Getting Out of a Rut

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

 

My Little Honey and I have this thing.  I talk about the effects and adaptations we encounter and make as we are aging; she refuses to go there.We do what we can, exercise, try to eat better, get regular physicals, etc., but we also recognize the importance of friends, community, and Temple in our lives.I was just reading through a commentary on this week's Torah portion, V'Etchanan.

 

We cannot avoid getting older physically, but spiritually we must try to stay young -- for the wiser and more advanced we are spiritually, the closer we should be to G-d's endless, never-exhausted fountain of vitality and grace. "It is not good to be old," cried Rabbi Nachman. "There are pious and righteous elders, but to be old is not good. You must remain young, renewing yourself each day and making a fresh start" (Rabbi Nachman's Wisdom #51).

The journey back to the basics and retelling of the Giving of the Torah in VO-ESCHANAN come to rectify the sin of becoming old spiritually, which is the main cause of destruction and exile. This sin is so serious that the analysis of its roots, given in our parshah (Deut. 4:25-40), forms the Torah Reading of reproof in the synagogue on Tisha B'Av. "When you give birth to children and children's children and YOU GROW OLD IN THE LAND and you CORRUPT."

 

quoted from http://www.azamra.org/Parshah/VOESCHANAN.htm by Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum

 It is so easy to become staid. We do some of the same things over and over and over again, then again and again, and sooner or later, we find ourselves doing these things without feeling them.  We are not actually there in the experience at all.  We see this in physical activities, such as running or walking, we see it in daily life, habituating everything from what we eat to what we read or watch on T.V.  We also see it in our spiritual practices.  Spiritual practices done this way, out of habit and by rote, tend to become less spiritual and more simple repetition.  The Torah says, we become "long established in the land" meaning old.  Rabbi Plaut notes this suggests we have "lost our spiritual keenness" (The Torah, Plaut, p.1342).  And so it is.

 

This Torah portion offers a remedy, though, and that remedy is in this verse, "But if you search for the Lord, you will find Him, if only you seek Him with all your heart and soul..." (Deut. 4:29).

 

A disciplined spiritual practice is a practice that constantly is refreshed by examining each moment as it is. We sit still and look deeply into ourselves, into our experience of ourselves, and into our experience of our environment.  We must engage ourselves within this examination, we must seek the Holy, or as Buddhists would say, our True Nature.

 

It is not the nature of our True Nature to smack us upside the head out of the blue (though this does sometimes happen).  More often it is our diligent effort to seek out the Divine and seek with an open heart, that permits us that glimpse. 

 

Oh, what a relief it is!

 

Be well.