Living into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path of Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 248

“It is not necessary for man to submit to the constant corrosion of his finest sensibilities and to accept as inevitable the liquidation of the inner man. It is within the power of man to save the secret substance that holds the world of man together. The way to overcome loneliness is not by waiting to receive a donation of companionship but rather by offering and giving companionship and meaning to others.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 83)

In the first sentence above, Rabbi Heschel delineates the issue facing all of us, especially as we age. In the next two sentences he gives us a solution and we have to engage in this solution in order to make it work for our benefit and the benefit of everyone. Please notice that this is not a prescription for Jews alone, it is for “man”/humankind.

The first bit of strength and encouragement we receive in the writing above is that we have the power to solve the problem that society and our history has proven to be so endemic to human beings. Reading the above reminds me of the verse in Genesis that says “mankind is evil from their youth” meaning, in this context, that “the constant corrosion of” our “finest sensibilities begins in our teen-age/formative years, even before our brain is fully formed and our spiritual knowing is so woefully underdeveloped. AND, we have within us “the power…to save the secret substance that holds the world of man together”- overcoming “loneliness” and stopping the “constant corrosion” and a non-acceptance of “the liquidation of the inner” person. We do this by offering and giving rather than waiting to receive. What a concept!!

In an entitled world, which has been this way almost since the beginning of humankind, we sit on our tuches’ and wait to be served. Just as in a restaurant, when we are not served quick enough, we moan, groan, yell, abuse the people we believe should be serving us. When we do not get what ‘we deserve’, we rail against ‘the man’. When we are so haughty and entitled, many people then believe the people serving them are slaves, indentured servants rather than human beings trying to make a living the best, and sometimes only, way possible for them. We are witnessing the “waiting to receive” attitude and how it makes people mean and miserable in our political realm, aka MAGA crowd who all feel ‘less than’ when anyone of color or non-christian/catholic gets ahead of them, accomplishes something they believe is theirs, earns more than they, etc. The entitled need someone to put down and the people on the far ends of both political poles continue to be exploited because of  this need by their ‘leaders’ who are actually opportunists seeking their own donations of money, power, status.

In an entitled world, we watch how companies and corporations cry and whine about being compelled to use safe practices, how they pay off people quietly for the wrong doings they have committed, how they ‘make’ people sign NDA’s in order to get the money due them, etc. We are witnesses to the exploitation of humankind by the anti-vaxers who want to live “survival of the fittest” idea to its illogical solution. We are watching ‘good people of faith’ deny the right to choose the health care they want and is best for them for millions of women. We are watching these ‘good christian conservatives’ roll back the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of the 1960’s because ‘there is no prejudice anymore’ according to Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas. We are watching our youth, in their search for connection, turn to a myriad of faux connections, their screens, the amount of likes on social media, alcohol, drugs, etc and blaming them, their parents rather than seeing how the unchecked marketing of drugs, ‘feel good’ panaceas, pushing entitlements/celebrities, and having the ‘good news bible’ of white supremacy blaring from right-wing conservatives day in and day out.

In all of these situations and more, truth is forgotten, alternative facts are all that matter, what the ‘leader’ says is good and what truth says is bad. Love is turned into false worship of the authoritarian and giving is for suckers! Here is where Rabbi Heschel’s solution is so crucial for the welfare of humanity. “Loneliness” can only be “overcome” when we are  “offering and giving companionship and meaning to others”. What I hear Rabbi Heschel calling us to do is to go beyond our selfish, entitled ways of being; to be “maladjusted to words and notions” in order to have “an authentic awareness of that which is” as he writes in his description of wonder in “Man is Not Alone”. We see bumper stickers saying “practice acts of random kindness”, we read often about the “good” people do for those in trouble, we are hearing more and more super-wealthy people giving the bulk of their estates to charities, we watch in awe of the men and women who volunteer for our Armed Services, we are in gratitude for the people who work in non-profits helping those in need while they could make a lot more in the for-profit world. We are witnesses to “thousands points of light” as President George H.W. Bush spoke about. Some of us are participants in these actions, veterans of these offerings and giving opportunities of companionship and meaning and how much richer are our lives for it. Yes, as we age, we have to make room for the younger generation and we have to raise them up right-as my grandmother used to say. Many in the recovery movement, like the therapeutic world, is succumbing to the greed of human beings and more about the bottom line of profit and loss than about the bottom line of saving a soul. As our institutions and governments succumb to the “constant corrosion of our finest sensibilities”, we, the people, the elders, have to help them reverse their corrosion through “offering and giving companionship and meaning” to themselves as well as to others. We have to help them remember their need to serve and offer, their need for meaning and “it is not good for humans to be alone”.

I have spent my entire recovery living into the solution Rabbi Heschel offers after spending over 20 years in abject loneliness which corroded my being and I kept selling/giving away my inner life and finer sensibilities. Since the beginning of my recovery, Rabbi Heschel has understood my loneliness and always has a solution for me to be connected. “Offering and giving companionship and meaning to others” has enriched my life to the point where even now, in my ‘older years’ when not too many people seek me out, I am not lonely, because I keep offering and giving my truth, my wisdom, my spirit and my love to all around me. This makes the rejection of some like flicking dust off of my clothes sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. I know that I am never lonely. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living into Rabbi Heschel’s Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 247

“It is not necessary for man to submit to the constant corrosion of his finest sensibilities and to accept as inevitable the liquidation of the inner man. It is within the power of man to save the secret substance that holds the world of man together. The way to overcome loneliness is not by waiting to receive a donation of companionship but rather by offering and giving companionship and meaning to others.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 83)

This first sentence above, written 63+ years ago, is prescient. Rabbi Heschel warning us all about “the constant corrosion of his finest sensibilities” should be ringing 4-Alarm Fire Bells in all of us. Sociologists can document the corrosion since the beginning of time with brief interludes of humanity recognizing it, stopping it, growing our finest sensibilities only to have people seeking absolute power spread acidic tales which then begin the corrosion anew. We do not have to “submit” to this merry-go-round that has become acceptable, ‘the way of the world’ as some like to say. We do not have to accept the liquidation of our inner life into a pool of goop. We can and, I am positing, we must hold onto what makes us human, what makes us worthy of our existence and being a partner with the source of the universe, our inner life. What is it in human beings that we allow this “constant corrosion” to occur? I have been working with people, including myself, for the past 35+ years to help us reverse this corrosion and in order to do this, we have to first end its allure for us. Every human being is susceptible to this corrosion and suffers from it, some more than others and some are more aware of the corrosion than others as well.

The allure of “the constant corrosion of his finest sensibilities” is not having to live up to the standards set by our higher consciousness, our higher power, God, Allah, Jesus whatever you understand as the “prime mover” as Aristotle posits. Once we realize our inability to live into these standards, we continue the error of Adam in the 3rd Chapter of Genesis, we hide! We are afraid to admit our errors, we have such low ego strength that we are incapable of saying “oops I made a mistake” for fear of being laughed at, for fear of engaging in self-loathing, for fear of not being perfect among other fears. Rather than realize that to be human is to be imperfect, rather than appreciate the “Spirituality of Imperfection” a book that Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketchum authored, humanity/society has propagated the lie that we can and should be perfect-how ridiculous and how it decimates our “finest sensibilities”. When we begin to buy into societal norms and its mental cliches, we lose our ability to be human, we lose our ability to truly connect with another and we lose our ability for compassion, empathy and love for another human being and for ourselves. Our “finest sensibilities” teach us how to forgive the errors of another person, they give us the ability to appreciate the differences/uniqueness of everyone else and see their uniqueness as a gift that we can use for our benefit just as they can use our uniqueness for theirs. Rather than compete and cheat, our “finest sensibilities” help us cooperate and celebrate the ‘wins’ of another and know our ‘wins’ are part of the greater good we participate in. It is when we see life as a zero-sum game, when our egos are so weak, our spirits so underdeveloped that we believe we must “win at any and all costs” that lying, deception, cheating, using of people becomes the prevalent way of being, the pathways of faux connection, optics, looking good on the outside are the only things that matter-hence the emphasis on ‘celebrity’, power, knowing it all, doing good to hide the rot inside, etc.

We have willingly participated in the “liquidation of the inner man” since time immemorial. Slavery is such a liquidation, living the societal norms are liquidations of our inner life. Needing to be right is a liquidation of our inner life as is the need to be subservient so we can ‘get ours’ from someone we loathe. All of the ways we engage in deceiving ourselves, deceiving another(s), feed our false egos, hide behind the curtain a la the wizard of Oz, we are liquidating our inner life. Religion, as it has been practiced in modernity and before, has contributed to this “liquidation of the inner man” by demanding perfect adherence to bastardizations of the tenets found in the Bible, by making Jesus into a caricature of what the New Testament describes, etc. All of this to empower despots, to make the ‘common folk’ (almost all other people than those in power) subjects to their whims and worship the authoritarians. We see this in our Boardrooms, in our Politics, in our Institutions, in our families. When we are unable to admit our errors in judgement and in deeds, we are liquidating our inner life and we are adding to the corrosion of our “finest sensibilities”. When we are unable to give credit where credit is due, when we need to steal from one another, when we need to be jealous of another, when we need to feel bad about ourselves and blame someone else for our shortcomings we are liquidating our inner life and corroding our “finest sensibilities”.

