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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 281

“Self-suspicion looms as a more serious threat to faith than doubt, and “anthropodicy”, the justification of man is today as difficult a problem as theodicy, the justification of God. Is there anything pure and untinged with selfishness in the soul of man? Is integrity at all possible? Can we trust our own faith? Is piety ever detached from expediency.?” (God in search of Man pg. 390)

Both words, trust and faith,  in Latin and Hebrew have similar meanings, leading me to understand Rabbi Heschel’s question in a new light. How does our “self-suspicion” make our faith/loyalty/fidelity untrustworthy? How does our “self-suspicion” lead us to suspect some people and believe some people? On the macro level, how does our “self-suspicion” lead us to not trust ourselves, to “trust our own faith” when we don’t trust ourselves fully nor most people? We are seeing this play out on our political scene. Bidenomics has helped the country come back, albeit not as quickly as some people would like, from the devastation of the pandemic. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has used their majority to attack specious rumors that they know are not true, rather than pass legislation that the majority of the people want. State Houses have tried to, and in many cases have, passed abortion bans that are draconian rather than seek to improve the lives of the poor, the stranger, the needy and both entities do this as ‘religious’ people. Even though they go against basic tenets of both Jesus and the Hebrew Bible, the “trust (their) own faith” as given to them by charlatans, idolators, false prophets and even proclaimed Trump a “messiah”! These actions and ways of being make it hard for anyone to trust faith, to engage in religious and spiritual disciplines with any fervor, with the desperation needed to change our evil/suspicious ways.

On a micro level, all of us are being enjoined, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, to see how our “self-suspicion” begs the question: “can we trust our own faith?” Beginning with the question what do we trust, what are ‘staying strong in, what lies that we tell ourselves are we staying so strong in that we cannot change, cannot have our minds changed, are unwilling to face truth because of our holding on to “alternative facts”? What causes our “self-suspicion” and how can we use faith to overcome our tendency to “suspect thy neighbor”? In evaluating our selves, in doing our inventory over the past year(s), looking at our suspicious natures and those we suspect of ‘wrong-doing’ it seems important to look at our own suspicions of ourselves, to see when we did things because we trusted in the wrong principles, when our “evil drive” was camouflaged and we believe we are/were acting from a Godly place when we were actually being idolatrous. At Mount Sinai, God asked for our pledge, our ancestors made this pledge for themselves and for all of us and it is up to us to stay “strong” in our “belief” and stay in fidelity to the original response: Na’aseh V’nishmah; we will do and then we will understand. Rather than following the call of our soul, we have been engaged, for millennia, in following the call of our rational minds, of our suspicious minds, which has led to wars, destruction, divorce of mates, of children, of parents, of commitments. Rather than making and honoring our covenants with God and one another as taught to us in the Bible, Koran, New Testament, etc, we fall into our suspicious rational minds and call it faith, call it fidelity, call it strength- how sad, how idolatrous, how crushing to our well-being.

How do we begin, you might ask, so I will begin with my own inventory on this topic: As a criminal I suspected myself so much, I couldn’t trust the people who had my best interests at heart and instead trusted people who had their own agendas seeking me to serve them. I was so “self-suspicious” that I didn’t recognize this truth and, in fact, I turned everything upside down. I stayed loyal, kept fidelity with and was strong in my conviction that people who wanted me to do things to serve them were actually the ones who ‘got me’ and I was so upside down because of my “self-suspicion” that I could tell truth from fiction, alternative facts from real ones. I have made amends to the myriad of family, friends who I could find and donated to Tzedakah for the ones I haven’t been able to find. I say here and now: I was wrong and I am sorry for any and all hurt I caused from my “self-suspicion” which led me to suspect the people I could have/should have trusted. In my recovery, I have found that my “self-suspicion” took the form of sadness and anger when people hid from me, when they came for my help and then tried to kill themselves. My passion for life, which is real, became mixed up in my suspicion of people who hid and this led to bad actions, mean actions on my part, I realize. I did not see this before and I am profoundly sorry for those whom I hurt and I know my intentions were good and they don’t matter when the  actions are not good. Please accept my T’Shuvah, my amends and God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living rabbi heschel’s wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 280

“Self-suspicion looms as a more serious threat to faith than doubt, and “anthropodicy”, the justification of man is today as difficult a problem as theodicy, the justification of God. Is there anything pure and untinged with selfishness in the soul of man? Is integrity at all possible? Can we trust our own faith? Is piety ever detached from expediency.?” (God in search of Man pg. 390)

Today is the first day of Elul, yesterday was Rosh Hodesh Elul and the 30th day of Av. It is 3 weeks and one day since we commemorated the destruction of the Temples and, as we observe 3 weeks between the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction of the Temple, we observe these 3 weeks since the 9th of Av as a time of healing and introspection as to our part in the destruction, not just of the Temple, rather how we have retarded the work of creation we were created to fulfill and how we have advanced our purpose, our mission, our work.

Looking at the second question above and using it in our Chesbon, our accounting of our soul, of ourselves is a deep dive into who we are, the lies we tell ourselves and the way we need to be to serve our mission, our purpose, to serve God and to serve our corner of the world and make it a little better than when we found it. “Integrity” is comes from the Latin meaning “intact”. The Hebrew is “shlaemute”, wholeness. Immersing ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s question: “Is integrity at all possible” we find, again, a both/and response. Integrity is possible and it is hard, it is not a constant for anyone except the spiritually elevated, even the Dalai Lama speaks of his anger issues, he laughs at himself, however which shows his humanness and his wholeness. Yet, we find so many people setting themselves up as having the ‘utmost integrity’ while deriding everyone else who disagrees with them. We see this mendacity in tribalism, in populism, in any and every form of grouping that is dependent upon a ‘high priest/warrior king’ as leader and this leader is given the power to determine what we think, what we say, what we believe.

As a nation, our integrity is being retarded. While we have never kept intact the words of the Declaration of Independence: “all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, we are in a state where scared white men are speaking of the goodness of slavery for the slaves, banning books like Maus, Diary of Anne Frank, Toni Morrison’s books, anything that speaks of the ills done to slaves, to Native Americans, etc-anything that would make them question themselves, admit their errors to themselves, is banned or ignored. We are very far from being intact as a nation and the reason is because we are not intact as individuals! We are broken people whose brokenness is being played out as anger, as “godly”, as ‘we are the saviors and warriors of Christ’, except the Christ they speak about and worship has no relationship to the Christ in the Bible, just as the ruling party and Netanyahu have no relationship to the words of the Prophets nor the lessons of the Hebrew Bible! Yet, these broken people who try so hard to convince themselves by convincing us how together they are, how they are fighting for the ‘little guy’, how ‘they are our retribution’ have bought their bullshit, they have drunk their own juice and are bringing us to the brink of disaster, just as the priests, royalty and wealthy did at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.

“Is integrity at all possible” is the question before us as part of our “accounting of our souls”. While Trump, Netanyahu, Giuliani, Cruz, McCarthy, Greene, Jordan, et al want us to believe they are the paragons of integrity, as do many of the progressives, like Bernie Sanders, the Squad, et al, I believe it is only when we can acknowledge our both/and; our separation and connection with God and human beings; when we can see the ‘errors of our ways’ and the good we do; when we stop seeing ourselves and one another with myopic vision and see the whole picture of self and another-good and not so good; we are in integrity. We are intact as human beings because we see our whole self, fulfilling the Latin definition and the Hebrew definition of integrity.

In using this question in our accounting, we have to determine when we were split and how we fed our split nature. We have to delineate our tunnel vision and how/when we wear “a new pair of glasses”. There are many other ways to respond to the question of “when have we acted with/without integrity?” In looking back on the past year, I realize when I worry about the past or the future, I am not intact and when I live in the moment, when I seek to not blame anyone for my own errors, I am more intact with my whole 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

Year 2 Day 279

“Self-suspicion looms as a more serious threat to faith than doubt, and “anthropodicy”, the justification of man is today as difficult a problem as theodicy, the justification of God. Is there anything pure and untinged with selfishness in the soul of man? Is integrity at all possible? Can we trust our own faith? Is piety ever detached from expediency.?” (God in search of Man pg. 390)

As we celebrate and acknowledge the new month of Elul in the Hebrew/lunar calendar, hearing Rabbi Heschel’s questions above give us a path to using this month as the Rabbis intended-look at ourselves without the usual filters of ego, self-centeredness, self-deception, self-suspicion, and be responsible to and for our actions, the false selves we portrayed and the authentic souls we are. Rabbi Heschel’s questions are calling to us to see reality, to understand, in my experience of his teaching today, that purity is not the goal, the souls of each us wrestling with our selfishness, our instinct to go with the rational mind over the intuitive one, our need to be right, our desire to deceive another(s) and ourselves, to live in suspicion of self and just about everyone else. This is the month to delve into our way of living a suspicious lifestyle. It is so important to acknowledge most of our suspicions are projections, we are going to get them before they get us. We project onto another what we would do and in those moments, we are not allowing our souls to override our rational, lower thinking and logic. In those moments we are fulfilling Einstein’s fear of worshiping the rational mind and forgetting the intuitive one(soul).

“Is there anything pure and untinged with selfishness in the soul of man”, I believe that we will never achieve this goal, I do believe we can work to lessen our selfishness and our self-centeredness, we can increase our “take the next right action for its own sake” mentality the more we allow our spiritual life, our inner life, our intuitive mind to ‘run the show’. Herein lies the challenge for all of us, allowing our souls, our intuitive minds, our connection to a power greater than ourselves be the guiding lights of our actions, of our living and of our loving one another. When we seek to lessen our selfishness, increase our desire to take the next right action and serve something larger than ourself, we are taking actions with a little more purity than we had before. Again, perfection is not the goal, as I hear Rabbi Heschel speaking to me. In Pirke Avot, Rabbi Tarfon says: “It is not our job to finish the work and we are not free from engaging in it.” Let’s take this month of Elul, when the cosmic forces of compassion, truth, kindness are so strong, as I learned from Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man, and do our inner work, our truth speaking to our self, allow our rational mind to hear and take in the truth that our intuitive/soul mind knows.

Our political world is in desperate need of this type of introspection, it is so far off the rails our democracy is still in danger of being taken over by authoritarians, not just Trump but McCarthy, Greene, Jordan, DeSantis, Pence, Christie, et al. We are witnessing selfishness, self-centeredness, suspicion of another, lack of integrity (as evidenced by the debt-ceiling deal and now the threats about the budget deal), and the practice of mendacity disguised as piety, the inability of people to keep their word because all they care about is what is expedient in the moment and call this faithfulness to principles-no matter how idolatrous those principles are! Will any of the people, the guilty and the responsible ones, aka enablers, ever stand up and admit their errors, ask for forgiveness, change their ways? Unfortunately, I think not and this is what is so sad about reading Rabbi Heschel’s call to us from almost 70 years ago!

In recovery, we do a complete inventory and then continue to “take personal inventory and promptly admit when we are wrong.” Beginning today, I would like to suggest we all do a Chesbon HaNefesh, an accounting of our soul, using the questions that Rabbi Heschel’s writing brings up for me daily. Today’s writing is: 1)How have I been less selfish, lived with more integrity, and stayed faithful to spiritual principles, God’s will this year? 2)How have I been selfish (the same or more), been more split and less faithful to spiritual principles, God’s will this year? I have witnessed my split more this year than I have in the past. I have been selfish when I have felt bad because FOMO, I have been more split when I have shunned people who reached out to me, I have been less faithful to my spiritual principles when I have been suspicious of people because of their past actions and not giving them the benefit of the doubt, not looking for, and where appropriate, seeing the change in people. These ways have lessened, I am happy to say and I have been more open, more welcoming, less suspicious and more forgiving in this year. I pray the people who harmed me live well, I stay true to loving more and doing what I say, I am less self-deceptive and better able to see, experience, hear the light and truth. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel’s Wisdom - A Daily Path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 278

“Self-suspicion looms as a more serious threat to faith than doubt, and “anthropodicy”, the justification of man is today as difficult a problem as theodicy, the justification of God. Is there anything pure and untinged with selfishness in the soul of man? Is integrity at all possible? Can we trust our own faith? Is piety ever detached from expediency.?” (God in search of Man pg. 390)

How can we seek to justify God? God is the Ineffable One, the Infinite One, the One without end, and yet, humankind, in all of our hubris, our ‘need’ to understand so we can ‘believe’, seek to justify God’s existence, etc. We do this so we do not have to be responsible to something greater than ourselves. We do this so we can set ourselves up as ‘godly’, as the ‘one true representation of God’ and your suffering is either a sign God loves you, or a sign God doesn’t love you-depending on whom you are listening to, which charlatan in robes, cloaked in oil which they claim has anointed them God’s representatives and we invest such power in. All the ‘where was God in the Holocaust, why does God let bad things happen to good people, etc’ are paths to justifying our wrong doings, giving into our baser desires, allowing us to “suspect thy neighbor” and do harms in the name of ‘self-care’. Truly, who are we to justify God, we should be grateful to God, humbled before God, servants of God, partners with God, etc.

As usual, Rabbi Heschel is disturbing me this morning and every morning with his wisdom and teachings. The only way I can justify myself and humankind, I am seeing today, is to fulfill God’s will instead of mine, to “nullify my will before God’s will so God’s will becomes mine”(Pirke Avot 2:4). Our justification as human beings comes for our surrendering to God’s will, to “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly in God’s ways”. Yet, we have so much hubris that we expect God to walk in our ways, we demand mercy for ourselves and give none to another(s), we decide what justice is-ensuring that what is just for ourselves doesn’t apply to anyone ‘not of our kind’-hence the justice for the rich and the rest of us. We witness and participate in these God-denying, idolatrous actions daily and we say nothing, we do nothing to change ourselves, our systems! Instead of being descendants of the prophets, we are acting like descendants of the Greeks and Romans, both civilizations were destroyed and did not make the transition to modernity. Yet, we would rather use our minds to justify our idolatry, our inhumanity, our fear-mongering, our inappropriate use of power, than justify our existence as partners with God, as tillers of the soil, as keepers and growers of God’s Garden-our world. Rather than use the sayings and commandments of the Bible to help us grow, we are using the words of the Bible to have rule and dominion over one another.

We are so deep into self-loathing that we continue to find ways to justify our existence by not justifying God’s. We keep seeking a world where God is not necessary, through science, religion, logic, psychology, etc. Yet, the Surgeon General considers loneliness to be a major disease today. Loneliness comes from a disconnection from one another -usually attributed to the Pandemic, which only made the truth of what has been happening for a long time clear to ‘the powers that be’. Loneliness is a spiritual malady! It is a look into the vapidness we have been living within ourselves and this vapidness reflects our loss of living with meaning and purpose, it reflects our suspicion of everyone around us, it reflects a deep belief of being unloveable and unable to live in covenant with God and/or another human being. Because of the lies of the Greeks-humans can attain perfection- we find ourselves on the merry-go-round of not good enough and the best there is, we can do anything with impunity(Trump, his minions, the Republicans in the House of Representatives) and you have to follow our rules-authoritarianism. Maybe it is time to heed Rabbi Heschel’s words and accept God’s Will, justify our existence by doing God’s will and living together in a loving interdependence with God, with one another!

In recovery, we justify our existence by “turning our will over to the care of God” in our 3rd step. This is the culmination of our entering recovery (as opposed to abstinence); the surrender process. Surrendering our will to God’s will, surrendering our “need to be right” to our need to connect, rekindling a belief and commitment to a power greater than ourselves, are necessary if we are to move into our inventory, our process of taking off the blinders we have been wearing and seeing what we have done that isn’t good and what we have done that is good. After we surrender, we clean house so we can once again justify our existence through service and decency. It is the 29th of Av, tomorrow is the new month of Elul, the time for us to do our inventories, to surrender to truth, to God, and make our amends and our resolutions to do better, to enhance the good we do, will you? God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi heschel’s wisdom - A daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 277

“Self-suspicion looms as a more serious threat to faith than doubt, and “anthropodicy”, the justification of man is today as difficult a problem as theodicy, the justification of God. Is there anything pure and untinged with selfishness in the soul of man? Is integrity at all possible? Can we trust our own faith? Is piety ever detached from expediency.?” (God in search of Man pg. 390)

In the second half of the first sentence above, Rabbi Heschel’s calling to us to understand and change our suspicious ways! Our “self-suspicion” leads us to doubt everything, to believe only ourselves and people who say what we want to hear, people who agree with us. Hence, the need for people to watch Newsmax, Oan, Fox (not)News, and listen to Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, White Power people like Nick Fuentes, and become radicalized. People in America, especially white men, young and old, are being radicalized at alarming rates, because of their self-suspicious natures which leaves them open to the lies of charlatans, the allure of authoritarians who ‘identify’ with and make themselves ‘popular’ while being the real elites that they are railing against. “Self-suspicion” is “a more serious threat to faith”, to freedom, to truth “than doubt” and we are watching this truth play out in real time.

It is harder and harder to justify humankind when we live in this self-suspicious manner. There is no truth that we can agree on, we can’t even agree on what freedom is, what the US stands for, what it means to be a “nation of immigrants”, as JFK wrote about. Donald Trump and his co-conspirators and his enablers continue to rape and pillage our country rather than be responsible and uphold their constitutional duty. The Big Lie and all the ‘little lies’ that have been told and are being told, the weaponization of Government by the GOP, now as it was during Nixon, the Harvard, Yale, and Ivy League graduates that purport to ‘care about the little guy’ while berating ‘those liberal elites’ with lies, innuendos, trying to whip up their followers to do physical harm to ‘those enemies’ as they did on Jan. 6th, 2021 while stealing from their followers, while making them suspicious about someone else so Trump, et al can pick their pockets, are making this country a war zone, rather than a democracy! When we witness the horror of mendacity, the crime of the Big Con, the criminal conspiracy that the GOP participates in, the cover-up of Gingrich(a serial philanderer and the beginner of this weaponization and hatred of fellow elected officials), and McCarthy(“I will sell my soul to be Speaker and bow down to Trump and his mobsters at any and all costs), being joined by the lies of Ted Cruz(I will kiss the ass of someone who took off after my father, my wife, my family in a cruel and dishonest manner) and the silence of McConnell and the rest of the Republican leaders, we see how difficult the “justification of man” can be and is.

Our religious leaders are woefully inept as well and this, for many, brings about the difficulty when the justification of God is brought up. How can God anoint Trump and his minions to bring about redemption when all they do is bring about chaos? How can these ‘religious leaders’, ‘men/women of God’ go against everything the Prophets cried out about and say they are the ‘true messengers’ of God’s will? How can they purport to represent and teach what Jesus wants when they go against his basic precepts? How can anyone believe in God when God is being represented by liars, charlatans, people out for their own power, people who are so self-suspicious they are empty inside, people who fake their empathy and collect their money? This issue that Rabbi Heschel called us to look at and solve/change, is staring at us today on steroids and we still hear the lies and mendacity of our political, religious, communal leaders!

Recovery is the anti-dote, it is the healing agent for self-suspicion through the healing power of truth, the healing power of confession, the healing power of God and of our fellow travelers. We no longer seek to justify our bad actions, we are committed to justify God’s faith in us, as many Jews and others in recovery are grateful for in our morning prayers. We no longer seek to justify our lies and our treachery, we ask for forgiveness and we make living amends through our actions which are contrary to those we use to practice. Rather than being part of a conspiracy to ‘get ahead at any and all costs’ anymore, we are part of a group that seeks to “grow along spiritual lines” and “practice” spiritual “principles in all our affairs”.

It is hard to let go of our self-suspicions! T’Shuvah is the solution that God has given us since the days of the Bible; seeing my part, growing from my experiences, making amends for my errors and being joyous at the good I have done, all help me stay in the solution to lessen my self-suspicions which lessen my suspicion of everyone else. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 276

“Self-suspicion looms as a more serious threat to faith than doubt, and “anthropodicy”, the justification of man is today as difficult a problem as theodicy, the justification of God. Is there anything pure and untinged with selfishness in the soul of man? Is integrity at all possible? Can we trust our own faith? Is piety ever detached from expediency.?” (God in search of Man pg. 390)

Rabbi Heschel brings us face to face with ourselves in his teaching above, he is, as he usually does, speaking truth to power-not just powerful leaders, not just wealthy people, but to the power we all have to choose self-suspicion, to falsely justify our suspicious minds and ways, and to justify our regulating God to the Church, the Mosque, the Synagogue. Just prior to this sentence, Rabbi Heschel reminds us of the power of evil to camouflage itself, to hide itself and our suspicious ways make us partners with evil, help hide evil from ourselves in plain sight, and imbue evil with more power, with more logic, with more rationalizations.

In our political world we are witnessing and participating in the self-suspicious evil and its dangers when we make moral equivalence between Trump and his crime gang/crime family and Joe Biden; we seem to not question Jared Kushner’s 2 Billion dollar deal with the Saudis, nor his selling of his New York building that wasn’t worth much for a profit to Qatar, I believe. Our willingness to just believe the lies of Fox ‘News?’, NewsMax, OAN, etc is an indicator of how deep into suspicion we have fallen, how unaware of the evil that blindly following and/or believing lies causes and promotes. The same is true on the other end, just going along because it fits into the “self-suspicions” we hold dear. This is a recipe for disaster, for promoting evil and for being part of the cover-up of that evil.

Jews have promoted suspicion in our questioning of people who want to convert, Shammai, a famous Rabbi prior to the Common Era, when asked to convert someone “while he stood on one foot”, chased him away, which many Rabbis and congregations still do, making it difficult for someone who wants to join with the Jewish people. Rabbi Hillel, his counterpart, on the other hand, when confronted by the same person, instead of being suspicious, he was welcoming and told him: “The main principle of Torah is what is hateful to you do not do unto another, all the rest is commentary-now go study.” Ruth, was a convert and she was the great grandmother of King David and her conversion was simple: Wherever you go, I go, whoever is your people is my people, whoever is your God is my God, to paraphrase her words to Naomi, who told her to stay home in Moab. Yet, today, with all of our suspicious minds, we reject people at first who want to be part of and, we reject one another because we are suspicious of their ways of being Jewish. How sad we are unaware, willfully blind, and/or just so suspicious that we let evil flourish in our own midst, within the Jewish people, within our Synagogues, within our homes. I fear for Israel with the Ultra-Orthodox trying to take over, with their outlandish and unholy suspicious natures destroying the democratic state and Israel becoming an authoritarian state run by people who, with all their ‘studying’ are unable to hear the call of the Prophets, “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God”.

Our faith, as Rabbi Heschel is indicating to me today, is dependent upon our letting go our our self-suspicious natures, letting go of our ‘rationalizations’ of evil and promoting the evil that is hiding in plain sight. Doubt doesn’t impede faith, in fact, I believe doubt enhances faith. God is so ineffable, that God can handle our doubt and understands humans are incapable of 100% surety, without doubt we wouldn’t learn more, and doubt presupposes a fact already known-God exists, God loves, God is ineffable. Suspicion, on the other hand, prevents true ‘devekut’- true connection and union with God, with another human being. Because of our self-suspicions, we suspect everyone else, we are waiting to be screwed over, we want to make everyone else bad and wrong so we can be in the right and have power. Our self-suspicion retards our living, yet we believe we are using it to move up the ladder!

In recovery, I have found it imperative to heal my self-suspicion and believe in my inner worth, believe my inner truth, and know I have so much more to keep learning. My belief in my soul causes me to keep maturing my soul, seeing where I still have to ‘grow my soul’ so I am never 100% sure I am right. Surety leads to separation from God and a bastardization of faith. I keep open to learn new and see clearer and trust my self a little more each day as well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 275

“It is the new perception of evil that drives man to despair. For what is ghastly about evil is not so much its apparent might as its cryptic ubiquity, its ability to camouflage.” (God in Search of Man pg. 390)

God in Search of Man was published in 1955 and Rabbi Heschel’s teachings stand the test of time, in fact, I would say they were/are prophetic. He is so concerned with evil, with integrity, with faith, and gives us a roadmap to our inner life, to our ability to question ourselves, and too many of us ignore his wisdom, his concern, his care for each of us as individuals and for humanity as a whole.

Our integrity is directly linked to our ability to perceive evil in ourselves, to be humble and seek out the self-centered, self-serving aspects of our actions. While every good action serves us, serves God, serves another, when they are done for our self-centeredness, they easily turn to the “cryptic ubiquity” of evil. Cryptic comes from the Latin meaning “hidden” and ubiquity’s root is “everywhere”. Rabbi Heschel’s use of these two terms together teaches us to seek and find the evil that is hidden everywhere, that is ‘hiding in plain sight’. Yet, too many of us are willfully blind to this truth, we are too lazy to ask ourselves the right questions.

Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man, z”l, taught me (and many others) “what is the question this experience is the answer for” and I began to realize that I had to right answers to the wrong questions. When we are not asking ourselves the ‘right’ questions, we will add to the “cryptic ubiquity” of evil even when it seems we are doing the good! Our inability to question ourselves, to ask the right questions for this moment, to realize that our experiences are not answers, rather they beg certain questions from us is at the root of adding more evil to the world rather than adding more good. This is not to say that anyone is all good nor all bad, it is to remind us to not be smug, not be so certain, not be so impervious to outside opinions and suggestions when it comes to our actions, our thoughts.

We are living in a time where certainty reigns, where humanity’s quest for certainty and our fear of the unknown is so great, we listen to the false prophets, we turn our will and our lives over to ‘the supreme leader’, rather that to God, rather than to listening to and responding to the calls of our inner life. The evil that is hidden everywhere, that we willfully ignore is running rampant in our time, possibly more than in any other time in the history of humankind. We have become so afraid of living in truth, so scared of truly seeing ourselves and maturing our inner life, we ‘go along to get along’ even when we are going along with evil, even when we see the error of our ways. Defend, defend, defend is the way of our world, no matter what the issue is. We are engaged in a battle for democracy, for faith, for religion today, as we have been before, because so many people are willing to believe lies, mendacity, deceptions of another and give in to our own self-deceptions

As we approach the Hebrew month of Elul, the time when we are to take an inventory of our year, a Cheshbon HaNefesh-accounting of our soul, Rabbi Heschel is calling upon us to uncover the hidden evil that we have perpetrated ‘in the name of good, in the name of being conservative, in the name of being progressive, in the name of doing nothing. For me, Rabbi Heschel is demanding a T’Shuvah for all the “cryptic ubiquity” that I/we have engaged in. He is telling us that our very way of being depends on our taking off our blindfolds, “lifting up our eyes to see” as God tells Abraham in Genesis, reaching into our inner life with courage and desire to serve God, not idols, to fulfill the calling we were created for, and to live in truth. We have to make a decision to root out the hidden evil within us, the hidden evil that is everywhere around us, to be like the boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes and say what is, not what everyone wants to believe. We have to take back the words of Christ, Mohammed, Moses from our Holy Texts that the charlatans, the perpetrators of this hidden evil, have stolen and bastardized.

In recovery, we constantly are searching for our part in every interaction, the good and the not good that we do. We have the experience of spreading the hidden evil, adding to it from our times prior to our decision to live differently. While we are not perfect, each day we seek progress in our war with our own hidden evil, with our own self-deceptions. We are asking ourselves more of the right questions so we wind up with the right answers. Each day we root out some evil we were unaware of through prayer, meditation, growing our inner life and connecting to, learning from another human being. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 273

“The self-suspicious man shrinks from the light. He is often afraid to think as he feels, afraid to admit what he believes, afraid to love what he admires. Going astray, he blames others for his failures and becomes more evasive, smooth-tongued, and deceitful. Living in fear, he thinks that ambush is the normal dwelling place of all men.”(God in Search of Man pg. 389)

The last sentence above is, unfortunately, the path many people take, now and throughout history. The fear of FOMO, the fear of one another, has overtaken human beings for the millennia. So many of us live from these fears and act out accordingly. Rather than live in “both/and” most people live in “either/or”. In the latter, we are in win/lose mode, my way or the highway thinking, success/failure beliefs. In the former, we realize that both success and failure, my way and your way, are part of being human and winning or losing doesn’t define us, in fact we never ‘lose’ because we are always learning. In “both/and” we seek to communicate, relate, make connections with people from our souls in order to learn, grow and not need to be right.

Yet, “either/or” thinking is the paradigm most people live at. In this paradigm, “living in fear, he thinks that ambush is the normal dwelling place of all men”, is true, and people in this mode of being describe the world as a dangerous place, they believe ‘they are out to get me’ and join with like-minded people to fight against “those people”. Hence the popularity of Donald Trump, the going along with Republican legislatures and Governors who relish and embrace authoritarianism. People living in this fear, living in “self-suspicion”, living into “suspect thy neighbor”, are hypersensitive to any and all perceived slights. They look for validation of their suspicions, their conspiracy theories and believe the lies of “pizzagate”, the lies that all democrats are pedophiles, the 2020 election was stolen, ‘big brother is listening in’, ‘the deep state is out to get them’, etc. They join with other conspiracy theorists, they will follow Q, they will believe and clap at the lies Trump, et al promote because they have “fear of missing out” syndrome as well. Living in “either/or” thinking makes ambushing everyone else a smart, survival technique, a way of being that is logical (in a twisted way), and a “societal norm”. Rather than promote ideas and solutions, our political parties are more interested in trashing, ambushing their opponents! While they proclaim that “God is on their side”, in reality, we are witnessing the desecration of God’s Name, of God’s will, a bastardization of the Bibles, Koran, etc.

It is not just in the political realm we witness the bloodbath “either/or” thinking and acting brings, we witness it in business, in sports, in our personal lives. Business engage in espionage against their competitors because they have to be #1 or they are a failure. The advertising, the promises, the small print disclaimers, the Super Bowl ads, all try to make (fill in the blank) “the best” and the “only true/right choice” in a myriad of industries. In our families, we witness the pushing and shoving to be #1 child, #1 in the class, #1 in sports, etc. We are so interested in making our children ‘the best’, there are parents who do their homework, who call the schools when their child doesn’t get a ‘good enough’ grade (an A or A+) to have the principals change the grade and discipline the teacher! Have you gone to a kids sporting event lately and heard parents berating the coach, the umpire/ref for their kids ‘failures’? In “either/or” thinking, people do not see progress, they see winners and losers, and if their kid is ‘a loser’ then this reflects on the entire family! In the workplace, people take credit for another’s work, they step on one another so they can ‘climb to the top’. Being a mensch, a decent human being, is laughed at by people living in the “either/or” paradigm. Because of their own fears, their own inadequacies, people living in “either/or” truly believe they have to ambush, abuse, cheat, lie, steal to ‘get ahead’ and, why not, everyone else does it!

In recovery, we are recovering the truth that Spirituality and religion have always known-live in the “both/and” because our “either/or” thinking has led to self-deception, to self-doubt, to self-harm, to self-deprecation, etc. Our eyes become wide-open to the destruction and pain we caused ourselves and another(s) by living in “either/or”, ‘get them before they get me’ thinking. We choose to embrace the paradoxes of life, we choose to open our minds to the ideas and wisdom of another(s), be they contemporaries and ancient sages, philosophers and spiritual guides/leaders, mentors and parents/siblings. Letting go of the “ambush” mentality, letting go of suspicions allows us to breath in the truth of living, it allows us to deal with pain, loss, not being #1, realizing how we ‘miss the mark’ in ways that promote our growth in being human. It is not easy and it is simple, the more I engage in “both/and”, the more responsible, joyous and free I am. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 273

“The self-suspicious man shrinks from the light. He is often afraid to think as he feels, afraid to admit what he believes, afraid to love what he admires. Going astray, he blames others for his failures and becomes more evasive, smooth-tongued, and deceitful. Living in fear, he thinks that ambush is the normal dwelling place of all men.”(God in Search of Man pg. 389)

The experience of self-suspicion, suspicion of another(s) is universal and historical. While it seems to be embedded in our DNA, it is a learned behavior. As I delve into my own suspicious nature and actions, I am understanding the phrase “the inclinations of humans are evil from their youth” found in Genesis 8:21 in a new context. Because we learn how to be “self-suspicious” and we learn ‘perfection’ is the goal/winning, when we go “astray” we have to “blame others for our failures.” There is just no other way to be able to live with ourselves, there is no societal norm that welcomes imperfection, that rewards truth telling, doing T’Shuvah, being responsible for our errors. While parents, teachers, political leaders, Rabbis, Priests, Nuns, Imams, Cantors, Monks, etc will tell us to be honest, to always tell the truth, their examples are less than exemplar in this area! They teach us with their actions how to hide, how to cover up, how to blame someone else, how to lie, how to deceive through omissions. Standing up for what is right, like the Prophets, like Rabbi Heschel, like Dr. King, like Dr. Barber, for no personal gain, doing the next right action purely for the sake of God, of humanity, of being able to live with oneself, seems to be a lost art for most of us. Yet, this way of being, the opposite of blaming, the opposite of evasiveness, the opposite of glib and smooth-talking and the opposite of deception are within our grasp. We can change, because unlike leopards, humans change ‘their spots’ all the time, this is called growing and maturing.

We have to begin by calling out what is not right in our world, what is anti-human, what goes against the teachings of Jesus, of Moses, of Mohammed, of God. One cannot “love thy neighbor like their self” without loving oneself! We stop blaming and take responsibility for our imperfections. Rather than try and kill our “other self”, we learn how to make friends with the parts of us we have denied, bringing together our divine and earthly inclinations, as Rabbi Harold Kushner, z”l, taught me and so many others. Once we stop blaming another(s) for whatever we are perceiving to be ‘wrong’ with us, we begin to understand and appreciate our progress rather than our failure, we do our inventory, our Chesbon HaNefesh, accounting of our soul, and see where we have done well in areas that we beat ourselves up for not ‘being perfect’ in prior years. We begin to realize our ability to learn from, repair and have new responses to situations and ways of being that used to be our Achilles heel. We realize we no longer have to be deceptive, we no longer have to ‘sell’ a false version of events, and we no longer have to evade truth, evade God’s call, evade faithfulness to principles, evade our command to “welcome the stranger, care for the poor and the needy”.

The news yesterday was distressing and joyous, the fires in Maui, destroying Lahina, are so sad and scary-so many lives lost, injured, and impacted in a myriad of ways we have yet to know and understand. Ron DiSantis ‘firing’ a duly elected prosecutor because he disagrees with her politics, her choices, so he doesn’t believe in an Independent Judiciary, which speaks volumes about what he would do as President-a very scary thought. DiSantis is a made up person who is the textbook example of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above and how he can be considered for continuing and protecting our democracy, our constitution is beyond me. The Republican Party has decided that the Confederacy was right, we should make anyone not like us (white, male, Anglo-Saxon, protestant) slaves that serve us- “those people” being anyone who is Black, Asian, Jewish, Latino, Muslim, women, etc. Yet, my home State of Ohio came through- they stopped Republican attempts to hamper democratic methods of change, they repudiated a bill that would have made a ballot measure protecting Abortion and Women’s Reproductive Health Care impossible to pass. YAY Buckeyes!

My experiences in recovery help me to be less evasive, less blaming, and going astray less and less over the years. I am in sync with my imperfections, I don’t beat myself up for my errors in judgement and actions. I know that I am doing the best I can in any given moment and my practice of T’Shuvah, doing a 10th step daily (or so) and a Cheshbon HaNefesh(4th step) once a year, keeps me growing, learning and more accepting of my imperfections and those of everyone else. I no longer suspect myself of ill intent, I no longer suspect myself of hating someone in my heart, I no longer blame anyone else for my choices and actions. I continue to grow along spiritual lines, continue to practice God’s principles in all my affairs to the best I can in the moment. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 272

“The self-suspicious man shrinks from the light. He is often afraid to think as he feels, afraid to admit what he believes, afraid to love what he admires. Going astray, he blames others for his failures and becomes more evasive, smooth-tongued, and deceitful. Living in fear, he thinks that ambush is the normal dwelling place of all men.”(God in Search of Man pg. 389)

Leaning into the 3rd sentence above reminds me of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching in the introduction to the last book he wrote, A Passion for Truth: “To live in both awe and consternation, in fervor and horror, with my conscience on mercy and my eyes on Aushwitz, wavering between exaltation and dismay? Was this a life a man would choose to live?” Rabbi Heschel’s teaching “going astray he blames others for his failures and becomes more evasive, smooth-tongued, and deceitful” was not heeded then and we have come to ‘improve’ our blaming, our evasiveness, our smooth-tongued has become sharper and our deceitfulness is on steroids! Living in awe of Rabbi Heschel’s mercy, awe, fervor, exaltation, his hope, his actions for good, his covenantal relationship with God, with goodness, his commitment to the words of the prophets motivates us, hopefully, to emulate, to learn from and to take action on his life’s work: service to God and service to one another, ie being more human. My consternation comes my blindness, wittingly and unwittingly to “going astray” and blaming “others for” my “failures. It comes from being blamed by others for their failures. I am in awe of Rabbi Heschel’s ability to live in the tensions he lists in the quotation above.

We are so addicted to perfection, we are so engaged in our facade of always ‘looking good’, we are so concerned with power and our hold on it, we are so in need of control, we have forgotten our humanness, our imperfections that are God-given, we have forgotten the stories and lessons of the Bible. Because we are unable/unwilling to do T’Shuvah-translated here as repentance, return, new response- we continually hide from our selves, from our errors, from our ability to improve and do better one grain of sand each day. We would rather blame another for whatever goes wrong, for our failures, than learn from them, than be responsible for them because we are afraid of seeing our true selves and living authentically. This fear comes from being shamed by society for our failures rather than using them to grow, to ask for forgiveness, to return to our souls, our spiritual homes, and/or to have new responses to the situations that we will find ourselves in over and over again.

The ‘popularity’ of Donald Trump and the Republican Party is an example of how low we have sunk in our fear of being real, in our fear of following the examples of King David, Jacob, Judah, and the Israelites in the Desert to turn back to God, to turn back to their authentic nature, which includes fears, imperfections, and learning. Rather than accept responsibility, Trump, the MAGA crowd, the Republican Party have made blaming everyone else into a death match, they are in a MMA fight with truth and responsibility as their opponents and they are out to prove that power gives them the strength and right to lie, blame, become more evasive than the people Rabbi Heschel saw in the 1950’s, and do all of this smooth-tongued deceitfulness in the name of God, when really they do all of this in the name of themselves whom they have made into idols, authoritarians, false gods.

In recovery, the 4th step we take is: “Made a fearless and searching inventory of ourselves”. Prior to being in recovery, we all had PhD’s in “going astray” and blaming everyone else for our failures, being evasive was our normal MO, deceit was at the core of our speech, our actions, our everything. Even though we may have had ‘feelings of love’ we were incapable of acting loving. We are aware of our ability to deceive ourselves and another(s), we are aware of our smooth-tongues and how their sharpness cuts into the souls of people around us, and we know we have to admit our failures so we can learn and grow. We also know that we have to see the good we have done, the basic goodness of being that is implanted in us by God at birth, and doing our “searching and fearless moral inventory” clears a path to our souls that we had blocked prior to our recovery.

I, of course, have a PhD in “going astray, he blames others for his failures”. My recovery is rooted in returning to God, returning to my rightful place, returning to my basic goodness of being, returning to belonging in the world one grain of sand each day. I understand Rabbi Heschel’s awe and consternation. I am grow more each day in accepting responsibility for my errors more each day and I am learning to accept the blame another puts on me and discern my part, be responsible for it, and feel sad that they have to hide from themselves. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 271

“The self-suspicious man shrinks from the light. He is often afraid to think as he feels, afraid to admit what he believes, afraid to love what he admires. Going astray, he blames others for his failures and becomes more evasive, smooth-tongued, and deceitful. Living in fear, he thinks that ambush is the normal dwelling place of all men.”(God in Search of Man pg. 389)

Rabbi Heschel is pointing us towards the path to leave “the hysteria of suspicion” with his teaching above. We have to move into the light rather than shrinking from it. Societally and individually, we need to let go of our fear of being seen for who we are, living in to the call of our souls’ that we were born with, and let go of our need to look perfect, always be right, and accept our proper place in God’s Garden.

In the first two sentences above, we learn that our current “hysteria of suspicion” is an age-old challenge. We are so concerned with “what will the neighbors think” we are constantly contorting ourselves into whatever ‘image’ we are told is acceptable. Because we are “afraid to think as he feels, afraid to admit what he believes, afraid to love what he admires” we live as chameleons. We are waiting for someone to tell us how to think, what to believe and what is loveable! This is one of the root causes of our dissatisfaction with everything, our disbelief in people, our xenophobia, our power hungry self-seeking actions.

We are witnessing what our suspicious natures have done to our children/younger generations. We are witnessing what happens when one “shrinks from the light”, it all becomes dark, we begin to believe the lies we tell ourselves, we engage in deception and mendacity with people, we buy into the deception and mendacity of ‘our people’, and we become slaves to our fears. In our slavery, we make ourselves taskmasters over ‘those people’ who don’t go along with us, we seek to dominate them with our lies, with our deceptions and seek to make them as unfree as we feel because of the fears Rabbi Heschel lists above. Our children have developed a myriad of ‘mental issues’, they have become so dependent they don’t know how to make their bed, their parents start them on anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, ADHD meds at the earliest possible ages. The fable, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is no longer viable in our world because as soon as a young person (or anyone) points out to “the self-suspicious man”, their falseness, they/we are bombarded with hate emails, hate tweets, hate trollers and, in our horror, the response by some young people is to commit or try to commit suicide! Some of our religious institutions, our Clergy, our spiritual leaders of all disciplines have succumbed to their own suspicious natures, are “self-suspicious” people and preach a gospel, a way of being, a dogma that is in direct opposition to the light they claim to be leading us to. Rather than seek to bring themselves and everyone else into the light, into letting go of their self-deceptions, their mendacities, people in power of any kind, from parents to bosses to elected officials, preach about taking up arms (in a metaphorical and literal sense) against these charlatans who are pulling up the window shades and letting light and truth into our world, into our daily activities, using the Bible(s), the Koran, Eastern Philosophical works as their proof that light is important, that with light we can allay many of our fears.

The recovery movement is based in truth, it is based in spiritual principles which are immutable, which have at their roots: “love thy neighbor”, you are not your worst mistake, constant self-checkins, share with another so one always has a different perspective, surrender to a power greater than oneself, self-love, letting go of self-suspicion, come out of hiding, and living in the light. Recovery stresses our imperfections not to shame, rather to acknowledge, normalize and accept our human condition of imperfection. We are always going to “miss the mark” and we have a way back, we have the wisdom and teaching of the prophets, of Bill W and Doctor Bob, Rabbi Heschel, Rev. Niebuhr, and the wisdom of so many other spiritual teachers and guides.

Immersing myself in the wisdom above, I am aware of the times I shrank from the light and I am sorry. I also know that in my recovery I have not done this too much, I have let myself speak the truth that I know, been willing to admit when I am wrong, make T’Shuvah, allow another to not accept it without being angry, accept the T’Shuvah of another easily, and most of all, think what I feel, admit what I believe, and love who and what I admire. I have had and continue to have great spiritual guides, Rabbi Heschel being one of them of course, and I continue to “grow along spiritual lines”, “practice these principles in all my affairs” and “improve my conscious contact with God”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 270

“The hysteria of suspicion holds many of us in its spell. It has not only affected our understanding of others but also made us unreliable to ourselves, making it impossible to trust either our aspirations or convictions.” (God in Search of Man pg. 389)

We have to change our inner life, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s words above. It is time for us to break out of our addiction to “the hysteria of suspicion” and our being “unreliable to ourselves”. Yet to do so takes a willingness to live in the nuances of life, to live into the both/and of life and to surrender to the Ineffable power of the Universe. Today is the 20th day of Av in the Hebrew Calendar, 11 days since we commemorated our part in the destruction of the Temples and other catastrophes in Jewish History that happened because we forgot our allegiance to the Ineffable power of the Universe, we stopped living a life of recovering our essence, we no longer cared about the earth and all its inhabitants, and we no longer “proclaimed freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants thereof”! We commemorate the 9th of Av to remind us to engage in our inner work so we learn from our history rather than repeat it and we look inside of ourselves to root out “the hysteria of suspicion” that seems to rule us.

We are also 10 days from the new month of Elul, the time to do our inner accounting of the soul and repair the outer damage and the inner damage we have done to another(s) and to ourselves since last Rosh Hashanah. While we are taught to do T’Shuvah every day, this month is a time for us to look at our year, our life with a microscope that tells us where we missed the mark and where we did well. Both are crucial to having an opportunity to view the entire picture of who we are. Once we see ourselves in totality, we are able to see the choices we have made, the ways we have been unreliable and the myriad of ways we have been reliable. We are able to witness our connections and service to human beings and the people we have cut ourselves off from. We are also able to discern the actions we have taken and see where our suspicious minds pushed us into actions that were inappropriate and where our souls warned us of danger so we did not take inappropriate actions.

Letting go of our “hysteria of suspicion” allows us to be in “radical amazement” much more often. It allows us to see the newness of the moment, gives us the opportunity to be human and make free-will moral choices, Rabbi Twerski’s definition of what makes us humans different from animals. It is a hard road to recovery, especially given the bombardment of negativity in our political world right now, the blaming and comparing happening in our churches, temples, mosques, etc, the marginalizing of “those” people, whoever “those” people are in the moment. It is also difficult to be in recovery from “the hysteria of suspicion” because there were not enough people who were suspicious of the Nazis, there are not enough people who are suspicious of the special interest groups, there are not enough people who are suspicious of the Heritage Foundation which is promoting fascist, authoritarian policies.

We have to let go of our suspicious minds, the “they are out to get me” mindset, the ‘good guys/bad guys’ as well as the myriad of deceptions and mendacities being promoted today. We have to mature and grow our spiritual core, our soul’s essence, our ‘knowing in our kishkas/gut’ and trust them more so we can begin to accept our spiritual reliability, make our decisions and choices from our inner core and know we can trust our selves, our authentic selves. We all need a spiritual program that we can live into so we are trustworthy to ourselves. We need to follow the spiritual principles laid out in the Bible, the Korah, in Buddhism, and other spiritual disciplines not the lies that religious and spiritual leaders may spread for their own sake, because they are in their addiction to “the hysteria of suspicion” and, joining with the authoritarians in governments, want to be close to power. Reading and immersing ourselves in the Prophets, in Rabbi Heschel, in the Bible(s), in Jesus’ words and deeds, etc make it impossible to stay mired in the lies of the authoritarians, the mendacity of the Heritage Foundation, and our addiction to “the hysteria of suspicion”!

I have been engaged in leaving this addiction, as you can see from my earlier writings. My blindness, willful and real, makes me very sad and taking this time to leave my suspicious mind and listen more to my discerning spirit is daunting and exhilarating. Whether people will accept my T’Shuvah(amends) is none of my business, my commitment to making more and better free-will moral choices from a place of clarity is. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 269

“The hysteria of suspicion holds many of us in its spell. It has not only affected our understanding of others but also made us unreliable to ourselves, making it impossible to trust either our aspirations or convictions.” (God in Search of Man pg. 389)

The second sentence above is empirically true, we have seen it happen throughout history, we are witnessing it happen right now. We have become so suspicious of everyone else we are failing to realize the inner suspicion we carry, we act from and how suspiciousness of our self has impacted the entirety of our living. From our political realm to our spiritual realm to our personal realm, suspicion rules. We are suffering deeply from an inability “to trust either our aspirations or convictions.”

We have gotten to this point because we have relied too heavily on societal norms, we “stand idly by the blood of our neighbor” and we are so spiritually immature we have no true sense of our need for one another, our unique gifts that are to add to the world, nor how to be in truth with ourselves. We understand another(s) through the lens of suspicion, through the lens of ‘what do/can I get from this person’, ‘what’s in it for me’, etc. We are not seeking to give freely what we have, we are not willing to “judge each person with the scale weighted in their favor” as Pirke Avot 1:6 teaches us. Instead, we have come to, as Rabbi Heschel says, “suspect thy neighbor”.

In a strange way, we are fulfilling the commandment to “love your neighbor as you love yourself”, however. Because of “the hysteria of suspicion” has “made us unreliable to ourselves”, our love for ourself is tainted with suspicion, it is overwhelmed and affected by our inner suspicion that we have forgotten how to love ourselves, how to “clean our side of the street”, how to admit our errors and our guilt, etc. We, instead, continually blame another(s) for our miscues, for our wrongdoings, we have come to internalize Goebbel’s teaching: “accuse others of that which you are guilty of”. We are seeing this and have seen this occurring forever and especially with Trump and his followers and his minions in the Republican Party. McCarthy, Jordan, Greene, Gaetz, et al keep accusing the Democrats, the Biden’s, Pelosi, even the Capital Police of wrongdoing rather than hold the rioters, the Trump Cabal accountable! We see this in families, as youngsters deny wrongdoing when caught and blame another person, another family member, because of their inner suspicion that if they admit to making an error, this means they are an error. We have come to confuse making a mistake with being a mistake. We confuse the good, innocent, helpful intentions of another person as a statement of our being incapable. We have adopted the erroneous thinking of society that we are supposed to be perfect and if we are found to have imperfections, we are bad, we will be rejected, we will be banished.

In our religious and spiritual realms as well as our political realm now, we either put our Clergy and gurus on a pedestal that they can never stand on or we tear them down, humiliate them, reject them for their errors. Our inner suspicion causes us to suspect the wisdom, the teachings, the assistance of our spiritual and religious leaders because we can point to their incongruences, so we ‘throw the baby out with the bath water’. For us clergy, spiritual guides, we are so aware of our inner battles, our imperfections and we know the expectation of those we serve, we continue to hide our flaws, we ‘go along to get along’, ie keep our jobs/income, we even abandon our friendships when they are no longer convenient and conducive to our goal of hiding. This is true not just for clergy and spiritual guides, it is true for all people. Our being “unreliable to ourselves” causes us to continually hide, lie, wear masks, put up facades and send people when they are real, imperfect, etc because of our fear of being found out and we send them away to wander in the wilderness of ignorance of their ‘crimes’. For most of us, our inner suspicions are buried so deeply, we are unaware of them and we continue to believe we are acting from our ‘higher place’ and we are ‘doing what is best’ for our country, our business, our family, our institutions, our selves.

“The deception of others is nearly always rooted in the deceptions of ourselves” is a quote from Bill W in AA literature. It serves as a constant reminder and guide for our daily “personal inventory” which, those of us in recovery, engage in daily. While it may take time to root out “the deceptions of ourselves” when we do, we promptly admit our wrongs, we do what we can to repair the damage, and, in my experience, we find ways to be forgiven, reconnect except with people who are still “rooted in the deceptions” of themselves. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 268

“The hysteria of suspicion holds many of us in its spell. It has not only affected our understanding of others, but also made us unreliable to ourselves, making it impossible for us to trust either our aspirations or convictions.” (God in Search of Man pg.389).

These words of Rabbi Heschel are as true today as they were when this book was published in 1955! Hysteria comes from the Latin/Greek meaning “suffering in the womb” and, as I ponder this definition, I find it to be an apt description, especially when coupled with suspicion. The anxiety, the fears, the suspicions, the joys, the spirit of the mother can impact the fetus’ development, just as playing music, talking to the fetus impacts its development. People of all genders suffer from this hysteria, this “suffering in the womb” because all of us are subject to the spell of suspicion, the suffering in our core and in our minds that suspicion brings, the twisted thinking and rationalizations that this “suffering in the womb”/“hysteria” causes.

What is so appealing about suspicion? It is a “conventional notion” and “mental cliche” of societal thinking that has come to permeate all aspects of living. When someone does something good, like the billionaires who have committed to giving away a large portion of their wealth to different charities, there is a suspicion as to their ulterior motives. When someone does something nice and kind for any of us, there is a moment for most people of thinking “what will this cost me?” There is a saying: “no good deed goes unpunished” and, many times in life this has proved to be a truism. If we suspect one another, we don’t have to live our gratitude for the kindness, the compassion, the faithfulness we are given. All of these goodness’ become transactional rather than covenantal, they become a tit for tat rather than acts of grace and courage. Suspicion allows us not to be responsible to participate in the ‘reciprocity of generosity’ that fuels goodness, kindness and is our obligation as human beings. Suspicion gives us a pass in ‘doing the next right thing’ as part of a spiritual discipline, rather ‘doing the next right thing’ becomes part of a check list that we keep to see how much we are owed rather that experiencing the joy of paying the gift of life forward! Our suspicious natures gives us the erroneous belief that we are owed, not owing.

This is a powerful spell to be under, it gives rise to authoritarians, it gives rise to “father knows best”, “I am your mother-do as I say”, and other such poppycock! It causes children to “suffer in the womb” of deceit, indulgence, neglect, prejudice, despair, believing they are doomed or exalted, stuck or can do anything, etc. None of these extremes are true, we give our kids the wrong message, the wrong medication, because we are suspicious of spirituality, of God, of religion, of another(s) as well as of ourselves. The rational mind, reason are powerful spells to be under, they seem to make such sense and are so accepted. The prophets were ignored, Jeremiah was put into prison for speaking in God’s name, for telling the powers that were at the time the errors of their ways, calling on the priests to stop their idolatry of sacrifices while doing the wrong things towards the people. Cozying up to the power brokers and giving them cover using God’s name, Christ’s name, Mohammed’s name is another reason the spell of suspicion is so strong. Using the holy, the spiritual, the foundational texts of our faiths, of our moral codes, for our own satisfaction and power cause suspicion of another(s) and of ourselves.

In recovery, we get to let go of our suspicious natures, it is a sometimes slow, sometimes quick process. The group’s love and acceptance melts away the fear, the loneliness, the lies we have been living in and the path of recovery we choose gives us the experience of working through all of the old “sufferings in the womb” we have held onto. We no longer need to suspect our motives, another(s) motives, we begin to live from our spiritual nature, we hear with more clarity the words and see the deeds of another(s) with “a new pair of glasses” and life just keeps getting better and better.

In doing my inventory as I do each year at this time, I see how my suspicions overruled my inner instinct to embrace. When I have been in the “hysteria of suspicion”, I have reacted badly to whatever I perceived was happening rather than seeing what was truly going on. In hindsight, which is always 20/20, I realize I could not hear the people I trust, I could not see anyone else’s point of view and I wrote people off as bad, wrong, etc. All of this because of my own “suffering in the womb”, because of childhood experiences that I hadn’t worked through yet. I am sorry for these bad actions and my suspicions are being tested and let go of, one day at a time. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 267

“Thus the predicament of modern man may be characterized as an escape to suspicion. There is a tabu on the idea of objective validity, of sacredness or supremacy of a value. It is our implicit belief that there is a vicious underground beneath all action, that ulterior motives are the humus of all virtue, no reality to integrity.” (God in Search of Man pg. 389)

In the Book of Genesis we are told that God sees the inclinations of humans are “evil from their youth”. “Our implicit belief that there is a vicious underground beneath all action” could be the root cause of our being “evil from our youth”. We grow up learning to suspect everything and everyone. Humanity has the capacity and the need to question, to learn, to mine the depths of life and experiences which is necessary to grow, to improve, to learn. Yet, we have turned this foundational aspect of human living into suspicion, into believing “that ulterior motives are the humus of all virtue”.

Humus comes from the Latin meaning “soil” and Rabbi Heschel is calling to our attention how we have come to believe that the soil, the necessary ingredient of all growth, of all virtue is our ulterior motives. Rather than give each person “judge all people with the scale weighted in their merit” as we learn in Pirke Avot 1:7, we have come to judge all people with suspicion, believing people are always acting in their own interests, seeking out the ulterior motives in the good people do. We have come to believe in the meanness of people, in the selfishness of people, and we suspect the goodness of another as a cover-up for a scam someone else is trying to perpetrate upon us.

This, I believe, is the reason that Trump is able to keep so much support even though he has proven himself to be self-centered, authoritarian, a bully, etc. Populism is a label for suspicion, for hatred of another, for believing the goodness of another is a cover for their ‘ulterior” and selfish motives. We are in need of believing the worst of another so we can think better of ourselves. When we suspect someone else, we can feel good about ourselves. “Everyone cheats on their taxes”, “everyone else is doing this” are constant refrains that give our suspicious minds power and strength to point our fingers at another so we can feel good about ourselves and assuage our own inner suspicions.

Because of our ‘false’ ego needs, we come to believe there is “no reality to virtue”. I think of my grandfather, Abe Borovitz, who never said a bad word about another person, who lived the teaching from Pirke Avot above. He would not let anyone else speak suspiciously about another person in his company. He did not suspect people automatically, he did not point fingers at another while doing what he accused another of. Rather, he believed that people had integrity, he took a person at their word, he lived with integrity and a clean heart, a soul that radiated good, joy, and, at times, happiness. When he had to close his tailoring and dry cleaning store, he made us deliver all the clothes that had been left there to the people who owned them, when we said we would not give them without the people paying their bill, my grandfather said: “these are not our clothes, if they don’t pay, it doesn’t matter, we cannot steal from them.” Some people paid, others didn’t, yet everyone was amazed that a white person would give them , mostly black people, their property back anyway! Abe did not have a false bone in his body, he wasn’t rich, he wasn’t “successful” according to societal standards, and he was the most upstanding human being I have ever known!

We learn to leave our suspicions at the door when we enter recovery. Being accepted with all of our flaws, our past errors, even being ‘re-accepted’ after a relapse seems impossible to us. We have been rejected for being who we are so we find escape in our non-recovery patters, we have been suspicious of anyone and everyone who reached out to us thinking “if they only knew who we are, they would run away”. Yet, the people who reached out to us prior to our recovery,saw who we are and wanted to help us grow into our authentic self. Everyone in recovery sees who we really are and want to help us grow into our authentic self. “Let us love you until you can love yourself” is one of the mottos of recovery, it is the opposite of the suspicion Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us. Living a life of integrity may or may not make us rich materially, it will give us a life worth living, a life worthy of being a partner of God.

I am guilty of suspecting people when I perceive they are hiding. I have reacted with anger, with passion, with hurt and I have been wrong to do this. I commit to follow my grandfather’s example more 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

Year 2 Day 266

“Thus the predicament of modern man may be characterized as an escape to suspicion. There is a tabu on the idea of objective validity, of sacredness or supremacy of a value. It is our implicit belief that there is a vicious underground beneath all action, that ulterior motives are the humus of all virtue, no reality to integrity.” (God in Search of Man pg. 389)

Reading these words some 68 years after they were written and given the latest indictment of Donald Trump, given that he is the frontrunner of the Republican party’s nomination for President race, they seem prescient, and Rabbi Heschel was a prophet in his time and for our times. Yet, no one truly heard his words, people did not take action on this teaching so we find ourselves even deeper in “the predicament of modern man”. We live in an era of ‘alternative facts’, in an era of denial of what we witness, in an era of suspecting anyone and everyone who does not march lockstep with our views and our actions/tactics.

Our situation is so dire precisely because even our ‘religious institutions’ are hotbeds of suspicion, have forsaken the words of the prophets, have lost touch with God’s will and with reality. We are witnessing the decline of religion and religious values, of morality and truth not because of the foundational tenets of religion, morality, nor truth rather because all have become “irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid” as Rabbi Heschel states in the first paragraph of God in Search of Man (pg.3). Rather than being the place to counteract suspicion, rather than being the home of sacredness and supreme values, the leadership of religious institutions give loud voice to the suspicion that is inherent in today’s world, in each individuals’ nature. We no longer “love our neighbor as ourselves” we are fearful of everyone, we have deep mistrust of ‘the other’ and our preachers, our imams, our Rabbis exploit this implicit suspicion rather than lead us to the paths of decency and holiness, love and concern, Godliness and connection. Rather, too many of our spiritual leaders are leading us to the supremacy of suspicion, remember David Koresh, Jim Jones, Jerry Falwell Jr., etc?

The response of the Republican Party to the latest indictment is to go after Hunter Biden, to call this indictment, which is based on factual evidence, based on what we all went through and witnessed, based on the public words and actions of Trump and his un-indicted co-conspirators, a ‘weaponization of the Biden Justice department against the frontrunner of the Republican Party nomination for President’. Kevin McCarthy knows the truth because he called out Trump on the floor of the House of Representatives days after Jan. 6, 2021 as did Mitch McConnell, yet McCarthy is kissing the ring of Trump, kissing the asses of the Freedom Caucus, all to stay Speaker of the House, to get re-elected. His suspicion is of his own people, his ‘tribe’ his caucus, not the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives. He has fallen into the morass of “the predicament of modern man” and is rolling around in it, sinking deeper in it and acting as a trained seal.

What do we do? We, the People, have to acknowledge our faith in idols and in the idolatry of suspicion. We have to look inside of ourselves with love and with truth, to seek the sacredness within, to use this sacredness to root out our suspicious natures that are dominating the majority of our actions and our thoughts. We have to begin to do T’Shuvah, make amends and ask for forgiveness from ourselves, from those we have harmed, from God so we can transform and use the powerful energy of suspicion for goodness, for holy actions, to fulfill the divine need we are uniquely qualified to do, to live life in communion and in community with everyone. This new way of being allows us to go to sleep at night with goodness and clarity, with hope and joy, and wake up in the morning with more determination to live into this way more today than yesterday.

In recovery, we call this surrendering our will to God: “God, I offer myself to Thee-to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!”is the 3rd step prayer and in recovery, we are painfully aware of where our suspicious minds, nature and actions have taken us-to our bottom, to depression, to despair so we remind ourselves each day of our need to let go of our suspicions, let go of our need to ‘play god’, our need to worship idols and turn back to God, to experience and use God’s power, love so we can live into a new way of life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 265

“The discovery of this tragic predicament is a most painful blow to man’s sense of spiritual security. What lesson is to be drawn from it if not the advice that suspicion is the shortest way to the understanding of human nature. This it seems is the modern version of the Golden Rule: Suspect thy neighbor as thyself.”(God in Search of Man pg. 389)

Engaging in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above allows us the opportunity to appreciate our need to constantly check our spiritual temperature. It is imperative, if we want to live in accordance with our spiritual nature, to examine our inner life and our rational minds in order to discern when we are acting from suspicion and when we are acting from love. Suspicion of another(s), like deception of another(s), is rooted in suspicion of ourselves, I believe.

There is a great difference between suspecting ourselves, from suspecting another(s) motives and examining one’s motives, one’s “vested interests of the ego”. When we act and live from suspicion, we are denying the essential goodness, the need to be of service to another. We are surrendering to the “evil drive” and we become untrustworthy and, seemingly, incapable of doing the next right thing for its own sake. We are susceptible and give in to the lies of another who appeals to our negative drive, who validates our inner anger and feelings of powerlessness over change. While change is the only constant, besides God, in our lives, many of us fight changes we don’t ‘like’ and feel like a fish out of water in ‘this new world’.

Teaching that slavery was helpful to the slaves because it gave them skills they could eventually use is ridiculous, yet there are many people who will buy into this because of their inner guilt, their inner suspicion of Black people, and their inner fear of losing power to people of color because people of color will ‘get even’ with the white people for the crimes committed against them all these years. People suspect that the inhumane actions they have done to another(s) will be done to them, when another(s) are in power.

The suspicion with which we view another(s) and ourselves comes out in the labels we use to identify human beings; progressive, conservative, Jew, Christian, white, black, Asian, Latino, etc. Once we label someone, we suspect them and their ‘tribe’ because of the stereotypes we have of their ‘tribe’. “All Jews have money, they control the media and the banks, Jews will not replace us, are all examples of the inner suspicions of people who want to demonize, paralyze, keep Jews away from sitting at the table of decision making. Yet, the labels we use have no real meaning anymore. A conservative does not really want to conserve the dynamic nature of the US Constitution nor the dynamic nature of the Bible, they want to conserve their power structure; a progressive doesn’t necessarily want everyone to move forward according to their spiritual nature, they want to move the needle forward for their ‘tribe’ even if it means pushing the needle back for another ‘tribe’. Both of these ‘tribes’ need a ‘bad guy’ to point to, rather than being dynamic and seeing the good in all, seeing that we all need to move forward, continue learning what the next right action is for the particular situation we are in.

We  need to pray/meditate often during the day in order to keep checking in on our spiritual condition. Paraphrasing the Big Book of AA, we have a daily reprieve from our suspicious natures based on our spiritual condition. In recovery and in life, prayer and meditation, study and action are essential to grow our spiritual condition and relieve us of “the bondage of self”. Once we leave the “bondage of self” we get, as Chuck C writes, “a new pair of glasses”, an improved vision of what is, what can be, what God wants, what is the truth of living.

As the month of Elul approaches, the month where Jews do their annual accounting of their soul, I continue to pray, meditate, study, “lift up my eyes and see” how and when my actions were from goodness as well as from suspicion. I am awakening to the truth that suspicion was present in some of my actions, it motivated me in ways that were not always right and good, and it helped me avoid pitfalls and trouble. I am sorry to those I harmed when my suspicions were wrong and I acted them out. Hindsight is always 20/20 and I realize these errors of judgement and how they affected everyone around me. Suspicion does this to me, and I believe, everyone else. Most of the harms I have wrought in my recovery have been based in my suspicious nature and I am committed to the teaching: “give each person the benefit of the doubt” found in Pirke Avot 1:6.  Examining life through Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and wisdom is hard, painful and exhilarating and joyous!  God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 264

“The discovery of this tragic predicament is a most painful blow to man’s sense of spiritual security. What lesson is to be drawn from it if not the advice that suspicion is the shortest way to the understanding of human nature. This it seems is the modern version of the Golden Rule: Suspect thy neighbor as thyself.”(God in Search of Man pg. 389)

Rabbi Heschel’s assessment of the state of humanity is as true if not more true today than when he wrote it some 68 years ago. We are desperately in need of more trustworthiness and more honesty/truth today with the advent of “alternative facts”. We are in a time where everyone suspects the words, the motives, the actions of another person. Because of the belief that everyone acts only in their self-interest, even actions which are good, holy, kind, generous, etc. are suspect to people. We are living in a world where trust is on the wane and suspicion is the norm.

This experience has exacerbated not just because of the lies of people in power, it is exacerbated by the lies we tell ourselves. As Rabbi Heschel teaches, human beings are aware of the intrusion of “instinctual desires” and “vested interests of the ego” in our motivations and our thinking. Because we suspect ourselves, because we know, at some level conscious or unconscious, that our actions are tainted, we believe everyone else’s are also! We are in this “tragic predicament” because we grow up afraid to be who we are, afraid to admit our ‘missing the mark’, afraid of our imperfections, and taught to ‘hide our dirty laundry’ lest the neighbors find out. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is not just a folktale from Hans Christian Anderson, it is a real state of being for individuals, be they power brokers, elected officials, despots, royalty, and/or ‘normal’ folk.

We hide our mistakes from our parents for fear of punishment, for fear of rejection. We witness and experience the betrayal of their ‘unconditional love’ for us when they get angry at our mistakes, we are afraid of their disappointment and their wrath so we lie, we hide, we meld ourselves into being what they want us to be and we carry this on throughout life. We watch the anguish of our parents at the compromises they have to make to ‘put food on the table’ and we accept this way of being as ‘normal’, as ‘this is the way life is’, etc. It skews our vision how to be, it implants in us an erroneous belief that we have “to go along to get along”. It also gives our “evil drive” much more energy, power to assert itself and strengthens “the vested interests of the ego” so we come to believe we have to ‘get ours’ because everyone else is ‘getting theirs’. We learn to make contracts that we can break, take the risk of being sued for our breaking a contract and have lawyers who find the loopholes so we can betray our word, our signatures. “A man’s word is his bond” is an antiquated phrase that is laughed at, talking smack about everyone else is de rigueur, a ‘normal’ way of being.

Because we learn suspicion from a young age, because we learn that trustworthiness is for fools, we betray and get betrayed daily. The biggest betrayal that we engage in is the betrayal of our self, our authentic self, our fulfillment of the divine need we are created for. We know this to be true and we run from this truth, we, like Jonah, try to hide from God, attempt to go in the opposite direction of God’s will and call, and while we think we have succeeded, we are distraught, unhappy, depressed, etc. We put thieves in jail as an attempt to distance ourselves from the thievery we participate in each day: running from the truth and stealing from God, from our true self, from humanity.

In recovery, we realize that our escape into the addiction of our choice was an attempt to hide from ourselves the “exact nature of our wrongs”. Whether it was the facade, the mask we wore, the drug, the booze, the gambling, the co-dependency, etc, we were consciously and subconsciously hiding from and running from authenticity. We come to realize our actions were driven from a deep belief of our unacceptability by people when we were authentically our self. In recovery, we know we may be unacceptable to people and accepting our self, our truth becomes our North Star!

My daily writings give me new spiritual awakenings and I accept that my authentic self is not acceptable to many, that I have mistaken acceptance of my gifts, acceptance of my help as acceptance of me. They are not the same and I became too attached to being accepted to realize this. My gifts, my assistance comes from God and they are not mine to keep and I know this and live this more today than yesterday. I have to accept me, I have to be acceptable to God, and I have to never be a victim to anyone’s betrayal, anyone’s non-acceptance of me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 263

“The discovery of this tragic predicament is a most painful blow to man’s sense of spiritual security. What lesson is to be drawn from it if not the advice that suspicion is the shortest way to the understanding of human nature. This it seems is the modern version of the Golden Rule: Suspect thy neighbor as thyself.”(God in Search of Man pg. 389)

Immersing oneself in the wisdom above, in the wisdom and teachings of Rabbi Heschel from Friday, we can easily fall into the pit of despair, the sense of ‘why bother’, a state of silent acquiescence, a state of going with the flow of suspicion that is so prevalent now as it has been throughout the ages. Yet, this is the very reason immersing ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, immersing ourselves in the spiritual discipline that speaks to our souls is so crucial. Through living Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, through being an active member of a spiritual discipline, we become aware of the pitfalls we are subject to, we are able to experience “a most painful blow to man’s sense of spiritual security” and return home to our souls, to our connection with the Ineffable One, the spirit of the universe and not be defeated by “this tragic predicament”. It takes a powerful spiritual discipline, a commitment to engage in our particular spiritual discipline “in all our affairs”, and a respect for, a learning from, and a connection to one another’s souls.

Allowing Rabbi Heschel’s words to wash over me, I find that “spiritual security” could be an elusive goal. Security comes from the Latin meaning “free from care” and the English definition is: “the state of being free from danger or threat”. When we couple these definitions with spirituality, I remember the wisdom of Rabbi Abraham Twerski, who taught me that as soon as I think I have achieved being spiritual, I have lost it!. It is difficult to hold onto “spiritual security” for any length of time for most of us, certainly for me. In fact, as I reflect, whenever I or anyone claims to have ‘the one right answer’ to our spiritual predicaments, to our worldly predicaments, we can rest assured that I/we have fallen into “this tragic predicament” of our ego’s vested interests and our instinctual desires penetrating our motivations and our rational mind, our rationalizations have disguised themselves as spiritual knowing. The beauty of a spiritual practice is just that, we continue to practice, we are always learning, growing, aware and present in as many moments as possible in order to have the humility to know we will never be perfect, we can never ‘rest on our laurels’, we will constantly be seeking and doing the best we can, ever on alert for our false egos, our “sense of superiority” to rise up within us.

The realization of this “tragic predicament” has had me reflecting on the world crisis we are facing as well as alerting me to the spiritual crisis I have always and continue to face. It is so difficult for me/for us to unentangle our false ego’s vested interests, our instinctual desires from our motivations and actions. This is not to say the good we do is not good, on the contrary, the good we do is heroic because inspire of our egotistical desires, we are able to rise above them to do the next right thing, to go against self-interest at times to aid another, to serve a higher purpose than self-satisfaction. Yet, in looking back upon my life, I also realize the moments when I lost the ability to discern between the “vested interests of the ego” and how even doing the ‘right thing’ can be skewed because the false ego and my instinctual desires, especially to be right, overrode what my soul knew and how to achieve a goal respecting the dignity of another(s). I/we fall into “the tragic predicament” whenever we ‘need to be right’, need to prove we are the smartest in the room, when we are so power-hungry, so narcissistic, so authoritarian, we need to win at any and all costs. It is apparent in our current political crisis’ across the globe and, I believe, we have to be aware of our spiritual insecurity, our spiritual uncertainty so we continue to be aware of the myriad of paths our false egos, our “evil drives” disguise themselves and send us into despair, silent acquiescence, ‘why bother’ as we witness in our individual and communal lives.

Surrender is the first step in recovery, it is not a surrender that is defeatist, rather we surrender to truth, to a power greater than ourselves. We live the Serenity Prayer throughout our day and we take our spiritual temperature often during the day so we catch ourselves early when we drift into “the tragic predicament” Rabbi Heschel is warning us of. This surrender is a gift, it is an awareness of our spiritual uncertainty, our spiritual insecurity so we can constantly be teachable, always learning and discerning, our inner life becomes the determining factor in our actions rather than the rationalizations, the mendacity that used to dominate our thinking. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 262

“Psychological (and sociological) research has disclosed not only how the motivations of our conduct are entangled in the functions of instinctual desires, but also how the vested interests of the ego penetrate not only moral motivations but also acts of cognition.”(God in Search of Man pg. 389)

On this day after Tisha B’Av, after commemorating the destructions we have wrought through giving into to “the vested interests of the ego”, it is crucial for us to “make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God” as the third step of Alcoholics Anonymous suggests to us. If yesterday was meaningful rather than perfunctory,  if we immersed ourselves in the evening and morning of mourning and being accountable and then made this decision in the afternoon of Tisha B’Av, then today marks a new beginning, a new way of dealing with the wisdom above.

We have to acknowledge our “instinctual desires” in order to deal with them, we have to examine our inner lives and see what our instinctual desires are and how we can transform them to serve God, to serve another(s), to serve our higher self rather than just satisfy some craving of self-interest. This teaching of Rabbi Heschel gives us the opportunity to examine the motivations behind our actions, to examine our selves in a mature manner and stop making the excuses we normally do to prove the ‘rightness’ of our decisions and actions.

Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to let go of our ‘need to be right’, to stop validating our selfish motivations, to be aware of the instinctual desires that are motivating us morally and spiritually. Living into his wisdom allows us to see ourselves and our actions truthfully, without the defenses of our ego, of our rational minds. Living into this teachings gives us the opportunity to go through the pain of the examined life, as Malcom X teaches. It also gives us the joy of knowing we can and are serving our higher self, our “good drive”, our neighbor, the stranger, and God. Living an examined life gives us the gift of questioning our motivations, the ability to mature our instinctual desires, and be aware of “the vested interests of the ego”. While difficult to do, while painful to experience, it is the only path to ending our propensity “clothe” ourselves in selfish interests rather than wear the garments of God as Adam and Eve did when they left the Garden of Eden.

We are living in a dangerous era, we are living in a time where, as in the Civil War, as in the times of the destruction of the 2nd Temple, brother is hating brother, senseless hatred abounds, mendacity is the “normal path”, leaders are unable to rise above “the vested interests of the ego” in order to ‘do the next right thing’, everything is tainted with ‘what’s in it for me’, ‘how will this affect me’, etc. Whether it is the current iteration of the Republican Party, the denial of fair and impartial justice in Israel, the bluster of Trump, et al, the refusal of many to hold him accountable, the machinations of Netanyahu, the lies of Putin, the arrogance of Musk, the power of employers, the need of shareholders to put money over people, we are in a deep state of what Rabbi Heschel is describing above.

Yet, we can rise above it!  The 11th step of Alcoholics Anonymous teaches us “sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry that out.” We have the power through prayer, meditation, study, immersing ourselves in the wisdom of teachers like Rabbi Heschel, to transform our “instinctual desires” to serve God, to serve one another. We have paths to separate “the vested interests of the ego” from our thinking and our spiritual life. We have the inner strength to constantly examine our lives, to make our amends, to admit our missing the marks, to accept and admit what we do well. We have the wherewithal to change, to let go of our “stiff-neck” way of being. We can all be  in recovery. Isn’t this what praying is all about for all faiths, isn’t this what meditation does in all spiritual disciplines?

I know that I am guilty of entangling my lower “instinctual desires” with the motivations of my conduct at times, I am aware of how “the vested interests” of my ego have penetrated my moral and cognitive life. I am sorry for those times and the harm they may have brought. I am also aware that I will never be totally free of either experience. I do know and believe the more aware I stay through study, prayer, meditation, the more I will be able to recognize these conditions and rise above them, as my history attests to as well. I also know living an examined life is not easy, it is painful and it is joyous. Knowing what and when I miss the mark, gives me the opportunity to ‘fail forward’, repair harms and move forward. It also allows me to not wallow in shame nor self-pity. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark