Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 312

“Constant danger requires constant vigilance, constant guidance. What is needed is defense in depth, in the depth of every person. But the tragedy of our civilization is the liquidation of the inner man. We are doing our utmost to flatten man. Spiritual resources are being depleted.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.56)

Each morning I am surprised at what Rabbi Heschel wrote 50-100 years ago, I do not think about nor prepare what I am going to write about before I sit down in the early morning. I do this so I encounter the teachings fresh and new without my preconceived notions nor my pondering how to be ‘smart’ about his words. Today is no different and I am realizing, again, how timely his words are, how eternal they are; there is always “constant danger” and most of us are oblivious to it! When we give everyone the “benefit of the doubt” many times we are being naive and allowing evil to flourish. When we don’t pay attention to what is around us, to what people are saying, what their actions tell us, we are being ostriches and hiding our heads in the sand. When we refuse to grow our inner life, when ‘way down deep we are shallow’, we are ripe and totally susceptible to the ravings of a lunatic and the ‘saving grace’ of the strongman. This is how dictators take over, this is how authoritarians win the day. This is how good people will do things that go against their best interests to serve ‘the man’.

We are in “constant danger” politically, morally, religiously and spiritually precisely because we have failed in our “constant vigilance, constant guidance.” “Vigilance” comes from the Latin meaning “keep awake” and “guidance” comes from the Latin meaning “to teach, instruct, point out”. Rabbi Heschel called out to all of us to be aware of our surroundings, not paranoid, just aware and stay awake! Rather than going to sleep and allowing people to “teach us the wrong ways of being, to instruct us in how to deceive ourselves and lie to ourselves, he is demanding we grow our inner lives so we can discern between the lies of society and the truth of our souls. I hear him wondering and crying out to all of us DANGER surrounds us when we fall asleep, when we do not “stay awake”, when we follow the teachings of the liar and the charlatan and not the teachings that raise our souls, educate our inner life. We have to return to this teaching over and over again because we keep forgetting about the “constant danger” that the “liquidation of the inner man” has brought about.

The only reason the far right gains traction across the globe is because we have failed to have a good “defense in depth, in the depth of every person.” We have failed in our schools- many of which no longer teach basic civics; in our religious organizations- many of which teach a false dogma that was never part of the original text of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, etc; and in many spiritual disciplines which are used by some practitioners as a salve for their conscience-‘see how spiritual I am, I practice Yoga and cheat my customers, but that is only business’. We have become pawns and willing participants in “the liquidation of the inner man” by deciding we don’t need any moral and spiritual training after we are 13, after our confirmation, because it won’t help us in our careers, it won’t make us any money. Even the fundamentalists stop growing their inner life at 13 because it doesn’t help their cause, it might make them rebel against the dogma that is designed to make them “excellent sheep” just as our universities and colleges, our businesses and politics are doing as well. We have to say NO to this way of being, we have to listen to our wise elders, to our ancestors, to the words of wisdom passed down through the ages. We have to stop the “liquidation” of our inner lives and souls.

Each of us needs a spiritual guide so we can receive “constant guidance” for the “constant danger” that awaits us. This “constant danger” is falling into a rut of being the smartest person in the room, believing the lies of our minds and the press we get, being empty inside because we have spent “the moral capital of our ancestors and not put any back into the moral/spiritual bank” as Dr. Stephen Marmer said at a conference in Los Angeles in 1990. We have failed to heed his words just as we have failed to heed Rabbi Heschel’s words. It is time for we, the people, to take back our birthright that we allowed the nephew of Laban the Aramean to steal from us. It is time for we, the people, to live into the blessings that Isaac gave us, to reject the “guidance” of Rebecca and the vanity of Rachel, the ‘where’s mine’ of Jacob. It is time for we, the people, to live into our birthright of being created in the image of the divine. It is time for we, the people, to return to the heritage we all share, leaving Egypt, letting go of the inner slavery as well as being saved from the harsh burdens of the taskmasters. It is time for we, the people, to once again say “We will do and we will understand” changing the ways of the Greek society we are in and returning to a ‘Jewish’ way of life, the way of Abraham, “go for yourself/go to yourself … to a land I will show you”, going forward even though we don’t know where because we will learn from our actions. It is time for we, the people, to care for the stranger within us, our inner life, and nourish our spirit, connect with a guide so we can “go for” our self to the place we belong, to fulfill the need we were created to fill.

I have had a spiritual guide since 1987 and while I have changed them, my current one I have had for the past 30+ years. I have not always listened to the guidance and I have paid a price for it, I have not heard clearly his advice and I regret that I didn’t get ‘hearing aids’ sooner. I have done the best I can to live in “constant vigilance” because I am aware of the “constant danger” around me and around the people I have served. Yet, as I look back, I see every time I forgot about the “constant danger”, I did not hear the “constant guidance” of my spiritual guides nor was I in “constant vigilance” and the situations always turned out badly. I know that it is so hard to be in “constant vigilance” from my own experience and I am understanding why “constant guidance” is part of the first sentence. I can’t do it on my own and the guide we choose is our partner in discerning the dangers ahead so we can avoid them, the guide we choose is our partner in growing our inner life rather than liquidating it. Having “constant guidance” allows us to replenish our spiritual and moral bank accounts rather than deplete them. “Guidance and Vigilance”, ‘staying awake and being teachable” is the secret to my success both in my rabbinate and in my daily living. I self-recriminate the times I fell asleep and I am so grateful for the guides and fellow spiritual travelers on my journey! To those who ‘won’ because I was asleep, I have no resentments and I say “God Speed”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark