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