Not Again

God appears to Avraham and tells him, “Go for yourself, from where you were born, from your father’s house. Go away from the conditions that influenced you as a youth. You will be made into a great nation, be blessed and your name will be great.”

Avraham goes to Israel and there he is told he will have children who will inherit the land. So far, so good… All of a sudden he and his family have to leave and go down to Egypt. But I thought You said to… Everything was looking so good and… What the…!!??

I have this friend who has spent years living through this “story” of his; “If I am not really successful then I don’t matter, I’m a failure”. This is a pattern of thinking that was imprinted on his psyche at a very early age, mostly by parents who clearly showed him their disappointment when things were not just so. No longer are his parents laying those judgments on him in real time, but he still generates his life from that same scared, “I’m never good enough” place. What began as an external voice is now a self generating internal pattern of thinking.

Through doing a lot of work on himself, my friend has become aware of this pattern and is now able to make it an object of his awareness. In other words he becomes conscious of his thinking. He becomes aware that he is looking at reality through the lenses of old imprinted judgments. When he is able to do this, on some level, he transcends his old story and he is free to make conscious choices. And freedom feels good.

But old habits are old habits, especially if they are re-enforced by all sorts of life conditions that we had set up when we were fully enslaved to our old “stories”. After tasting the freedom of consciousness, to find ourselves back under the rule of negative judgments can be a very discouraging experience.

But I thought You said to… Everything was looking so good and… What the…!!??

We were going towards our true selves, going away from old constricted patterns of being and then we find ourselves back in Egypt, the land of slavery itself.

And because of this we often begin to despair. “I can’t do this. What’s wrong with me? I’m a failure.” And if you listen to these judgments carefully, they start sounding a whole lot like the initial ones I was trying to leave in the first place. The old ways of being I was leaving home to get away from.

Everyone falls. Everyone finds themselves back in constricted patterns of thought. Everyone wakes up and goes back to sleep. Everyone loses their mind and forgets who we really are and whose loving Presence we are embraced by.

When I fall, I really appreciate knowing that others who have fallen back to Egypt (exiled from our essential self) because of some famine have made it back “home” to Israel.

Maybe Avraham imprinted in our genes; to experience home, go back down and fight our way back home again.

Gevalt! Not only should we never despair and give up, but like our father, it’s a lesson of life to teach our children.

Have great Shabbos,

Simcha

Oh Brother

In last week’s parsha, Hevel’s offering was accepted and Cain’s was not. Cain got angry and he got depressed. The Sforno tells us that his anger was directed towards his brother out of jealousy, and his depression was a result of thinking he should be ashamed in front of God for not providing an acceptable offering. God asks Cain why he was angry, and why he was depressed.

I happen to be one of those people who can relate to Cain’s feelings.

And I can even give a bit of an answer as to why I have felt those same feelings in similar situations. I am all too familiar with feeling jealousy towards another person who’s offering, who’s affection, or attention, etc. is being received before mine.

The stories in my head that generate those feelings in me could be, “what about me? I matter also. See me. Someone else is being seen, someone else matters, especially a brother and I want what he’s getting. And if I can do away with him or put him down then maybe that acceptance will be mine.” And shame at not doing good enough. I know that one as well.

Somehow what is simply a mistake to learn from turns into a reflection on the essence of who I am. It’s not, “what I did was not good enough”, it becomes “I am not good enough” and I recoil in shame. And if that is what Cain was experiencing, then those feelings must be pretty primal.

God asks “why?” because logically it really doesn’t make sense. God in a sense was saying, “You’re angry at him? His offering was correct and yours wasn’t. You’re ashamed? You made a mistake. Get over it and fix it.”

It even goes further back:

God confronts Adam about his mistake… “She made me do it.”

God confronts Chava… “The snake made me do it.”

Normally I would look at these tendencies to get angry from jealousy, blame others from fear of being wrong, or being ashamed at not being good enough, as obvious defects.

But maybe they are not negative defects, but simply primitive instincts. And like all childish or primitive instincts we can transcend them and evolve to more conscious levels. We can transcend previous behaviors, just as mature adults transcend their former immature behaviors.

When we act irresponsibly we are simply on a less mature level or we have regressed back to a previous less mature level, and we act from there. When we view our actions as coming from an innate inadequacy, we deny, we defend, blame others or hide in shame.

When we perceive our actions as having come from a lower level of consciousness we learn and move on.

An obvious question regarding the Garden of Eden is, what was the Tree of Life for?

Quite possibly, if Adam had admitted his original mistake he could have eaten from it, rather than suffer the banishment they experienced. Instead, they were sent into exile. And maybe the whole point of all the years of exile is for us to learn to take responsibility for our mistakes.

We all make mistakes. When mistakes are judged as personal defects those judgments are like snakes that seduce us away from our Tree of Life.

When we consciously transcend and embrace our mistakes as opportunities to grow from, they simply become steps in an evolutionary ladder.

It could be that Cain’s offering, which was rejected, actually held the greater opportunity for growth after all.

It still might.

Have great Shabbos,

Simcha

Listening is Just Another Word for Consciousness

I think most people would acknowledge the importance of choosing who we or our family associates with. When we hang out with cynical or lazy people we can be influenced in one way, as opposed to, if we spend our time with people who are focused on higher values and are appreciative, we would certainly be influenced in other ways. We know this to be especially true with children who are particularly impressionable to the influences around them. As adults, we are not victims to our surroundings, but it’s foolish to ignore the affects other people’s habits have on us.

The reason I am reminding us of how we are affected by others, is to actually emphasis the influence we can have on others.

I’m reading a book on consciousness and the author was making the point that the majority of people living just several hundred years ago were not able to take a conscious perspective regarding their own thinking. He cites different writings from before as recently as the 1600’s to show the lack of introspection and the propensity to assume magical or mystical causes for certain internal impulses. I have been taking the faculty of conscious awareness for granted and would never have guessed that in the scheme of time it is such a recently developed capacity for the majority of people.

Consciousness is obviously a good thing. It gives us perspective of our own internal process and therefore the ability to make choices. It gives us freedom. After all, we are the thinkers of our thoughts. It can be argued that the world’s problems are a function of a lack of consciousness. Conscious people have a greater perspective on the developmental levels of themselves and others. They are able to distinguish and access; compassion and therefore are more inclined to feed the hungry, responsibility causing them blame others less and initiate fewer wars, and values that respect the ecology we all share for our survival.

Consciousness is a practice. Practicing meditation, mindfulness, prayer or learning, are all ways to develop muscles of awareness.

If consciousness is a positive value, how can we influence others in that direction?

I was in a group last night and we were talking about the facility of being conscious of our own patterns of thinking. We were also distinguishing and practicing different forms of listening. When we simply and deeply listen to another we are offering our attention to their internal reality. Literally, thousands of times I’ve witnessed the phenomena that by truly listening to another, they begin to offer their own attention to their own internal reality. They become more conscious. If we listen with patience, presence and compassion they begin to hear themselves from that same perspective.

Listening promotes consciousness, because I think listening is just another word for consciousness.

If the evolution of consciousness is the faculty that will set us free, then perhaps listening is the vehicle that transports that faculty from one to another.

Our most central prayer is not;

Be powerful Israel, be kind Israel, be good…

We are told to listen.

Have a great Shabbos,

Simcha

Raising the Fallen Sukkah

The second day of Sukkot was my father’s sixth Yartzeit. Something happened to me that night that was not very remarkable, but did however give me an opportunity to grow a bit.

We had a bunch of people over for dinner in our Sukkah, Motzei Shabbos. We had a really good time. I drank a bit too much alcohol, which I very rarely do, and towards the end of the evening I began talking about some ideas regarding Sukkot. They were thoughts that I was still in the process of organizing in my own mind. They were not old ideas that I could just spew out. They were ideas that were still in the test drive mode, and my alcohol level was a bit over the driving limit. Anyway, the bottom line is that I didn’t get my thoughts across very well.

OK, not a big deal.

What happened, however, was that later that night and for a good portion of the next day, I got into a whole pattern of insecure thinking; “What did I do? I made a fool of myself. Who do I think I am? I’m never going to speak in public again. I’m out of here…” basically, an old pattern of wanting to run away and hide after not being “successful”.

One of the realizations I had, while I was struggling with my internal judgments was; almost every time I try to formulated ideas that are new for me, I generally don’t get them across very well the first time I try. And after, almost every time I blunder my first time through I go through similar internal battles of “What was I doing? Who do I think I am? Blah, blah, blah.”

There is a distinction in developmental psychology between states of consciousness and stages of consciousness. A state is a temporary experience, something like a taste of a particular level of being. A stage, on the other hand, is a more permanent level. It’s a way of being, like a plateau that I exist on. We generally experience new states of consciousness until we begin to regularly function from that stage.

A child learning to walk will experience states of balance and be able to take a few steps until she “owns” that stage. That’s how we grow; we experience states until we then embody stages.

I remember hanging out with a friend of mine, watching his daughter first learn to walk. She took a few steps, fell, got up and gave it a few more shots. All the while we were proud witnesses to her cuteness and effort. My friend turned to me and rhetorically asked; when do we start getting the message that trying and falling is something to be ashamed of?

On Sukkot we sit in the Sukkah and are covered by hovering schach. It’s not on us but over us. It is sometimes referred to as makifim, surrounded by, embracing by. We are told that on Sukkot we have the opportunity to draw down levels of consciousness that are up until now only makifim, up until now temporary states that we have not fully integrated.

If our relationship to the natural process of growth, of getting up and falling down, is one of embarrassment, hopelessness and impatience, then we live our lives in small, enclosed, secure boxes.

If however we can pass through the natural frequency of falling down and getting up while in states on our way to stages, then our lives are open like the roof of a Sukkah, to an endless sky of possibilities.

Sukkot are days of joy, of resonating to our innate wellbeing. From the place of joy and wellbeing, falling down and getting up are as natural as a child learning to walk. Sukkot is the time of having the faith that the processes we go through within the Sukkah, are ultimately within an even greater surrounding Presence who is proudly waiting for us to get up and give it another shot.

That would be the essence of my father whose Yartzeit was the second night of Sukkot.

Have great Shabbos and a most joyous Chag,

Simcha

A Journey Back to Now

Recently I began teaching a class which explores Judaism as a path towards individual wellbeing and the ability to engage in healthy relationships. We explore qualities of being which help us achieve these goals; to be compassionately present, uniquely expressive, spontaneously alive, powerfully value directed, having the courage to be vulnerable, as well as gratitude for life’s opportunities.

As a class, we have a destination, a goal, to learn, to grow and develop ourselves. And, the goal of the class is to consciously experience the joy of intimacy, and true intimacy always happens in the now, not in the “more, improved, better, when I finally get there” future.

What we’re doing, or should I also say, who we’re being, is;

Not just on a journey to a “more evolved” future

And

Not just resting in a “no need to evolve” present.

But we’re on a journey back to now.

And not just this class, but all of us.

When I’m instructing my child in how to behave, how to read, how to take responsibility; is my love for her any less before she gets the lesson than after she gets it?

When I’m making mistakes in business or still figuring out how to be a better husband and father; am I impatient with myself as I am now and can’t wait to get better?

I’m trying to get out of dept, I’m learning to learn, I’m building a business, I’m working on my health, I’m practicing to stay conscious, getting better at being patient, I’m improving on expressing my gratitude.

I’m a work in progress. I’m on my way to Israel.

And, is that, in any way, a contradiction to being in God’s loving presence, right now, even before I (any day now) perfect myself?

Yaakov journeyed to Sukkot, he built Sukkot and he named the place Sukkot. (Breishis 33:17)

Yaakov personified the quality called Tiferet. Some of the meanings of Tiferet are harmony, beauty and truth, as in;

The harmony of a single note within the context of a melody,

The beauty of seeing the whole world in the face of a child,

The larger truth, that we are all individuals, who are also parts of greater wholes.

In the desert we were surrounded by God’s presence, the Sukkot, on our way home to Israel.

On Sukkot we dwell in individual dwellings whose roofs are open to see the greater space we all inhabit together.

On Sukkot we hold the estrog, the resulting fruit that, we are told, has the same taste as the tree that causes it.

Yaakov, and us, his children, are not only about getting better, and we’re not only about loving what is. We’re about transcending and embracing both these qualities with the beauty and harmony and truth that is Israel.

We’re about striving, we’re about fighting for values that matter, for making difficult choices, for stepping into our fears, and for upholding spiritual disciplines,

And,

We’re about being a compassionate presence for ourselves in the process.

On Rosh Hashannah we are individuated and we experience our desire to return.

On Yom Kippur we open to the embrace of the Compassionate One.

On Sukkot, we experience the joy when these 2 realities touch.

We grow and we develop to become more conscious. And from a more conscious perspective, we embrace the stages we have grown through, the stages we still embody and the stages our children and others may still be on.

Have great Shabbos and a Chag Sameach,

Simcha