Getting Out Of Our Own Way

Just recently I had the pleasure to address “Coffee and Kavannah” an adult Sunday morning discussion group at a nearby synagogue. The group meets once a month and selects a theme from a wide variety of Jewish topics. That month they chose Jewish mysticism. The rabbi called me a few weeks prior to ask if I would make a presentation. I accepted but realized it was not going to be an easy task.  To compress centuries of knowledge into an hour and a quarter would be quite an undertaking.  So I thought I’d clarify some of the esoteric abstractions by preparing a handout with a simple chart and a diagram of the Ten Sephirot, the Kaballah’s model of the universe. I was getting to the point of explaining the emotional concepts of Chesed, lovingkindness; Gevurah, strength; and Tiferet, beauty, when a hand came up. One attractive young woman seated at the far end of a circular coffee table shyly asked, “what exactly to you mean by love?”  The question stunned me.  At that moment, I felt as if I would be stuck in that moment forever.  I tried to go back to the diagram to explain, and just then, in a flash of light, I realized the question couldn’t possibly be satisfied with some kind of intellectual explanation. Suddenly, a new insight overcame me. “Why it’s our genuine nature” I now answered assuredly. “We naturally radiate love; it’s as natural as the shape of our nose. The problem is we get in our own way.”

You might wonder how we could get in our own way? You see, there are actually two of us inside--the ego and the higher self--constantly competing for attention. The ego, our thinking, calculating part, was trained from early childhood to be protective of our thoughts and feelings. The higher self, on the other hand, glows with the pristine purity and innocence that’s symbolized by the Garden of Eden. It is our source for the blessings from Above—love, healing, wisdom and a host of others. Enter, the higher self beaming with love but before it gets and chance to shower its blessing, the ego chimes in with “what’s in it for me?”  That very question blocks the light of love. That’s the basic model for why so many of us suffer from low self-esteem (the lack of loving ourselves enough) and unsatisfactory relationships. If we could only realize how much love we are capable of emanating, but alas our mind trips us up.

Afterwards I went on to further describe how our minds deceive us, in other unsuspecting ways. Our ability to heal is impaired when our internal dialogue propels us towards needless and undue stress. There is enough publicity, out there, these days, on the detrimental impact the mind has on the body. We should pay more careful attention to what we do to ourselves rather than blaming illness on the weather or the environment.
We hold on to our past misbehavior like the proverbial Albatross, and even though everyone has forgotten, we remember and invariably punish ourselves. The little mind awakens memories of how bad we have been. We lock ourselves into a self-imposed jail and forgot what we did with the key.
We obsess about money too much. Regardless how much we have or how much we earn, most of us believe it’s never enough. What is little understood is that God provides an abundant supply of wealth that’s distributed according to our unknowing needs; our personality determines how much we should have. A constant stream of messages issues forth: “we don’t deserve more” or we’re not worthy of more”, so we don’t get more.
So how do we get out of our own way? One of our two selves has to take the helm. There are those times, as we steer through the vicissitudes of life, the ego should be in command. But there are other times like when you simply need to be alone with yourself or someone else that you sparkle best through your higher self, known in Hebrew as the neshamah. We’re conditioned to think out every decision we make. That’s OK, as long as we can switch gears when the situation demands it.
I concluded by explaining how to turn the rational mind off in a more contemplative mode, Jewish prayer.  In the daily service, we stand and recite the Eighteen Benedictions, the prayer that petitions for love, for forgiveness, for abundance, and for other goodies of life.  You may wonder why we pray for the things we get anyway, but prayer trains us to focus, even just for a while, on God. In that mind-set we see everyone around us, the downtrodden, the sick, the distressed, including ourselves as created in God’s image; we see how we block ourselves from receiving God’s bounty, and in those moments, we step out of our own way.