Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 236

“Old age often is an age of anguish and boredom. The only answer to such anguish is a sense of significant being. The sense of significant being is a thing of the spirit. Stunts, buffers, games, hobbies, slogans -all are evasions.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 77)

The last two sentences above have so much for all of us to learn from. Even though Rabbi Heschel is not saying anything new or revelatory, he is reminding all of us, no matter what our biological age is, that everyone needs to have a “sense of significant being” and all of us are in desperate need of growing, healing, and following our spiritual knowledge.

There is no amount of money, there is no career height, there is no substitute for knowing in our ‘guts’, in our soul that we are significant. This is not just based on what we do, it is internal, we are all born with a “sense of significant being” and our challenge throughout our life is to live into this sense more and more, reject society’s desire to beat it out of us, resist the methods used by parents and teachers to “be like everyone else” and seek out people who will help us grow this “sense” and not be deterred. It is, to a great degree, a single-minded quest, a quest of our spiritual nature and without following it, we do live in “anguish and boredom.”

We are all aware of the “stunts, buffers, games, hobbies, slogans” that society uses as “evasions” from our spirit’s quest for a “sense of significant being”. Why do people have to continue to amass more and more money? Why do people have to continue to be ‘in charge’ of a company, business, political party? What are people holding onto? It is, as I immerse myself in the words above, a desire to keep a “sense of significant being” even though it is a false sense! It is a false sense of significance because when we continue to amass things, when we continue to hide from our inner life, we are create falseness, we create images, we create deceptions that we portray outward and begin to believe inward. Humanity keeps trying to define itself by what it does rather than by who we are. We are partners in creation, be it with Nature, Higher Consciousness, God, Allah, Christ, is immaterial. All humans have a share, a responsibility, a need to partake in creating something-family, friendships, scientific breakthroughs, the cotton gin, distilled spirits, whatever. We all need this instinctively and, in some cases, without any idea where we are going, just that we are going. Like Abraham in the Bible, we all are “going to/for ourselves to a land I will show you”.

The “stunts, buffers, games, hobbies, slogans” that we use as “evasions” have diminished our sense of significance and our sense of self. We have become so enamored with these “evasions” that we believe they are the goal. “The one with the most toys wins” is a popular phrase and what does she/he win-more “anguish and boredom” because there is never enough to fill the “hole in the soul” that only a “sense of significant being” can fill. Hence the need for more and more distractions, money, power, and the intense need to hold on to it.

We have become afraid to face our authenticity. We seek to hide behind acts of goodness, charity, etc rather than face our selves, rather than engage in the spiritual growth necessary to nurture and grow the “sense of significant being” that we are born with and, in most families, ignored and told we are only as good as our worst action, only good when we are pleasing another or our false self. In older adults we see this when they are “forced into retirement” and they sit around mourning what they lost and believe they have no purpose nor significance any more. We see this in younger adults who believe they can never match the ‘achievements’ of their parents and have become “failures to launch”, entitled brats, and live at home, dreading their jobs and being angry just because. This is what helps people join causes and protests that go against their own self-interest, that spread lies and deceit, that leave them susceptible to authoritarians who promise “only I can fix it” when what is broken is the inner life, the spiritual health of the individual which the authoritarian doesn’t care about. We are in desperate need of renewing our “sense of significant being”, of engaging in our inner life and growing our spiritual health. We do this through daily introspection, be it prayer, gratitude, mediation, exercise, etc and any combination of these. We have to engage in the place inside of us that holds nothing but spirit and an opportunity to see who we are, what our “sense of significant being” is and how to live into it. This is the ‘work’ of every human being no matter what age.

I have been facing and failing, at times, at remembering that I have a “sense of significant being”. I am well aware that I have something to offer and I have rid myself of resentments because I don’t want to light up the addictive parts of my brain with grievances! I am not interested in what was, what happened, I am focusing on what is and what will be. I have learned the lessons of my past and, while not completely free, I am no longer tethered to everyone’s image of me, only to the image of the divine I have to reflect. I am using distractions less and less, I do like to binge-watch a fun series:), and I no longer need anyone to validate my “sense of significant being” as I am doing this more and more myself.  It is a hard road to face myself every day, to live in the space that is nothingness but spirit and me, ego and spirit, both my inclinations and how to manage them, and it is a glorious experience. I believe the move to psilocybin is to help people reach this place of nothing/everything and see their own “sense of significant being” because on their own too much shit is still in the way. I am grateful that I have “been to the mountain and see the Promiesd Land. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark