Tag Archives: choice

Letting It Go: TorahCycle Miketz

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Miketz 2014The old adage goes, Revenge is a dish best served cold. That suggests it’s better to be tough (so you are not hurt again) and cunning (until you can get even). Not good for anyone, including those who’ve been hurt. Ditto for immediate responses of anger, physical violence, and words that cannot be unspoken. All set us on a path to unhappiness, disease, dis-ease, and a generalized sense that the world is an unfriendly, even hostile, environment.

But hurt is a heavy burden. You know the difference between the lightness you feel when you are joyous and the weight sadness brings to your soul. In the movie 21 Grams, that miniscule amount is the difference between a living person and their empty husk. Would it be more on a very bad day?

Other than spirit itself, what weights a soul? Wounds, sadness, anger, regret, unrequited longing, unhappy memories, words spoken and not, scars of body, mind, and heart.

The grudges and hurts of a lifetime form a subliminal refrain. Something your parent or a teacher said. The ex you can’t get over. A bad review, criticism from a friend, a mistake you can’t forgive yourself for making, the chance you didn’t take. It all festers. Whether we want revenge, oblivion, or another chance, we’re unlikely to get it this time around. We need forgiveness, from and to ourselves and others.

In this week’s reading, Joseph, now a governor of Egypt, looks down from his dais at the very brothers who sold him into slavery. They’ve come petitioning for sanctuary and grain.

What’s a guy to do? Embrace and thank them for initiating events that brought him to high position? Or hide behind the masks of office and test them, see if they are worthy of his help?

It’s the rare person who would choose the former. But bearing a grudge keeps him caught in a dark place too. He escaped the pit and slavery, but they cast a shadow on his soul. The forgiveness he is working on towards those who wronged him will benefit him as much as those who treated him badly.

Often times we bury our wounds in our bodies. We encapsulate them emotionally but they fester in our aching backs or sour tummies. They simmer, keeping us unbalanced, hurting, and unavailable to be fully present

It’s amazing what letting go of old pain can do to heal us. Recent studies have shown that memory transfers cellularly to future generations. So lineages of abuse and trauma get multiplied. What if we infected one another with forgiveness and goodness instead?

Q: How can we interrupt the cycle? A: No revenge: cold, warm, or otherwise. Keep releasing the anger, grief, and sadness, no matter how old or seemingly small. Remember it; look at it and let it go; then sweep out of your soul. Rinse and repeat. You’ll know when you’re clean.

From Peter Heller’s new novel The Painter:

      It’s not possible to hold that much pain.

There was a silence and then she said, Even the earth rests. The moon swims up, thin as grass, and the stars, and you can see every one. It is a much quieter song.

 

Knock, Knock: TorahCycle Vayeira

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Vayeira 2014Much of lot of Torah is about recognizing and responding to messengers. Messengers and messages that come in various forms. It’s easy to imagine holy messengers looking like white-robed angels. In fact, the Hebrew word for angels is malachim, which translates as messengers.

They come bearing news and pronouncements, instructions and even commands, both joyous and dire. They’re interpreted as performing divine errands. But they’re not on call to you. When you might want them to save or guide you, they can be absent or silent, no matter how much you search, ask or plead.

Who do you listen to then?

This week’s reading has several important moments, with messengers and otherwise. It’s almost a distillation of Torah, framing questions about who one listens to when, how far one is willing to go (in obedience to a god or a spouse), and the generational consequences of those decisions.

In the ultimate supremacy of hospitality, Abraham interrupts a conversation with the divine to welcome three strangers who approach his tent. They are, of course, angels come to bless him and his ostensibly barren wife with news of a child to come. The stories in this reading seed centuries of Middle East conflict: Ishmael/Isaac and Hagar/Sarah, the ancestors of warring tribes, nations, and faiths. It also presents the almost sacrifice of Isaac, interrupted by yet another holy messenger.

Too often we’re shown Abraham acting, but not deliberating, even though he’s confronting serious issues that have deep and long-range consequences. It’s certainly not how I consider far smaller decisions, and contrasts mightily with the bargaining he does to try and save Sodom. What’s the pointing finger trying to tell us?

The metaphor of child sacrifice is scary and compelling. I read it as  putting us eyeball to eyeball with our values. About knowing which voice to follow in very difficult circumstances, albeit of our own making. The whole process that we’re engaged in as humans is about pushing ourselves to understand our true values, and how we’re going to live as a consequence of embracing them. That goes for daily life and bigger things, like elections. If we believe something we need to act to keep it alive.

One of my friends said recently, Nothing important in my life has ever happened where I didn’t hear a call. I feel the same. I’d like to think that if an angel hadn’t appeared Abraham would’ve decided a loving god would not actually require him to kill a child.

I believe in holy resonances but I also believe they’re here to teach us by offering opportunities to step up. In any given moment you have to decide where the lines is that you will or will not follow or cross. Just because you walk down a path doesn’t mean you have to follow it to the sad and bitter end. You get to write your story.

The point is to notice when the messengers and messages arrive. Then to listen very carefully.

You get to decide what you believe in. All the rest is pointing and whispers and hints. And if you are lucky sometimes a great big cosmic pat on the back.

Packing Up, Heading out: TorahCycle Lekh Lekha

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P1000256I bought a little piece of pottery last week, shaped like an old- fashioned suitcase. It reminds me that my parents were immigrants, of the We came to this country with $10 in our pockets, so work hard, get an education, and all will be fine variety. (Yeah, maybe, sometimes.) It reminds me of journeys ahead, and of the personal baggage we all bring along. Our memories and hopes, secrets and fears. The things we keep tucked deeply inside, though our close ones would get lots pretty right.

We carry the emotional legacy of our past, of what’s formed us, and often pack what we think we’ll need to stay safe, to avoid being hurt again (at least in the same way). These defensive patterns shield us. But they also insulate us from what might teach or heal us.

In this week’s reading, Abram (soon-to-be Abraham) leaves his land, his parents’ home, and his country. There’s a strong, dynamic, tension between what we’ve always done/how we’ve always done it and our desire, curiosity, and need for the new. The more old stuff we carry with us, the harder and slower it may be to let go. Think Chinese finger puzzle.

There are places in your soul and heart that have been that way so deep and long that you have to actively choose to make room for change. For the unknown. The hoped-for, but also the unanticipated, surprising, even startling and challenging. Easier said than done.

This is a great time to think about what you’re bringing along, and what not to pack. If you need a meat cleaver to discern the difference, put behind you anything that’s hobbling your growth or seems like a repetitive pattern. If you’re not sure, look for bad outcomes and work back to their source. Catherine Shainberg, whom I respect as a teacher, has many great exercises, to help sort grain from chaff.

How can you develop the part of you that’s looser, that’s easier on yourself, on those you’ve tangled with, and on the folks who see and support you on your journey? It takes both will and a willingness to release.

Many folks organize their lives with compartmentalization and denial. An ignore-the-elephant-under-the-rug practice. But a reframe of that, its higher aspect, is to say What hurt me, or how I’ve hurt myself, no longer has authority over me.

A declaration of emotional independence. A clipping of the ties that bound. Leaving behind your stubbed toes and heart surgeries, whether they were literal or visceral. Transcending what you’ve outgrown. And bringing along the best. The joyous and sweet memories. The lessons learned. And the wisdom and flexibility they engender.

It’s about non-resistance. Yes easier said than done. And easy to get distracted by the clamor of our lives or our very human frailties. But if you pull it off, you’ll travel lighter and happier.

The reading concludes with the covenant of circumcision to mark the relationship with the divine. I prefer the metaphor of peeling back yet the next layer from your heart. Unveiling more you. And experiencing everything in your life one notch more intensely. Living more openly, more vulnerably, more receptively, and with less baggage.

The Way It Feels: TorahCycle Ha’azinu

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hold for later

Somewhere along the way we make agreements with ourselves. Agreements on a soul level about what and how we’ve agreed to experience this time around. Sometimes they show up and I think, I get this lesson easily. Other times not so much. (Of course the “easy” time could really be the fiftieth and I wasn’t paying close enough attention the first forty-nine.) Either way, it helps to be doing your karmic homework.

We all have issues we seem to need to learn the hard way. They’re as unique as our DNA, but the process is pretty much the same: butt your head repeatedly getting it wrong; fall down, complain, cry, or all the above. Rinse and repeat

So how do we learn?

A handful of years ago I said a capital Y Yes to a process I hoped would culminate in emotional and spiritual development. I got a grace period, then a big kick in the butt, some serious choices over a period of time, with lots of healing, friends, head-butting and small bits of progress along the way. It meant moving past fear, sadness, wanting what I didn’t have, not getting what I wanted, or at least not in the way that I wanted it, or as much as I wanted, mourning what I’d lost, and feeling a little wiser. You know the drill.

Making progress took visioning the life I wanted to create and an equally clear knowing of what I was saying No to. Mostly it took shedding a load of heaviness and making lots more room inside for good things to grow.

In Lev Grossman’s brilliant conclusion to his Magicians trilogy [Note: the wise will follow great instructions from the jacket blurb: Throw your electonica down a well and duct tape the door when you begin], he uses the image of a flower to represent the combined emotions of awe and joy and hope and longing. That’s pretty much a summary of a divine spiritual experience. It’s hard to sustain, which is why those peak moments stay etched so clearly in our souls. The moment when….

…. you touch that place in your soul when you’re as close to an enlightenment experience as you’re likely to get this time around.

In the life that follows, your regular one, where you jump-start your day with coffee, put up with colleagues, bad drivers, and stubbing your toe on one thing or another, you sometimes remember that feeling. It can come through a scent or a sight or a thought. And you’re transported to that complex sense of awe and joy and hope and longing.

We are at the cusp of a brand new Jewish calendar year. Soon we’ll be re-rolling the whole Torah and starting again with Genesis. The air is pungent with that freshly-sharpened pencils smell of childhood. We’re anticipating the blessings just around the corner.

Sure, there’ll be butt kicks too. But what the hell. We signed on for this ride, so let’s see what it offers. With luck it’ll be awe and joy and hope and longing. Glimpsed, fulfilled, and more to come.

Choosing Life: TorahCycles Nitazvim/Vayelech

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Mattot 2014Unless you’re in the mood for an earworm, don’t itune the Rent song that so lyrically wraps its arms around what we do with our time in this incarnation. It asks how you measure a life, and answers: In minutes, in daylights, in sunsets, In midnights, in cups of coffee, In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. It encourages us to measure in Seasons of Love, In truths that she learned or In times that he cried, In bridges he burned or the way that she died, and invites us to remember the love.

This week’s reading says, Choose life. There’s simply no better way to spend your time here.

Your choice might be trekking in Nepal and mine watching hummingbirds from my chaise. Others might wish for potable water or a safe place to sleep.

Choosing life comes down to resonating with what your inner voice, your soul, is pointing to and encouraging you see/hear/feel. It’s why some people are good gardeners, and why others sail or put out to sea. Why we write or make art, parent or make love.

We’re each such a strange, wonderful, and mysterious constellation of resources and desires. Life comes down to how we share them.

Several friends have had parents die in the last while, and others are pending same. The ones on the before side are tenser. Each time the phone rings, it’s a potential crises. The caretaker, doctor’s office, or other bad news. The ones who talk about their recently deceased seem to glow a little. They’re free from the worry, and can relax into memories of the gentler times.

Judaism buries folks within a day, and then asks friends to sit with the kin for the first week of evenings. To say prayers and speak of the departed love one. To hear about a mother who loved to docent at the art museum, and learned to tango at 80. The dad who taught his kids to play tennis and chess. These people come alive again in the telling.

Why? Because they lived doing what was most precious to them. And shared their pleasure and joy in doing so.

 

It’s hard to get really angry when you’re happy. Harder to exploit others or start wars. Though it’s pretty easy to feel dissatisfied if you’re having trouble simply staying alive, or feeding and educating your kids.

If we want to keep choosing the life we want, we’ll need to work a little harder making sure everybody else gets the same choices.

There’s always gonna be some evildoers. But if most of us are trying to make a good life for us all, ya gotta think there’ll be less kindling for the flames the malcontents try to light.

If you do nothing else this week, take some moments here and there to be very conscious of what you’re doing right then. To think how you have chosen it, to really feel it, and then choose it again. Or not to, and decide instead to choose something else, a different way of living.

If you really listen, you’ll choose the life you want.

 

 

 

What We’re Good At: TorahCycle Eikev

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KedoshimWe all have things we’re good at. Sometimes they’re thing to be proud about, like prowess with money, math, or words. Others are less admirable and useful, like being great at driving under the influence. We want admiration for the first set of traits, and hope the others won’t end up getting us in too much trouble.

This week Moses gives the Israelites a detailed litany of their failures and transgressions. It’s delivered the way an ex (or soon-to-be ex) might recite them: The time when you blah blah blah. And the time when you didn’t…. It’s not endearing, but it does raise rather interesting questions of why we’re so good at disobedience. Why we’re so good at rebelling, acting out of fear and lack of trust, impatience and desire trumping faith and the higher moral high ground. And also whether we’re happy repeating that pattern over and over or are ready for a change.

Eons ago, at the dawn of my deeper metaphysical work, I was studying higher math. This came after decades of flipping past charts and tables whenever they appeared. It was only intro calculus, but it was enough to show me two of the principles of the cosmic dynamic.

Stay with me because they’re not that hard. Principle One: the universe stretches from one infinitely far away place to its opposite infinitely far away place. Principle Two: the difference in space/time between any one thing and its neighbor can be teeny tiny small, just a nano-breath greater than zero, but any two things that are different are by definition not the same.

I use these principles to illustrate what I call the calculus of the soul. No matter what issue or action you’re thinking about taking, you have a huge range of possible behaviors available to you. Plus an infinite amount of equivocation and rationalization to help you decide where on the spectrum you’re going to land today, this time. That’s an intellectual approach. You may function on gut or emotion, but the outcome is still somewhere on the range between pure obedience and pure screwing up.

In my world, obedience means not eating sugar anymore. Perhaps not to the zero tolerance, not even if it’s ingredient number twelve on a package, level. But between the raw white stuff, honey, agave, date or coconut sugar, stevia, and zero none, I’m sticking to fruit, and whatever’s in a glass of wine, or the occasional slice of bread. It’s a health thing, but it’s also retraining my taste buds. I don’t ever expect to lust for sour, but it would be nice to be satisfied with savory. I’m in day seven, and it’s easier than it’s been the last zillion times I’ve tried.

We trek the same territory year after year. Cycle through Torah striving to become better and better, or at least get it right more often than we did the last time around. You may be trying to become the you that you feel you are in your soul, even if her disobedient clones cause you to stumble on your path.

Eventually though, you will improve. We all do. And you’ll get one step closer to where you wanna go.

What You Say: TorahCycle D’varim

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Dvarim 2014There’s a Chinese proverb that says the symbol for crisis also is the symbol for opportunity. In the midst of the current Middle East violence, I’ve been thinking about how we use language and how that influences how we perceive and act.

We’re at the very beginning of the last book of Torah. This week’s reading, D’varim is a Hebrew word that means both words and things. In the beginning the world is spoken into being. This whole universe we inhabit and share with one another begins with speech: energy and intention taking physical form. At each step, creation is given a cosmic seal of approval, And it was good.

Things were simpler without people to get greedy or angry, to start sparring with their kin and other tribes. Though even within the first family story there’s strife and murder: Cain killing Abel, a battle between brothers that continues with Isaac/Ishmael, and Jacob/Esau.

As Torah progresses, the stories become less personal, but peace is always shattered and blood spilled. Those people/they/them are defined as other. As fair game for our tribal rage. As acceptable collateral damage in modern parlance.

What would happen if instead of saying enemy people said neighbor? If instead of The man who killed my brother, we said The man whose son I killed?

I confess to the sadness/fatalism about Middle East politics that Israeli novelist David Grossman bemoaned in a recent speech: a loss of hope, especially ironic given that Israel’s national song is Hatikvah (Hope). For the record, I believe in Israel’s right of self-defense, but also in its responsibility for different, better, socio-politics.

As long as the people of the region identify as warring tribes rather than neighbors caught in a complicated situation, we’re all doomed to cycles of violence and retribution.

It is a sad, sad waste, given what we humans are capable of in our best and most creative times. But like Jacob wrestling an angel who could represent his most crippling aspects of self, we seem to be trapped in an endless struggle of killing and revenge. Time heals some wounds but seems to deepen others. There’s such a long legacy of anger and pain; forgiveness and healing feel far away.

Writers try to wrap their arms around it: In The Jewish Lover, Topol uses a contemporary murder mystery to dramatize the 1,000-year ambivalence between Russians and Jews, from the tenth-century Jewish Khazar kingdom in southern Russian until now. The Lemon Tree, by Sandy Tolan, is about a house built in 1930’s Palestine by an Arab patriarch, taken in 1948 by Israelis, and settled by immigrants from Holocaust Europe. It’s a microcosm of regional conflict that recounts good and evil on both sides, with all the tangled roots and acidic fruit.

I believe in the power of words, be they fiction, essay, or self-talk. My writing focuses on personal growth because it feels like a necessary precursor to larger shifts. Also, because it’s what we can wrap our heads around.

So the only thing I know for sure is that while people are using words of war they are unlikely to create peace. If we can change our words maybe we can change the world.

 

Fingers Crossed: TorahCycle Mattot

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Mattot 2014Sometimes we cross our fingers for good luck. We’re wishing and hoping. Other times we cross them while rationalizing a “white” lie (to protect someone’s feelings, though as often it’s our own self-interest). And sometimes when we promise something we cross them because we want a great big loophole to vault through later.

This week’s reading deals with the rules for breaking vows: commitments made with sacred intention and obligation. A kind of spiritual promissory note. Often made in times of great stress, and abandoned later when what caused that stress abates. Think hospitals, wars, night terrors, and other forms of acute fear.

More optimistically, individuals make pledges to everything from diets to fund drives. Countries make promises too, as treaties and alliances. But when conditions change, we break our vows. It’s no more honorable in a country than a person, though there’s usually  spin-doctors to wrap the betrayal in flags and slogans.

Making a vow you’re not going to keep reinforces the idea that your word is worthless. Why would anyone else believe your promise to them if you don’t keep your promises to yourself? Why would you make a commitment if you didn’t really plan to keep it? Mostly, because we’re human. Fallible. Filled with good intentions and lousy habits.

Ironically, more often than not we do better at meeting commitments we make to others. That’s part of why behavior modification programs like diet plans, AA, and the like have public meetings. External accountability is often more effective than putting patches on your arm and hoping that you’ll be able to quit inhaling.

I believe in few absolute vows. Thou shalt not kill, is an example of a good one. But as I age I’m becoming more of a relativist. Not just to go easier on myself when I stray from my program du jour. But because I don’t think they work well for really effective change.

I’m finding vows more of a guilt trip than a benefit. Thou shalt not eat gluten, for example, in the absence of actual ciliac disease, is more a chance to screw up than to stare down temptation. The sense of failure that comes with a bagel is worse for me than the actual gluten.

Better to build up our sense of progress and pride by honoring intentions more gradually, more naturally, and more authentically. By making the right choices in each moment, time after time. Not saying something once and hoping I’m done. Because “done” is more often the path to backsliding and recrimination, looking for the loopholes, rather than taking the next step on the right road.

What vows do you make and which do you keep? What would happen if you allowed your deep intention to guide you rather than struggle with a one-time promise?

Too often vow-making and vow-breaking go hand in hand. Far better to choose good in the moment than out of fear or obligation. Regular reinforcement of your intention by making good choices more often is far more effective, llong lasting, and gentler on the soul.

Better to count the times you get it right, not the ones you blow it.

Too Much: TorahCycle Pinchas

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shemot 2013Most of us are passionate about something, whether it’s our soccer team, favorite candidate, or religion. I’m pretty anti-evangelical about religious passion, although I make an exception for Rumi, who refers to The Divine as The Beloved, with such open-hearted yearning that you hope he made it to nirvana.

Virtually of us have been passionate about passion at least once in our lives. That glorious cosmic zap when nothing exists but your new love. The Gotta have you now! kind of passion. One of my favorite Rumi quotes: At the sound of love’s flute, even the dead shall rise and rend their shrouds with desire.

The problem for me in this week’s reading, is that the lovers in question are killed by a guy named Pinchas, who enforces his personal morality with the sharp end of a spear, and is rewarded for doing so.

I’m from the “make love, not war” generation, a sentiment good for all time. Many rabbis don’t condemn Pinchas, who seems to have skipped his “use your words” training and gone immediately for the self-righteous knockout blow.

I think this reading is about excess. Not just acting out our super-sized moral values as though we’re the only ones who have it right., or lust’s temporary blindness. But the smaller, seemingly more trivial decisions that cause big problems over time. The eat-the-whole-chocolate-bar instead of a one or two pieces kind of excess. Whipping out our visas instead of saying I can live without that.

My teaching: excess at any end of the spectrum is wrong. And it’s  a great time to cut it out.

In more personal terms, it might mean setting up (and then-gulp –living on) a monthly budget. Ditto for calories, TV, frittered time, etc. Whatever you’re doing too much of, this is a great week to think about reining yourself in.

Because if you don’t, the universe will do it for you. Not in a death and damnation way. But in the actions have consequences way.

If I don’t limit sugar/carbs, my body’s gonna rebel. I suspect you know which of your passions has been running on overdrive. You might not be on borrowed time yet, but Act III could be here or near.

I always prefer a carrot to a sharp stick. (Actually I prefer chocolate, but without it carrots taste much sweeter.)

Metaphor aside, payoffs often help motivate us. To make a change, chooose a different source than the one you usually gravitate to. If food’s your downfall, use kissing for nourishment. Spending too much? Appreciate what you already own: use the good china, or put on your dress-up duds on a weekday.

Whatever’s on your bucket list, pick a payoff that’ll help you choose change. And then, as the ad, says, Just do it.

But whatever you do, don’t be a zealot. Take the process a little slower and gentler than you might in your most self-righteous, first-to-fifth in six seconds mode.

It’s okay to be excited. But more kindness and less self-judgment will keep you on the right path far longer and better than a pointed stick or flaming out in a burst of short-lived glory.

Yikes!! TorahCycle Shelach Lekha

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Shelach 2014Back in the day, in a different golden age of television, Lily Tomlin played a character called Edith Ann, a charmingly incisive toddler sitting in a B.I.G rocker. Adult life can feel like that. Inside we can feel like little kids pretending to be grown-ups, an emotion as true in our sixties as in our teens.

This week spies are sent into Canaan on a reconnaissance mission. They return with clusters of fruit and report a land flowing with milk and honey. But they are afraid, and tell tall tales: Ah, um, oh yeah, did we mention the G.I.A.N.T.S? They’re b.i.g. and not looking to leave. This may have been a bad idea. How about a giant U-turn back to good old Egypt, where, really, how bad could it have been?

When we’re faced with a challenge–be it physical, mental, spiritual, or emotional–do we see opportunity and possibility, or danger and risk? Do we say Yes or No? Jump in or run? What are we saying Yes or No to? The seduction of adventure and reward? Long-run gain for short-run sacrifice? Or saving our hides and Never mind, I’m outta here!

What are the consequences–both desired and unintended–of our choices? Do they make us better, strong, wiser, or do they lube the path towards failure and regret? Once we’ve told the first lie, starting a complicated process of rationalization, what can stem the slide? What’ll it cost us to climb back out of the pit we’re digging. Or to descend from whatever precarious perch we’ve climbed onto?

Mostly, why isn’t this whole life thing just easier?!? It can be, but that often requires an attitude adjustment.

At the pulsing surge of spring into summer, nature in all her fecundity is impressive, even a little intimidating. That dynamic urge to grow. As Michael Pollan says in his splendid The Botany of Desire, the zeal of life to recreate itself.

This vitality demands we step up. That we participate. Not just by weeding and watering. But opening ourselves, every part and every chakra, wider and more receptive. Let in all that color and birdsong. Encourage those rosebuds and tomato blossoms. Calls of Smell me, Taste me are beckoning from our future.

Like the spies, we’re being invited to a land of good and plenty. No question there are challenges real and imagined. Pollen, aphids, and drought. But they’re a small price to pay for the bounty that follows.

The invitation is unambiguous and delicious: Step up and grow. Step up and bloom. Step up and transform.

Your promised land and mine may have nothing in common. But the things that matter to me matter to me a lot. I hope you’re as committed to your own vision. And that you’re willing to face the possibility even of giants to reap your own harvest.

Don’t get sidetracked by fear. Whatever challenge you’re trying to avoid will only show up later in another form if you duck it now. You’ve schlepped all this way to get here. No way out but through. With great rewards ahead of you.

Don’t fall for the Yikes! Do what you came here to do.