Executive Director’s Blog – Notes from Lisa’s Desk
What Now? A Practice for the Aftermath of the Election
There have been so many beautiful and helpful responses to the aftermath of the election. I would like to offer something a little different:
In my practice recently, I have become aware of certain universal human experiences that seem to function like fields of energy. The experiences can be love and trust, anger and fear. When these “fields” manifest in our lives, they take on a garb, the particular color and expression of our distinct, individual experience and context. But the underlying field of the experience is not our personal invention and is not unique to us.
Suffering is one of these fields. It is a universal experience that manifests in each of our lives in unique and concrete way. We can know it in personal and systemic garb, through illness or addiction, through poverty or discrimination and any other number of ways. Each garb has its set of strategies and reactions that come with it as we struggle to find the best way to address that particular kind of suffering.
But the thing about suffering is that it often tends to confuse us into thinking that our experience is separate from all others’ experiences. We focus on the garb, not the universality. As Tolstoy famously said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Furthermore, we know from our practice that this very sense of isolation and separation is itself at the root of so much suffering. So it becomes a vicious cycle: suffering, separateness, alienation, more suffering and so it begins again.
Ironically, suffering is something that people on both sides of the political divide have in common, although the explanations and strategies concerning it vary widely. But if we can experiment with experiencing suffering as a universal field, we have a chance to open to mochin degadlut, a wider perspective. You might want to try this:
Take a seat of dignity and sense into your body.
Where is sensation arising?
What does the sensation help you notice about the climate of your heart/mind right now? Stay with whatever emotion arises in the body.
Now imagine that emotion as a huge, broad energy field that comes up from the ground and fills you, taking your shape as it does. What does it feel like?
Now imagine that this same energy field is also taking shape within others, those you agree with and those you don’t.
Return to the sensation in the body and see if you can soften a little around it. Breathe and soften. If you choose, try imagining the energy field again, in yourself and in others.
Perhaps it is possible to sense in our bones the potential of relief and the possibility of more connection, maybe even love. Perhaps that will help us discern with wisdom and generosity how we can best move forward now – for ourselves, our communities and our country.
With love,
Rabbi Lisa Goldstein
Interconnected: An Intention for Elul
Scene one: I went to the local farmer’s market and bought some berries. I brought them home and when I opened the box to finish my lunch with fresh fruit, I noticed that the whole package was laced with mold. I was annoyed; the berries weren’t cheap! I grabbed my purse and the box and marched back up to the market in the hot afternoon sun. I got in line at the stand, only to be told by the woman in front of me that the line actually wound down the street and I had to go and stand over there. Just as it was my turn to move up, another woman, who also didn’t understand how the line worked, edged in to step before me. I curtly informed her that the end of the line was over there. She blinked, stood a moment, then put her items back and walked away, telling me that she hoped I didn’t hurt other people the way I had hurt her. Confused and contrite, I apologized, but she tossed a rude gesture over her shoulder and didn’t look back.
Yuck.
Scene two: It was a rainy morning, which somehow always means the subway is more crowded. I managed to squeeze my way in so I could get to work on time, only to end up on an express train that stopped between stations and sat for long minutes. A man in the car was demonstrating a new game on his phone to his friend. Apparently, he didn’t know you can turn off the sound and everyone was forced to listen to the endless insipid loop of music punctuated with little “whee’s!” and “ka-ching’s!” Did I mention it was loud? I breathed. I said to myself, “This is unpleasant.” I felt my annoyance rise in my chest. Then the man in front of me started dancing a goofy dance to the music and I had to laugh.
Ahh.
As we come into Elul, I am considering the interconnected nature of our actions. Sometimes I think that the way to actually know the underlying Oneness of everything is through certain kinds of mystical experience, but then I begin noticing how just paying attention to what we do brings the same insight home. My grumpiness is infectious. It rises up and pours out in my words, my tone, my body language. It makes another person’s bad day even worse. The same is true for joy, as well. The same is true for love. We are so profoundly interconnected as individuals. How much the more so are we interconnected as communities and nations and species on this small planet!
My intention for Elul is to become as awake as I can to the intended and unintended consequences of my actions. And who knows? Perhaps that will help prepare me for a more mystical experience of interconnectedness as the High Holy Day season begins next month.
Tisha B’Av in Turbulent Times
It’s getting to the point where I dread checking the news or signing onto Facebook. The spiking of violence in so many parts of the world, including on our own streets, the unbridled vitriol, the screaming without listening, the hot rage – perhaps I am getting old and myopic, but I don’t remember seeing this much venom before. I feel my heart close up, pressure in my throat. It is so profoundly unpleasant. I dislike the anger rising up in me and I want to turn away. But somehow I can’t.
I am also aware that we are currently in the three weeks of mourning leading up to Tisha B’Av, which will be observed on August 14th this year. Some years, I must confess, this day commemorating the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem feels a little counter-intuitive to me. It’s summer! It’s a time of abundance! And what is this about the Temple? Perhaps I can grasp it as a symbol, but really, why focus on grief and mourning now?
Then I read an excerpt from Rabbi David Jaffe’s soon-to-be-published book, Changing the World from the Inside Out: A Jewish Path for Personal and Social Change. Rabbi Jaffe differentiates between “hot anger,” which is passionate and explosive, and “cold anger,” which is grounded in grief and loss. According to Jaffe, this cold anger can lead to creative solutions to intractable problems. And I thought, “Aha!”
The rituals of mourning that accompany Tisha B’Av can help me surface the grief and loss that is lurking under the despair and anger. There is so much to grieve: the lost lives, the disintegration of civil discourse, the loss inherent in not feeling safe, the fear that all of this evokes. When I sit with the grief that is under the other emotions, I can connect back to my heart. I can feel my own vulnerability and humanity. I might even feel the vulnerability and humanity of those I cannot stand because I sense their grief as well. After all, we are so profoundly interconnected.
Tisha B’Av moves us from mourning into Shabbat Nahamu, the first of a cycle of readings of comfort and consolation. As my meditation practice these days, I am focusing on a chant to the words “Ahavah verahamim, hesed veshalom” – love and mercy, kindness and peace. It helps me both allow the grief to surface and to cultivate the qualities I sense are missing in the world. It is a comfort for me and one which I hope brings strength and loving commitment to a better world.
A Summer of Delight
Last week I had the opportunity to be in Los Angeles for Father’s Day. I was delighted to celebrate with my family by going up to a picnic area by a small creek – complete with a waterfall – in the San Gabriel Mountains. When I was a child, we would often escape the heat and smog of Southern California by going to this lovely canyon with its white granite walls, the cold honey-colored water, the smell of oaks and sage. It was the definition of summer time.
Summer brings us out into the world in ways that we often don’t have during the rest of the year. Sometimes it is a pleasant experience – warmth, greenery, the long days. And sometimes it is less pleasant, too hot or too humid.
But in any case, it gives us the opportunity to experiment with a teaching from one of the texts we often teach in our cohorts. It comes from a very early Hassidic source, Likkutim Yekarim: “A high rung: Always consider in your heart that you are close to the blessed Creator, that God surrounds you from every side. … Be so attached that the main thing you see is the blessed Creator, rather than looking first at the world and only secondarily at God. God should be the main thing you see.”
A high rung indeed! And a beautiful thought experiment as we move outdoors this summer. What would it be like to experience the world through the lens of “This is God”? God: the creek. God: the oak and sage. God: the rattlesnake. God: the humidity. God: the crush of people in the city. God: the open expansiveness of vacation.
If you wish, I’d love to hear how the experiment goes. And in the meantime, I wish you a summer of delight!
When we listen deeply, what can we hear?
It seems to me that Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates the revelation of Torah at Mt Sinai, is an extraordinary opportunity for us to explore listening as part of building our capacity to hear God’s voice. For some, that might not be such an intuitive suggestion. Even if we “believe in” God, which not everyone does, the idea of hearing God’s voice seems archaic. But it invites intriguing questions or thought experiments: How would we know what God’s voice sounds like? What would it say if we could hear it? How would we know that is the voice of Divinity? What practices might help us cultivate more attuned ears?
I have always admired, and committed myself to develop, the ability to listen more deeply, to bring my full empathetic presence to the person speaking. I know that when others do that for me, it helps me to hear my own truth with greater honesty and insight and to explore more deeply than I might have otherwise. When I am listened to in this way, I feel seen and held. In this noisy world filled with bombast and interruptions, that attentive listening can feel like a gift of cool water on a hot day.
Recently, I’ve noticed the emergence of another experience of listening. This listening seems to emanate from a very calm, still point at the solar plexus that moves out and creates a kind of contained spaciousness. When I listen from this place, I notice my emotions are less engaged, not because I have become cold and callous but rather because I am more able to get out of the way for the sake of the person I am listening to. This kind of listening feels very clean and holy to me; it is one I want to continue to cultivate.
One additional suggestion for exploring how to listen in a new way is one I learned from Norman Fischer. He gave a meditation instruction that began with listening to the ambient sounds, whatever they may be: birdsong, traffic, voices, music. Then, he taught, shift your attention and start listening instead for the silence (or perhaps Silence) from which all sound arises and to which it returns. What might you hear?
Maybe this Shavuot we can practice listening more deeply, respectfully, lovingly to the people around us. Maybe we can practice listening to the sounds of the world. And maybe we might hear a Divine voice. May whatever we hear bring blessing.
