Daily Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 85
“The confusion goes back to the very process of creation. “When God came to create the world and reveal what was hidden in the depths and disclose the light out of the darkness, they were all wrapped in one another, and therefore light emerged from darkness, and from the impenetrable came forth the profound. So, too, from good issues evil and from mercy issues judgement, and all are intertwined, the good impulse and the evil impulse..”(Zohar Vol. III pg.80b)”(God in Search of Man pg.371)
Immersing ourselves in this teaching is daunting. It is a journey into our inner life and one that is very uncomfortable for most of us. We are seeking certainty and surety, we want to have ‘the answer’ and ‘be right’, we want to ‘be in control’ of our lives, our surroundings, our world, etc and the wisdom Rabbi Heschel is imparting to us, as I understand it today, tells us that our search is for naught, there is no ‘ the right answer’, certainty is a myth we have created to deal with our need to hide from and not engage with our inner life. We keep trying to ‘figure stuff out’ with our intellect, we seek therapy to help us deal with and control our emotions, in order to ignore the truth of everything being intertwined and the only way to discern/separate/distinguish the different strands that are wrapped around each other is through our spirit, our soul.
This is the least attended to in most people, the reason being is that even many of the people who pray, who do yoga, who meditate, are trying to go through their practices, are trying to perfect their practices, not understanding/realizing that it is more important, healthier, and more solution oriented to have prayer, yoga, meditation, etc go through us. We need to have our inner life changed by engaging in a practice of distinguishing what is and the ways to unwrap the good from the evil, the mercy from the judgement, the truth from the lies, etc; in other words, our practices have to engage and change our inner life, they have to strengthen our souls, our spirits, enough for our souls to become the arbiters of our much needed action of distinguishing and separating the strands that are “wrapped in one another”.
We, the people, need to let go of our certainty, our need for surety, our ‘succeed at any cost’, our ‘safety in wealth’, etc attitudes and ways of being. I know that these are societal norms and ways of being, I know these are the deceptions we are brought up on, I know we believe we can be anything, anyone we want to be and the teaching above tells me these deceptions that society has perpetrated on us for millennia, is what is killing our spirits, causing mental health problems and providing the spiritual crisis that is fueling our rampant Addiction Epidemic. We have been in this epidemic for a lot longer than the Government, the Doctors, the FDA, the NHI, etc decided it was an epidemic. Yet, we are willing to find pills to cure our addiction crisis up to and including psychedelics , take homeless people off the streets without giving them the one-on-one individual care they need-just give cookie cutter global answers, etc. Rather that acknowledge how mixed up we are because we are not separating what was intertwined at creation, we are all beating our chests like the Cavemen and Cavewomen to prove how smart, powerful, rich and right we are. How ridiculous after so many 1000’s of years of failure!
I hear a call from Rabbi Heschel for all of us to realize our mission is to unwrap what is intertwined, discern and distinguish what is good and what is evil, what is light and what is dark, what is true and what is mendacious. We were given the tool to do this, our inner life, our souls, and to realize that darkness is necessary, mendacity moves us to seek truth inside of us and to call out when “the Emperor has no clothes on” with a knowing that goes beyond our intellectual certainty. When we unwrap, discern, distinguish what truly is from our intellect, we can always be persuaded we are wrong by a stronger opposing argument. When we unwrap, discern and distinguish from our souls, we have a sense of knowing that is unshakeable, we can allow someone else to ‘win’ and know that we are seeing what is. All of this takes a maturing of our souls, allowing our spiritual practices to truly go through us and change us.
In recovery, we are on a constant journey of spiritual maturity. We are engaging in a path of one step at a time, one grain of sand more of maturity in our souls, our inner life. Upon entering recovery, we become aware of how stunted our inner life, our souls have become. We become aware of how imprisoned we have kept our inner knowledge because of our fear of change. Once we immerse our self in recovery, we are excited for what this day will bring and how we will grow, mature and embrace our life more and more.
I have been the Caveman, I have been the mendacious one, I have shirked by duty and the demand of God to unwrap a piece of what is intertwined and confused. Rather, I have, at times, added to the confusion. I am so sorry and, my entire recovery has been to make amends for these ‘crimes’. I also know that my recovery is not perfect and I have made some of the same mistakes to a much lessor degree and I am grateful for the love, the guidance and the infusion of spirit that God and God’s Angels that surround me keep pumping into me! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark