Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 128
“The ego is a powerful rival of the good. When coupled with gain, when virtue pays, the good has a chance to prevail. When the good is to be realized at a loss, with no reward, it is easily defeated.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)
Gain and loss have become the barometers by which we measure everything, it seems. We are so obsessed with not losing our positions, our money, our jobs, our things, that we go to extraordinary lengths to both hold on to what we have and to keep amassing/gaining more. Because these two concepts are so embedded in our psyches, because society measures us by what we have, what our jobs, our skin color, our abilities, we have lost our sense of good and evil, we have lost our ability to hear the call of our souls, we have come to define good as gain and evil as loss.
Our egos, like the earthly inclination we are all born with, when left unchecked become the rivals of the good and we are witnesses to this phenomena throughout history. This rivalry is inherent in our struggle to be more human each and every day. Our egos, when unchecked, turn us into good people who do bad things and this is true for all people. We have become so obsessed with gain and loss that we become slaves to our egos, we give control to our egos and believe it is a holy action! It makes us live a very narrow life and gives us permission to do whatever it takes to win.
We calculate our living through the lens of gain and loss and Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above is reminding us of the danger of this way of being. From the time we are little, winning becomes an obsession, a ‘family value’, and losing is shame producing, labelling, and soul crushing. Good people will cheat to get their children into ‘a good college’ as we see from the recent College Entrance Scandal, good people will be ‘ruthless’ in business in order to ‘provide for my family’, good people will cross the street when they see an unhoused person or a person of a different race out of fear rather than greet each person as a fellow traveler. Good people will befriend some people in order to climb the social ladder, get into the ‘right’ country club, etc not because they are joining with people to do good, rather they join with people to ‘get ahead’ and be seen as good and worthy. Good people, because of ego, because of fear of loss and need of gaining, will “run after the majority to do evil” which we are cautioned against in the Bible. Good people, in order to gain prestige, power, etc, will step on anyone and everyone in the name of gain no matter who gets injured.
Living in society that is dominated with gain and loss brings about so much ruin, heartache and pain. Putin’s ego and his need to gain stature, power, etc led him to invade Ukraine, put a puppet government in Belarus, not seek a way out of the destruction and murder that he is committing. Hitler’s ego could not allow him to see how Germany was losing the war and his Generals were too afraid to tell them for fear of losing their lives. Pharaoh was too enamored with his ego and needed to not lose the Israelite slave labor so he too ruined his nation, his people and himself. These are historical truths, these people are just like the rest of us. We too, whether on a grand scale in government, politics, big business, in our families, in our schools, in our daily living need to see how we have confused gain with good and loss with evil. We have to stop blaming another for our loss, believing we have achieved our gains solely by our own hands, feeling shame when we lose and hating those who gain. We have to stop measuring our self-worth by what we have and don’t have. We have to see that good is the true measure of life, doing the next right thing is how gain, how we live better and how we serve God/the universe.
In recovery, we have a new awareness and appreciation for letting go of our need to ‘win at all costs’. We know now that doing what is good and right is the gain we need to engage in and celebrate. We have a saying that Easing God Out is a killer of our spirit, a detriment to the world and the wrong way to live.
I am aware of the years I spent in gain and loss, in Easing God Out, in ruining my own living and harming the living of so many other people and this knowledge keeps me from going back to that way of living. I am not perfect and I know that my life has been about being responsible for my part in every interaction and not taking credit for what someone else does-keeping my ego in proper measure. I also know that someone else’s loss is never my gain, that my self-worth is measured by what I have contributed, not what I have. I am also acutely aware of my need to serve what is good according to the standards of Spirit, not society or my own mind. I work hard each day to do good for the sake of good and for the sake of my soul. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark