Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 238

“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)

I wrote about the first part of this sentence on Friday, today I want to engage with the second part. In modernity many of us have lost our sense of meaning because, I believe, today’s society rewards the actions of those who ‘make it’, those who are ‘rich, therefore smart’, and those who give us the ‘latest, coolest, etc’. The long view, seeing where we have come from, where we are and where we are heading is only useful for our individual socio-economic benefit as we witness with rich people throwing money at political candidates who worship the way Russia, Hungary, Saudi Arabia works-authoritarianism and cronyism. We are witnessing the worship of a candidate who is the anti-christ, a bully who folds when confronted with truth in a courtroom where he cannot lie. Yet, these ‘good religious, god-fearing folk’ claim “to be involved in deeds that will generate higher motivations”-the height of self-deception!

As we age, many of us, according to Erickson’s stages of psychosocial development, we move from mistrust/trust to Intimacy/isolation to generatively/stagnation and, finally, to Integrity/despair. In infancy, we learn to trust or mistrust,  from 18-40 we learn either to be in truth with ourselves and another(s) so we can have an intimacy that is more than physical and from there we grown into either giving to those around us, giving to those less fortunate, ‘succeeding’ at work by having meaning and purpose or being stuck in our own self, making money rather than community, self is #1, etc. Finally, at over 65 according to Erickson, we reflect on what we have created, achieved, and we can be satisfied with what we have added to the world, or we can be despairing over the ‘inequality’, ‘unlucky’ ways we have been treated, we can realize our selfishness has left us alone and lonely and we have lived by the adage: “life is hard and then you die”.

The only path to the more positive ways of being from our teenage years of finding our identity or being confused through the stages above is through “deeds that will generate higher motivations.” There are so many stories and case studies of people who were mistrustful of adults because they were never seen nor heard, where kids felt like they could not be themselves because their parents depended on the kids to make the parents feel good, kids who grew up with shame/doubt, guilt and inferiority because they were smarter than their parents, kinder than their parents and they overcame these early wounds and traumas to become the adults, the parents that they wanted for themselves. These types of changes are due to taking actions that motivate us to do more, that teach us how much is possible and we are capable and able to build a life from the ashes of a terrible childhood. For those of us who are helping people who have suffered traumatic events and then kept engaging in risky, inappropriate behaviors that helped to continue the downward spiral their upbringing began, we know that “acting one’s way into right thinking” is the best prescription for change! While therapist and psychiatrists want us to believe that talk therapy is the way, we have witnessed people being in therapy for years and years with not too much progress because they are more interested in the past rather than the present and the future. When all we do is talk about shit that happened, we are more prone to repeat the same situations over and over again.

The prescription Rabbi Heschel gives us changes us-full stop! From the Rabbis to Christ, from Mohammed to the Sufi Mystics, from the Buddha to the Dalai Lama, from the Baal Shem to today, we know that “faith without works is dead”, taking actions which raise our consciousness are crucial to our inner growth, to healing the traumas our inner life has suffered, and to making our spiritual growth possible. During our formative years, without “being involved in deeds that will generate higher motivations” we sink into narcissistic behaviors and thinking, we become more selfish and more about ‘what’s in it for me’, etc. Without doing things that motivate us to grow and reach higher, we will see only this moment and not care about what comes next thinking we are insulated from danger or destruction because of our ‘success’, our money, our ‘friends in high places’ and the real danger for which we have no defense is when we reflect on our lives an see how little we have added to the world, how selfish we have been and how much shame/doubt we have lived in.

For younger people, take note of the despair those of us ‘of a certain age’ experience because we did not engage the positive aspects of the stages listed above, see how you can change, through your deeds, your ‘fate’. For those of us ‘of a certain age’, it is not too late to add to the word, it is not too late to generate goodness and safe relationships, it is not to late to repair the damage we have wrought. It takes an honest appraisal of our life so far and it takes the willingness to admit our errors, repair them and figure out how to use them to help another rather than help ourselves.

The second half of Rabbi Heschel’s words above have been the path for my change. I look back now with some regrets and no resentments, and most of all joy and satisfaction. I have pride in the deeds I did, for the most part, and I am satisfied with what I have contributed to the world. I am also grateful for the loving relationships that I am a part of and that my true identity and self is always evolving and growing without fear of being seen by another. I am still involved in deeds which generate higher motivations as we speak and I know I have to be in order to continue my spiritual growth. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark