Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 237
“To attain a sense of significance being we must learn to be involved in thoughts that are ahead of what we already comprehend, to be involved in deeds that will generate higher motivations.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 77)
This week, Jews around the world will read from the Book of Numbers about the spies sent to scout out the “promised land” and while the Hebrew is usually translated as God said to send them out, it could also be that God just gives into Moses’ haranguing and tells him “send for yourself”. This week’s Torah Reading also is where the spies say “we looked like grasshoppers in our eyes so too we must have in theirs”. Both of these instances are examples of not learning “to be involved in thoughts of what we already comprehend”. They are examples of how insignificant we think of ourselves at times. Even the narcissist is not “involved in thoughts that are ahead” of what he already understands. We are being called out here and shown examples of how difficult attaining “a sense of significant being is” when we are unable to rise above our pettiness and pride, our envy and enmity.
Learning from the Torah portion, realizing our own psychological needs, applies to people of all ages, just as a need for “a sense of significant being” is with everyone at all ages. Yet, we continue to fall short of this need, we continue to mask it with the trappings of wealth, the trappings of opulence, the lies we tell ourselves and our endless climb ‘up the ladder’. We are witnessing the fruits of our failures “to attain a sense of significant being” in the ways we believe the lies of the authoritarians, the ways we have loyalty to people who are disloyal to principles of freedom, truth, justice, kindness, love, etc, the ways we continue to be restless in our ‘free time’, our driven nature to be #1, and our continuing ways of seeing “grasshoppers” being reflected back to us every time we look in the mirror.
Staying stuck in the thoughts we already comprehend is the road to perdition, the ways humanity stays stale. We mask our stickiness with technology, with the ‘newest fad’, the shiniest discovery, etc. We believe we can have “a sense of significant being” vicariously thorough he few that are “involved in thoughts that are ahead of what” they already comprehend. Yet, even many innovators get stuck in their own creations and forget to move beyond their latest discovery because there is money and prestige in continuing to say the same ‘discovery’ over and over again. It takes courage to lift ourselves out of the quicksand of being stuck in the thoughts we already comprehend, because it is easier to deceive ourselves that this way is grounding instead of pulling us down. In every generation there are those who are able to rise above the quicksand and when they begin to recruit more and more people to seek to find their own “sense of significant being”, they are usually decimated by some portion of society that is afraid of equality, afraid of equity, afraid of “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. We have seen in the past 65 years the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, Medger Evers, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Yitzchak Rabin, and so many more people who sought to help all of us see the significance of our beingness. Isn’t it time for us to stand up to these bullies, these fear-mongers, these Stalin.Hitler acolytes?
We, the people, are more than capable of living into our unique “sense of significant being”. We, the people, are denying this sense that lies in our souls and in higher consciousness to our psychological and spiritual detriments as well as causing untold physical ailments to ourselves. It is a truism that our body manifests our spiritual and psychological health and illness. Ergo, it is imperative for all of us to put an end to our denial of our need for significance, our need to be seen, our need to be “involved in thoughts that are ahead of what we already comprehend” so we keep growing our spiritual life, our psychological life and ensure the health of our physical body. We are not separate parts, we are an integrated whole, body, mind, spirit, and when any one of these parts is ill, our 3-legged stool tips over. We live into our unique “sense of significant being” when we let go of our old ideas, when we jump into the abyss of possibilities, leap into the arms of new thoughts and boldly go where no other human can-ahead of our own thoughts that are unique to us. We need the support and the grounding of our spiritual friends, our family and loved ones as well as being grounded in what we already know so we can go further. We need to support those around us who are engaged in the same journey. We welcome everyone who wants to join us, knowing their journey to the same end is different from our own and this is not a competition, rather it is our greatest endeavor of cooperation. Learning together, journeying together beyond what we already know while doing it on different planes and paths is the path of dignity, equality and uniqueness.
I have been involved in this process for most of my life. I mistakenly believed in my youth that crime would get me significance because I could make a lot of money. What I have learned in my recovery is money doesn’t buy an inner sense of significance, only going beyond myself does. I continue to read Torah, etc with new eyes, even though I am re-reading these texts for more than the second time. I continue to see how when I fought for significance, I lost it. I know the myriad of times I just was and just am which connects me to learning more and more than I comprehended and it takes a minute or two for me to immerse myself in the new understandings I gain each day. What I also realize is that many times people around me didn’t want to go on this journey with me and we stopped understanding one another and this is when relationships fractured and I am sad about this-both the fractures and my inability to realize the people were not on the same plane nor journey as me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark