(27/40) Suffering.

Is your suffering dear to you?

A question popped into my head a few weeks ago.

Every time I heard myself complain, or someone else utter a grievance, it would come to mind: "Is your suffering dear to you?"

As crazy as it might seem, I am attached to certain aspects of my misery. For example, I hold fast to, and even enjoy, the idea that I'm terminally unique — that I don't fit in well with groups. And honestly, this is a misery I don’t feel like giving up. This suffering is dear to me. I get mileage out of it!

So, I want to ask the same question of you: "Is your suffering dear to you?"

Let's face it, our problems often define us and anything that defines us — while spiritually it’s perhaps not the best idea to hold onto these things — makes us feel like we exist.

Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a 19th & 20th century Armenian-Greek mystic, wrote:

"Another thing that people must sacrifice is their suffering. It is very difficult also to sacrifice one's suffering. A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering. Man is made in such a way that he is never so much attached to anything as he is to his suffering. And it is necessary to be free from suffering. No one who is not free from suffering, who has not sacrificed his suffering, can work. Later on a great deal must be said about suffering. Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering. Now, decipher what this means." (Emphasis added.)

About a week after the phrase "Is your suffering dear to you?" surfaced in my consciousness, I realized where it came from. I knew this phrase from a passage of Talmud I had studied 15 years ago in which two holy men were interacting and one asks the other, "Is your suffering dear to you?"

I looked up the Hebrew-Aramaic tale in Brachot 5b and saw the response given: "Neither it nor its reward."

What does that mean? The explanation is this: in the ancient world it was commonly believed that God compensated people in the-world-to-come for their suffering in this world. That is, the more your suffered in this world and the more nobly you endured your suffering, the greater reward you could expect in heaven!

With love,


Rabbi Brian


And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

(26/40) Surrender.

Surrender.

Surrender, a religious-spiritual counterpart to the notion of fate, seems very un-American.

Nonetheless, of the practice of regularly taking some time off from controlling our world in order to surrender to life and to live it on life's terms is the basis of almost every religious-spiritual tradition.

Surrender is something we all know deep in our hearts we ought to do more often . . .

Here are my two favorite quotes about surrendering:

• True religion is surrender. (Muhammad)
• Doubts arise because of an absence of surrender. (Ramana Maharshi)

As a little exercise, I'm going to suggest that we take a moment to explore the notion that we could be more fated than our egos would like to believe.

Just for fun, let's dive in.

An Exercise in Surrender
Consider for a moment that you don't have freedom of will and allow yourself to surrender to life.

(I promise you don't have to do this for longer than the 117 words in this exercise.)

Think about the following:

• Maybe some of the things you thought were in your control weren't.
• Maybe nature and nurture have conspired to make you exactly who you are at this moment.
• Maybe I was fated to become a rabbi, write my thesis on freedom of will, write this exercise, and you were fated to read it.
• Maybe you are supposed to be exactly where you are at this very moment reading these words.
• Maybe you are supposed to be wearing exactly what you are wearing.
• Maybe you are breathing exactly as you are supposed to be breathing.
• Maybe you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing.

How does that feel? How does it feel to entertain the notion that you don't have complete freedom of choice — that you are doing exactly that which you are supposed to be doing?

Now, let me ask you one more very important question:

If everything were happening according to some giant plan — and not one over which you had any control — do you think you would be more or less relaxed?

A Charge & Conclusion
What I've started to do on Friday nights is to prepare myself mentally for what I refer to as "Surrender Saturday." I try each Saturday to see how well I can just "let go and let God."

It's not so easy. But it's also not that hard, as long as I remember that it’s a practice — the word practice by definition means it isn't something I ought to have mastery over.

I would like to conclude by reiterating the notion that we live somewhere between strict determinism and absolute freedom, in a beautiful balance like the one suggested by the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

Amen.

With love,


Rabbi Brian


And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

(25/40) Spiritual Escapism

Spiritual Escapism.

There is serious, rampant religious-spiritual problem that I want to address: SPIRITUAL ESCAPISM.

Spiritual escapism is a notion advocated by the famous Bing Crosby song Mister In-Between.

You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between

You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene

But, is this true? Should we force ourselves to find silver linings in every dark cloud?

As you have noticed, I'm a big proponent of the importance of attitude. After all, we don't need to let a parking ticket ruin our day, but I do think there are limits and restrictions to how much "magic" we should expect our minds to perform in "turning that frown upside down."

Let me give an example: recently, I was driving and traffic was backed up. (I know, big surprise since I live in LA.) I got off the freeway and took surface streets, which turned out to be much worse. I was stuck. Sitting there, starting to get anxious that I would be late, I told myself to "turn it around." So I looked out my window at the big old tree I was now parked next to. Regarding its beauty, I told myself to be grateful that I was able to see that which on any other day I would have sailed past.

Great, right? Unfortunately, all I did was tuck my frustration away. I didn't get rid of it, I just bottled it up for another occasion. I can’t say if it directly caused the snippy attitude I had with a customer service representative later in the day or the pain in my lower back that night; but I do know that frustration not expressed has to go somewhere, it’s as unavoidable as Newton's first law of thermodynamics.

What I'm advocating is much simpler (albeit more difficult) than manipulating our experiences through spiritual escapism . . . I'm suggesting the religious-spiritual notion of living and being present to reality as it happens. In other words, being frustrated when we are frustrated, angry when we are angry, happy when we are happy, sad when we are sad. Just to experience our lives as they happen, not to judge them.

Of course, this is simpler to say than to do. The point is that in our daily lives, emotions inevitably come up that we don't like. But we have the choice to live them or deny them.

Don't succumb to spiritual escapism. A healthy spiritual life is not a way of avoiding human suffering or other "negative" emotions.

Be where you are, as you are.

With love,



Rabbi Brian


And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

(24/40) Have 2, Get 2.

A Simple Spiritual Exercise:

Here is a simple, easy-to-do spiritual exercise:

See if, for the rest of the day, you can substitute the verb "get" for "have."

For example, if you were going to say, "I have to check my e-mail," say instead, "I get to check my e-mail."

It's amazing how the little change of one word can affect our attitude.

With love,


Rabbi Brian

And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.