Through these past 35+ years, under the tutelage of great teachers, my people and I have found a solution-it is an age-old solution- T’Shuvah is part of it, admitting my errors, realizing who is/was harmed by them, how they were/are harmed and what I need to do to restore the dignity I stole from them and myself as well as how/what I need to do to stop me from repeating this way of being. It is, actually, a return to the being I was created to be, that my soul/spirit is calling for me to be. As a former thief and conman, I have a PhD in the liquidation of the inner life and the corrosion of my “finest sensibilities”, so making this 180 degree turn was difficult and exhilarating, hard and the simplest action I have ever taken. Another part of the solution 1000’s of people and I have found is: Gratitude! We are told in the Bible: eat, be satisfied, and bless. From this we have found that eating is something we should do often (in proper measure of course-something I have yet to conquer completely), satisfaction doesn’t last forever nor should it because then we would stop growing, and be grateful for what we have and what we don’t have- cherish the teachers and friends, family and loved ones we GET to hang out with and learn from, wrestle with and embrace. Living into our “finest sensibilities”, ending the “liquidation of our inner life”, helping another human being do the same- this is the Jackpot, the Big Win of life and I am grateful to all who help me achieve this way of being and continue to help me be grateful and do T’Shuvah. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living in Rabbi Heschel’s Teachings - A Daily Path of Spiritual Growth

                                            Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

                                                             Year 3 Day 246

“This is one of the beauties of the human spirit. We appreciate what we share, we do not appreciate what we receive. Friendship, affection is not acquired by giving presents. Friendship, affection comes about by two people sharing a significant moment, by having an experience in common.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 83)

The last two sentences above are crucial to our understanding of what a friendship, an intimate relationship is actually based on. Most people are acquaintances, they are often need based and therefore time limited, and when the significant moment arrives where we actually need another person, our ‘friends’ turn out to be acquaintances and/or ones who show up when they need something and not the other way around. Other instances are the ‘friends’ who want to cozy up to people they think will help them or give them some celebrity/gravitas because of their closeness to hip, to power, to wealth, etc. There can be no real friendship nor true affection in “role to role” relationships. These are the I/It relationships that Martin Buber speaks about. They are also what I call I/object relationships where one person treats another as a tool, an object for their benefit with no real feeling or caring about the welfare of the person they are using.

We are witnessing this phenomena more and more in modernity and we recognize it more and more the older we get. We have the opportunity to impart the hard earned wisdom of what true friendship is from all of the battle scars we have from getting it wrong. We have the obligation to teach the younger generation of our errors and triumphs in having authentic affection for another human being and what it takes to maintain and grow this affection in all of our relationships, especially our intimate ones. We have become afraid to share a “significant moment” with another person because we have been laughed at so often for our seeking of real connection when so many people are only into ‘faux’ connection. We watch our political leaders put down authentic moments of grief by blaming people not guns so there is no need for gun control. We are witnessing one party relish the thought of being fascists and dictators while reveling in the idea they can end democracy and do this in the name of our founding fathers! No wonder our children and grandchildren don’t have faith in anything any more. No wonder they are so susceptible to the lies of Hamas and the far left as well as the far right and religious fanatics- they are searching for certainty and we in the middle have forgotten to teach them that there is no certainty, we are all just doing what we believe is best with the information we have in the moment. When we can share a significant moment, when we acknowledge our need to have a common experience, then we can hear one another’s perspective and wisdom which leads to authentic affection and true friendship.

We all need to stop believing in “alternative facts”, in the rewriting of history as the Republican Party is trying to do regarding Jan. 6th, as the Supreme Court is doing with the immunity case, the Dobbs decision, and the other ones they have overturned and look forward to overturning. We are not a country governed by the rule of law anymore, we are being governed by fascists and a Supreme Court that cares more about the wishes of the rich than real justice. We have to end our fascination with the Reality TV show that Trump and his minions and his puppeteers are running on our political stage. We have to do this because it has infiltrated all our relationships, it has made us suspect of everything and everyone. We are afraid to speak about the dangers that are hanging over us lest someone who is a MAGA will berate us, will shame us, will enrage us. We have lost the ability to “share a significant moment” because we are afraid of being real. This is one of the ways we have hindered our knowledge, I believe. We have bought into the lies of people so much that we accept the societal norms and cliches that we know are wrong and destructive. We have allowed these deceptions to penetrate our being and we have given into our own self-deception.

We have the solution, however. Letting go of our need for certainty, revealing to ourselves our self-deceptive ways, and offering a hand in true friendship and authentic affection to those who have helped us, those who have reached out to us, those who seek real connection with us. They are all around us, our children who need to see us as human beings with all of our flaws and greatness; people we work with who need to know we care about them, their families, their way of life; parents and family who need to know we know they did the best they could to connect and help us grow; friends who reach out and need our help and need to be needed by us; and the people we pass in the street with whom we share our space with and are in need of a smile and/or a hello. In other words, everyone we come into contact with gives us an opportunity to share a “common experience”-being human and a “significant moment”, the one we are in right now. Taking off our armor, letting down our guard will result in some pain because not everyone we meet will honor our attempts at true connection and the pain will pass quickly while the guilt from not doing this stays with us and turns to shame when we find out the ramifications of our imperviousness. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above gives us the wake-up call, the opportunity to ask ourselves if we are happier in our own bubble or do we realize how necessary the true friendship and authentic affection that comes from “sharing a significant moment” and “having a common experience” are?

I have been blessed with both authentic affection, true friendship, real connections and the faux ones as well. The pain of finding out someone is having a faux relationship with me when I believed it was a real one is excruciating. I also know it is part of being human, I will recover from the pain and living as an open book, offering real affection is better than living the other way-since I have done both. I understand my grandfathers belief that if someone cheated or hurt them, it is sad for the other person and not a reflection of who they were. I am coming to the same realization, slower than they did and getting there. I know the “common experiences” I have had with people who have forgotten them or cared about them only as long as they needed something, I know the “significant moments” I have shared with people who decided they didn’t matter. I know the people for whom my way of being became too difficult for them and they decided to forgo the friendship, the relationship we had forged together. I know the people who withdrew their affection when it became uncomfortable to stand with me. I get it and blame no one, I understand the difficulty in maintaining friendships and have let some go that I needed to hold onto. I am grateful for the affection and friendship I share with people and for the love and gratitude I share with them and with my family. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living into Rabbi Heschel’s Teachings - A Daily Path of Spiritual Growth

                                             Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

                                                             Year 3 Day 245

“This is one of the beauties of the human spirit. We appreciate what we share, we do not appreciate what we receive. Friendship, affection is not acquired by giving presents. Friendship, affection comes about by two people sharing a significant moment, by having an experience in common.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 83)

Still in the chapter “to grow in wisdom” from his lecture at the Conference on Aging in 1961, Rabbi Heschel presents a very interesting concept above, one which humanity in the modern age has tried to deny and failed in our denial of the truth above. In a society that is so concerned with wealth and power, thinking these two things will protect us against old age and death, we have found neither one engenders authentic “friendship” nor “affection”. In the 63+ years since these words were written, society has focused more and more attention on “getting rich”, on “making it big”, on staying young looking through Botox, cosmetic surgery, etc. The idea of making it on your own has strengthened and the rich have given more and more to their children who appreciate it less and less. We have become an entitled society because of a lack of appreciation and gratitude for what we have acquired. We believe we ‘earned’ our wealth through our brilliance, rather than know we are blessed and have used our skills to make something of value; when being a celebrity because of marketing overtakes being valued because of what you add to the world, humanity is in grave danger of losing it’s appellation “very good”(Gen.1:31)

We have seen for a very long time human beings’ reluctance to share, we see it first in infancy, where we teach our children to share with their friends, we allow them to cry when they continue to believe they are the center of the universe, we help them learn self-restraint and then we see selfishness and harshness come back in their teen years-think “mean girls”, “jocks vs. eggheads” etc- and without parental influence, without teachers stepping in, this behavior gets normalized and we raise generations of “ME/MINE” adults. This belief that I can have whatever I want with little or no effort has resulted in a generation of “failure to launch” adults as written about by Mark McConville in 2021. He is recounting what Clergy, Parents, Therapists, Psychiatrists have seen for a long time and what has resulted in therapists and psychiatrists getting a lot of therapy hours and payments to ‘combat’ this dreaded disease. Rather than heeding Rabbi Heschel’s words, society has ignored them to our peril and to the detriment of our youth and young adults.

To share an experience with our children, with our peers is to join together in joy and sorrow, in creating and in letting go throughout our lifetimes. It is to teach gratitude and responsibility from a young age, it is to not allow the children to be the center of attention always-their needs come before the parents and/or anyone else’s-and to not ignore them as well. Finding this balance has been the bane of our existence since the beginning of humanity! Yet, we keep trying to find the right measure of both and, in our failures, we continue to learn more and more. We learn that giving our kids everything and/or nothing is not a path to appreciation and affection, we have learned that being our kid’s ‘friends’ means we relinquish our authority as their parents and elders as well as our wisdom from our own experiences. While each generation has proclaimed they will raise their children differently, they will raise the standards of living to be better, we are witnessing today more selfishness, more entitlement, more poverty, more senseless hatred, more mendacity, more danger to freedom than since before the American Revolution!

In our drive to ‘succeed’, we have almost lost one of “the beauties of the human spirit”, sharing, allowing people to work for what they have, and gratitude for what we have. As wisdom found in Chapters of our Ancestors teaches: “Who is rich? One who rejoices in their place, portion” ie, one who wants what he/she has. When we live a life of honoring others, of learning from everyone, a life of subduing our ‘evil’ inclination in order to use the energy to do good, and we find our ikigai, our purpose-all we can have is gratitude and the desire to share with another, share with the world our unique talents and gifts as well as receive from another(s) their gifts and talents so one doesn’t have to do it all. Living this type of life allows us to live in proper measure, to know we tend only a small portion of the garden and we need people around us to tend their portion so the weeds don’t become overgrown and wild. While we have lost this way of living in many areas of the world and in our own country, we can regain this path, we can teach our children and help them live lives of meaning, we can stop the accidental path of life from overwhelming us and live with and on purpose. We can return to a time where giving was another form of gratitude, where sharing our wealth, our ideas, our skills was the path we all took in order to “make a more perfect union”. We have to end our practice of “buying our children’s affection”, we have to end our practice of “I am only as happy as my unhappiest child”, we have to teach our children how to share and stand on our own, we have to help our friends with our support and counsel, we have to ask for and take the same from them. We have to change our ways so we can grow into the people our individual souls want us to be. We do this by sharing, not by taking.

I have lived both ways-entitled because my father died when I was a young teenager, thinking that I deserved more because I was so traumatized and this led to crime, alcoholism and prison. It also led to me thinking I was smarter than most people because I could ‘get over’ on them. At age 37, I found myself in a prison cell with very few people to call, seen as a pariah by my family and peers, except for the other people who were in the same boat as me. My change happened because of an ecstatic experience and my daughter’s letter to me. I made a decision that I could not live the way I had been living and honor my father nor be a father to my daughter. Since then, Heather and I have had many shared experiences. I have many shared experiences with Harriet, with the people I have been and am Rabbi for/to. I relish these shared experiences because they help me grow in gratitude, in awe, in learning and in witnessing the beauty of life. I am joyful for all the people I know who have ‘made it’ and the spiritual growth they have attained. I am grateful that I don’t ‘take’ anymore, I earn the respect and the love that I have because of the sharing of experiences, wisdom, kindness, love and truth with the people in my life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living into Rabbi Heschel’s Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth and Happiness

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 244

“The years of old age may enable us to attain the high values we failed to sense, the insights we have missed, the wisdom’s we ignored. They are indeed formative years, rich in possibilities to unlearn the follies of a lifetime, to see through inbred self-deceptions, to deepen understanding and compassion, to widen the horizon of honesty, to refine the sense of fairness.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg.78)(Bold is used to highlight the sentence I am writing on)

In our youth, we are sure of our “rightness” in all of our thoughts and actions. Youth is a time of coming into our own, so to speak, and we are hungry to prove ourselves. We are sure we know more than our parents, as Mark Twain’s quote shows: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Today, most of us are unable to recognize “how much the old man had learned” when we are into our middle age much less at “21”. While it would be convenient to blame the young people, I find much of the fault lies at the feet of older people.

In our quest to stay ‘relevant’, to be ‘hip’ for our grandchildren, to not be ignored by our children, older adults do not spend enough time “to deepen understanding and compassion” within themselves and to teach our children how to do the same. In Deuteronomy Chapter 6, verse 7 we are told to “teach your children” all of our learnings throughout our lifetime-there is no end for our engaging in this Mitzvah. Yet, we have not done the work to “deepen understanding and compassion” within our selves enough to pass this wisdom on to our children. Many times, even when we have, our children and grandchildren are ‘too busy’ to listen and we give up too easily.

In our older years, we have the time and the luxury to look back on our youth, on our actions and see what we have learned from our ‘missing the mark’ and what we have learned from when we ‘hit the mark’. Many of us forget to review our successful ventures and miss out on important lessons they have to teach us. This review of when we ‘hit the mark’ also allows us to “deepen our compassion” for another who didn’t ‘hit the mark’, for another whom we may have harmed knowingly and/or unknowingly in our ‘march to the top’. We get to see how even when we did what was best for the situation at hand, we may have harmed another human being who also was doing the best they could. Taking the time to “deepen our understanding” of our decisions and our actions will bring us to a new level of vision and knowledge. It will give us the insight of growing our inner life and we will better be able to find the ways to speak to our children and grandchildren in ways they can hear us instead of expecting them to understand our way of talking. Allowing ourselves to truly look at ourselves and our actions for the sake of being able to live with ourselves and with everyone around us in truth, in compassion, in fairness and in love will give more power and meaning to the life lessons we impart and how to move forward a little better as we age.

“To widen the horizon of honesty, to refine the sense of fairness” is a call to “erase the margins” as Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries teaches. It is a call to let go of the barriers we have erected throughout our lives to ‘protect’ us from ‘those people’, from ‘that happening to me’, and other such self-deceptions. When we “widen the horizon of honesty”, we are letting go of self-deceptions, we are jettisoning the societal norms and mental cliches that keep us stuck and we are taking a journey into the wonder of life, to a place of maladjustment and awe, to a place of mystery and beyond. We become explorers going to places never thought possible by society-we are Christopher Columbus, on a journey to discover a whole new world-truth and fairness, freedom and celebration, wonder, awe, surprises, and joy. In our youth, most of us are too busy trying to ‘make a living’ to take this journey and we get used to being stuck. There are some who go beyond and, while for years they were laughed at, in recent times they have become billionaires. In our ‘older years’ we have the luxury of time to reflect and see how, where, when we did “widen the horizon of honesty” and when we did “refine the sense of fairness” and when we didn’t. We have to obligation to teach these lessons to our children as well as repair our inner life for the damage we wrought on it when we failed to act in these ways. Taking this last phrase to heart and taking it seriously gives us an amazing opportunity to be more relevant, to be more important in the lives of our children and other youth and to impart the hardscrabble wisdom we have attained.

As I immerse myself in the words above, I realize that I have continually sought to “deepen my understanding and compassion” throughout my lifetime-in my youth it was this way of being that caused me to not be such a good criminal! In my teen years I was giving my “ill-gotten gains” to my mother and my brother because they needed it. In my older years, I lost this way of being and it became about me and my first wife and daughter-or so I said to myself. In fact, it was about the lies I told myself and my forgetting the teachings of my father and grandfathers of how important the last phrase above is. In my recovery, I have done a good job of living into these teachings and, as I reflect back, I realize my hurt and wound, my sense of betrayal at certain times caused me to be blind and less than compassionate, narrowed my “horizon of honesty” and my sense of fairness was about me not thinking about the other people were seeing the experience. I am sorry about this and this daily blog is my way of sharing what I have learned and how to live into this learning for my family, friends and everyone it reaches. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Wellness

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 243

“The years of old age may enable us to attain the high values we failed to sense, the insights we have missed, the wisdom’s we ignored. They are indeed formative years, rich in possibilities to unlearn the follies of a lifetime, to see through inbred self-deceptions, to deepen understanding and compassion, to widen the horizon of honesty, to refine the sense of fairness.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg.78)(Bold is used to highlight the sentence I am writing on)

The bolded half-sentence above is eye-opening and, frankly, a shockingly wonderful way to experience “old age”! While there are two opposing views of “old people”, one that shows us doddering, mumbling, wearing Depends, etc. and the other which Jack LaLane portrayed of totally fit, being like the 90 year-old marathon runners. The reality is most of us are neither doddering nor fit enough to run a marathon, we are somewhere on the continuum and, many of us are trying to find things to occupy our time, be it children, grandchildren, hobbies, pickleball, golf, shopping, museums, lunches with ‘the girls’ or ‘the guys’…

And in the midst of this search, this time-killing soul crushing search for relevance comes the teaching of Rabbi Heschel above. “Old age” is a time to formulate our legacy, to reflect on what we have accomplished and what we still need to accomplish, to see the “possibilities” that abound for us and, especially, the “possibilities to unlearn the follies of a lifetime”! We are given these years as a gift, not a punishment. Our experience of “old age” does not have to be one of waiting to die nor one of filling our time trying to be relevant and needed. We are relevant and needed just because we are alive, just because we have a wealth of experience and knowledge as I wrote about in prior days. We are have to realize the truth of the teaching above, not wait for someone else to validate us. One of the major follies of our lifetimes is that we have to prove our relevance, we have to be a human doing rather than a human being! Being the richest is not a badge of honor, being the shrewdest doesn’t get you a better seat in the next world, having the most toys wins us nothing special in death. Yet, these and so many more follies we continue to chase. “I am only as happy as my unhappiest child”,“If I only had _______, my life would be good”, and so many other “follies” we have believed Yet, these and so many more follies we continue to chase. “I am only as happy as my unhappiest child”, “I have to put all my affairs in order so my children don’t have to deal with them”, “My only joy is my grandchildren, children,…”, “If I only had _______, my life would be good”, and so many other “follies” we have believed. Isn’t it time to use these “formative years” to end our pursuit of these follies we have built up and spent our lives chasing?

Del Webb coined the phrase “golden years” in 1959 to sell his 55+ communities and many of us have bought into this phrase. Yet instead of living into the ways Rabbi Heschel is giving us to use these “golden years” most of us spend them unwisely-maybe as unwisely as we spent our years up till now-“through inbred self-deceptions”! So many of us spend so much time and energy on our “inbred self-deceptions” These self-deceptions are passed down from generation to generation and seem to be multiplying as they are passed down. Given the desire of so many people to want a dictator here in America, we see the self-deceptions that these people have grown since 1776, since 1789, since 1865 - all of these being dates of affirming a commitment to equality and democracy. Yet, because of these “inbred self-deceptions” we find ourselves in another civil war, will it be bloody depends on the commitment of those seeking to end the American Experiment and those seeking to continue Democracy, as imperfect as it is here. We also suffer from the familiar and personal “inbred self-deceptions” that we can’t criticize family in public, we can’t ‘air our dirty laundry’, we can’t speak our truth, our experience if it goes against the ‘party line’, we can’t ever reveal our inner dialogue to those closest to us because they will leave us… Now, in our “old age”, we can finally let go of these “inbred self-deceptions”, these falsehoods we have accepted as ‘just the way it is’, the societal norms and false cliches we have spent our lives up till now adopting and adapting to so we could “make it”. We have the power, we have the experience, we have nothing to gain from holding onto these “self-deceptions”, these “follies”, we will not crumble when we let them go, we will not be lost without them. I am positing, based on the teaching above and my experience, we will be freer than ever, we will experience joy, stand straighter and for something and be able to pass on to the next generation our “follies” and “inbred self-deceptions” so they can lose theirs a little sooner than we have.

I realize how my “follies” and “inbred self-deceptions” caused my spiritual crisis of 2020, how they led me to act out inappropriately, how they gave me a false sense of security that my years of service would override this error, how ‘my people’ on the board would stand up for me and I would be restored. No one person is at fault for what happened with me in 2020, and I am responsible as well as guilty of, most of all, holding onto the “follies” and “inbred self-deceptions”, which when they were not realized, when the bubble burst on them, I was shocked, angry, hurt, and bewildered. When a conversation could not occur, when “it is up to the lawyers” took over, I was lost. Living into the teaching above, I finally understand the depth of my part in this whole debacle. My “follies” and my “inbred self-deceptions” no longer control me and I am grateful for the experience of 2020, I know that I will never go back to them again as deeply or as confidently again.  God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Learning from Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 242

“The years of old age may enable us to attain the high values we failed to sense, the insights we have missed, the wisdom’s we ignored. They are indeed formative years, rich in possibilities to unlearn the follies of a lifetime, to see through inbred self-deceptions, to deepen understanding and compassion, to widen the horizon of honesty, to refine the sense of fairness.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg.78)(Bold is used to highlight the sentence I am writing on)

Since the beginning of my study of Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, I have read a page, gone on to the next and then had to go back to the page I understood one way only to realize the power of his words and teachings anew.

Today is Independence Day, as is everyday if we choose to leave the narrow places of false ego, our minds, our self-deceptions, etc. In America we celebrate the courage of the Founding Fathers to issue a document that states that all people are created equal, all people have certain unalienable rights; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which most of us have come to believe applies to people of color who were enslaved, discriminated against, etc. I would like to offer that all people also includes “old age”! Even though the emphasis on youth has always been strong, modernity has reached higher levels than previous societies in its disdain for people who are considered “old”. Ergo, the words of Rabbi Heschel above take on new and important meaning for all of us.

“The years of old age may enable us to attain the high values we failed to sense…” is a response to modernity’s treatment of “old age” as a ‘disease’. I underlined “may” because it takes those of us who are considered in and/or entering “old age” to do the inner work to “attain the high values…the insights…the wisdom…” we “failed to sense, missed, ignored”. It is up to the young to sit at the feet of the older generation and listen to these errors, to learn from the failures of the previous generations, not waiting for the failures and/or clean ups to be written in history books. In real time, it is imperative for “old agers” to do their own inner work, to admit their failure “to attain the high values we failed to sense”. Of course, we have to admit to our own self-interest in failing “to attain the high values” because we were more worried about optics, self-promotion, wealth, and power than in our inner life and adopted the “dog eat dog” mentality of societal norms. Then we can begin the work to repair our spiritual life, to repair the damage we have done to the inner and outer lives of those we impacted, change our ways of being so we can “attain the high values” we believe in and “teach our children” as the Bible instructs us to do both in Deuteronomy and in Proverbs.

What are the “high values”, the “insights”, the “wisdom” Rabbi Heschel is speaking about? I believe he is calling out to all of us to realize the myriad of times when we had the opportunity to “be human” we were not. Instead we were self-serving, self-centered, and selfish. We  bought into the lies of the people around us, the deceptions of societal norms and cliches, so we could ‘succeed’ and, in our “old age”, we are realizing the futility of our actions. While they may have brought us financial security, they have also wracked our inner life with anxiety, with loneliness, with a “hole in the soul”. I believe Rabbi Heschel is demanding we hear the call of the prophets; the 10 sayings at Mount Sinai; the 36 times we are told to care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow, and the orphan; he is calling us out for not being true and acting on the “high values”, “insights” and “wisdom” found in the Bible, in history, and in the Declaration of Independence. Just because the Founding Fathers could not bring to fruition their acknowledgment of what should be doesn’t give us license to do the same. As Jewish wisdom teaches; “it isn’t our job to finish the job, neither are we free to not engage in the work”.

As we begin to celebrate our Independence, it is, I believe, crucial that we take stock of ourselves and our community, our country and our “high values”; see where we are on the continuum, make a decision to learn from people who we consider in “old age”, and repair their errors of ignoring their “insights”, pushing aside the “wisdom” of their elders, and failing to attain the “high values” they were taught. Rabbi Heschel’s words are a challenge to all people, old and young, to end the myriad of ways we fool ourselves into believing our lowest way of being is necessary and just ‘business as usual’ for humanity. They are calling us to raise our standard of living to match the stature we are imbued with just because we are human beings. So far, we have failed to answer the call-from Moses to the Prophets to Christ to Mohammed up till today-will we answer it today, will we achieve the Independence that was declared on July 4, 1776?

I am heartened by the teaching above because it means I am not a failure, I still have time to engage in the “high values”, “insights” and “wisdom” I have within me. I still have the opportunity to repair old damages and even see the ones I have repaired in a new light. I am using this time in my “old age” (which doesn’t feel old) to reach higher levels of being-not hold onto resentments, allow hurts to pass quicker, see how stuck some people are and hang out with people who help me grow and learn even more. I am using this time to honor my insights instead of allowing myself to be talked out of them, I don’t need people to agree with me, I know what I know and what I don’t know (which is a lot), I am willing to learn. I am reflecting on the wisdom I ignored and using it now to enhance each day while continuing to learn more. This is my actions  of Independence this day and every day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path of Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 241

“People are anxious to save up financial means for old age; they should also be anxious to prepare a spiritual income for old age.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 79)

Continuing to delve into Rabbi Heschel’s talk at the 1961 White House Conference on Aging, I am struck with the words above. In 1961, the average lifespan was 69-70 years old and “retirement” age was 65. Old age was thought of when people turned 60ish, I believe. Today, the average lifespan is 80+ years and old age is thought of when people turn 80. “To save up financial means for old age” is a lot harder/different now than it was when this paper was delivered, and the need “to prepare a spiritual income for old age” is as important, if not more important now than in January of 1961.

The decline in humanity understanding, appreciating, and responding to the need for “spiritual income” seems to correspond with the decline in moral principles being the guiding light of our actions. “Justice for all” being turned into different ‘justice’ for people based on their socio-economic status and whom they know, and our forgetting what the 1930’s and 1940’s were like here and abroad as well as forgetting the cultural settings of every authoritarian takeover, be it royalty or despot, throughout history. We are witnessing the same rhetoric, in one way or another, we are witnessing similar thoughts and actions being taken and/or promised, we are witnessing the takeover of our Justice System by right-wing ‘christian nationalists’, we are witnessing the concern for the rich, the famous, the corporations-not the ‘man in the street’.

Our system has become so lopsided ‘regular’ people are unable to afford “to save up financial means for old age” and have to rely on Social Security which the right-wing wants to end! We aer witnessing a degradation of some older adults by the very people who claim to “live by the 10 Commandments” as Mike Johnson likes to purport. The anxiety caused by our tilted economic system is palpable and, to the chagrin of this writer, some of the people most affected, most anxious are believing the people who are causing this anxiety are going to help them-much like Germans thought Hitler would restore Germany to glory, there are people supporting the haters, the bullies, the liars, the thieves who are proclaiming their allegiance to Jesus and belief in ‘good christian values’! OY, what a mess we have made of our financial anxiety, how well we have turned peoples’ financial fears into hatred, into them going against their best interests, and they have turned their powerlessness into slavery rather than freedom.

This is happening again/still, I believe, because we have not been “anxious to prepare a spiritual income for old age.” This preparation is done in the days of our ‘youth’, in the decades of growing into the wisdom age and experience brings us. This preparation includes meditation, prayer, study, community service, etc. It is a conscious decision to stop denying our errors of judgement and missing the mark of our actions. The decades prior to “old age”, as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel this morning, need to be spent in preparing both for our financial security in “old age” to the best of our ability AND preparing/growing our inner life so we face aging with dignity and grace, with kindness and  concern, with service and asking for help when needed-all without shame, without guilt, and with connection and truth and love. Living this way eliminates the need to deceive oneself into believing the liars and cheats, the thieves and power-hungry actually have any concern for anyone but themselves. Living this way imbues people with a sense of Justice that, while blind, isn’t deaf and dumb.

We “prepare a spiritual income for old age” in many different ways and they all have similar ingredients: self-reflection, seeing where we “hit the mark” and where we “missed the mark”, preparing any damage we have wrought by “missing the mark”, growing our awareness and knowledge through these actions. We “prepare a spiritual income for old age” by deepening our inner knowledge, hearing it better and trusting it more. We sit with a spiritual guide and spiritual friends to have our souls reflected back to us and to reflect the souls of another(s) back to them. We join a community of people seeking a better life, a life of meaning and purpose, a life of safety and security in knowing; together we will face everything and live through it all. We engage throughout our teens - “old age” with ideas and thoughts, looking at what we can learn from them, how our experience or the experiences of our people have shown us which ones to pursue and which ones lead us back to destruction, to slavery. We continue to engage our “higher consciousness” and our souls to enlighten our living and to light the way forward-knowing we always need help and we are never the smartest one in the room and if we are, we have to find a new room.

This preparation of “a spiritual income for old age” is not a panacea, it is the only defense I have found to balance the hurt and bereft feeling one has when “old age” comes and one is relegated to the dust bin. I have spent the last four years dealing with what comes when one is told -thanks for your service, now get the fuck out-in my case, I freely admit I prompted this reaction, and it was a shock that my spiritual bank account didn’t have enough in it to cover this error I made. What I have come to realize, especially in light of the quote above, is my spiritual bank account is for me alone-it isn’t for someone else to withdraw from, it doesn’t cover the losses someone else experiences, it covers the losses I experience from my actions and the actions of another(s). My “spiritual income” hasn’t stopped and my bank account keeps growing because I keep learning. This is the preparation I am grateful I took in my ‘younger years’. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path of Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 240

“What a person lives by is not only a sense of belonging but also a sense of indebtedness. The need to be needed corresponds to a fact: something is asked of man, of every man.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.78)

Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of one of the foundational aspects of being human; “the need to be needed”. Every human being has this need and it is built into our spiritual DNA and our emotional DNA and possibly our physical DNA. No one wants to nor can one thrive without fulfilling this basic need which leads to both great connections and phony ones. Every con that has ever succeeded has this element to it, either the ‘mark’ is the one being needed or he/she is the one who needs. Every scammer, every con person, be they business ‘leaders’, politicians, criminals, and/or everyday people seeking connection, plays on “the need to be needed” that another has, they are so convincing because the con also has “the need to be needed” as well, so the con man/woman is most convincing because they are acting from a true need/desire only bastardizing it for their own selfishness, not for the sake of the person(s) they are conning. We see this in the political life of many politicians, aka Trump and his minions, McCarthy and his henchmen like Roy Cohn, we are even seeing this in the horrific decisions of this Supreme Court-giving the Presidency almost absolute powers going against the letter and the spirit of the founding fathers who did not want another king! These con artists wrap themselves in the cloaks of caring for truth, justice and the American Way while actually playing to an audience of wealthy benefactors who want absolute power so their need to be needed is fulfilled by their cruelty and their beneficence depending on their whim on any particular day. Be it the ‘religious’ right in America and/or in Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, be it the despots like Orban and/or Putin et al, Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, et al on the court, they share “the need to be needed” as a birthright to do as they please because their needs supersede any one else’s.

This, of course, is not what Rabbi Heschel is speaking about, nor is it what any spiritual discipline means because all spiritual disciplines believe we all have “the need to be needed.” Without the second half of the sentence above, we have the recipe for disaster that has happened before and could be happening right now. Yet, we can change the course we seem to be traveling on when we accept the second half of the sentence above; when we commit to find what the “something is ask of man, every man”. When we are willing to let go of our selfish desires, when we are willing to explore our inner life and seek spiritual guidance, we can find our “ikigai” as the Japanese say; our “raison d’être” as the French say, the “ikar” of our life, the reason we are born. We need to search our souls and reach out to community to find the corner of the garden we call life so we can find the patch we are needed to sow and to reap. This is wisdom we learn from Hasidism, from the Desert Fathers, from the Buddha, etc. What makes us feel so lonely is when we are engaged in a futile search fo our “ikigai”, when we believe that our age (too young or too old) precludes us from finding it, when we deny what is in our being for riches, fame, power, etc. When our “need to be needed” is out of proper measure, when it is overpowered by self-deception and/or the deception of others, we will stay mired in emotional distress and anger, spiritual illness and seek to fill the “hole in our soul” with a myriad of substances and behaviors that temporarily ‘fix’ the malady we are suffering from. Of course after this temporary fix, the malady comes roaring back greater and the cycle begins again and again.

There is a solution to the spiritual malady caused by not know what the “something is asked” is. The solution is to acknowledge we don’t know, go out on a discovery mission that is similar to Abraham’s going “to a place I will show you”, to Columbus’ journey to the New World, America’s Mission to the Moon, etc. We are being called to find the unique gift/talent inside of us that makes us so important and valuable that the world doesn’t work as well without us in our proper place. We are in the solution when we realize that we are powerless over so much that happens around us and we have the power to respond to what is with a higher purpose. We are in the solution when we seek to understand, hear and listen to our inner life; Shema. We are in the solution when we are willing to wrestle with the mixed messages of our higher/earthly inclinations; Yisrael. When we are willing to admit we are not the end all/be all; Adonai Eloheynu. We are in the solution and find our place when we join and connect with community and family and live our place in the oneness of life, of the world, of the creator; Adonai Echad. When we live into the Shema prayer, we are in the solution of responding to the “something is asked of man” and experience the fulfillment of our “need to be needed”.

I had no idea where this writing today, or any day, would lead me. I am in awe of the power of “words from the heart go to the heart” as Maimonidies says. I sought being “needed” in all the wrong places for much of my early life and where I was “needed”, many times I ran away from. I am so sorry to family, friends, community that I harmed with my running and with my conning. While I have made amends before, I keep realizing the depth of my harms differently as I deepen my understanding of life and my place in it. I am grateful that I have lived into the Shema prayer, as I have outlined it above, more each day/year. I am also realizing the self-deception of my thoughts of not being “needed” anymore and how this was a false ego decision rather than a soul knowing. It is an example of how falseness creeps into our minds and hearts blocking the truth of our souls from reaching us. Only through the Shema do I get to an authentic awareness of fulfilling my “need to be needed” in a healthy, holy manner. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path to Spiritual Health

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 239

“What a person lives by is not only a sense of belonging but also a sense of indebtedness. The need to be needed corresponds to a fact: something is asked of many, of every man.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.78)

The teaching above seems to have been abandoned in the modern world and many humans ask: “what’s in it for me”. Also, so many of us have been taught to “fit in” rather than belong we are having to relearn the truth that we all belong, as Brene Brown teaches. We are living in an age of entitlement rather than “indebtedness”, an age of deception and deceit rather than belonging and being authentic. We are desperately in need of relearning Rabbi Heschel’s and all spiritual disciplines’ teaching as stated above.

Our first challenge is to accept that we belong! We belong not because of our wealth, not because of our wit, our brain power, our superiority, our socio-economic status. No, we belong because we are human beings who struggle to be human and tame the desire for revenge, for our more animalistic inclinations. We belong just because we are right here, right now; and we all have something to contribute to making our corner of the world a little better than when we found it. We all need to accept not only that we belong, we have to embrace the truth that everyone belongs, there is no application for admittance to belonging to humanity, there is no one who can blackball anyone else from belonging to the human race, even though there are people who think they can separate ‘those people’ from us ‘good people’ and ‘those jews and muslims’ from ‘us good christian folk’. There are even people in our government, as there always has been, who want to disqualify people in need from entering-remember the ship the St. Louis and our current border issues- and people running for office who are proclaiming how they will not defend the constitution and/or the country “from enemies foreign and domestic” because they are the domestic terrorists-even on our Supreme Court! Until we, as a society, accept that everyone belongs to the human race, that all people have infinite and unique dignity and worth, the rest of the actions described above will never come to fruition.

“A sense of indebtedness” is anathema to our current culture. When one of the candidates for President goes around telling everyone how he is entitled to a different system of justice-one in which he is never guilty, when the same person keeps grifting money from his supporters who he constantly lies to, when the same human being continues to exclude decency and truth, loyalty and kindness from his ‘platform’, we are in danger of losing our “sense of indebtedness”. Public servants like Dr. Fauci are viscerated in our Congress for telling the truth, when some elected officials are only interested in serving their ‘supreme leader’ like the current Speaker of the House, Gaetz, Greene, Vance, Rubio, Cruz, and the rest of the Lindsey Graham types in Congress, we see that entitlement rather than “indebtedness” is the order of the day. We see this in business, in countries across the globe, in our families and in our history. The only “sense of indebtedness” that is talked about is the “indebtedness” owed to the ‘supreme leader’, to the authoritarian presence that is controlling the lives of her/his followers and has convinced people that if they want to belong, they have to be in debt to him/her. Rather than owing the world, owing the Creator, some of humanity has been fooled, conned into believing they only owe the authoritarian. How sad and dangerous!!

We can, however, reawaken our “sense of indebtedness” to something greater than ourselves-be it God, higher consciousness, community, etc. We do this by going back to basics-remembering who we are, recovering our passion for living well and discovering the unique purpose we are created to fulfill. We have to engage in mediation, study, practice, and deeds. We need to “act our way into right thinking” as the Big Book of AA reminds us. We have to make a commitment to following a path of living that honors our dignity and the dignity of everyone. We have to have “one law for the citizen and stranger alike” so there is only righteous justice practiced in our land. We need to return to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” which means we have to truly see our beauty and our goodness and have a practice of self-love that is not narcissistic, that recognizes our own value and dignity so we don’t tarnish ourselves by following the deception of another(s) nor our own self-deceptions. We need to see what we add to the world around us, see everyone as equal in value and how we need them to live their unique lives so we can live ours. Competition and comparisons that are personal fall away and we see how we can use them to grow our own spirit and our dignity. As a friend of mine, Glenn Goss, z”l, and I agreed: we are alive, we have been given another opportunity at life, we owe!

My “sense of indebtedness” has grown over these past 35+ years. In fact, the more I learn, the more I owe. I keep paying back and there are days when I am sure that the most I achieve is to pay the interest on the note and there are other days where I am hopeful that I have paid back some of the principle. However, this debt is not crushing me anymore, it did when I was adding to the debt, adding to the misery of the people around me, now, it just reminds me I still have more to give, more to offer, more to do. This is an exhilarating experience, it gives me hope and purpose, joy and a path. I am not entitled to anything other than to enjoy my achievements for what they were/are and use them to keep going, to keep forgiving myself for my errors, keep asking for forgiveness from another(s) and keep letting go of resentments and understanding how stuck those who have hurt me and are unable to do T’Shuvah are. I am so indebted that I can’t even hate them nor be angry with them. I too have been and still get that stuck. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path of Spiritual Growth

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

Living into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings- A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

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

Living into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

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

Living Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 235

“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)

Continuing to immerse ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s paper given at the White House Conference on Aging in 1961, many people of ‘a certain age’ can relate to the teaching above. People who are in “old age” and those of us who remember how we ignored the anguish and boredom of our ‘older relatives’ including our parents! This was not a willful ignorance, it was an ignorance born out of being oblivious to the plight of people once they were no longer ‘productive’. Once we asked them to leave the workplace, stop adding to the society, because we wanted them to enjoy their “golden years” as Del Webb coined the phrase, we had no understanding of what a loss of dignity, a loss of purpose meant to people. “Anguish and boredom” have interesting definitions, anguish comes from the Latin meaning “narrow” and boredom is the state of “feeling weary because one is unoccupied”; bored also means “make a hole in something”. Using these definitions/roots we can hear Rabbi Heschel saying “old age often is an age” of narrowness and weariness from being unoccupied and a time of feeling like there is a hole in my soul. This experience is, unfortunately, happening at an alarming rate for ‘senior citizens’.

The “anguish and boredom” that often happens in “old age” is, as Rabbi Heschel says, from a loss of “a sense of significant being”. We strip people of their dignity and tell them in a myriad of ways they no longer are worth as much as they were to society and what else can happen except “anguish and boredom”? We have been seeing an uptick in addiction in older adults, more use of Marijuana and THC, we also see more illness, more falls, etc precisely because they are bored and alone-even if family is around, even with their spouses loving them, many people feel the loss of dignity and worth so acutely “anguish and boredom” are their daily spiritual temperatures.

Why do we have to define any person as young or old, why do we have to define “golden years”, “senior citizen”, etc? Because once we define someone, something, it gives us power over them, power to know how to ‘deal with’ them, power to demean or extol them, etc. Once we use any terms other than “human being” to describe someone we are making a judgment about them, we are categorizing them and we are revealing what we think they are ‘worth’. We steal the dignity of an individual by categorizing them, we rob people of their worth by saying: time’s up. While there are some people who need to take a rest from their work, this doesn’t mean “putting them out to pasture in an ‘old home’. It doesn’t mean that everyone should stop working at a certain age or everyone over a certain age doesn’t need this particular r medical test, or that the arm of an 80 year old is worth less than an arm of a 30 year old as actuary tables believe. Yet, society has narrowed the path for people ‘of a certain age’ and purposely tries to make a ‘hole in their soul’ by telling them they are not needed anymore.

How can we combat these lies, how can we change societal norms? I believe we can be serious about the term “senior citizen”. Instead of this term meaning “older person”, we can understand and use this term to mean: “holding an authoritative position”. When we turn the dial of our thinking and seeing, when we allow our higher consciousness and our ‘third eye’ as well as our inner knowing  to be our eyes, ears, and actor, we realize the infinite value of our elders to guide us, to relate their failures and their successes to us. The wealth of knowing that “older adults” have is unmeasurable. It is like the story of the man who wandered in the forest so lost he was sinking into  despair and then he saw another person and was overjoyed. When the lost man asked for the other person’s help in getting out of the forest, the second person said: ‘I don’t know the way out, I do know the ways that don’t work and between us we can figure the way out because of our knowledge of the ones that have proved futile”. Using the experience of “older adults” in navigating our way out of the forest is crucial for the next generations to improve our world and not spend too much time on old ideas that “result in nil” as it says in the Big Book of AA. Doing this allows us to relieve the “anguish and boredom” and honor the spirit, value and dignity of everyone!

These words, teachings of Rabbi Heschel are giving me more compassion for myself, my daughter, my siblings, my wife and everyone around me. I have a greater capacity to forgive people for not seeing “older adults”, for people believing someone is “past their prime”, that “they are the past”, and other defenses for the mistreatment of “people of a certain age”. I have more understanding of my mother’s plight when she would want everyone to call her and know everything about our lives along with always giving me, at least, her opinion of what I should and should not do. She was ‘lashing’ out in her “anguish and boredom”, in her seeing herself diminish in her own eyes and losing her dignity. This is why, after she had an accident at age 88, my siblings and I helped her lease a new car so she would not be trapped. It is also why, two years later, we helped her move into an “Independent Living” situation. I did not realize the “anguish” she was in at having lost her identity. I am sorry Mom! I also understand the “anguish” of people around me in the “Over 55” community I am living in-none of us want to experience being irrelevant, none of us want to lose our dignity, and all of us still believe we are valuable. I write, I pray, I study, I help those who want my help and I love-these are the ways I hold onto my dignity and worth. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 234

“Human existence cannot derive its ultimate meaning from society because society itself is in need of meaning. It is as legitimate to ask: Is mankind needed” as it is to ask: Am I needed?” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 76)

The words above seem prophetic to me, given at a White House Conference on Aging in 1961. There was a knowing of the issue of aging some 60+ years ago and, as so many revolutionary thoughts and actions of the 1960’s, it was put on a shelf to collect dust. Aging back then was thought of in terms of reaching one’s 70’s maybe 80, unlike today with the plethora of Centenarians, people living active and aware lives into their 90’s. The issue Rabbi Heschel is speaking about has only grown both deeper and wider.

“Society itself is in need of meaning” is an apt description of where we are today as it was then. In the 60’s, with the help of Religious leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, Rabbi Heschel, Rev Jim Lawson, et al, we had a group of people who sought to put meaning and purpose into society and they were fought at every attempt. Whether it was the draft, the war in Vietnam, Civil Rights, Voting Rights, white society was afraid of change and wanted to enshrine the status quo. Even the victories that were won, even the myriad of meaning and purpose the movements contributed to society have been undone in the name of progress(?).

We, older people, are the generation that directly benefited from the “greatest generation”, that heard the stories of survivors first hand, that saw the pain and anguish on the faces of our fathers when any son was drafted because they knew the horrors of war and could not even talk about it most of the time, must be the ones to stand up now and demand that society hears us, that society recognizes how much we are needed so that society can respond to the first question above in the affirmative.

We keep hearing about the newest and the fastest, the hippest and people have made fortunes from being ‘celebrities’, witness the Kardashians, Paris Hilton in her youth, etc. We assume from the stories they tell that what is important is being noticed, which speaks directly to their need to be needed. Celebrity status seeking is another attempt to be relevant, to let people know someone is available to fulfill your fantasies and dreams vicariously and this is the way the “celebrities” believe they are serving society and, of course, filling the hole in their soul of being needed. The problem, of course, is their hole is so large there is never enough from society for it ever to be satiated, never enough adoration to make their need to be needed subside, there is only more, more, more. The fact that we run to make these ‘celebrities’ feel important, follow their every move, and fulfill some fantasy while ignoring the “older” people who have wisdom and experience, lessons and failures to impart is ridiculous and proves the first sentence above.

We, older and younger people, need to let go of our need for societal recognition. We have to begin to recognize our self and the self next to us, in front of us, behind us, around us. We older adults need to impart the folly of trying to follow society, trying to lead society in its quest for vapidness, how having all the money and power in the world doesn’t lead to inner joy and happiness, rather it leads to paranoia and fear, that it could go away in a moment, it leads to authoritarianism and the worship of conspiracies, etc.

We, older adults, have an obligation to impart the knowledge we have gained through the myriad of failures and successes, lost connections and the ones made, through paying attention to our inner life and intuition. We are being called upon to demonstrate to ourselves and to the next generations that we are not just “Tik-Tok Grannies”, we are people who are still wrestling with the issues of how to live well, we are still wrestling with how to find an inner acceptance of life at our age, we are still seeking to be relevant not for egotistical reasons but for service reasons. Our being needed is not about what we can do, rather it is about what we can give. Because we did not know this earlier in life, we have to, are compelled to offer this truth, this way of being to the next generations so they don’t waste as much time as we did to find this out.

We Are Needed! Full Stop. The teaching above is important to me because it is so easy to fall into the lies and deceptions of ‘societal norms’ and to base my worth and existence on what another thinks. I am, and have been, seeking to find the place that I am needed in this era of my life. Hence, I keep writing every day, usually between 4 and 5am. I am compelled by a sense of purpose and meaning, I am compelled by knowing this is my platform and the numbers don’t matter-only if I can touch one person, even if that person is me. Writing has always been a good way for me to figure out what is needed, where I am needed and finding the meaning and purpose of this moment and this day. I continue to use Rabbi Heschel as my guide because he speaks to all of my parts, even the part that is hidden from most people, my inner sanctum where I and the Ineffable One are alone. My experiences over my lifetime so far have shown me the vapidness of society, they have shown me the pain and trauma I experience every time I believe ‘society’ has accepted me and is listening to me, every time I erroneously believe I am seen and then find myself rejected and exiled. One would think I would have seen the pattern years ago and ended my Quixotic quest. Today’s teaching has, I hope, finally opened my eyes completely and I know I am needed and I need individuals, not society. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Teachings- A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 233

“In spite of the fact that our ideologies and institutions continue to imply that the worth of a person is equivalent to his usefulness to society, every one of us entertains the keen expectation that other people will not regard him merely because of what he is worth to them…but will regard his as a significant and valuable in himself.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 75)

This is the challenge of our time as, evidently, it has been the challenge in all times and throughout time. We are in a war with society’s conventional norms and cliches, values and principles that puts these norms and cliches, values and principles against what each human being knows in their guts, we are all valuable because we are born, each of us is enjoined upon by the universe to contribute from our inner talents and gifts, each of us is worthy of being human and each of us deserves the air we breathe because we are alive.

Society has, throughout history, made a person’s worth based on wealth, on status, on skin color, on religion, on success, etc, while at the same time, extolling the Biblical verses they can pervert for their use, to keep power and to enslave whole groups of people! People have, throughout history, given into these lies and deceptions as far back as the Israelites when Pharaoh “dealt slyly” with them in Egypt-after the death of Joseph. None of us are not susceptible to the ‘norms’ of society, none of us are not susceptible to the war of values and principles that exists between what we know to be true and what society wants us to believe.

We keep hearing the extremists work to convince us that what we see isn’t real, what we know is false, what we hear is ‘fake news’, what is getting destroyed is actually being built up, they are the true Messiahs and helpers, etc. We, the people, have to take back the reins of leadership, we have to remind ourselves to “Let Freedom Ring”,“throughout the land and to all it’s inhabitants therein”. It is incumbent upon us to stop buying into the “ideologies and institutions” that “continue to imply that the worth of a person is equivalent to his usefulness to society” It is essential that we proclaim the infinite worth and dignity of all people, even our enemies and honor their dignity even when they don’t!

This is true for everyone and for all of us. We honor the inherent dignity and worth of people, when we rebuke them because we know they are better than their worst actions. We honor the inherent worth and dignity of people when we argue with them for the sake of finding truth and opening our eyes more. We honor the dignity and worth of people when we continue to seek their counsel, stay connected long after their “usefulness” to us ends. We honor the dignity and worth of ourselves when we stop seeing everyone as a means to an end. We lift up creation itself when we end our incessant need to make everything transactional and we realize that covenantal relationships are the goal of life. While the words above apply to all of us, seeing “older adults” in these words is also critical. We are a society that values young and hip as opposed to old and wise; we are constantly seeking the ‘next new thing’ - to either create it or invest in it or use it. The iPhone, an amazing invention, has revolutionized our lives and it has enslaved us, the false claims of the Fascists and Authoritarians has enslaved large swaths of people and helped the few ‘trusted servants’/partners in the various ‘coups’ that happened by ‘democratic’ means.

For all of these to flourish in the ways they have, it takes the buy-in of human beings, we are willingly giving up the joy of celebrating the wisdom of our elders, we are willingly disrespecting the lessons that ‘older adults’ have to give us because we are drunk on the ideas such as ‘there is something new under the sun’, that “what the mind can conceive, man can achieve”, “I think, therefore I am”. For those of us who are older, wiser and more experienced because we thought the exact same ways, we know “I am therefore I can think/be”, everything the mind can conceive is not worthy of being achievable, and there are no new games, only variations-without mathematics we would not have the inventions we have now, without science, we would not have come out of the Pandemic so quickly, etc. We continue to rely on the wisdom of history, on the wisdom of previous generations to build upon their foundations and rise higher and higher, until we realize that building our inner life, finding a teacher and a friend to learn with and engage in a covenantal relationship with human beings and the world, nature and life is the greatest achievement we can obtain-hence the necessity to not be the “smartest person in the room” but rather be the excited learner in the room, continuing to learn with teachers and mentors, friends and even enemies so we come to see the worth of everyone just because they are alive.

I am guilty of not always doing this, I know and I am saddened by this type of missing the mark. I have always sought out mentors, just haven’t always followed the ones who truly cared for my soul, hence my previous life of crime and alcoholism! I have, however, always kept the lessons of my father, my relatives in mind, I have, in my recovery, sought people of wisdom-no matter what age they are- to learn with and from, to wrestle with life’s ups and downs, and I have found people who are older and more experienced than I usually give me the best advice and see things clearer because their agenda is to help me, not compete with me. I do the same with everyone who seeks me out and will continue to put their agenda ahead of mine-to the best of my ability in the moment. Watching everyone around me age, I have seen the light and the power of spirit in the communities I belong to and realize that, as my friend says, every room is better because you and I are in it-no matter our age:) God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growing

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 232

“Is this the way and goal of existence: to study, grow, toil, mature, and to reach the age of retirement in order to live like a child? After all, to be retired does not mean to be retarded.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 74)

Continuing on in Rabbi Heschel’s essay “To Grow in Wisdom”, the question he poses is even more relevant than it was 63 years ago! Retirement is about “the golden years” as Del Webb coined this phrase in 1959 so he could sell his “Over 55” communities to people. He did a fantastic job! His properties sell out and because of all the amenities and clubs his “over 55” communities offer, people stay and love it-full disclosure, I am one of those who live and love a Del Webb community. There is a myriad of activities here, from astronomy to weaving, sports from golf to pickle ball and bocce ball, beautiful grounds to walk on and just sit and admire nature. Yet, there are few activities that engage the inner life. Yes, there are religious services and, as we all know, religion doesn’t always engage the inner life!

People talk louder to older adults, we get emails that are in size 15-16 font because it is assumed we can’t see nor hear. We are subjected to various other indignities like ‘oh you look so young for your age’, ‘do you mind if I go in front of you because you walk so slow’, etc. People speak of us in the third person like ‘how are we doing today’-as if we know how the other person is doing or that we have the temerity to speak for another person whom we may or may not know. We are given different speeches on how we have to stay active and don’t fall, how we have to keep our minds sharp and ‘don’t worry your pretty little head over this’.

People are used to treating older people as children, our children believe they should make decisions for us because, ‘well, you know, mom is getting up there in years and can’t think so well anymore’ and other such poppycock! Granted there are a million scammers who prey on older adults and some fall for these scams not because they are dumb, rather because they are in disbelief that someone would lie about their grandchildren, lie about being from medicare, etc. Young people get scammed also-as a former con man, I didn’t take advantage of older adults, it was the young ones who were/are more susceptible to ‘get rich quick’, ‘something for nothing’ deals than the older ones were.

As we age, we are not descending into childhood. Age is not a disease, it is not something we have to treat as an illness nor a burden. One of the issues is most of us are not prepared for old age, however one defines old age, because we have placed so much emphasis on being young, on plastic surgery to keep looking young, on trying to have the bodies of 20-year-old when we are 70, especially when we didn’t have that body when we were 20. We want to keep up with technology which changes so fast, we want to stay ‘hip’ for our grandchildren and other family members. Most of all, we don’t want to be seen as needing to be cared for. We are desperate to hold onto our dignity, which society and our children at times seem hellbent on taking away from us. We are no more or less worthy of respect, dignity, being seen as a human being than anyone who is younger than we. Many people are leaving “Ethical Wills” to their heirs along with the financial ones so their wisdom gets passed on.

The issue is, as Rabbi Heschel says above, we are not “retarded” because we age. We are, in most cases, more aware of the whole picture, we are aware of the errors we have made and uniquely able to spot trouble spots before they happen, we can track issues that can/will cause problems down the road because we have ‘been there, done that’ which means we are not only “not retarded” we are able to offer advice, wisdom, and insight that younger people just don’t have because they don’t have our experience. Aging gives us time to take a breath and realize the wisdom we have gained, it gives us the opportunity to develop a richer and more meaningful inner life and it allows us to deepen our connections to one another, to families, to the world. Because we have the time and are not caught up in ‘the rat race’ , we take a longer view of what is happening and what is in front of us because we have the experience. Yet, we are shunned to the ‘back of the bus’ with -‘thanks folks but you are not in it anymore, you don’t understand the way it is now’ going against the wisdom of the Bible that says “there is nothing new under the sun”.

The talk about Joe Biden being too old to be president while Donald Trump is only 3 years younger than him being ‘relevant and capable’ is another example of ageism, of prejudice and, of course political propaganda. Yet, older adults suffer from this same type of propaganda and prejudice all the time. I want to engage people in discussions about our inner life and, in my community, I am not seen as having any worth nor any wisdom about anything other than “addiction”, I was only good for helping “those people”. And, places here who help “those people” don’t think I have anything to offer after all my experiences. I am willing to help, I am wanting to learn with other people who seek a deeper connection to their inner life and I watch in horror as people believe talking down to a congregation with a smile and a ‘glad hand’ is what Judaism is about! It is hard to deal with a life without meaning-Plato taught us “an unexamined life is not worth living” and as I age, I am examining more and more. I want to share this wisdom with younger people, with older people, with everyone and, I am not always able to. This is another challenge to my inner life and it has given me the insight and wherewithal to write everyday, to find old writings, engage an editor and begin to put them together in book form. This is my legacy, this is my gift, this is my obligation. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth and Well-being

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 231

“The aged may be described as a person who does not dream anymore, devoid of ambition and living in fear of losing his status, Regarding himself as a person who has outlived his usefulness, he feels as if he has to apologize for being alive.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 73)

The more I read this essay from 1964 the more I am in awe of Rabbi Heschel’s insights, his vision of what was then and what is to come! The descriptions he gives above are real, they are true, and they are valid given society’s relegation of ‘old’ people to these narrow and untrue ways of being. People over a ‘certain age’ are seen as “burdens on the system”,, “drains on the financial health of the family, community, country, etc.”, and, they are seen as “living in the past” rather than the true experience of people who are still thinking about the next “galaxy” to conquer, considering how to fulfill their mission, their “ikigai” as the Japanese say it, in their current status-knowing their purpose and passion hasn’t died they are not in the same roles as they were before.

We are living in a time where ‘the date of birth’ is the first question asked in a medical setting, as my wife Harriet Rossetto writes about, people who “look” old are treated differently than those who don’t, where some Clergy write emails in “all caps” and “bigger fonts” as well as speaking to ‘older adults’ in a louder voice and speaking down to us even in “active retirement communities”. We are treated as if we are broken down and need to be put out to pasture as Race Horses are! We are NOT HORSES! We are living breathing human beings who have learned how to live well and live with joy and wisdom. We have acquired much knowledge and we are balancing our knowledge with the understanding that years of experience bring. We are living more and more in concert with the teachings of Maimonidies and the Kabbalah-in the middle between two opposing forces. This is seen as not dreaming, “devoid of ambition”, and therefore we live “in fear of losing our status” as being needed.

Society’s treatment of us ‘older adults’ as non-useful, as ‘past our prime’, as not being relevant has led many people to regard themselves as having “outlived our usefulness and makes us “apologize for being alive”. How many of us worry about being “a burden on our children” and “using our money for our care instead of leaving it all to our children”? We are very sensitive, probably over-sensitive, to the subliminal messages of our children: do they call us, do they answer when we call, do they return our messages, do they love us, will they honor us and our wishes, do they seek our advice and opinions or just want to argue and hold resentment and grudges for imperfect parenting? Do our children see us as people or as roles, do they understand our need to communicate soul to soul as we tried to raise their souls even in the face of societal norms that we ignored in order to speak to them in ways they could hear? Are they going to join the new order of ‘divorcing parents’ as discussed in a book titled “Rules of Estrangement”?

Now that we are ‘not working’ not being ‘productive’ in the ‘normal’ way of understanding, we are being seen as “outlived our usefulness” because we have become a society of human doings rather than one of being human. Society defines usefulness as it pleases and doesn’t usually see spiritual wisdom as useful, it doesn’t understand that when one’s eyesight may dim, one’s vision of what is, what was, and what can/will be is magnified and more in focus. We have decided what is useful and what isn’t based on utilitarian system, not on a scale of being human, and this is the system we need to return to/begin to use. ‘Old people’ have a wealth of knowledge on how to be humane and inhumane. We have been both and, in our ‘older’ years, we realize the errors of our ways and the many times we ‘hit the mark’. We have so much to impart to people and they seem incapable of hearing us because; you don’t understand the ways things are now”, “life is not the same as it was for you”, “you are not up on the latest”, etc. Yet, society seems to forget: “There is nothing new under the sun” and, as Rabbi Heschel says: “There is nothing stale under the sun except humans who become stale.” We have the wisdom of our errors and mistakes to offer to people, we have the history of how companies, institutions, got started and moved forward, we have no skin in the game except to help our successor and this is often interpreted as ‘not letting go’. Rather than take advantage of what ‘old people’ have learned we reject them as “the past” and we are ‘moving forward’. Yet, without a knowing of our past how can we move forward? We read the Bible every year even though the words don’t change, our understanding of them does, hopefully-knowing where we have been is essential to seeing where we can/need to go.

I have wrestled with being relevant when I am rejected or feel rejected. I know viscerally the teaching above, I know the moments of wondering why I am seen as an impediment rather than a help by the very people I have helped before. I am still dreaming and still relevant, at least in my own mind. I have begun to assert myself instead of accepting the rejections of some as a rejection by all. I am seeking to “spread the word” of Rabbi Heschel, spread the my words and insights over the years through books and speaking where and when I can, and sharing with everyone who wants me. I also am helping others realize dreams they had pushed aside, I am still available to ‘make shit happen’ for another and I continue to stay in touch with family and friends. I continue to support Harriet and Heather in their dreams and love watching my grandson Miles begin to have his own. I know I am relevant, I know I am not a drain, I know I am still useful-no matter what society thinks. “Old age” allows us to live more inside out and this is a true blessing. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 230

“Old age is a major challenge to the inner life; it takes both wisdom and strength to not succumb to it…In terms of manpower he is a liability, a burden, a drain on our resources.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.73)

This teaching by Rabbi Heschel is as true today as when they were written in 1961. While not being sure when one is considered to be in “old age”, as I am almost 73 and do not ‘feel’ old nor consider myself old, a cottage industry has grown up around “old age”. Be it the myriad of retirement communities, one of which I live in, or the assisted living, independent living homes that populate every medium and above city, or the different companies offering to be the companions for the ‘elderly’ so they can “stay in their home”, or the many scams perpetrated upon older adults, people see “old age” as an opportunity to take advantage of people, rather than honor them.

Given the situation we all face in “old age”, it “is a major challenge to the inner life” because we no longer have career to define us, our children no longer ‘need’ us as they did prior to adulthood and, in many cases, even though they love us, they have their own busy lives to attend to. We have to re-define our self-image because they image we had of busy, relevant, needed, fades for many people in “old age” and it is a startling discovery. We are transitioning to a new phase of living, we are being transplanted into a new life, new way of being, and we have to engage our inner life to not lose our sense of self, to not succumb to the societal notion of being a burden, a drain, and easily forgotten.

Our health system decides at some point in  “old age” it is not worth the cost of tests or the risks involved to check for colonoscopy, for different heart scans, for any costly testing to prolong wellness. Rather they rather get the money for the sicknesses that might have been prevented because that is more economically sound and helpful. Medicare deems some tests not necessary as well and even is unwilling to pay for interventions that will save millions of dollars that are needlessly spent on health issues that could have been prevented. It is insane and a waste-yet, when society sees “old age” as a liability and a burden, why not let them die?

Another issue is how “old age” is treated in the work force. Unless one is living in an areas that cater to ‘older adults’, most places are constantly seeking to replace people of age with younger people because the younger people are paid less money as a rule. With age and longevity, one has wisdom and a knowing of customers, of the company and of how to work smart, hard, and be of service. Today’s companies are seeking to fill a spot and believe workers are interchangeable, provided the skill set is similar, ignoring the fact that their older workers have a skill set that is far superior to the younger people by the mere fact of their experience and wisdom. Rather than have a younger person learn from an older worker, companies are putting younger people who know less in charge of the older workers in order to get them to quit. Some even have mandatory retirement ages so they can stop paying the older workers the higher salaries that longevity at a company brings! Another experience is when people who start companies, who have been integral in the expansion of a business, a service, are considered ‘behind the times’ or ‘the past’ and it is decided to take the business/service in a ‘new direction. The very people who helped the company grow are considered a “liability” and a “drain”!

These examples and so many more are reasons “old age is a major challenge to the inner life”. “It takes wisdom and strength to not succumb to it” because it is so easy to fall into the abyss when one sees oneself being treated as less than human, as a throw-away item, as ‘past their expiration date’ and are being treated as such by society, by family, etc. Much of this treatment is not overt, it is subtle, it is the phone not ringing, the advice not sought, the opinion tolerated, etc. We, ‘older adults’ have the luxury of time to engage more in our inner life and for those who have ignored it up until now, it is imperative to grow our spiritual living so we can cope with the indignities that “old age” brings both physically and emotionally. We are not going to ‘enjoy our golden years’ without some “wisdom and strength” in our “inner life”, we are going to sink into the morass of misery, of bewilderment, of loneliness, of feeling useless and unmoored unless we tether ourselves to a strong spiritual core and a spiritual community that sees our value and our worth. “Old age” doesn’t lesson our infinite value and dignity nor our uniqueness, I would suggest it heightens these and the sadness is society’s inability to engage with us.

I am thinking of the times when I did not call my mother because I did not want to hear her complaints and when she lectured me, how often I wanted to just hang up. I now see it was her way of seeking to stay relevant. While I wanted to ensure her dignity as she grew older, I didn’t always honor her cries and I am saddened by this truth. I know that I am dealing with ‘the phone not ringing’ and the lack of response to my offers to help, my ideas for making my new corner of the world a little better, and seeking new ways to use my creative energy. It is hard at times, especially since I believe I am still vibrant and relevant, since I believe I still have wisdom to impart and, no one to impart it to-hence I write this blog each day-to introduce everyone to Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and the ways I live into them and the ways in which many people in recovery and those not needing recovery from substances,  have been helped by them. I keep using wisdom and strength to not succumb to the challenge of “old age”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 229

“What we owe the old is reverence, but all they ask for is consideration, attention, not to be discarded and forgotten. What they deserve is preference, yet we do not even grant them equality.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 70)

The words above struck me upon reading them this morning. Maybe it is because I am ‘old’ and maybe because I am afraid of being irrelevant these words pierce through me. “Reverence” comes from the Latin meaning “to stand in awe of”, consideration comes from the Latin meaning “examine” and as I think about the words above, I hear Rabbi Heschel demanding we at least acknowledge what we “owe”, what our obligation is to those who go before us and blaze the trail, clear out the brush so we have a clearer path forward.

In today’s news is our disdain for those who some believe are “over the hill” who’s usefulness has an expiration date, as people are wont to say about President Biden while extolling the brilliance of a man a few years younger who talks like a madman and is proposing to end the democracy of the founding fathers. We are witnesses to and, in some cases, participants in “pushing out the old so the new can come in” not realizing that we have an obligation to those who have come before us instead of disdain for them. The Supreme Court has shown it’s lack of reverence for the first time by overturning precedence numerous times, by saying a corporation is the same as a person and then speaking of their ‘good christian values’-I don’t think that Christ would think a corporation and a person are the same!

We have become so enamored with ‘staying young’ that plastic surgeons have become super wealthy, we bow down to the idols of fashion and looks, Kim Kardashian and her family have become very famous and rich for their ‘beautiful bodies’ not for any action that causes the world to be better. Teen suicide rates are skyrocketing because of the belief that there is something wrong with them because they are not good looking, smart, etc enough. We see the need for ‘the newest, latest’ growing quicker that it can be supplied. Reading a newspaper, or a hardcover/paperback book is so ‘old fashioned’ most younger people don’t do it anymore. Sitting and listening to the stories of their elders seems like a drag to many young people today and their need to ‘prove’ themselves right by making the older generation wrong is rampant. Blaming their unresolved issues on parents, which may well be warranted, doesn’t help them solve what is happening right now in their lives, it doesn’t allow them to be responsible for themselves and have a discussion and hear where their perceptions are correct and where they might not be.

There is a phenomenon happening where adult children are ‘divorcing’ their parents when their parents need them most. Rather than continue to engage and wrestle through the difficulties of relationship, they are quitting, in many cases when their parents may need them most! This is so ‘they can take care of themselves’ forgetting how their parents did their best to take care of them during difficult times for their parents, without knowing how to parent, making mistakes without malice and intention in most cases. Yet, many younger people have not heard nor considered Rabbi Heschel’s words above.

On the other hand, many teen-agers go to retirement communities, to ‘old homes’ and meet people who can be their grandparents and listen to their stories, make connections and learn about how to live better. It is a wonder to watch how they care for people who have no familiar connection and the bond is pretty strong and sparks of light/holiness shoot out from these experiences. And, there are too many people who are put in these ‘old homes’ who are forgotten and discarded. We can and must do better.

How we treat our older generation is a barometer of the spiritual health of a society. As we experience, our society is spiritually ill! While many speak of the political, social, economic heath and in those terms, what most pundits and experts are missing is that we either retard or move forward our march towards justice, freedom, truth, love, kindness, compassion, etc based on our spiritual health. Not realizing that we have an obligation to parents, to our older generation that honors their service, honors their achievements, respects their wisdom, asks for their help because, as it says in the Bible, there ain’t nothing new under the sun. We can and must do better if we are to recover the sparks of decency and goodness, justice and kindness, righteousness and strength.

I think of my mother, z”l, and how she was ‘happy’ to retire and then felt useless when no one called for advice or help. I am thinking of how there were many times when I paid attention to my mother, I cared about her dignity and spoke with her regarding matters that were important to her and I can still here her voice “Mark, I am still your mother and I will always tell you what I think is right”. I knew I owed her respect and I failed at times, yet I never walked away nor did she. I am thinking of the generational difference- most in my generation honored our parents even if we were unhappy with the ways they interacted with us. I honor my mentors and continually seek wisdom and help from them because I know how much I don’t know and how easy it is to get tunnel vision. I pay attention to the needs of and the desires of people older than I because it is the right thing to do-none of us know what someone else went through to get to where they are at and respecting their journey is paying forward what we want for ourselves. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark