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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 217

“The self is always in danger of being submerged in anonymity, of becoming a thing. To celebrate is to contemplate the singularity of the moment and to enhance the singularity of the self. What was shall not be again”. (Who is Man pg. 115)

“Celebrate” comes from the Latin meaning ‘frequented or honored’. Enhance comes from the Latin for “make high”. Using these two definitions, I hear Rabbi Heschel calling to us to honor and heighten the moments we have and the self we are. It is impossible to have what was because we are in a different time, a different era, a different moment. Yet we crave the certainty, the glory, the ‘way things used to be’. I hear Rabbi Heschel reminding us to put down these old ideas, stop our conventional notions and mental cliches from hindering our learning, our knowing, our seeing and stop making our self less than it is. Each and every moment is filled with the opportunity to honor and raise up our self, our world, our community, our way of life, our standard of living. Yet, we fail to do this because we want to keep the “status quo”, we want what we used to have, we are bereft at the loss of what was.

The White Replacement Theory is an example of wanting what was-white christian men ruling and controlling the lives of anyone not like them. Even the poorest white christian in rural areas felt superior as long as white people were in charge of their women, blacks, browns, Jews, Irish, Italians, etc. While Irish and Italians were eventually let in, people of color, Jews, were thought of as making the white race impure and they were/are inferior, etc. How many people have to be killed by these god-fearing white christians, how many souls have to be raped, persecuted, marginalized, not allowed to enter the country, etc to satisfy these god-fearing white christians? How long and how far will these god-fearing white christians be used and exploited by the good old boys who control them and the Senators, Congresspeople? How long and how far will these good old boys who claim to be doing god’s work go to keep power, control, and kill the democracy that made it possible for them to have their wealth and power? I use small letters for God  and Christian because these charlatans are idolators, they are todays Pagan Priests willingly sacrificing our children and anyone not like them at the altar of power, the altar of Baal, the altar of Evil. Killing innocent children in Uvalde, in Sandy Hook, in Parkland, in the myriad of other school shootings, is not the way to honor the moment, not the way to raise up the self, it is the path to destruction, to defaming the Name of God!

A formula for honoring the moment and the self, heightening the experience of the oneness of one’s self is to begin each day with gratitude for awakening. Jewish Tradition tells us to thank God/Higher Power for returning our soul to us with compassion and acknowledge God’s faithfulness to us. Meditating on this prayer reminds one of God’s care, concern and need for one to be the one we are created to be. We are blessed by being alive, we are shown compassion for our imperfections, and God is with us all the time. A next part of a morning routine is to write, contemplate a gratitude list, writing down the gifts we are given by God, by other people, by nature, by the universe. Making sure to keep it fresh by realizing all the nuances of the day before that we might not have been aware of. All the people who impacted us by saying hello as we walked by, reached out and engaged us in conversation, the new learning we did yesterday that will make today one grain of sand better, the people we impacted by connecting with them. Awareness before  and after eating is another way to honor the moment, heighten the self by making eating an intentional experience. Doing this makes us more aware of the moment, grateful for the opportunity and ability to eat, to pay for our food, to make our food, to share our food, to sit and eat with friends and foes alike, with strangers who become known and share themselves with us as we share ourselves with them, etc. It is an action that will make the moment heightened and honor our self and another self as well. The practice of praying before and after one eats plus 3 other times during the say and before we go to bed in the Jewish Tradition is mirrored by/mirrors the Muslim Tradition of praying 5 times a day, all for the sake of awareness, celebrating and enhancing the moment and the self.

In recovery, we are keenly aware that we have only this moment, this day, this experience. We know the dangers of ‘stinking thinking’, of taking things for granted, of staying stuck and stagnant. We know the pitfalls of self-sufficiency and self-aggrandizement, of euphoric recall and mourning the ‘good old days’; a spiritual and, possibly, physical ailment leading to death. Honoring the moment and raising up our self, our uniqueness, our oneness is the path of real recovery.

I do, for the most part, follow Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and have for 35+ years. It keeps me out of resentment, “where’s mine”, feeling used, and detaching from life. I forget this teaching and way of being at times AND I feel blessed to be able to return to it more and more. I use this writing to center me, to heighten (enhance) my soul through the insights I gain each day, I use my prayer routine, never being routine about it, and I continue throughout the day to recognize the blessings in life and the things I should be changing. 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 216

“The self is always in danger of being submerged in anonymity, of becoming a thing. To celebrate is to contemplate the singularity of the moment and to enhance the singularity of the self. What was shall not be again”. (Who is Man pg. 115)

Another way we are “in danger of being submerged in anonymity, of becoming a thing” is by not contemplating “the singularity of the moment”. We have become so obsessed with achieving, obtaining, amassing, living in the past and future-tripping we miss the wonder, beauty, singularity and importance of this moment. We engage in telling stories of ‘the good old days’ and pining for what was, yet we were not truly present nor appreciative of the moments we are speaking about and pining for. We live our lives in retrospect much of the time, we are looking backwards for meaning and/or staring into space trying to ‘manifest’ our dreams. This keeps us unfocused on the moment we are in, it allows for ignoring the immediate in favor of the glory of the past and the wishy-hope of the future. Of course it is healthy and necessary to look back and learn from our past and having a goal to achieve and a plan/path to get there are important and necessary, too many people are focused on these two aspects and become two-dimensional, forgetting the third dimension-the here and now. Forgetting to “contemplate the singularity of the moment” throws our plan to achieve our goals off track. Each day we need to move closer to our goal, closer to fulfilling the demand and call of our soul, closer to living our authentic script and we are unable to do this when we are not present in the moment we are in because of focusing on the past and/or future. We cannot recreate this moment nor any moment, we cannot take back the missed opportunities and missed calls. We can, of course, learn from our experiences and make this moment count, we can learn from our experiences and immerse ourselves in the here and now. We can learn from our experiences and use this moment to move ahead with our goals/plans and change them when new information tells us to.

We need to be in this moment in order to take in new information, not just the data from the analytics we run for our social media posts, not just the data we get from the books we read, not just the data we get from the media, etc; the information that each moment gives us to learn more about our self, the information we get to learn about another human being, the information we are called to about new, fresh ways to serve our purpose and passions. We miss so many opportunities because our focus is not in this moment. We get so focused on being #1, the best, the worst, the richest, the prettiest, the most likes, the best TikTok star, the darling of the press, etc. we miss the truth, the message, the learning, the beauty, the connections of this moment. We miss the nuances of what is going on in our inner life, the nuances of what is going on in the inner lives of the people around us, the people we love, the organizations/business we are part of, etc. We miss the ability to reflect, change, move forward, sideways, even retreat if and when necessary.

Celebrating this moment, celebrating the uniqueness of this moment leads us to celebrate the uniqueness of our world in the moment as well. It sets us on a course to be more aware of what is around us, to drink in the beauty and the awe of nature, of people, of our ability to breath, to be alive, to experience wonder, radical amazement, etc. Instead of “being submerged in anonymity”, contemplating “the singularity of the moment” expands our self, helps us climb the mountain of appreciation, awareness, kindness and service. It forces us to see and speak truth, to see and seek community rather than create chaos and strife, it forces us to recognize the Ineffable One in all people and all things.

In recovery, we speak often of one moment at a time. Many of us realize that we are blessed to have this moment because we engaged in activities that could have killed us.  We are acutely aware of “there but for the grace of God go I” statement and truth therein. Why are we here is not a question to contemplate in recovery I believe. What am I going to do with this moment I have been given, is the correct question for how to live in the singularity of this moment. Yet, alas, there are people who are sober and not yet in recovery, who love the why question so they can get lost and miss this moment, miss the information and the celebration of the now. In recovery, we work to not get lost and to move forward, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, to the Sovereignty of God.

In writing this today, I realize all of my “troubles” and my errors come from “becoming a thing” and not contemplating the singularity of this moment. I have reveled in the past, pined for what was, and been too focused on getting ahead, reaching the goal at times to be in the moment. I have missed the information/data being transmitted to me in those moments and, as I had/have learned before, not been able to refocus the goal, reframe my thinking and acting, see the changing landscape before me. This led to erroneous premises about people, places, things, and even me and my capabilities. In not contemplating the singularity of the moment, I became willfully blind to what was happening in front of me, I put blinders on myself and thought I could charge ahead, as I had in the past. Instead, this last time of missing the moment, I was Custer-and I am saddened for the people who went down with me because of my not contemplating the “singularity of the moment.” 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 215

“The self is always in danger of being submerged in anonymity, of becoming a thing. To celebrate is to contemplate the singularity of the moment and to enhance the singularity of the self. What was shall not be again”. (Who is Man pg. 115)

Another way of “being submerged in anonymity” is the way we talk about, view our daily existence. So many people see life as a sort of ‘groundhog’ day. Get up, go to work, come home, go to sleep, wake up the next day and do it over again. We look forward to the weekend to be free and do what we want to, only finding we have chores to do, obligations to meet and feeling exhausted from our days off. Many people find themselves stuck in routines not of their making and feel forced to be enslaved to ‘making ends meet’. Still others, when asked what’s happening respond with “Same stuff, different day”. All of these ways can be defended and are real life experiences, we are forced into routines to make ends meet, we are repeating our routines daily, weekly, monthly, we are working for paychecks and not fulfillment. We are living a ‘groundhog’ experience. However, this experience is true for all the economic classes, the 1% is as stuck in their routines as our the rest of us, the celebrities are as stuck in being submerged in anonymity as anyone else. Because anonymity is not about the headlines, it is about the loss of self. It is about “becoming a thing” where we lose/surrender our core sense of beingness to the societal ‘norms’ and to an outer locus of control. Anonymity is the loss of our inner being, our uniqueness to the conventional notions of the society around us.

Being one’s unique self is not always pretty, it is not always fun and it is not always accepted by the masses. While we celebrate the unique inventions of people, like Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Alan Turing, Steve Jobs, etc, we do not know them and have come to identify them by their inventions rather than by their essence. For many of these people, they may have cme to identify themselves with their inventions and with their success’ not with their independence of spirit, their inner lives possibly were submerged by their outer protective shells of success and brilliance. I have counseled numerous people who have had this issue and found solace in different escapes and experienced a myriad of psychological traumas that could not be ‘fixed’ by a pill. While each person was unique and different, they/we shared a common problem: Believing we only mattered based on what our last/next great action was/is. We/they did not believe they mattered just because they exist, just because they live and their fear of being not being known was as great as our fear of being known.

We become “submerged in anonymity” because of our fear of not being seen and, at the same time, of being seen as imperfect, unpolished and needy. Our fears manifest themselves by going through life, either not making waves, trying to make ourselves very small, or by being loud, gregarious, puffing ourselves up. Both have the same effect-keeping people at bay so they will not see the messy inner lives we lead. Both have the same effect-keeping us stuck in anonymity and sorrow. Both have the same effect-separation and worthlessness, fear of being ‘found out’ and more and more hiding.

The antidote to our anonymity is to live truthfully. To accept that all of us suffer from the same dilemma and everyone wants to know they matter! Telling our kids that our lives are better because they are in them, taking actions of gratitude towards people who help us and we are connected to, no longer using someone for our gain rather recognizing their worth and contribution to our lives, our shared mission/job, etc. Living life in full view of everyone, without shame nor blame, overcoming the fear of being seen for the joy of knowing we are seen, growing and deepening our connections to our inner lives, to the people around us, to the community we live in, to God and living a life of belonging, of including rather than pushing away those who love us, embracing our imperfections as well as our brilliance, all our paths to getting out of anonymity, living the truth of YOU MATTER! This, is the surest path to never “becoming a thing”!

In recovery, we are constantly seeking to improve our connection to and turn over control to our inner lives. We have lived with an outer locus of control forever, we wanted an inner locus of control and did not know how to achieve it, we mistakenly thought escaping the outer controls was enough. We have learned to grow our inner lives so they can have the control over us and in this way we throw off the yoke of ‘do as I say’ societal norms and conformity. In our rebellion, we found a new master and it wasn’t us nor God. Our recovery is based in spiritual principles.

Being immersed in this teaching helps me to see the error of my ways and the lies I told myself. It is also helping me see how I have strengthen my sense of being, how I have left the lake/ocean of anonymity by strengthening my inner core sense of self, offering my self to help another(s) and connecting with people by overcoming my fear of not being liked, not being seen, being scorned, rejected, etc. I am committed to not treating myself as a “thing” anymore and not going along with another treating my like a “thing anymore as well. I have the power and control to stay free. This independence, this freedom is precious and I pray I can stay free and not fall back into anonymity and “becoming a thing”. 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 214

“The self is always in danger of being submerged in anonymity, of becoming a thing. To celebrate is to contemplate the singularity of the moment and to enhance the singularity of the self. What was shall not be again”. (Who is Man pg. 115)

Our submerging into anonymity is so insidious and nuanced, we often don’t even realize it. It takes so many forms, too numerous and too unknown to any one individual to list. We sink into anonymity by becoming a human doing instead of being human, as Rabbi Heschel teaches. What does this mean in this context? I believe the most accepted and promoted path to “being submerged in anonymity” is our misguided belief that what we do is who we are. Our titles, our paychecks, our homes, our families all are ways we define our self and other selfs. We are described by our occupations, our roles and our bank accounts. We are mistakenly driven to ‘be the best’ in every thing we do and fall into the self-deception of believing our best is the same all the time. This begins in childhood, passed down by our parents, by society and we, in turn, pass these lies down to our children and the next generation.

Anonymity is, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, the loss of a true self identity, the constant push to prove we are worthy, we are deserving of praise and the seeking of both praise and wealth along with power and prestige. This is a problem for us as individuals, for our communal groups (especially religious institutions) and for nations. Upon meeting someone, as adults, the usual questions are; “what do you do, where do you work, what is your family’s business, who do you know, etc.” We are setting up a transactional relationship from the beginning of our encounter and it takes a while to develop a deeper, connected relationship, if we do at all. Even college students are focused on who can help them move them forward to the ‘best’ job, career, home, investments, etc rather than who can help them grow internally, emotionally, spiritually. We have lost the art of being human in the need of ‘being somebody’.

This begins in childhood, as I said above. When we cry as infants, toddlers for whatever reason, even no reason, we are told “don’t cry baby” because we are unable to deal with the emotions of our children, especially the ones that are unspoken. We are taught that “you shouldn’t feel that way” from an early age as well. When we talk about dreams of being a _____(fill in the blank) and are laughed at, we begin to sink into anonymity. When we offer an opinion and are told “children should be seen and not heard” in a myriad of ways, we retreat into anonymity. When we make mistakes and we are told “God is going to punish you” and/or are afraid of the punishments of family, friends, society, we begin to lie and blame another and, most of all, hide our authentic self, hide our beingness and see the world, even family, as performance art rather than as welcoming our uniqueness, embracing our divine image and accepting our individuality.

There is a solution to this: reject the conditioning of our parents, our childhood and society in favor of the truth of our souls, our inner lives. Rebel against the tyranny of the anonymity and rebel towards the freedom of expression of one’s divine need, one’s divine truth and one’s much needed unique gifts. Opting out is not the answer any more than opting in and “being submerged in anonymity” is. The solution is to go through the birth canal of freedom, as the Israelites did when they went through the Red Sea, and find our true identity and ways to live as free, authentic selves bringing the best we have in any given moment, without comparison to any other moment. The solution is to throw off the shackles of conventional notions and the mental cliches we have adopted, the lies we have been telling ourselves, the mendacity of another(s) and the self-delusion/deception we have been operating under and create a covenant with our self to hear the call of our soul/inner life and fulfill, to the best of our ability in this moment, the demand of God, the needs of another and the needs of self.

In recovery this is the goal, this is the path. Rejecting old ideas, no longer having “contempt prior to investigation”, finding the real human being that is me by casting off the old lies, the old patterns is a life long endeavor. We know we will never fully ‘get there’ and we are aware that moving one grain of sand towards the ‘there” gives us a new freedom that motivates and exhilarates us.

I have always known this wisdom and not always lived it. I realize the subtle and not so subtle ways have ‘become a thing’ in my actions, my living and my thinking. I am relearning that I am me, whether I am here, there, anywhere and I am me whether I am embraced or rejected by another person, group and/or community. I am me and the only way to leave my anonymity, my “becoming a thing” is to live life out loud, give what I have and accept the gifts of another, especially you! I need to not make a caricature of myself, not apologize for being who I am and act according to the call of my soul and not the ways of being accepted and approved by another/society. I am rough, I am loud, I am abrasive, I am difficult, I am smart, I am caring, I am a loving, I am kind, etc. Being these ways are good and, at times, not so good, and when I deny these ways, deny these attributes, deny my authentic self, I submerge myself into anonymity, I become a thing and then I rebel, I act out and I screw up. Seeing this pattern is a blessing and I I am rededicating my self to being MY SELF. 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 213

“The self is always in danger of being submerged in anonymity, of becoming a thing. To celebrate is to contemplate the singularity of the moment and to enhance the singularity of the self. What was shall not be again”. (Who is Man pg. 115)

Reading this teaching reminds me of God’s need for us and the paths we often take to dehumanize our self, submerging our  selves in anonymity, making ourselves into objects, robots, automatons, rather than living, breathing, imperfect, unique selves.  I believe our need to belong, while necessary and true, often leads us astray. We often find our selves ‘going along to get along’ in order to ‘belong’ and be part of something greater than ourselves. We often are just ‘following orders’ so we are not shunned and cast out of the particular group we have joined. We begin to agree with ideas and actions that go against our Higher Self morality just to ‘belong’, all the while thinking ‘if they really knew who I am, they would not want me’.

This thinking permeates so much of our falseness, our hiding, our fears of being found out that we sink into anonymity so we don’t slip up, show our true self and be shunned. This is, I believe, the path to “becoming a thing”. We have learned to ‘not rock the boat’ for fear of reprisals, becoming unpopular, etc. Even many of the  people who supposedly shun the group are doing it from a place of hiding, of not wanting to be known, to believing they are not good enough. While many people put on the facade of ‘look at me, see how smart/successful I am’ most are afraid to be seen’warts and all’ for fear of becoming unpopular. Social media has made stars of people for their falseness, for their outrageousness, and this is another form of “being submerged in anonymity” I believe. Celebrity has become a thing, the celebrities are marketing themselves as a thing and then, when they realized they have become a thing and are being used by so many other people, they get mad, sad, upset, etc. Belonging is the greatest experience when it is real, when we belong as our whole self and it is the most excruciating experience when we belong only because we are being false.

People who join cults, movements, which seek to dehumanize another group, people who join groups which seek to set themselves above another group, people who engage in stereotyping another group of humans so they can feel good about themselves and mollify their unethical, inhumane ways of treating God’s creations, are all “submerging” themselves in anonymity, are all “becoming a thing”. They become tools of charismatic leaders who are so narcissistic they see no one but themselves and need to see their reflection in their followers. When we are engaged in the anonymity Rabbi Heschel is speaking of, we have submerged our uniqueness that is our birthright, we are sinking into the quicksand of a fool’s errand: trying to belong to groups that do not honor, want nor respect our uniqueness, brilliance, our vision.

We do this because we are afraid of being alone, of being lonely. Yet, we know, in our souls, we are more alone and lonely because we are being phony and fake. We are doing things that we may or may not believe in just to be part of something/anything. We are convinced that their is strength in numbers and we need other people to fend off the attacks by our enemies, by people who are trying to take what we have worked for and, while true to a certain extent, this belief causes us to be overtaken by our worst enemy-our inner fears and negativity, our belief in our own lack of being sufficient and not good enough, our false belief we need others to approve of us to be ok, etc. We have chosen to sink into this anonymity, this “becoming a thing” because to do otherwise is to risk disapproval, to delve deep inside of our self and turn to God for sustenance and support. We are afraid that, in “our fall from grace”, God no longer cares nor is here for us-a false fear, yet the one that drives us into anonymity, I believe.

In recovery, we chose anonymity because of the prejudice against people who were drunks, addicts, people with psychological issues, personality disorders, etc. If we were ‘found out’ we could lose jobs, friendships, relationships, etc so we became anonymous and, I believe, it was a necessary action. Yet, while it is important to identify as people who share a common goal and suffer from common ailments, it is also important to remember we are like but not the same as everyone else. We share a common goal, recovery, and we all have our unique paths to it. In recovery, we are searching for our unique path, for our own purpose and passion, our own true self.

I find this teaching fascinating. I am more and more aware of the need for authentic human connection and the myriad of faux connections I have had in my lifetime. When I could do something for someone, everyone was calling, when I had ‘power’ people sought my counsel, now, in retirement, the phone rings less and my counsel is sought less. Till reading this text, I felt as if I had become anonymous, and now I realize that it is my doing, my actions of “becoming a thing”, my submerging my self in anonymity that is the issue. It is not anyone else’s doing, it is mine. I have to remember to not be a caricature of my self, to continue to bring my whole self to the table, to offer my unique service and not submerge my self to get along nor submerge my self to stay separate. I can and commit to bring my self, be my self and serve God, another human in the ways I can. I am buoyed by this teaching and Rabbi Heschel has disturbed me again so I live well and as a whole self. 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 212

“The question is not where is the event and what is the surprise, but how to see through the sham of routine, how to refute the falsehood of familiarity. Boredom is a spiritual disease, infectious and deadening, but curable.”(Who is Man pg. 115)

Boredom is curable, it is curable through the same dedication to spiritual exercises as is needed in our physical exercise routines. Just as with our physical exercise routines, we must continually change, update, add ‘weight’ to and have a daily/weekly routine we engage in. While some may say “I am not spiritual” and need to see this as mental/psychological/emotional exercises, so be it. Rabbi Heschel’s entire body of works is dedicated to ideas, pathways and actions helping us grow our inner life, grow our spirits, grow our emotional, psychological and intellectual living. It begins with being in the moment, as I wrote on Friday, and continues with appreciation. It is a given that being present is the foundation of not being bored and many people are practicing being present, appreciation for this moment is not always a given. Even people who say: “same shit, different day” can say they are in the moment and it is ‘shit’.

Appreciate is defined as “realizing the full worth of” and comes from the Latin meaning “to price”. Boredom ends and is defeated when we realize the “full worth of” this moment, when we realize the “price” this moment has on it and the worth of being present, the joy of realizing this moment only comes once and is fleeting, yet full of power, full of meaning and we can be loyal to it, remember it and use it to enhance the next. Appreciation is a key to curing our boredom, I believe. Yet, we live in a fog which prevents us from a true appraisal of this moment for what it truly is. We get so much outside noise regarding what isn’t worth it, who isn’t worth it, and these erroneous appraisals have ruined our ability to be in this moment, to reevaluate what is and to appraise it for ourselves. Th bombardment of the outside noise of social media rants, mendacity from the charlatans who proclaim themselves the TRUE believers, prophets and adherers to god’s will, from family hierarchy, from the lies we tell ourselves and our immature inner life, etc, cause us to have a misappraisal of this moment and every other moment. Hence, boredom sets in when we allow these half-truths (remember every great lie has a kernel of truth in it), this noise, our need to be accepted and belong, our fears and our “adjustment to conventional notions and mental cliches” as Rabbi Heschel teaches in Man is Not Alone, to overwhelm us and envelope us in the fog, the slavery, the self-deception of boredom.

We cure it through changing our way of being 2%, as Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man taught me back in 1989. He reminded a class Harriet and I were taking with him that the shift from this to that is only a 2%shift. At any given moment we are 49% willing to appreciate this moment for what it is, for the possibilities it has, and if we shift our perceptions, our focus, our investigations 2%, we will be 51% in appreciation and 49% in (possible) boredom, anxiety, etc. We can make this shift a lot more easily that most people realize. Going back to the exercise model, when we go to the gym for the first time, we are not expecting to have six-pack abs immediately, or even at the 100th day. Because we know so much goes into our exercise routine, so much goes in to our changing of habits, the choices we make, the attention we give to our routine, our rest, our food choices, etc. We know we cannot approach our workouts with a routine attitude and get the results we are seeking, we put a high price on how our exercise is going to help our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual heath so we keep moving the needle one grain of sand each day.

The same is true with our spiritual exercise, we can’t become a spiritual giant in a day, we won’t ever be 100% spiritual being until we die, so to begin to release ourselves from the prison of boredom and the slavery of “the sham of routine”, “the falsehood of familiarity”, we must being with the acceptance of the 2% shift which can happen in a shorter or longer period of time depending on “the price” we set for spiritual health, for not living in boredom, and for adding to and belonging to a community of people engaging in being human. This 2% shift is not easy, I am not suggesting it is, yet it is doable, it is achievable, it is worth it. People who have left boredom, people who have made this shift,  have a light in their eyes that is difficult to ignore, they have a spirit that infuses each moment and each idea with energy, they believe in the power of we and they know that me is an important component of we. We all need to make this 2% shift in every area of our lives, one of the lies we tell ourselves is that we only need to be spiritual in church, synagogue, mosque, and the truth is we have to walk in the ways of spirit, of being human in all areas of our life, we have to appreciate, reappraise, set the correct price on our relationships, our covenants with people and on the truth so we do not fall back into the boring routines and familiarities we are leaving.

My recovery is based on the 2% shift I learned so many years ago. I have made it and I have stayed with it. I am aware of the times I have fell back into boredom and I am aware of how quickly I have left them (quick in relation to how long it took me the first time). I am also aware of the price I have set on joy, being present, letting go of resentments and letting go of needing people to agree with my vision and experience. These are the exercises I engage in every day to grow my spirit, to be better at being human each 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 211

“The question is not where is the event and what is the surprise, but how to see through the sham of routine, how to refute the falsehood of familiarity. Boredom is a spiritual disease, infectious and deadening, but curable.”(Who is Man pg. 115)

The root cause of boredom, I believe, is our inability to take in what is authentically happening in this moment, without regard to the moment before nor the moment after this one. Rabbi Heschel teaches us that every moment is precious and unique, “no two moments are alike” he reminds Carl Stern in their televised interview that was aired after Rabbi Heschel died. When we are unaware of the grandeur and beauty of this moment, when we are willfully blind to the importance of this moment, when we forfeit our sight of what is right now for what was and/or what will be; we are living a very boring life and a vapid meaningless life.

This is not to say we don’t have plans, this is not to say we are not learning from our past success and missing the marks, I am saying we have to be present in this moment in order to have plans that are doable, goals we can actually fulfill, dreams we can pursue and achieve, and apply the lessons we learned from our missing the marks. Being present in this moment is the only way to being loving, to being human. Many people are able to lie to themselves that they are being human because of their charitable work, because they provide food and sustenance for people through employing them, because they are on the “right” side of things/issues/religious beliefs, etc. Yet, they are not connected to the moment they are in, they are thinking of who to take revenge on, how to get their way, how to win at any and all costs, how to preserve their image, how to be the ‘smartest person in the room’ or at least the loudest, etc. These people who lie to themselves, often unknowingly, are leaders of industry, media darlings and stars, politicians, husbands, wives, bosses, parents, etc-in other words, all of us to a greater or lessor degree. I don’t know of a person who is present in all moments, yet I do know many who strive to be and achieve a great deal of success in this realm; they are usually more joyous, more positive, more hopeful, more courageous, more innovative, more connected and loving than those who stay bored and not present.

When we clear our minds of the ‘shoulds’ we grew up with and with the negative self-talk we have allowed to foment, we are able to see what is, change what should be changed, as Reinhold Niebuhr teaches us in the Serenity Prayer, and accept with clarity what cannot be changed, We are able to see what truly is, see the people in front of us for who they are, no longer depend on someone to ‘save’ us and no longer put ourselves at the mercy of inauthentic people. When we see what is in this moment, with clear vision, with the foreskin of hearts circumcised, we are present and can never be bored because we will respond to the call of the moment, we will love with all that we have in this moment, we will be connected to the excitement and celebration of connection to the moment, to the people, to the cause, to the work, to the call/demand, to the text, to LIFE!

As I am writing this, I believe this is the purpose of a L’Chaim toast-to be present, to celebrate this moment we are in, to be grateful and loving and connected to the moment, to the experience and to the people we share it with. L’Chaim is not for whiskey, it is not an excuse to drink, rather it is a recognition of the moment, it is to rejoice in the moment and, in our misguided way, we have instead used a moment to become inebriated, to take ourselves out of the moment with stimulants rather than allowing this moment to stimulate us to be present in the next. This is one reason, I believe, that boredom is so infectious and deadly.

In recovery, we know that we ‘get’ to be in the moment, we know that every day we are aware, present and engaged is a gift. We are so acutely aware of this precisely because we were so unaware of this prior to our recovery. We achieved certainty in our past way of being, the certainty of boredom, the certainty of deadening our spirits, our hopes, etc. In our recovery, we seek with gusto to be present as much as possible and to welcome the moments of our life with hope and know we are able to respond to whatever comes our way.

I have not had any alcohol pass my lips for 33 years and 5 months and I have said and meant more L’Chaims than in the previous 37 years of living. Letting go of the boring way of being is joyous and authentic for me. I have gotten into trouble, I have been inappropriate and chastised, I have been lauded and thanked, I have helped people save their own lives and I have celebrated with people who moments before hated me and/or I had not so much love for. Being in the moment allows me to discern what is true and right in this moment, it allows me to welcome people who have hurt me, be joyous for their success’, meet them in their sorrows, know that they meant to hurt me and are so blind and boring they are unaware of their own duality. Being in the moment also allows me to experience change in myself and in another person and  being in the moment allows me to be excited and focused. Letting go of boredom is not easy and it is essential for me to be loving and real. 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 210

“The question is not where is the event and what is the surprise, but how to see through the sham of routine, how to refute the falsehood of familiarity. Boredom is a spiritual disease, infectious and deadening, but curable.”(Who is Man pg. 115)

Boredom is “a spiritual disease” because it deadens our ability to see what is, hear the call/demand of our inner life, and take positive actions that help us immerse and engage ourselves in the joys of living. Boredom infects our entire being and is ‘caught’ from people around us, the media, and our community. We seek many ‘wrong’ paths out of boredom; hatred of another, blaming of another, addiction, workaholism, risky behaviors, etc, all for naught because they destroy our souls even more, they prejudice our minds and our emotions till we cannot tell truth from fiction, holy from profane, life from death. Boredom is a way to exist, not live.

Humans have always sought excitement as a path out of boredom and this excitement leads to the ways above. It is exciting for some to hate someone else for who they are, what they have accomplished and to tear them and their achievements down. It is exciting for some to blame their failures on another human being/group so there is no personal responsibility for ones own situation. It is exciting to ‘get high’ and leave reality for a moment, a day, year, etc in order to not have to deal with the sadness of missing the mark. It is exciting to engage in risky behaviors for the adrenaline rush we get is intoxicating. It is exciting to manipulate truth and facts so we can always ‘be right’ and convince another of our ‘rightness’, get them to join in our false narratives and ‘have our back. Excitement is another ‘wrong path’ out of boredom.

Our young people are bored with the status quo, they are bored with the need to make more than and do better than their parents’ generation. They are bored with the vapidness of life, they are bored with themselves, hence the suicide rate among young people, from teenage up, is rising. Over 100,000 people died of Opiate Overdoses this past year because people are seeking relief from their boredom in all the wrong places and manners. We are in a crisis of our own making. We have made money, celebrity, likes on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, etc the sole measure of our worth and value. Boredom leads us to deny our intrinsic infinite value and is a tool of comparison and competition for popularity, not celebration of our uniqueness.

Boredom leads to the mass shootings, I believe, we are experience. Because hatred, stereotyping, blaming another group/individual is so insidious and there are so many people promoting this with big megaphones, Tucker Carlson et al., more and more people are bored with ‘those’ people taking the place of, trying to replace ‘me’. Because of boredom and the refrain “its not my fault”, one can justify the killings, the marginalizing, the dehumanizing of another human being so one can be happy, one can take the place of another rather than find their authentic place in the world. Boredom is a motivating factor behind wars as well, I believe. When leaders are bored, they want to ‘shake things up’ so they go to war to take what isn’t theirs. When business leaders are bored, they believe their solution is to engage in ‘killing the competition’. When communities are bored, they ignore the present to focus on the glory of the past.

We are in a state of boredom today. Boredom leads to indifference and indifference, as I hear from Rabbi Heschel’s teachings,  is the birthplace of evil. We have become indifferent to evil, not the Putin evil, not the Hitler evil (although many people are revering him today and rewriting the mass destruction he committed as not true), we have become indifferent to the evil of not acknowledging the humanity of another, the infinite worth and dignity of another. This stems for being bored with our selves and not recognizing, growing and maturing our inner worth and dignity, our inner life’s needs and externalizing what is “an inside job”. Like Covid-19, boredom is easily caught and not so easily diagnosed, we go through a lot of tests, like mentioned above, and some people never accept nor seek the diagnosis of boredom as the root of their anger, indifference, and unhappiness.

In recovery, we are engaged in service as a way of staying fresh, we know the dangers of being stale. Staleness/boredom has led us to live false scripts, engage in profane paths of living and stay indifferent to the world around us. Service helps us hear the call/demand of our inner life, take action to help another and fulfill the task we are uniquely qualified for.

In my old life, I would say “I’m going to do something, even if it is wrong” and it always was. In fact, these words always came before I was arrested! The boredom I was in was choking me, killing me and, in my misguided attempts to get out of being bored, I was hurting people, I was breaking the law, I was acting against all of the morality I was brought up with and I was trashing my name, my father’s name and causing grief and pain to the people I loved. Boredom gave me the permission to be entitled, to believe the lies I was telling myself and everyone else. Boredom was killing my soul and it is so encompassing, I was unable to discern the cries of my soul from the cries of my emotions. I am grateful this is no longer the case. 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 209

“The question is not where is the event and what is the surprise, but how to see through the sham of routine, how to refute the falsehood of familiarity. Boredom is a spiritual disease, infectious and deadening, but curable.”(Who is Man pg. 115)

My father, z”l, when we said we were bored used to tell us to “play the Russian game, hit your head against the wall” as a joke. He said it in Yiddish which had a particular flair and humor to it. Yet, he was also telling us that the only bored people were people who were boring. Before Rabbi Heschel reminded me, my father taught me to stay present, appreciate the moment we are in and never see things the same way twice. Looking back, I realize both through his words and his deeds, my father stayed present almost all the time. Of course he gave into routines at times, he fell into the falsehood of familiarity in moments and he left them quickly. I believe his time in the service, his occupation as a salesman, his upbringing, his nature, and having a heart condition that was life-threatening at anytime all contributed to his belief that we have today, live for it, live in it. While planning for tomorrow, live this moment because one never knows if it could be our last. While my father died at age 42, he lived a full life in those 42 years and his wisdom carries on in his children, grandchildren and his great-grandchildren.

Most of us are unaware of how important this teaching is. We have become accustomed to the routine, whether it is our daily schedules, our indifference to the evils that are being perpetrated in our names, resting on our laurels, our entitlements, etc. to the detriment to our living well. People who see awe and beauty in sunrises and sunsets, in nature and art are still susceptible to falling into the “sham of routine” and the “falsehood of familiarity”. We listen to music as background noise rather than as moments of exhalation, we listen to ourselves repeat the same actions over and over again, we seek the safety of routine and familiarity in order to defend against the fear of the unknown. We pray the same prayers with the same melodies and don’t immerse ourselves in the new meaning, hope and love that today’s prayers give us. We study different texts and use the same explanations and commentaries we have used before forgetting to see how these texts and readings impact our being today as opposed to yesterday. Yet, we are better than this enticing and tolerable slavery!

To live this first sentence above takes great courage and constant awareness. We have to continually guard against profaning our lives by falling into the same routines in the same way. This is not to say we should not have routines, we must! Yet, we can’t sleepwalk through our days and our routines and have an authentic awareness of what is truly happening. Anti-semitism and racism are old stories that keep coming back whenever someone wants people to coalesce around hatred of a group. Stereotyping is another sure path to enslaving ourselves with routine and familiarity. Euphoric recall of “the good old days” is another sure way to fall into the “sham of routine, the falsehood of familiarity” because they never were that good! We will always have moments of falling backwards, we are human after all, our challenge is to ensure that they are moments, not decades, not lifetimes.

We can do this by being grateful for the moment we are in, even if it isn’t so wonderful. We can never change things if we are stuck in misery, routine, familiarity because these ways of being blind us to any and all other possibilities. We get stuck in the routine of labeling, ourselves, another(s), situations, etc and this labeling prevents us from seeing the nuances, the newness, the possible solutions to the challenge of this moment and the beauty of the present. We have to constantly blink our eyes to change the myopic vision we are having, otherwise we easily and unconsciously fall back into the “sham of routine, the falsehood of familiarity”. Seeing this moment as an event, experiencing the surprise of awareness and newness, realizing the current challenge in front of us and exploring new solutions gives us freedom and joy that is immeasurable.

In recovery, we follow the advice of Chuck Chamberlain and wear “A New Pair of Glasses” as his book is titled. One of the main attributes we recover is our ability to see things new, see things for what and who they are in this moment and not fall into the trap of “same old, same old” thinking and acting. We recover our ability to experience and respond to life’s sorrows and joys in the moment, we recover our ability to deal with the traumas we have experienced and leave them in the past, we recover our authenticity and our uniqueness.

My father’s wisdom is still something I use at times, I have to “hit my head against the wall” to get out of the “sham of routine, the falsehood of familiarity” that I fall into when I feel scared, hurt, angry, etc. I usually “hit my head” against the situation instead of the wall, trying to change things around me prior to seeing them new and finding the solution in this moment, not trying to get my way nor attempting to make things ‘like they were’. I begin each day with hope and newness and it is a challenge to keep this vision present throughout the day, when I hear news about different situations that I thought had been solved, etc. Today’s learning reminds me to keep it fresh, keep it new and keep it real, so I can live a little freer and better each 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 208

“The question is not where is the event and what is the surprise, but how to see through the sham of routine, how to refute the falsehood of familiarity. Boredom is a spiritual disease, infectious and deadening, but curable.”(Who is Man pg. 115)

I am struck at the powerful images the first part of the first sentence above brings to mind. We are so enamored with and engaged in looking for where the event is, what is the next event, making sure we don’t get ‘left out’, that we are unable to see the and experience the authentic, exciting, important events that are happening right in front of our eyes. We have become so obsessed with rubbernecking, with searching for the celebrity, slowing down to see an accident, looking past what is for what might be, we have lost our ability to see what is at the end of our nose, what is right in front of our eyes and what is true and real. I know that our need to not be ‘left out’, our need to be ‘part of the next event’ and our fear of boredom has led us to a life that is vapid and meaningless. It has led us to seek to blame, hate, lie about, enslave anyone ‘not like me’ and be susceptible to the deceptions of another to follow them down the path of mendacity and boredom. This past weekend we saw two terrorist attacks, I call them terrorist attacks because they were meant to terrorize all of us, to make all of us feel unsafe, to get us to capitulate to the hatred, racism, anti-semitism, of the few so they can feel powerful and strong. By continually seeking “where is the event” and “what is the surprise” we allow ourselves to become diseased, infecting all around us and dead to the here and now, dead to the call of our higher selves.

We love the routine and the familiar because it gives us the certainty we crave. We will follow the person ‘who has all the answers for us’ to the ends of the earth because there is a certainty and comfort in this way of being. Remember all of the cults who were willing to die at the command of their leader, ie Jonestown. Remember all the people who are willing to kill because of Q. See all of the people willing to become radicalized White Supremacists through the Internet and follow the call to arms by Trump and his minions. See all of the Republicans who are kowtowing to Trump for fear of losing their elections. See all of the progressives who are willing to exclude people from the table if they don’t agree 100%-I remember this happening in the ‘60s as well. This need for certainty is infecting our ability to see what is in front of us. It is putting blinders on us so that the routine looks perfectly normal and good for us. “Same shit different day” is a motto that rings true for so many people precisely because they crave the certainty this statement brings, they crave the comfort of knowing what is going to happen today and it will be the same as yesterday and tomorrow. My friend and Rabbi, Ed Feinstein, calls this the definition of Slavery. When everything becomes a routine, when certainty is the most important principle in our lives, we enslave ourselves!

Rabbi Heschel is giving us the path to life, seeing through the “sham of routine”. How do we do this? We have to let go of our need for certainty, we have to let go of the past traumas and fears, we have to let go of our need to be perfect, need to be anything other than who we authentically are. We need to be noticed and heard, we need to stop ‘going along to get along’, we need to stop selling our souls and our minds to the people who say they have all the answers. We have to begin to notice the event that is happening right now, I am writing this and you are reading this-here is an event. Waking up in the morning is an event that usually goes unnoticed. We are able to think, see, touch, feel, hear, love, connect, use our gifts and talents daily; these are all events that go unnoticed because of the sham of routine. When we pay attention, we see all kinds of events that we have been missing because we are stuck in the routine and the profane.

In recovery, we make it a point to notice what is, not what we want. We know that if we do the same things today as we did yesterday, we will be moving backwards. Just as the earth is constantly rotating, we too have to move forward in our living well each and every day. Otherwise, we fall into the old traps of mendacity and self-deception. Otherwise we miss the events that are happening in our lives today and we are bored instead of surprised.

I realize how subtle the shift from being present and aware of the events unfolding in front of me to the “sham of routine” and the “falsehood of familiarity” is. I am guilty of not being aware enough to see it, I am guilty of blaming another when it is my false belief in certainty that causes my problems. I have always known that there is no certainty, yet because of my father’s death when I was young, I have craved it and fallen prey to the dangers and damages that this craving brings. I am acutely aware of the traps I have fallen into because I have lived a routine routinely instead of with awareness and newness. I am acutely aware of the damage to my soul and to the souls of people that my succumbing to this “sham of routine” has caused. I am also rededicating myself to seeing better and truer. Yesterday, I received an Honorary Doctor of Divinity Degree from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies for 20+ years of service and I saw people I haven’t seen in 20+ years and this event of reconnection was so powerful. Harriet woke up a few minutes ago and I saw her and knew this was an event. I am excited to live today and everyday as an event, rather than just another 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 207

“Events and the sense of surprise are not only inherent in the quintessence of reality and authentic consciousness, they are the points from which misunderstandings of human existence proceed.” (Who is Man pg.115)

Reality and authentic consciousness are important terms for us to consider and ponder. We are so enthralled with falsehoods and deceptions that many of us no longer have an authentic consciousness, most of us are engaged in creating ‘our own reality’ and have the expectation that everyone will go along with us. We are living in a time of ‘alternative facts’ and the misuse of the internet to spread whatever falsehoods, inauthentic consciousness we are able to. We see the rise in authoritarianism again and we stand by and wring our hands over everything we see rather than engaging with the reality of what is and working to change it to what ought to be.

Because we are ‘free to be me’ many people have decided to take this event, freedom, and use it as a club to subdue an individual and/or a large group, even a country. While we are, of course, ‘free to be me’ and need to be our true self, this is not the same as free to enslave you, free to do whatever I want to and free to abstain from adding to our corner of the world. Freedom, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, is an event, not a constant. Many of us believe we are free while be enslaved to ‘the way things were’ and the false belief that freedom is a one and done experience. This is an example of  an event that leads to a misunderstanding of human existence. Because people have the false idea that freedom is a constant, they do not guard it well, they take it for granted and it begins to erode. Freedom is a surprising experience because we no longer are tied to the lies and deceptions of our minds, of another person(s) and we can truly “smell the roses” authentically. It is a surprise to many of us how capable we are, how connected we are and how needed we are. We see ourselves and everyone else as partners in creation or at least potentially partners in creation, we see ourselves and everyone else as sharing in the greatest gift of religion-freedom from being enslaved by another person and freedom to search for and find our authentic way of being.

Yet, we can easily get lulled into the false belief that freedom is a one and done event and, as we see in the world; freedoms once attained have to be cultivated, nurtured and respected by all, otherwise they will atrophy, they will be challenged by the ‘enslaving’ group that did not want the first place and we will fall asleep at the wheel under our false beliefs and taking things for granted. We are involved in such a time right now. The White Supremacist movement that radicalizes men and women to such an extent they stage mass shootings, the Radical Islamists who are willing to blow themselves up for a false claim of martyrdom, the followers of Kahane, the radical left who have blown up people and places, the anti-abortionists who kill doctors, blow up buildings, and many other splinter groups. All of these have taken advantage of the freedoms our founding fathers and mothers and subsequent generations fought and died for. They are able to bastardize the event of Freedom because we stopped seeing it as such, we took it for granted and, in the process, became “indifferent to the sublime wonder of living” as Rabbi Heschel teaches in God in Search of Man. We are responsible for the misunderstanding of human existence as much as the people who take advantage of our misunderstandings are.

While we are not the bad actors, (I hope), we are responsible for their actions in so far as we have not cared for and continued to experience freedom and other states of being as events that are not one and done, continued to think that we don’t need to nurture and grow our authentic consciousness and continue to do a reality check on ourselves and with everyone around us. “In a free society, some are guilty, all are responsible” Rabbi Heschel said regarding the Vietnam War and it is important to repeat this teaching over and over again as we have allowed people to point the fingers at us and use the finger pointing to deny freedoms and truths. We are also guilty of doing the same to people around us and far away from us. Most of all, we are guilty of not staying fresh, not staying alert, not staying authentic and allowing the snake of hatred, like the snake in the Garden of Eden story, to flourish and insinuate itself into our consciousness.

In recovery, we are aware of our guilt of being irresponsible, our guilt of bastardizing freedom and of misunderstanding and promoting the misunderstanding of human existence for everyone we came in contact with. We are hyper aware of our need to experience life on life’s terms and “put principles before personalities” so we can have an authentic awareness and consciousness of reality and live a life compatible with being free.

I have misunderstood the essential and intrinsic values of events and sense of surprise. I have bastardized them and, in doing so, enslaved myself. For the past 36+ years I have been extracting myself from the falsehood of one and done, from the falsehood of blame and shame, from the indifference to the sublime wonder of living. I know I have a ways to go and I am proud of the distance I have travelled. 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 206

“Events and the sense of surprise are not only inherent in the quintessence of reality and authentic consciousness, they are the points from which misunderstanding of human existence proceed. (Who is Man pg. 115)

Quintessence is defined as “the intrinsic and central characteristic of something” and comes from the Latin meaning “fifth essence”. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that events and surprises are “sticking to” what is the central characteristic of “reality and authentic consciousness” and so many people are unaware of this truth, bastardize this truth and use this truth to enhance their own personal power, wealth, while contributing to the ruin of another(s).

We have lost this sense of daily surprise and of the daily events that occur in our lives. Sometimes we are just too tired and too overwhelmed with our problems, sometimes we are taught to ‘stay in your lane and accept your lot in life’, sometimes we are lied to that we are “miserable in this life to be happy in the next” as a control mechanism. Whatever the reason, we are missing out on an essential element of reality, we are missing out on an intrinsic necessity towards living a more authentic consciousness.

Every day is an event and a surprise whether we are aware of this truth, whether we recognize this truth or not. I woke up this morning and this is a miracle, whether you want to call it a miracle of science, dumb luck, ‘not my time yet’, etc-to me it is an event, I am surprised when I wake up in the morning because there was no guarantee I would. Yet, most people, even if they recite a prayer upon awakening do so routinely. We have come to regard our daily living as mundane and routine and in doing so we are in grave danger of losing what is an essential element of our humanity-surprise and awareness of the events.

We are in a terrible situation as human beings, we seek and crave certainty, we always want to know what is going to happen and what’s next, we want to see the end result before we take the first step. Yet, we also know being surprised and making each experience a unique event is the central characteristic of being human. We are always in the tug of war between what our minds want and what our souls know. This is another quintessential event in the life of every human being. We get afraid to have the experiences of surprise and event unless it is one that we decide we want-how many people really enjoy ‘SURPRISE’ birthday parties? We want the surety and the safety of our routine because we never have to move beyond our ‘comfort zone’.

Yet, going to sleep is uncertain, waking up is uncertain, death and birth are uncertain, etc what is certain is that we can have an authentic experience and engage in authentic consciousness whenever we are willing to see the events and surprises in our lives. We are taught to say blessings for everything; earthquakes and rainbows, birth and death, wins and losses, to make these daily occurrences special, make them events and mark these surprises so we can remember what is truly real, what is truly important and what is truly happening. Doing this helps relieve ourselves of the false stories we tell ourselves and is a wonderful coat of armor against the bows and arrows and gunshots of the liars who want us to follow them and their lies, serve the lower interests of self and them as well as enslave ourselves to boredom and dullness. We are alive, we have the capability of awareness and the strength to be authentically our unique self. We no longer need someone to ‘rain on our parade’, we are able to experience our daily lives with awe, reverence, joy, etc as well as being surprised and celebrating the events, big and small, that occur each and every day.

In recovery, we learn about what is intrinsic to reality and stop trying to make what we see, think, feel, etc our reality and the reality for everyone. We learn to give gratitude for what we have, who we are and what we can give. We learn to be surprised and joyful at each and every occurrence in our life rather than bitching and meaning all the time. We pray for guidance, wisdom, acceptance for our selves and for all selves.

I have struggled with this intrinsic and central characteristic of being human at times in my life. From 1966-1987, I couldn’t find authentic consciousness nor be connected to reality, I was only connected to my pain and my trauma. Rather than seeing the death of my father as an event, I experienced it as the end of hope for myself. I no longer cared about the dreams and aspirations we had talked about, I was angry, fearful, sad, bereft and vulnerable to the lies I told myself. Events, surprises, experiencing reality for what it is, not what I want to make it, and having more moments of authentic consciousness are the hallmarks of my life since 1987. I am more aware of all these things and have a heightened sense of when I check out. My daily work is to be present more often, check out less and pay attention to the important things in my life; family, friends, ideas, new possibilities, service, teaching, and, of course, golf:) 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 205

“The power of being human is easily dissolved in the process of excessive trivialization. Banality and triteness, the by-product of repetitiveness, continue to strangle or corrode the sense of significant being.” (Who is Man pg. 114-5)

We are always in danger of being pulled into these soul-crushing, spirit-killing ways. We are and have always had societal pressures to “go along to get along”, become enslaved to ‘making a living’ rather than make a life, have our creativity crushed, laughed at, etc because someone else is afraid of our creative powers, denied our “unalienable rights” because of someone else’s need for power. This has been happening to us for as long as humanity has existed. We have bought into the lie “we are only one person, one vote-what difference will I make”, we have bought into the lie ‘stay in your lane and know your place’, etc, etc. These lies and the megaphone of society that keeps blaring these and other lies have their effect on the majority of people.

Most people, unfortunately, do not engage in critical thinking, they let some TV, Radio, Powerful personality do their thinking for them and they follow along like ‘little lambs to the slaughter’. I use the word slaughter because whenever we engage in these actions, we are surrendering, giving up, killing our own “sense of significant being”. We engage in the banality of life daily with our lack of originality, our rote behaviors, our escapes through social media, mind-numbing activities, inability to connect with another human being. We engage in “following orders” like the good German Adolf Eichmann did, whether these orders come from the Bible, the mind, the mouths of the authoritarians in our life, and/or the self-deceptions we have come to accept as truth. It is easier to let someone one else do the thinking for us than have to immerse ourselves in the thoughts, ideas, nuances, whole picture of life. Give us the cliff notes as we used in school when we didn’t want to read the book. Doing life by cliff notes is the surest way to strangle and corrode our “sense of significant being”. We are denying the Divine Image and the Divine need we are created in and for. We are denying our uniqueness and infinite value and relinquish our infinite dignity when we live life by cliff notes.  Banality, triteness, excessive trivialization are dangerous paths to go down because they are so seductive, so deceptive and so ensnaring.

And there is a solution! Every day when we arise, we say a prayer, meditate, on how grateful we are to be alive. We open our eyes, our ears, our hearts to the truth that today is a new day with new possibilities and new adventures. We begin with gratitude, meditation, study, writing, planning and spontaneity, openness, seeking connection, excited to learn something new today and make a decision to find joy today. We commit ourselves to being in the solution, adding our talent, gifts, wisdom to solve a bit of the issues that make our corner of the world banal, trite and trivial. We engage with one another at more than a surface level, when we say we care, we actually act in caring ways. When we pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and for which it stands we hold everyone accountable for the freedoms we are promised. We no longer ‘stand on the sidelines’ thinking someone else will fight our battles because we don’t want to ‘get our hands dirty’. We engage in truth and transparency rather than hiding and guile. We speak truth, we engage in learning by knowing we do not know it all, we are not the smartest person in the room and we don’t need to control everything and everyone, only our need to be right, our need to be in control, our character traits that are out of proper measure need to be controlled by us. Every day we commit to being original, unique, fresh with our actions, our thoughts, our love and our devotion to one another, humanity, nature, peace, kindness, justice and mercy. Every day we root our the indifference and the evil that want to attach themselves to us like barnacles on a boat. We have to stay involved and aware of our spiritual life, spiritual condition and no longer allow our minds and emotions to override what we know to be true.

In recovery, this is the main thrust of our new life, leaving the banal, the trivial, the trite ways we had been living and engage in fresh, new, original paths to find our true selves, live an original life and an authentic life, be a servant instead of a master and add to the lives of people whom are close to us and total strangers rather than taking from them like we used to.

I have been practicing living authentically, originally and uniquely and I am happy to report that this has given me a “sense of significant being”. I also have succumbed to the ‘powers that be’ and let them convince me to “rub” my originality away, follow their orders and be boring, seek solutions that are safe, not ones that honor the uniqueness of me and the person/people I am trying to help. I have succumbed to these corrosive ways when I have been afraid of rejection, afraid of financial loss, afraid of being made to look foolish. Each time I have succumbed, however, I have been foolish, rejected and suffer loss. Each time I have succumbed, I have lost me-my uniqueness, my path, tarnished my authentic self and I commit to not do this anymore! 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 204

“The power of being human is easily dissolved in the process of excessive trivialization. Banality and triteness, the by-product of repetitiveness, continue to strangle or corrode the sense of significant being.” (Who is Man pg. 114-5)

A “sense of significant being” is what is at stake in every action we take and/or do not take as a nation, a community, a family and an individual. Without this sense of significance, we can never achieve the sacred mission, respond to the call of our inner life/soul, hear and advocate for the souls of our friends, family, strangers, and realize the importance of living in this moment, using this experience to enhance my future and being present, not calculating, in the here and now. Without this sense of significance, we would either destroy the good works of another out of jealousy and/or give up our own agency and creativity becoming just robots, cogs in the machine, etc. Without a sense of significance, relationships become almost exclusively transactional rather than covenantal, business becomes a battlefield to prove the strongest, we would return to the Greco-Roman idea of putting people on rocks to die when they have no more use to the state, everyone would be trying to prove they are the strongest, smartest, richest, etc. Therapists offices, Psychiatrists offices, Bars, etc are full with people who are seeking to be reassured that their life has significant being. Yet, the belief that one is unimportant, boring/ordinary, stale is rampant in our world or at least the fear of being this way. There is a solution and it begins in the family and is infused into the individual by family and grown in one’s family life so this solution is lived into, leaned into, and grown in all of our affairs.

The solution that families can/need/do provide is to remind each and every child that they MATTER! Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski told me that he and his wife added a candle to light each Shabbat for every child they had and then for every grandchild they had. What an amazing sight that must have been, they had a kids and grandkids galore:). However, each child knew they mattered, each child was told often and in every way possible that their being brings more light into the life of the family and the world. Another friend of mine told me about his father telling him daily that:  “every room you walk into is better because you are there” and he believed his father. This belief kept him on course through the trials and tribulations of his business life and his home life. He, in turn, gave his kids the same message and, I believe, has kept them moving forward in their lives. Every family has the power to enhance the “sense of significant being” of their family and their family members and/or to trivialize, strangle and/or corrode this sense. Good family communications, actions which back up the words, You Matter, I love you, your ‘quirks’ are actually your unique gift and can be used to enhance your self and those around you, etc. Every family has to let go of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ and stop worrying about optics, how things look, what will the neighbors think, etc. Every family also has to be careful to not indulge the victim, unfair, immature, aspects of the character traits of a member and/or the whole family. The solution is to make the family the center of spirituality for its members, the hub and safe space for each family member to be real, free to speak, cry, ask for help and be responded to in ways they can hear. The solution is for the family to stop trying to make the members over into the “image” they want to portray and assist every member of the family to grow into the Divine Image they have been created in. The solution is for families to welcome the stranger in each member, not need its members to conform to their ways and embrace each and every member for their uniqueness not in spite of it.

In recovery, we are desperate to recover our “sense of significant being”, as I write this I believe this is what recovery is all about. This sense has been beaten out of us, we moaned and groaned over its loss and never realized we could, with “a little help from our friends” who have their “sense of significant being” recover our own. In recovery, we learn that we matter and so does every other person in the world.

My father spoke to each and every one of his sons in ways they could hear, if he had a favorite, we all thought we were it! Until my sister came along and we knew she had our Dad’s heart and we were not jealous. Each one of Jerry Borovitz’ sons knew they mattered to him, not just in words, in actions as well. He never missed an event we were involved in, he bought a business instead of staying a traveling salesman(which he loved and was his calling) so he could have dinner with us each night. He took each of us for drives, to the business alone so he could have one on one time. We all knew we mattered to him, we are were taught we mattered in the world. I forgot this lesson, I dishonored the memory of the most important person in my life, my dad, by forgetting this lesson and trashing the name he had built up, ignoring my own “sense of significant being” because of my pain over his loss when I was just entering my teen years. I also ignored the need of my daughter Heather by being in and out of jail and prison so much in her early years. I believe I have let her know how much she matters and I believe I have made my amends to my Dad as well. I am sorry Heather, Dad, Stuart, Neal, Millie and Sheri, to my cousins, aunts and uncles whose help and teachings I rejected, and to those I harmed through my corroded sense of 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 203

“The power of being human is easily dissolved in the process of excessive trivialization. Banality and triteness, the by-product of repetitiveness, continue to strangle or corrode the sense of significant being.” (Who is Man pg. 114-5)

The rise of social media platforms like Facebook, Wikipedia, Instagram, Twitter, etc have absolutely added to the banality and triteness that is permeating our lives, whether one participates or not. As I write this, I know I use these outlets to get these words to a wider audience to promote a different way of life for everyone and to promote myself and offer the wisdom I have acquired as a consultant to and for individuals, organizations, and companies. I do this on a ‘pay what you can’ fee basis and I believe, maybe erroneously that I am using these platforms in the ways they were meant to be used. Yet, I may be delusional and I may have fallen into the banality and triteness.

The problem with the social media world is we are not always seeking truth, we are not  always seeking to raise ourselves nor another up to a better level of living, nor are we acknowledging what is truly significant about our beingness! Rather, we are using it for likes, for celebrity, for fame, for advantage, for the tearing down of another person, etc. We are using Social Media to spread lies, to coerce people into believing the ‘alternative facts’ that we want to promote so no one sees what we are doing while we are saying ‘what they want to hear’. We have seen the fabric of our freedom become stretched to it’s breaking point by the use of Twitter by people who are only trying to promote themselves, people who only want power and have no other ideology or platform other than their self-aggrandizement, their hunger for power and their need for money and control. All of this done while the creators of these platforms and the C-Suite people wrap themselves in the 1st Amendment and knowingly promote lies, ads targeted to deny people access to the truth, to voting, etc. All this done under the banner of Free Market Capitalism, which we all can believe in, up to a point.

Herein is the issue, for all of us. To lift ourselves out of the pit and the quicksand of triteness and banality that are strangling and corroding our sense of significant being, we have to say no to the lower, animal self within each of us and begin using the platforms as forums to share ideas that are based in truth, not Q-Anon fantasies, based in serious discussion and exchange of ideas and solutions, not the Trump-fueled lies and self-aggrandizements. We have to remake the fabric of our society to live into and up to the promises of our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, the Bible, the Prophets, the Gospels of Jesus, the teachings of the Koran, the philosophy of Buddhism, etc. It is not as hard as many people believe, it is not too big of an ask nor too much to accomplish. As the teaching in the Pirke Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, teaches, we are not called upon to finish the work AND we are not free to not engage in it and we are not free to nullify the work that has been begun by another. We cannot allow the Social Media Platforms to further nullify and destroy our democracy under the banner of free speech.

Speech is not free, we are responsible for what we say, how we say it, when we say it and where we say it. Just as one cannot cry FIRE in a crowded theater, if there isn’t one, we are not free to say what we want about whomever we want to without regard to the truth. Yet, we are in this situation in this moment. Free Speech is under attack as is Freedom of Religion by the same people who want to control us for their sake, not God’s sake. We are inundated with the lies of some ‘religious’ people who are sure they know God’s Will and it is to listen to them, tithe them, bow down to them-how UnGodly can one get. God created the world through speech, according to the Bible, so our words also create and we are responsible for the creations we bring into being with our speech. When we are responsible for our words, our ways, our world, we heed the Hasidic saying: “If you assume the person next to you is the Messiah, you will come to weigh your words and watch your actions. If he/she chooses not to reveal her/himself, it will not matter”.

In recovery, we are aware of the power of our words and what we put out in the Social Media stratosphere through our taking inventory of our actions and their consequences, positive and negative, over the years. We make the commitment to be more judicious and less impulsive with our texting, our social media, our speech and we know we are works in progress and sometimes we fall short of our goals so we do our amends and we improve one grain of sand more each day.

I am guilty of flying off the handle, I am guilty of speaking truth at inappropriate moments and in anger. I am guilty of not assuming the person next to me is the Messiah all the time. I have violated the space of people with my calling out their  bullshit and lies in public and I have been violated by the lies of these same people and the innuendos they throw around about me. I pay for my way of doing life, being upfront, brazen, if you will, about spreading truth and calling out the mendacity of another. It is lonely, it is misunderstood and it is the only way I can live, it is the ultimate of recovering my soul for me, for God. It is the deal I made with God, my daughter, Heather, my wife, Harriet, my siblings, Sheri and Neal, and my community/my friends. I am not always correct, I am usually loud:) and I am willing to be wrong. 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 202

“The power of being human is easily dissolved in the process of excessive trivialization. Banality and triteness, the by-product of repetitiveness, continue to strangle or corrode the sense of significant being.” (Who is Man pg. 114-5)

Continuing on from yesterday’s writing, we are witnessing an extreme of banality and triteness, in my opinion, right now. It is happening in our political world, our social world, our religious/faith communities and our family life. I am understanding Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” in the light of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom to mean anything that strangles or corrodes one’s sense of significant being and/or the sense of significant being of every human being that masquerades as normal, righteous, legal is a neon sign of this “banality of evil” that so many of us go along with. Rabbi Heschel’s “indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin”(God in Search of Man) is another path to this triteness and banality.

In our political world we see this practice of triteness/rubbing the same tropes again and again along with the ‘call to arms’ by one group or another against either ‘the man’ or ‘the rebel/thug/immigrant’. We are seeing the use of hate speech innuendos to “rally the base”, as a way to remind this base of what is ‘common to all of us’, the us being anyone like me and the ‘them’ being anyone not like me. We are witnessing a decimation of the freedoms that are guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence, that are the basis of the American Revolution of 1776 and have been at the core of our moral growth as a nation, as a people, as a society. These freedoms have been won through much hard work, many mini-revolutions in the past 160 years since the Civil War and we must not fall into the “banality of evil” being practiced by the elected clerks of our government who, like Eichmann, are just taking orders from their Furhrer’s like The Family, Moscow Mitch, etc. They are engaging in the strangulation of everyone’s sense of significant being while conning their base to believe they care about them, they will take care of them, ‘white is right’ and ‘the hordes are coming for us’ along with ‘we are the injured and discriminated against minority’ etc. It is high time for all of us to stop going along with these lies, stop being indifferent to the evil these Eichmann-like people are spreading and say NO to their phony elections, NO to their control of a woman’s body and choices, NO to their false claims of doing it for God, NO to their hatred and discrimination of people of color, people who are not WASP’s in their image, NO to Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, et al for their stoking the fires of slavery, stoking the flames of injustice and pouring gasoline and lighting the match of burning the Constitution of the United States of America! These “fine upstanding Christian White Males” rail against the burning of the flag and praise the burning of the constitution while their followers and the politicians who do their bidding are saluting and goose-stepping in front of them in good parade fashion.

What our politicians have been somewhat successful in attacking is our “sense of significant being” and this is the greatest theft anyone can commit. By attacking the sense of significant being of a nation, of an idea, of a person’s identity, spirit, etc we attack the core of what makes us human, the Divine Image we all have within us, the need we were created to fill, the infinite value and dignity we each possess and deny the Godliness inherent in every human being by saying only we have these things and you don’t! The attack on the freedoms of our Constitution, of our Declaration of Independence are the harbingers of a “a new Pharaoh arose who did not know…” as quoted from Exodus, Chapter 1, and we all know what that Pharaoh did-enslave a people through cunning and guile-sound familiar?

In recovery we are obligated to leave the triteness and banality we have perpetrated upon people and upon ourselves. With help from others in recovery, family, friends, a power greater than ourselves, we are able to get pulled out of the quicksand we found ourselves in, the banality we engaged in, the indifference we lived, the evil we committed and the little import we gave to the call of our soul and the call of pain, neediness and loneliness we heard from another soul. In recovery, we commit to continue to pull ourselves out of the muck and the mire, out of the quicksand of banality and triteness through paying attention, asking for help and acting on the advice given.

I find myself thinking back to the 1960’s and my awakening to prejudice and hatred based on the unoriginal thoughts and ways of ‘the base’ at that time. Because my father paid Black Men the same wages as White Men, he and we were called “N….lovers” and being Jewish was just the cherry on the cake! Even Jews thought he was wrong, by the way, because they were worried about the backlash on them. Without realizing it, I was witnessing  how banality and triteness continued to strangle the sense of significant being while masquerading as the concern for significant beingness! I also gave into the ‘way of the world’ at that time and engaged in the triteness and banality of “getting mine” by hook or crook. I fell into the quicksand of banality, the quicksand of evil and it took me 20+ years to pull myself and be pulled by God and many others out of this quicksand and regain a sense of significant being. Hearing the “Ayecha” of God, of my daughter, of my family and responding was the beginning and the journey continues today, my sense of significant being is returning after being strangled and corroded for a bit. 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 201

“The power of being human is easily dissolved in the process of excessive trivialization. Banality and triteness, the by-product of repetitiveness, continue to strangle or corrode the sense of significant being.” (Who is Man pg. 114-5)

Banal comes from the French meaning ‘a call to arms’ and the German meaning ‘common to all’. We have come to use the word to mean ‘unoriginal, obvious, boring’. Triteness comes from the Latin meaning ‘to rub’ and we use the word to mean ‘overused and of little import as well as lacking originality and/or freshness’. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is the warning that all of us need to heed. We have come to accept boring, obvious, stale, etc because we are on a treadmill of work, keeping up with someone else, comparing and competing with society’s metrics. This is at the root of our discontent and unease which leads many to hatred, looking for a ‘bad guy’, making allies and enemies and joining cults, groups, etc that preach salvation through authoritarian leaders and repetitive ways of being. Even religion has become stale through because many spiritual leaders want behaviorism rather than originality, creed and dogma over awakenings and connection, etc. We are in a state of strangulation and corrosion without any awareness of this truth and we are constantly being told, as the Wizard of Oz said, “don’t pay any attention to that man behind the curtain”. 

Herein lies the issue of today, yesterday and tomorrow; are we willing to go against the grain, are we willing to take the lonely road of the Prophet, the fearful road of the Israelites when they left Egypt, the courageous road of the exiles in Babylon and return to our authentic self, our authentic mission, our unique originality in the face of scorn, rejection and aloneness? Throughout our history, it seems as if this is the road of the few, the brave and the connected. What makes the liberation from Egypt so amazing, to me in light of the wisdom above, is that people left! While I have always wondered why only 20% left, according to a Midrash, I am now amazed that 20% left! This has given me a new appreciation for the courage and bravery of the people who do T’Shuvah, who return after their mistakes and errors to a way of decency and flourish in love, justice, kindness and truth. I am in awe of the people who fight this tendency to be banal and trite, to be strangled and strangle others in their search for their own significance of being. 

‘Same shit, different day’ is a common response from people internally and externally. So many people feel trapped and stifled by the labor of living, the safety of repetitiveness and knowing what to expect and they also are afraid to break out of this safe space. Hannah Arendt wrote of the “banality of evil’ and while she was talking about Adolf Eichmann, I believe every time we succumb to the ‘rubbing away’ of our originality, every experience we see as the same as one before, every day we see ourselves and/or another as ‘little import’ we are engaging in the “banality of evil”. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call to us to stop diminishing our sense of significance, stop slamming the door on our spiritual connection, stop crushing our spirit of adventure, stop detouring ourselves from our unique purpose and passion. 

We can do this, we can say NO to the lie of ‘same shit, different day’ by waking up grateful and energized to find the new, let go of the sadness, hurt and fears from yesterday, not be engaged in trying to repeat the same victories from yesterday. We can do this by saying NO to the spirit crushing demand of society to ‘measure up’ to their expectations and instead say YES to the call of our own soul. Saying YES to our inner life’s needs and gifts, following through with a deep sense of connection to them, to the people in our lives, being grateful for what we have and wanting what we have rather than lamenting what we don’t is key to ending our boringness, our triteness, our banality, our participation in the evil that is rampant in our world. We have the technology to do this, we have the inner strength to do this, we have the path to do this, we just have to have the courage, the maturity and the commitment. More on this tomorrow! 

In recovery, we have been beaten into submission so many times by the banality and triteness of our former ways of living. Recovery is our rebellion against these ways of unoriginality and boring, of being rubbed to the bone by fear, comparisons, the lies we have told ourselves, etc. In recovery, we are aware of a power greater than ourselves and the spirit, the force field of this power can and will lift us out of the doldrums of addictive thinking. As my wife, Harriet Rossetto, says: “You don’t have to be an addict to be in recovery.”

I am embarrassed at how many times I have succumbed to the triteness and banality of life and forgot my own sense of significant beingness. As I wrote yesterday, engaging in trivial matters is a way I have succumbed and I am committing to leave these matters in their place and not indulge in them. I am also aware of the banality of my allowing and promoting at times a caricature of my self, diminishing the significance of my being and my gifts/talents. I am aware of the times I allowed my indignation and anger, while often appropriate, become out of proper measure and giving another person power over me, which led to my diminishing my significance. 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 200

“The power of being human is easily dissolved in the process of excessive trivialization. Banality and triteness, the by-product of repetitiveness, continue to strangle or corrode the sense of significant being.” (Who is Man pg. 114-5)

Reading this first sentence reminds us of the power of the unimportant and the power of deception and mendacity. It also reminds us of the power that people who want us to engage with the unimportant and who use deception and mendacity with us in order to help us stay in this process of the unimportant over us. I am embarrassed at how, so many of smart people, so many caring people get caught up in fighting with these deceivers and defending against their mendacity and have our power to make positive changes constantly be diminished. We see this in our world all the time, people will make a statement, cause a ruckus in a certain area of life so we get all involved in it so we miss the important things that are happening in another area. This is a trademark of a con, a lie, a scheme as we all witnessed with Trump and his gang. We still see it in the political landscape, the Supreme Court’s supposed decision on Roe v Wade is taking our eyes off the ways Clarence Thomas and his wife have truly violated the separation of powers between branches, the impartiality of the Court and the tearing down of the rule of law that Thomas so loudly praises. It is precisely those who are the loudest defenders that are often the greatest perpetrators of what they are supposedly defending. We have seen this throughout the millennia, remember Brutus and Mark Anthony? Yet, while it is easy to take shots at politicians and government workers, many of whom are champs at engaging us in excessive trivializations rather than caring about the product and the good we can/are doing, it is more important to look at our selves. 

We are so easily pushed into the trivial by our thinking and our emotions because of our lack of maturity, I believe. We are not spiritual mature enough to fight off the trivialities that consume our thinking and feeling. Herein lies the issue, as I am understanding these words from Rabbi Heschel today. The issue of abortion is a red herring, I believe, in the war against people of color, women, anyone not “christian” in the ways the right-wing fanatics think one should be. By getting involved in the trivial matters surrounding abortion rights, we are missing the core issues-do white men have control over women and every aspect of their lives? Do white men have control over the lives of anyone who isn’t a “christian” according to their viewpoint? Is America becoming a “christian” nation where everyone has to live under “christian” law as these charlatans dictate it? We have lost the power to engage in these core issues because we have become so bogged down in and overwhelmed by the continuous assault on our sense of justice, kindness, love and truth. We are suffering from a fatigue that no amount of sleep will cure, it is, I believe a spiritual fatigue, our spirits, our souls have been under assault for years and we are just too overcome with the trivial to have enough energy to battle the real war. As we see in Ukraine, it takes enormous energy to fight the monster and, rather than refuting Putin’s lies, they are first and foremost fighting Putin’s soldiers. 

This is what we have to do, we have to fight the soldiers of these liars, cons, schemers and show them what they are really fighting for, someone else’s power, someone else’s fear of being seen for who and what they are. We have to leave the battlefield of the trivial by growing our spiritual maturity, by raising up our soul and the souls of all around us so we can battle for decency, kindness, truth, justice, mercy, etc . 

In recovery, we keep reminding ourselves of our primary purpose, to be in recovery and to help another achieve recovery. Doing this allows us to stay focused on the prize, on the goal, on the path and on our own spiritual growth, remembering we are seeking spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection.

I see where I fell prey to this process of trivialization often and am still susceptible to it. I believe more than anything else in my life, this has caused me the most trouble and is the root of most of my problems. I think that every issue is a battlefield I have to engage in and in doing so, I lost the energy and the insight, the vision and the path to actually battle the most important issues. I realize today that in doing so, I weakened myself and my ability to be heard, seen and instead I was ignored and put off with “here he goes again”. While I believed every fight was worth it, reading this sentence today teaches me it isn’t. I did not ‘pick my battles’ and therefore did not have the strength and the credibility evidently to win the most important one of my career. While I there is responsibility all around, I have to take mine. I was the architect of my own defeat because I seemed, at times, to many people like Chicken Little, the sky was always falling. I know where this came from, my belief that every battle mattered and some, didn’t matter as much as others. I am sorry for the pain caused by my actions, I am sorry for the harm I caused my wife and others, by this need to engage in trivial actions and I have learned and am learning how to pick my battles now. 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 199

“We must burn the cliches to clear the air for hearing. Conceptual cliches are counterfeit preconceived notions are misfits.” (Who is Man pg.109) 

I have been thinking about this teaching for days, as you can see, because I realize this teaching is the path to freedom, to authenticity, and to connection. We live in a world that is all about illusions, optics, cons and schemes, mendacity and self-deception. Rabbi Heschel’s words above show that this is not a new phenomena for humanity, it has been with us for a long, long time; I guess it is in our DNA. Yet, we do not have to live like this, we are not doomed to this life of deception, hurt, false appearances, living in fear of lawsuits and the “fairness” that passes as decency today, if we heed and live the teachings above. We have to burn these cliches precisely because they are so insidious and so dangerous. We burn them in order to tell ourselves we don’t need them anymore. We are not so destitute, so bereft of substance, so spiritually bankrupt, so morally corrupt that we need to engage in illusions, optics, cons, schemes, mendacity and self-deception! Our burning/sacrificing of these cliches and preconceived notions is our liberation and path to freedom. It is the only way to live lives that are authentic, connected, caring and compatible with being a partner with God/functioning member of the world. 

We have all reaped what we have sown in this regard. We have become People of the Lie without any awareness. All of us, at one time or another, in one situation or another, are phony because we fall back on the counterfeit cliches to make ourselves feel vindicated/right/appropriate in our wrongful actions. I know of people who use “Founders Syndrome” to annihilate the good works of people who found, build, sustain an organization that helps people-there are volumes of papers about this cliche because people want to use one case where it may have been true and extrapolate it to everyone. False, mendacious, cruel are the hallmarks of this counterfeit way of living. Most of the people who live in this state are totally unaware of their actions, they have convinced themselves that they are acting in the greater good because this cliche has taken on the smell and ring of truth - when in fact the cliche is counterfeit, the main people promoting the cliche are acting out of a need to have power, crush the people who have helped them and/or family or friends. When the people in charge are counterfeit through their need to use cliches and the preconceived notions of people to convince them to go along with their mendacious plans, then the outcome has to be counterfeit as well.

As individuals, we have to burn these cliches for our own sanity, our own ability to live in our skin and connect with another human being, with God, with the Universe, etc. Very few people are totally counterfeit, totally run by the cliches and preconceived notions they were brought up with, yet the more we do not burn the cliches and the preconceived notions we have been buying into, that have been at the foundation of our living, the more of a hold they will have on us and we will not even notice them anymore. We have to burn them today and everyday as they will continue to creep into our actions in the subtlest of ways; money is an example. The Golden Rule has become: “the one with the gold rules” according to some people I know. I have watched people with money become dictators and demanders and, as Tevye says, “it will not matter if I am right or wrong, when you are rich they think you really know”. I have watched people who are involved in charities make themselves leaders of the charity while giving nothing, just getting others to give and in business be slumlords, treat the people working for them at their home and business like slaves and no one will call them out because they are part of the ‘country club’, the ‘money club’, etc. This is another way of how the cliches, the preconceived notions turn all of us into collaborators and part of what is ailing our world. When Liz Cheney called for truth about Jan 6, she was shunned, stripped of her role and power because she has the audacity to speak truth to power. 

We are all original works of art and, while I myself have lithographs, artist prints, etc hanging in our home, I never confuse them with the original. The same is true for each and every one of us. We have to live our own life, we have to burn the cliches and the preconceived notions in order to be original, to “walk to the beat of a different drummer” walk to the music that is in our souls, in our kishkas/inner life. We admire this trait in the arts, business, oratory, etc and as soon as someone ‘makes’ it-the powers that be work so hard to co-opt them into some preconceived notion of how they should be now. I have fallen into this state at different times in my careers, I bought the lie of self worth=net worth, I bought the cliche of what a real Rabbi should be and rejected it. I have been original throughout my recovery and I have had bouts of fear that made me buy into the preconceived notions and cliches deep inside of me, the ones my parents had bought and the ones people put on me. At times, instead of burning them, I erupted like a Volcano and spewed lava and ashes onto the innocents around me, instead of on the liars, the mendacious ones who were trying to put me in a box and deny my originality. I am realizing this through Rabbi Heschel’s words and I pray you will stop the cliches that have been running your life and burn them too. 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 198

“We must burn the cliches to clear the air for hearing. Conceptual cliches are counterfeit preconceived notions are misfits.” (Who is Man pg.109) 

Let’s get personal today, as if we aren’t everyday. When I write about the politics, the macro, the business, I am also looking at these pearls of wisdom from Rabbi Heschel from a deeply personal point of view. I am diving into my personal inner life and see how Rabbi Heschel’s teachings apply to me, which is why Rabbi Heschel, like the Prophets of old, is so disturbing, disrupting and loving to me. 

We are in the middle of counting the Omer the days between Passover/Liberation and Shavuot, aka the Pentecost, also called the event of Freedom as we receive the Torah on this day. You notice I am speaking in the present, freedom is not a one and done experience, as we see in the politics of the world, the tragedy unfolding in our country of freedoms that have been won through hard-fought battles now being reversed and people of color, and I am afraid, any people of faith that is not ‘approved’ by the Charlatan Leaders of the ANTI-JESUS movement called ‘right-wing christianity! These liars and these authoritarians are precisely the people Rabbi Heschel is calling to AND so are all of us! No matter what you may think of yourself being on the “right” side of any issue, acting with ‘absolute’ integrity, and staking out the ‘high’ moral ground, we are al in danger of not hearing the call, the demand, the task clearly because we are filled with these counterfeit cliches and preconceived notions. 

Our inner life is filled with these cliches because we grow up with them. Low self-esteem is a cliche that needs to be burned because we are a Divine Need, we are here by divine design, we are needed by the universe and our fellow human beings. We have something to add to this world and, therefore, the lies of low self-esteem come from the need to be approved of by society which is one of those preconceived notions that is a misfit in the spiritual world, its a misfit in our inner life and holding on to this misfit notion causes us angst, depression, anxiety, and sends us to our bed, to the bottle, to the office, to disregard and not care for our inner lives and continue to feel empty and ostracized from the world. All of this because of a cliché that we have not yet burned. 

By holding on to these cliches, these preconceived notions, we are sacrificing our self, our skills, our gifts, our connections, our authenticity to them. We are allowing ourselves to return to Egypt, we are discounting the gift of Torah, we are dismissing the event of freedom, we are denying our conscious contact with God and we are dooming our self to a life of low-grade misery, a life of tolerable slavery. We do not have to do this to our self and to another selves. 

We have been given the gift of free-will and by burning the cliches that have blocked our hearing, the cliches that have controlled us and forced us into a false way of living, we experience a freedom of choice. These counterfeit cliches and preconceived notions rob us of choice, they rob us of joy and they rob us of authentic connection. There are a myriad of ways to burn these cliches and let go of the preconceived notions that I will write about tomorrow. For today, to begin, we have to make a list of the cliches and preconceptions that block our hearing of the call, our hearing the demand of our own inner life to be free, force us to see demons that are not real and blind us to the demons that are real and living within us and next to us, block our hearing truth and knowing deceit when it is spoken. Making a list of these preconceived notions and cliches will uncover for us crushing harsh labor that societal lies and charlatans of faith have put on us and we will be able to discern truth, reject the shackles we have been living with and experience the freedom of Sinai, the freedom that receiving Torah gives and the roadmap to continuing to have events of freedom more and more in our daily living. 

In recovery, we are so aware of the damage of low-self esteem because it is anger producing, anger towards ourselves and anger towards another(s). We are constantly reminding ourselves of the path to freedom through recovering our essence, our authenticity and our souls. We do not even give in to the cliches and preconceived notions of the group and we engage as a group to ensure that we cleanse our group and each of us individually of either of those enslavers that creep in-they are insidious demons after all. 

I find the cliches and preconceived notions that are held about me to be enslaving because I get caught up in trying to combat them and trying to be truly seen for who I am, warts and all. Yet, I also know that I give in to the cliches and preconceived notions that I have. Each day, through prayer, through meditation, through this writing, I am purging myself of them and they creep back in when I speak with someone, when I am listening to the news, etc. Each morning I burn the cliches and preconceived notions as my offering to the world, to family, to God in order to draw nearer to these entities, so I can be authentic, engender authenticity from another, and not allow my fears, society’s judgmental ways and the disapproval of ‘the powers that be’ to stop me from being me. God Bless and stay safe, more tomorrow on this, Rabbi Mark