the real person is for a while because we are constantly peeling this make up off, even having to scrape it off like the barnacles on the bottom of the boat. In recovery, we know that the taking off of our “mental make-up” is a life long experience because we easily fall back into putting in on every day. 

I have been wiping the make-up off and putting some on every day for the past 35 years. Rabbi Heschel has been such a disturbance in my life, giving me a bad conscious every day that I am constantly wiping the falseness, the self-deception off of me to the best of my ability each day. Some days are better than others! I realize my loudness and my passion break through when I have been wearing the make-up of ‘go along to get along’, sitting idly by the damage another person is doing because of optics, political correctness, fear of losing position, money, etc. and I can’t do it anymore. My wiping off of the make-up, many times, is a loud, painful affair for me and those around me. I am sorry to those I hurt in these moments. 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 97

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91).

“Spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality” is a truth that goes unnoticed by and denied by so many people. If we can’t feel it, touch it, taste it, see it; many people don’t think it is real, or so they say. Some of us are unable to believe what we see when someone else’s voice is in our ears-we deny what is happening in front of us. We hear the words and don’t register the actions so we are continually deceived and deceiving ourselves. The words spontaneous and sensitive come from the Latin roots “of one’s own accord” and “feel”, having nothing to do with our tactile senses, rather with our spiritual beingness. I am using holy to mean, “elevated and connected”. Ineffable means “not able to express in words”. 

Rabbi Heschel, some 70 years ago, warned us and is warning us about a human trait that is within our nature and that we need to transform, our need to deny our desire, pull towards answering and connecting with something greater than ourselves that we don’t understand, can’t comprehend, and is always calling out to us. This is true for some ‘people of faith’ and their leaders as well as everyone else. I believe most people at one time or another have experienced a ‘call’, a ‘pull’ a ‘eureka’ moment and either ignored it, dismissed it, or answered it. This ‘call, pull, eureka’ comes from either deep within us and/or our connection to a dimension of reality that we are unable to express. Yet, it is totally real, it is absolutely valid and it occurs daily, if we attune our hearing to this elevated dimension of reality. 

Our problem, of course, is that we are afraid to attune our ears to this elevated dimension of reality because we are afraid of being ridiculed. Look at the people who are being ridiculed and disowned by their own people for standing up for truth that we can actually document, much less standing up for one’s inner experience that is almost impossible to describe, what I call: “knowing something in my bones”. Many people are afraid to follow this call for fear of being wrong, being shunned, being exiled, being not seen nor heard, being laughed at, etc. We have seen throughout history how often the people who are the most connected, the people who speak the truth of their experiences with the “holy ineffable dimension of reality” are shunted to the side, not given their due, and ignored. Rabbi Heschel had this experience and, unlike many of us, he kept writing, he kept speaking, he kept protesting, he kept standing up for God’s principles no matter what. Rabbi Heschel never stopped responding to God’s call, continuing on his own accord to connect to the indescribable dimension of reality and, by doing so, changed our world for the better. 

We have the same opportunity, to hear and respond to the call of a higher reality, our souls, God, a higher truth. Our challenge is to respond no matter what someone else thinks. It is to, in a way, be like Don Quijote and fight the windmills of mendacity. Stand up for what we “know in our bones” instead of what someone else wants to prove with their sleight of hand tricks. Life is not a three-card Monte game, life is serious and joyous. True living is when we, on our own accord act on the feeling/vibration/call we receive that is from an inexplicable source and experience the connection with the higher dimension of reality. This is not a one and done proposition, this takes a spiritual practice that is constant, consistent, always changing and growing, and trust in one’s own ability to connect with, hear, decipher, and act on the call of this higher dimension of reality. It also takes spiritual counseling with a physician of the soul. 

In recovery, we begin by scraping off the barnacles that have grown on our soul and the armor, the walls we have built up in our inner life that has made it impossible for us to hear any voice except the voices of deception, ours and the ones’ of people with whom we have called ‘our friends’. This scrapping begins with admitting that we need to live differently than we have been. It is the process of having our inner and outer ears cleaned of all the wax that has built up over the years which blocks our hearing the call of the higher dimension of reality. 

I began to hear the Ineffable call in jail in 1986 and, with the help of my Rabbis, my teachers, my friends, my siblings, my daughter and wife, I hear this call more and more often and I respond with, at times, reckless abandon. I see and hear things in texts, in living that many people don’t, so I am ignored, tolerated and used when convenient by some. By many others, this connection to the Ineffable dimension of reality is sought out, appreciated and used to help them. I want to be liked and appreciated and I know that it is impossible for everyone to understand me and join me. For those who hear the call of the Ineffable and don’t want to follow it or want me to not confront them with it, they need to silence me, marginalize me and I understand and forgive them. I also know that my delivery isn’t for everyone and I am more committed to speak to people in ways they can understand, not just the ways I like to talk. 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 96

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91).

Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that only some of us blush, only some of us are willing to be seen in our entirety by another person, by God, even by our own self. What does this say for the majority of people? The majority are not willing to blush, the majority wear a mask to veil themselves and the harm this does is immeasurable. Looking into a mirror, how often are we blind to what is in front of us, how often do we hide from the true reflection in the mirror? There is a famous poem titled: “The Man in the  Glass” that speaks to our attempts to hide from our self and we can’t hide from the reflection in the mirror. The final stanza reminds us that heartache will be our true reward if we “cheat the man in the glass”. 

This sad truth that the majority of people wear a mask to veil themselves is what causes the chasm in our society, what causes pain and war, depression and addiction, racism and anti-semitism, anxiety and hopelessness, senseless hatred and polarization. Wearing of a mask is to hide from another, to change our appearance so we can either “fit in” or not. We wear a mask to hide our faces from another because we know what we are doing is not the next right action to take. The terrorists who behead people on video never show their faces, supposedly so they don’t get identified and hunted and arrested. Yet, taking Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above to heart, immersing ourselves in it, it seems to me that these terrorists know taking another life goes against God’s will and their supposed allegiance to their god, is actually idolatry and self-serving. If they believed they were serving Allah, as they claim, why would they hide their faces? They don’t want to face themselves in the camera as they commit such heinous acts as well as not facing anyone else.

People veil themselves to cover, conceal and/or disguise themselves according to the dictionary definition of the word from the Latin word; vela-curtain covering. We are told as boys to ‘shake it off’ when we get hurt in a game or in life and ‘get back in the game, give them what they have coming’ etc, which only teaches us to make someone pay for our pain, physical, emotional and/or spiritual. This is the cause of most wars, hurt feelings, a poke in the eye, a denial of the spirituality of another human being. We engage in these behaviors not because God wants us to, not because our Higher Consciousness tells us to, because our veils force us to. If we don’t exact payback, we have to see ourselves and another can see us as ‘weak’ and vulnerable and we can’t have that happen because the veil would fall away and we would see our true self. 

This veil that most people walk around with tries to cover up, conceal and disguise personal agendas that they have when talking about larger topics. Examples are the ‘quick fix’ pharmaceutical companies that got our nation addicted to pain killers and, even worse, believing that pain is not a prerequisite of living authentically. Their motive was not the welfare of people, it was to line their pockets with money and power. The leaders of January 6th, 2021 who knew/know the election was not stolen, who know that allowing all Americans the right to vote is what is right, who know that the vaccines work(and take them themselves) and they continue to hide these truths from the people who listen to them, not to serve the people, but to serve their hold on power, to serve their hatred of ‘the opposition’, to serve their self-aggrandizing view of themselves, to serve their idol worship.

In recovery, we are continuing to remove the layers of the veil we wore/wear. We call it ‘peeling the onion’, because these layers are so thin like the membrane of an onion skin and as strong as this membrane. We are so used to the veil, we are so accustom to our masks and to our myopic sight, it is with great determination we remove one layer after another, not all at once, slowly and steadily so we can adjust our sight to what is and remove these layers/blinders completely. These membranes are on our eyes, our hearts and cover our souls/spirits as well and our removal of each layer brings a new sense of living, a new vision of life on life’s terms and a deep appreciation of being alive and connected. 

I realize the veils get thinner and thinner as we grow in wisdom, age, spirit and love. Being able to blush doesn’t mean I don’t still have veils, I do. The veil that I am peeling off is the veil of seeing another person as I need/want them to be rather than see them for who they truly are. It is how I changed according to what the other person needed me to be prior to my recovery and I realize today that I would change who another person was in my vision according to what I needed/wanted them to be and this was hurtful and harmful to the person, to me and to those around me. I reversed my conman way of viewing a situation to harm me, to serve me and it always blew up in my face. This is not the same as giving a person the benefit of the doubt, it is not seeing them for who and where they are in the moment and this is not serving God, them or myself. 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 95

“God is unwilling to be alone, and man cannot forever remain impervious to what He longs to show. Those of us who cannot keep their striving back find themselves at times within the sight of the unseen and become aglow with its rays. Some of us blush, others wear a mask. Faith is a blush in the presence of God.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 91)

Continuing to look at the last sentence above, we realize how often we “people of faith” are unfaithful as Rabbi Heschel is describing being faithful above. Immersing oneself in these words leads to one to the very core of the problem of faith and the reason so many people are turning away from faith. The leaders of faith organizations are not being faithful to God, to another human being to their core reason for being alive. They are too busy hiding, wearing the masks of perfection, the mask of authority, the mask of mendacity, the mask of fear, the mask of bigotry, the mask of Pharaoh. 3300+ years after being redeemed from slavery by God and Moses, our faith leadership and their flock, have put on the mask of Pharaoh, to rule people in the most ungodly manner. Fear and punishment, ie eternal damnation, is not God’s way. God’s way is truth, transparency, love, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, etc. We do not see this in many of today’s faith leaders, they are autocratic, absolutely sure they are ‘right’ and act imperially and become authoritarians. Instead of blaming the ills of the world on “those” people, for our faith leadership to truly “blush in the presence of God”, they would do their own inner work, their own T’Shuvah and help the rest of us do the same. 

Authenticity and transparency are not values that are rewarded in today’s world, nor in any world, when it comes to standing “in front of” and/or “with” God. Authenticity is not acting out our inner negativity, I believe. Authenticity, as I’m understanding and using the word is when we act from our higher consciousness, our spirit, our concern for another as well as concern for our self. One cannot be a hater, a bigot, a deceiver, a cheat, a con, a liar and a gangster and be authentic! One can only live authentically when they live in ways that are congruent with making their corner of the world a little better each day, when they see themselves as different and unique and see everyone else as different and unique so we can all respect, need and rejoice in the ways we all make this tapestry called our world, a rich, vibrant, truthful, loving experience. These are some of the ways we are able to “blush in the presence of God” by living authentically. Transparency is taking off the masks so someone else and God can see us without the bluster, the costume and the carnival paint we put on each day. Living transparently occurs when we are more afraid of hiding than we are of being seen, by another and by God. The world we live in does not reward this type of transparency, not in our schools, not in many homes, not in the workplace, not even in many houses of worship. Look at how the Prophets were treated! When we tell you who we are, when we act in the ways we act and, as long as it serving those in power, it is good and, when they get a little scared of optics and lawsuits, you are thrown away/sacrificed, these great faithful leaders, parents, employers are telling us that we love you as long as you act in the manner we want you to and that manner has nothing to do with your soul, spirit, gift-it has to do with our wants and desires in the moment. Rather than rewarding one’s “blush in the presence of God”, most people become afraid of it, overwhelmed by it, hide from it, and ignore/remove the messenger of God for their transparency and authenticity and their indictment of those ‘good faith leaders, good political leaders, good parents’ et al. 

In recovery, a “blush in the presence of God” is our daily goal. We are constantly seeking to “improve our conscious contact with God…” and seek to reach our higher consciousness and live better each and every day. We know we have to live our lives out loud, we have suffered the pain of and the pain caused by our hiding and our mendacious ways of living prior to our recovery. In fact, we are recovering our integrity, our authentic self a little more each day in recovery. 

I have fought this battle to “blush in the presence of God” every day for the past 35+ years. I fight with my false ego who wants to ‘look good’ as opposed to my soul who wants to do good, who wants to join in partnership with God to propel me and those around me to new heights of living. I win the war each day in that at least 51% of me is transparent and authentic in my living each day and some days it is just barely 51%! I strive each day to raise  the percentage and most days I live at 85+% authentic and transparent. Some of the masks I wear are for my own good as well as the good of another, ie, I wear the mask of confidence that I will not die today so I can never be hopeless-of course I know I will die, I just deny it will be today and I am better able to be of service, to be “seen by the unseen” and seen by those around me. I also know that there are people who have used my authenticity and transparency against me, those who have decided I am too much of a liability, and a few, who I thought truly got me, who deserted me in my times of most need. I have not hidden the pain that the first two groups brought me nor the “Et tu Brute” moment of the later group. I have no resentments, no anger, just sadness and this is a new mark of authenticity and transparency for me-usually I would just go to the mask of anger to hide the sadness. I have decided that to be “seen by the unseen”, allow another(s) to see me “blush in the presence of God” is more authentic, more transparent and more healing. 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 94

“God is unwilling to be alone, and man cannot forever remain impervious to what He longs to show. Those of us who cannot keep their striving back find themselves at times within the sight of the unseen and become aglow with its rays. Some of us blush, others wear a mask. Faith is a blush in the presence of God.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 91)

The last sentence in this group has overwhelmed me ever since I first read it 30+ years ago, sitting here this morning, I am aware of what it is saying with trembling awe. I tremble at what Rabbi Heschel is teaching us with this simple sentence, we have faith, we demonstrate our faith only when we are willing to be seen and make ourselves available to be seen by God and, I would add, another(s) person since we are all Divine Reminders. 

Since we are always in God’s presence, as the Mezuzah reminds us, our faith is shown through our openness to be seen, and I believe, to see another(s). Using this teaching as the measuring stick for living faithfully or not, gives us a clue into God’s desire and search for human connection, to me. So many of the “faithful” continue to wear masks and hide from God and from another human being. Many Spiritual Leaders forget to blush in the presence of God, of humanity which is why they can be so mendacious and deceptive. Choose Life is a commandment in Deuteronomy and so many of our leaders choose hiding instead, they choose to wear a mask of ‘righteousness’, ‘humility’, ‘caring’, etc. Yet, what they are actually doing is being self-righteous bigots, ostentatiously humble and caring about their power and their proximity to power. Any Spiritual Leader who promotes politics and political views over the life-saving, soul-saving teachings and ways of God, however you experience God/higher consciousness, etc, is a self-righteous bigot. Their bigotry is their disdain for God’s words, for morality, for saving a life in favor of their search for power, money and prestige. I call upon all spiritual leaders to show themselves, to be seen and to blush in the presence of their flock, in the presence of people and in the presence of God/their higher self/their soul. Meeting this challenge will allow them to look at themselves in the mirror of God’s reflection, in the mirror of human reflection and we all can then decide to follow their deceptive ways or not, help them move from mendacity to truth or not, choose life through connection to God and human beings or existence through deception and ‘getting theirs’. 

I cannot contain myself this morning as I realize how much we all hide, how unfaithful we all become at different times in our daily living. As a child, denying what we have done wrong when accused by a parent is done from fear, cheating on an exam/test so we can get a good grade is done from fear of not being ‘good enough’. The ‘celebrity fad’ such as the Kardashians, reality TV ‘stars’ are more examples of mask wearing since the shows are all scripted and people’s fear of not being like them has turned into multi-million dollar industries. We are the causes and makers of the masks that we wear, that our children wear, our friends wear, humanity wears, as I am experiencing Rabbi Heschel’s teaching this morning. 

The Hebrew Bible is an unmasking of human behavior, an unmasking of what happens when we hide from God and when we seek God. Adam hides from God, is sent out of the Garden of Eden because he can’t be responsible and, according to a Kabbalistic interpretation, Adam divorces God! We screw up and we want to blame anyone and everyone, even God. It is not God’s will that innocent children, innocent people die as collateral damage in wars, conflicts, robberies, gang initiations, etc. It is not God’s will that people are lied to and lie to another regarding life-saving medicines and vaccines all the while promoting drugs to help addicts that create their own dependency, drugs that do not allow people to experience grief and loss, anxiety and depression over experiences that naturally cause these experiences, blaming people ‘not like us’ for all the ills of our world rather than being responsible for our part. We teach and learn these ways of hiding, of wearing masks in infancy/early childhood and, our spiritual education is not sufficient enough to teach both parents and children: “faith is blush in the presence of God”, being seen is how we blush, and the presence of God is everywhere. When will we ever learn? 

In recovery, we “continue to take daily inventory and promptly admit when we are wrong”. This 10th step is our way of checking in to see how we have hidden and how we have blushed throughout our day. We need to keep on top of our both our hiding and our blushing so we make certain that we stay in recovery by being at least 51% in blushing. In recovery, we know the lure of self-deception and the subtlety of mask wearing, so we are constantly aware and on guard against falling into old traps and behaviors. 

I am overwhelmed with sadness at how I have worn a mask at times and how people who I thought I knew were wearing masks that I could not perceive nor break through. I hear people differently because of being able to blush and seek to blush one grain of sand more each and every day. 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 93

“God is unwilling to be alone, and man cannot forever remain impervious to what He longs to show. Those of us who cannot keep their striving back find themselves at times within the sight of the unseen and become aglow with its rays. Some of us blush, others wear a mask. Faith is a blush in the presence of God.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 91)

The wearing of a mask is not only to hide from God and another human being, it is to hide from oneself. Many years ago someone asked me and Harriet: “If I keep living my false persona, doesn’t it become real?” We were taken aback by this question and, ultimately, responded with a NO. While many of us want to believe that if we are false long enough, if we wear a mask and work to be someone/something other than our authentic self, the mask will actually become our face/our truth. The error of this type of thinking is enormous. 

The Torah, the Commandments, common decency, and morality allow us to transform the negative impulses we all have into doing something positive and right, sometimes called ‘acting our way into right thinking’. These guides, standards are here to help us discover our authentic self and the best way for each of us as an individual to serve our souls, our community, higher consciousness, God, etc. The purpose of every spiritual tradition and discipline, of the psychoanalytic methods are to help an individual find their authentic self and learn to live from it. 

The wearing of a mask, to hide an erroneous belief that there is something wrong with us, is a practice of mendacity and self-deception. First, believing there is something inherently wrong with one’s soul, one’s core being is a lie we tell ourselves and/or a lie someone else has perpetrated upon us and we have bought into. Each of us are created in the Divine Image, we are not defective nor do we have any defective character defects at birth. Yes, there are, unfortunately and tragically, human beings born with defects of the physical and emotional nature, however this is not the rule nor does it stop someone from living authentically. A child with Downs Syndrome lives more authentically, I think, than the rest of us-they live a life of love and joy, they are only sad when someone else is and/or when someone is mean to them. A Downs Syndrome person is a person who can teach the rest of us to be fearless in living authentically with whatever ‘imperfections’ we may seem to have and rejoice in our unique purpose and gifts. If only we as individuals and as a society would take our masks off and learn from them and embrace them, life would be elevated, holier, kinder and we all would stop being afraid of being seen for who we truly are. 

Human beings wear a mask out of fear, fear of not being “enough” mostly. While no one can define what “enough” is and/or when they achieve it, some of us know we are “enough" and have no need for masks. People who keep trying to achieve being “enough” in different areas of living; money, property, recognition, sports, accomplishments, beauty, etc are really trying to be perfect so no one will be able to touch them. They have bought into the myth of perfection and the belief they can shield themselves from harsh critiques both from self-examination and the judgement of another if they are “enough”. There is no “enough” that is permanent, we are constantly growing and changing, what was “enough” yesterday, can’t be “enough” today because today is a different day, needing different solutions and nuanced skills and tools to navigate and grow. A mask to show we are “enough” denies the truth that we are doing the best we can and that is enough, it is all we are asked to do and anyone who asks us to do more is stuck in their inauthentic, mask wearing mendacity!

In recovery, we remove our masks when we acknowledge everything we cannot change and the things we should change, as the original Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr teaches us. We are able to continue to learn how we fall back into old habits that don’t serve us and another(s) well along with the old habits and new ones/new way to employ them that do serve us and another well. This learning comes from a daily inventory, a constant inner check-in and taking of our spiritual temperature. We know we are removing our masks when we make an amend and admit we are wrong, when we don’t need to be the smartest person in the room and when we speak to and with someone else rather than at them, when we embrace rather than push away, when we see the humanity of another person and allow them to see ours. 

The mask I have worn the most in my recovery is the mask of strength. Not that I am not strong, I just have worn this mask to never show the hurt that people have perpetrated upon me. I may get mad, I may ‘fight back’, I just have not shown the pain and the hurt I experience when someone I work with ‘goes out’, when someone I have a connection with (or thought I did) just drops me without explaining why, when I am exiled because of being me, being authentic; this pain is so excruciating and I never wanted anyone to know how badly I was wounded, mistakenly thinking that I would get over it and move on. Writing this shows me how much I need to remove this mask so I can be healed by the universe, by the people I know I can count on and by my own soul. 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 92

“God is unwilling to be alone, and man cannot forever remain impervious to what He longs to show. Those of us who cannot keep their striving back find themselves at times within the sight of the unseen and become aglow with its rays. Some of us blush, others wear a mask. Faith is a blush in the presence of God.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 91)

Rabbi Heschel is calling us to decide, would we rather be in “the sight of the unseen” and be seen, warts and all, or would we rather hide from God, most, if not all, people, and ourselves? This is the question each one of us has to come face to face with and make our own individual decision about. Of course, the decision is revocable, we can put masks on, take them off, experience the blush of being seen and known, hide behind the curtain often and at will depending on situations and on our fears/desires. 

Wearing a mask is a statement of disbelief in oneself! It is a statement of disbelief in the basic goodness of human beings and a disbelief in the power of healing and love of the Ineffable One. Disbelief in the power of healing and love of the Ineffable One is a common and, in some ways, makes sense. We cannot see, feel tactilely, touch, readily hear, or smell the Ineffable One. We attribute so much of healing and love to either humanity and/or nature forgetting how we came to be created, the One who created nature and put love into the world. We are willing to give credit to a doctor, to a lover, to a kind person, to the natural healing ability of the body, etc rather than realize the Source to Whom all credit can and needs to be shown. Not that the other entities mentioned are not part of the process of healing and love; rather they get their abilities, their sensitivities and their inner attributes originally from the Ineffable One. We know this because so often, healers come up with solutions that are not in text books, are not taught in schools, they are solutions to situations that used to baffle us and our predecessors. Yet, having a Eureka moment, we discover a new solution. We have witnessed this so often in life; Polio Vaccine, wearing Gloves when performing surgery, Transplant surgery, Vaccines for Malaria, Measles, Flu, Covid-19, technological advances etc. Wearing a mask and hiding/being impervious to the Ineffable One causes us to disbelieve in the root structure and nature of our world and a way of living that honors our humanness. 

Wearing a mask is one’s way of saying they do not trust their being with another. We put on facades and show another person what we think they want to see and/or only what we want to show them. Showing another person what we think they want to see is for our personal gain. It is the way of the “con” and the “grifter”. Many people cannot understand why someone would be a “con/grifter” all the while hiding from most people/everyone behind their facade/mask. People create false selves to gain power, to make money, to join the ‘in’ crowd and/or the ‘out’ crowd. We wear a mask to pretend we are someone/something we are not for our gain and, often, a loss for someone else. When our mask is only what we want to show someone it is a statement of our disbelief in another person. We do not believe we can trust them to be honest and real, we believe they are ‘out to get us’ and will take what we have from us, and we don’t trust them with our truth and our vulnerabilities; fearing they will use them against us. We wear a mask to protect ourselves against losing what we have and being used by another. The masks and facades we wear in our person interactions continue to deny us the connection we crave and the opportunity to love another human being with our authentic self and to be loved by another human being for who we really are. Masks and facades promote the “imposter” syndrome so many people have; “if you really knew who I was, you would run away from me’ is a constant inner dialogue for many people and they believe this lie so much, they continue to hide.

In recovery, our mask is the first thing that has to be removed by us. We cannot be in recovery without dropping the facade and the mask. Many people do not remain in recovery because they cannot drop the mask for any length of time, they put the mask back on, they rebuild or build anew a facade they think works and return to the ways of living that brought the pain of their past back and these ways of living were the reasons for seeking out recovery in the first place. The lure of the mask and the fear of the blush are too strong for some and it is sad to see the pain, the death and the devastation these masks bring to all involved. 

Prior to recovery, I was mostly masked. I put up a facade that fooled people for a while and fooled me for longer. One of the masks that I wore was ‘better than’ mask to hide the ‘not good enough’ dialogue in my inner life. In my recovery, I realize I put that mask on at times and it harmed me and the people around me. Letting go of the ‘not good enough’ dialogue has been difficult when my past is used against me, when I not seen for who I am and spoken of in a negative manner; ‘he’s not a real Rabbi, he can only deal with ‘those people’. In writing this, I realize my putting the mask on to hide my inner dialogue was my believing their lies and hiding from God and not trusting in God which brought me deep pain and anguish. Only by being seen by the Ineffable One have I been able to heal. Putting on the masks prevented me from hearing truth and receiving the love that truth, rebuke, connection bring. I am sad and apologize for any harm my masks have brought and I commit to keeping them off. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark