Tag Archives: judaism

On the Mat: TorahCycle Vayishlach

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Vayishlach 2014There’s a great idea in theoretical physics called quantum entanglement. The scientifics involve polarity and spin but also lead to my more metaphysical interpretation: once a person, place, or thing has touched/interacted with another, both remain connected at the quantum level. The moral: we’re all part of a system that grows and changes as we evolve and as we believe. We’re all in this struggle together.

We’re responsible for knowing that, for our thoughts and actions, and for how we treat one another. Good makes better happen; evil creates pain and sadness. Assume everyone else wants what you do: more love, health, freedom, safety, bursts of joy, a happy daily life, a satisfied tummy, with some music and poetry thrown in for grace. Wouldn’t it be grand if we could all entangle like that.

In this week’s reading Jacob is on his way to reconcile with the brother he wronged. His shadow. His other. How much resistance will that require overcoming?

The reading is about integration. About how your yin and yang fit together. What’s the classic wrestling picture? Opposing feet planted inside one another; arms in shoulder lock. What’s it really about? The intensity of trying to create balance and equilibrium when opposing aspects of self are used to running the show. Or so they think.

Our lives are universes of possibilities. Which one we choose and our response to that choice (emotional, rational, spiritual, and material) is what we’re really wrestling over. Do we really want a 50/50 life? When we fall in love it’s more like 90% happy, crazy, lovesickness and 10% everything else, until we return to reality and want a more grounded relationship. A healing protocol you embrace only 60% is unlikely to lower your cholesterol or blood sugar enough.

Every option will teach you something. Guide you somewhere. Take you to your next level of lessons.

This reading reminds you it’s time to do your work again. Whatever it is and whatever state of evolution you’ve achieved. To do better and do it again. To wrestle and struggle with whatever your piece of the cosmic puzzle is until you know you’ve done the best you can. At least for now.

You will get changed and  may get damaged a long the way. A symbolic limp’s a small price to pay for the transformation. Proof of progress.

Going toe-to-toe with karma is good for us. Whether your shadow takes the form of your spouse, ex, boss, friend, or self, the wrestle-through-the-night challenges strip away your boundaries and resistances as you struggle and sweat.

How I do with my stuff and how you do with yours helps or hinders how we all do and the context we do it in. It all matters. Because every part of the process generates more sparks and more energy and more entanglement. It’s a leveler in the best of ways; we are each evolving. The struggle becomes part of our story. The whole of us.

Dawn comes when the work you are doing feels different. You’ll keep trying things that way until you realize it’s time to try to change it again. That’s what all the rolling and re-rolling of the scrolls is about: us wrestling with ourselves, seeking entanglement with one another.

 

One More Time: TorahCycle Noach

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NasoHere’s the good news about the Noah story: we get another chance. Assuming we’re identifying with the hero. And why would we not?

What if you got a do-over? A real, honest-to-goodness second chance to redo your life. To redefine yourself in some substantive and meaningful way. How would you live then?

It doesn’t matter whether you got there by hitting bottom with bankruptcy, addiction,  a health crisis, or by making new agreements with yourself about your next now. Whether the road is easy or hard, this week’s reading says, you get to head out again.

Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey describes the trip pretty well: aspire to a great goal, try/fail/fall/keep trying, purifying your soul and karma in the process. Who hasn’t already done it a coupla zillion times? Raise your hand high if you’re where you want to be, and then tell the rest of us how you did it.

Torah says the first ten generations become rife with all manner of corruption and decay. We don’t hear about their journey. Just know they screwed up so badly it’s HaShem who wants the do-over.

In most lives it’s more mundane, but we’re still hobbled by bad decisions, usually about money, partner, career, or habits. Too often we go back to our vices instead of doing our holy work. In the actual Torah story, after getting to dry land, Noah blows it almost immediately with women and wine.

It helps to be curious what we got so wrong. If you know the old stories maybe you’ll have better vision about the big picture. I say that believing that you/we/I are here now to get it right. Or at least better than our previous tries. Because none of us gets it right at once. Even if you do, you get another lesson thrown at you. So do this one as best you can. You don’t wanna have to come back to clean up stray threads of karma.

We’re standing in the gateway of our second chance. In the moment when you decide the future is gonna be different from the past. The whole rest of Torah is the journey to make that true. Trekking through soul space. Learning yourself, finding a tribe, earning and achieving the redemption you have just been granted. We get a rainbow to mark the experience.

Why wouldn’t you sign on for that ride? Why wouldn’t you do it now? (Really, why wouldn’t you? Why haven’t you? Why do you feel hesitant or unready to? Chew on those for a bit.)

It’s time to go back to Go. Back to baseline. Time for the next take. What do we do? We say Yes. That’s what Noach offers. A chance to come out of the wet and the storm and build a fire. To think about how grateful you are for this one more chance to be you. And then to do a good job of it. Your soul is watching and wishing and hoping you’re going to

Lucky you.

The Harvest of Our Lives: Sukkot 2014

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sukkot 2014At the end of the day, what do you talk about, you and your soul? Do you get into the existential Why am I here? stuff, or do you think about how you’re doing with your chores, whether they’re simple things like chopping veggies for dinner or deeper tasks like taking a karmic inventory?

In the quiet of the day, what’s the conversation between you and you?

There’s a great holiday that starts this week, early in the Jewish calendar year and at the very end of the Torah cycle. It’s called Sukkot, from the word sukkah, which means booth. Traditional folks build covered shelters, as simple as a frame tented with fabric or wood and a canopy of thatch, harvest stalks, and reeds. They eat and sleep in them. The more observantly elastic take part of each day to meditate outside and share a meal with friends in a less formal sukkah.

The observance is a powerful mirror of the Passover holiday we celebrated six months ago.

Way back then we chose to leave mitzrayim, the narrow place, the symbolic land of constraint. We left slavery and went into the unknown. Now, after reaching our symbolic goal (and a new year), we take time to harvest the blessings of the land, give thanks, and take stock of the insights from our journey.

I’m not always a good practicing Jew. But I cherish the way Judaism organizes the year, the way it moves us inexorably through the cycles of self-examination and growth that so many of us profess to want to partake of.

I frame this writing on the weekly turning of the scrolls because I think that somewhere along the way someone got it right. That there’s a story here, and it’s a good one. That there are paths and processes and journeys that we go on. Spiritually. Emotionally. Intellectually. Physically. That what takes place in the material world happens in parallel in your soul. And if you pay good attention to your process you might learn something that’ll help make it easier/kinder/gentler and also deeper/more meaningful/spiritually valuable. If we all did that, this place would be happier/sweeter/more joyous. And all our paths would be paths of peace.

So if you and your soul aren’t talking, if you don’t think you’re here to learn/grow/improve and to find/create greater goodness and compassion, then what are you doing? Does it teach you or satisfy you? Energize you and open you?

I hope so. If not, then get on with figuring out what’ll give you the same bang for your karmic buck.

As we sit amidst the harvest of the season–the squashes that will sustain us this winter, the aromatics that will flavor our soups, the apples and pears that will sweeten our winter evenings–we give thanks for not only our liberation but for our arrival in this place of safety. Our ability to have perspective and quiet time. No more scrambling and searching and wondering. We have arrived.

At this turn of the seasons, in the oasis of whatever sukkah you choose, take a sweet moment to have a good heart to heart with your higher self. There is simply nothing better.

I’m Sorry: Yom Kippur 2014

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YK-2014On any given day, what I believe may differ from the day before. I’m pretty consistent about basic physics. Gravity, for example, is easy to discern and trust (except in airplanes). My personal mash-up of faith has some reliable components. I believe in synchronicity more than randomness. No white-guy-on-a-throne. But though I believe in prayer, I couldn’t explain it with prepositions like to or from. I think we’re collectively spirit, and that our actions matter. That karma happens, but don’t look for linear examples of it. Bad things happen to good people, and good things to people who don’t seem to deserve them.

Although we’re trying to do good and better, we often blow it. Individually and collectively. I’m not talking about failures to give up cigarettes, carbs, or cocaine. I’m talking about the ways we treat one another on a daily basis, both those we profess to care about, and the rest of humanity.

Judaism has a great annual ritual for acknowledging our lapses, and for asking for forgiveness. It truly doesn’t matter whether you’re asking for it from an external energy or from your own conscience. What’s important is to acknowledge how you’ve not lived at the highest level of personal integrity. To clear the slate and do better the next 364 days.

The process happens on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, starting this year the eve of October 3rd. We say a very specific prayer accompanied by literal pounding of fist over heart. It’s chanted as and in the collective, in part to mask our individual lapses, and also because we act as witnesses to one another, and to the idea that as a community, a tribe, and a global family, we’re each part of a spiritual ecosystem that cannot heal until we all do.

Each phrase is prefaced with For the wrong we have done before you…. and interspersed with the request Please forgive us, pardon us, and help us atone. Read it slowly, thinking about your own hits and misses, and your ability to atone, forgive yourself , and to do better more often.

For the wrong we have done before you….

  • In the closing of the heart,
  • Without knowing what we do,
  • Whether open or concealed,
  • Knowingly and by deceit,
  • Through the prompting of the heart,
  • Through the influence of others,
  • Whether by intention or mistake,
  • By the hand of violence,
  • Through our foolishness of speech,
  • Through an evil inclination,
  • In the palming of a bribe,
  • By expressions of contempt,
  • Through misuse of food and drink,
  • By our avarice and greed,
  • Through offensive gaze,
  • Through a condescending glance,
  • By our quickness to oppose,
  • By deception of a friend,
  • By unwillingness to change,
  • By running to embrace an evil act,
  • By our groundless hatred,
  • In the giving of false pledges.

The focus of the Jewish High Holidays is a process called t’shuvah, return. We’re aiming for a clarity of soul and purpose, a re-commitment to living with integrity, honor, goodness, and compassion. And to creating a world of peace. Amen.

Growing Up: TorahCycle Ki Tavo

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KiTavo

It happens to all of us eventually. Perhaps sooner in some areas of our lives than in others. But some day we all look around, and think: Wow, that’s not such a big issue for me any more. The issues are as varied as our DNA and karma. But show me someone without any and I’ll listen hard to whatever they have to say.

This week’s reading begins, “When you come into the land…” Amazing. All that long beginning ago there was chaos and void; then lots of begetting, slavery, and most recently forty years of trekking. Finally someone’s talking about a payoff. Hooray.

The instruction goes, When you get there, give gratitude. There’s details of course, but it comes down to regular invocations of awe and wonder and saying lots of thank yous. It doesn’t really matter if the thanks yous are to self or external entities. The energy’s coming from the same place, the one where you say Good job! And really mean it.

Personal development is more than a theory. It’s not just possible. It’s becoming real and we are here to prove it.

What’ve we done in all our time of trekking and searching, striving and berating, trying and trying and trying yet again? We’ve grown “a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear.” There is no wonder we’re not equipped to witness. And no tragedy we can ignore. If we stay open and aware we’ll be in a continual state of witnessing and growth.

The promised land offers us plenty to give gratitude for. We’re able to share, to gift our family, friends, and neighbors. So do it.

You’ve heard the summer joke about people locking their car doors so people don’t fill the seats with zucchini. Turn it around. Practice practical gratitude. If you have money, donate some. If you have time, share it. If you know, hear, and see something that needs to be fixed, start fixing it.

That includes continuing to work on yourself, as well as looking outside. In this time of harvest we’re being gifted with a sense of optimism. It’s the time to believe not just in the possibility of change but in its manifestation.

I’ve been noticing how happy the current crop of babies is making people. It’s always that way of course, its just that in my circle there’s a dozen or so newborns/not-yet-walking souls. They make people smile. We’re tickled that they haven’t done anything wrong yet. Haven’t screwed up a relationship or a job, gotten stuck in a rut of bad habit or foolish opinion. Haven’t made the work of being human any harder than it need be.

This week’s about that same sense of newness. Of starting over with a clean slate. Of having made it through a passage that seemed endless. And, now, poof it’s gone. Over. Done. We have new life, more energy. We’re happier and in a better mood, We are fueled with the buoyancy of gratitude and wonder that an open heart can bring.

We are soon to enter a new year, a time of starting over. With our hearts open, eyes open, and ears open. May they see, hear, and share blessings.

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.

Do The Right Thing: TorahCycle Balak

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Balak 2014There’s a great Spike Lee movie in which a young black man has a choice between defending the white pizza-shop owner who hired him or siding with his rioting neighbors. The movie smolders relentlessly to a tight climax: heat and tension inexorably rising.

The guy in the moral cross hairs of this week’s story is named Balaam, hired by King Balak to curse the Israelites, whom he fears may settle in his land. In our times, uninvited neighbors might get a rock through the window or a burning cross on the lawn.

Balaam sets out, happy to have a gig. On the road, his donkey stops and says No further. No cursing. Do the right thing instead. PS, If you don’t believe me, can you see the angel blocking our way? Even with that, Balaam tries to curse, but blessings flow from his mouth instead.

We can’t pick our lessons. But we can pay attention when they show up. Unless they’re catastrophic we might not even notice them, usually for far too long. We get used to ignoring those nagging whispers or strange feelings every time we think about a certain person, place, or thing.

Because they’re almost always inconvenient, we rarely embrace our lessons with joy. For most of us, karmic reprimands aren’t pretty or fun. They’re annoying distractions from what we’d rather be doing. Gratitude, or even bemused irony, is hard to come by. We’re so involved in the immediacy of our lives that we forget this whole experience is just a small blip in the larger cosmic drama.

The Hindus have a great word, leela. It means cosmic play, which you can interpret as anything from hopscotching quarks to the fates rolling dice with our lives. We can learn our lessons the easy way or the hard way, depending on everything from attitude to karma. A lot depends on how well we heed the messengers who deliver them.

It helps to learn how your particular guides like to talk to you. Many cultures have trickster legends, guides who smile, beguile, and riddle. Judaism sends angels, malachim, often translated as messengers. Ignore them at your own peril. Much better to pay attention to what’s being said and asked of you.

Angels and talking critters are hard to come by. Spirit guides invisible. And their stand-ins, family and friends, so easy to ignore. But like in the old cartoon of a tiny angel and devil whispering into opposite ears, we usually know when we’re facing an important choice.

Wouldn’t it be grand if we knew what the right choice was? If we didn’t need a cosmic 2×4 to get our attention, like ultimatums from doctors, judges, or divorce papers. If we did the right thing willingly and easily.

We get greedy, forgetful, and lazy. But mostly we know what’s good, right, and true. My optimistic self believes we’re hard-wired for goodness. That mostly we want to get it right. It’d be a bleak world to think otherwise.

What if we did the right thing more often? If we created more joy and more caring, more blessings than curses, because we’re more light than dark, more good than afraid, more loving than angry.

Can you image the beautiful world we’d create?

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.

What Do You Do With A Do-Over?: TorahCycle Beha’alotecha

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BehaalotechaGolfers have this great concept called a Mulligan, named, I assume, for the guy who whined/cajoled his play buddies until they let him take his shot over without a penalty. We’ve all done, or certainly wished for, the same. Would that all our mistakes were confined to the world of recreation, and had such benign consequences, and that we could self-declare the moments when we wished to invoke our do-overs.

In this week’s reading, the Israelites who’d been considered impure during Passover ask for a chance to make up their missed opportunity to give offerings. In another section, the people complain they’re sick and tired of manna and ask for meat to eat. For the record, manna can taste like anything you want it to, from carrot cake to lobster. Okay maybe not lobster, but whatever kosher delicacy you can conjure. You may hold and ingest the same glumpfy stuff every day, but you’re supposed to be able to transform it into something that satisfies your imagination as well as your nutritional needs. But apparently that wasn’t enough. If it looks like manna, even if it doesn’t taste like manna, it’s still manna. And even though you don’t have to do anything more than pick it off the ground each morning and eat, we’re a grumbly greedy lot.

Where from, this perpetual desire to have things better and better? Why do we suffer from FMS (fear of missing something)? And why do we whine for more or different when our lives are abundant and filled with blessings?

Someone once told me the UN definition for sufficiency of life. It’s roughly: a safe place to sleep, a choice of food, and a means of transport other than your feet. Look around your world and see how it stacks up. I’m betting on the high side.

I’m not suggesting we live in a permanent state of guilt over our comparatively fortunate lives. But I am strongly advocating that when we reflexively reach for more, or complain about the lots and lots we have in our hands, we’d be far better off taking a couple of deep breaths and a time out for some introspection and gratitude.

It’s also the perfect opportunity to practice some generosity. One of the organizational pillars of Judaism is tzedakah, which is translated more as righteousness and justice than charity. It’s meant to be done with an open heart, and without concern for future payback or reputational glory. The benefits accrue to the giver as much as to the receiver.

The next time you get a chance for a Mulligan, go past taste buds, personal comfort, ego and desire. Stretch a little. Think about someone other than yourself and the narrow circle of those you usually care for and about. If you have manna, share it. Ditto for money and time. Do some volunteer work. Clear through your possessions; then donate to those with less. Offer up what you can afford to, and add in some more. Help your tribe and your life become less grumbly and more caring. Who knows, maybe you won’t need more Mulligans in the future. You’ll be part of a happier and more satisfying flow.