Mindful and Heartful Engagement ARJE Torah Lishma Session #7

“The Architect of the world never does the same thing twice.

Every day is an entirely new creation”

Reb Nachman of Breslov

Hebrew has three primary words for soul: Nefesh, Ruach, and Neshama. According to the Kabbalah, these are three different voices of the soul. They are expressed through the body (Nefesh), the heart (Ruach), and the mind (Neshama).

Mind, heart, and body. Ideally, these three elements interact in harmony with each other. No part of the individual is either ignored or denied.

Spiritual reading means not simply reading about spiritual things but also reading about spiritual things in a spiritual way. We can become very knowledgeable about spiritual matters without becoming truly spiritual people.

Spiritual reading is far from easy in our modern, intellectual world, where we tend to make everything we read subject to analysis and discussion. Instead of wondering if we agree or disagree with what we have read, we should wonder which words are spoken directly to us and connect directly with our most personal story. Instead of thinking about the words as potential subjects for an interesting dialogue or paper, we should be willing o let them penetrate into the most hidden corners of our heart.

...Spiritual reading is a way to reading the word with our whole being, our present condition, our past experiences, and our future aspirations. As we slowly let the written words enter into our minds and descend into our hearts, we become different people.

Adapted from Rav Kook, Olat Re'iyah http://www.ravkooktorah.org/VAETCHAN58.htm

“Know it today and ponder it in your heart: God is the Supreme Being in heaven above and on the earth below — there is no other.” (Deut. 4:39; recited in Aleinu)

What is the difference between “knowing it” and “pondering it in our heart”?

Sometimes, people admit that there is a gap between what they know intellectually and what they are ready for emotionally. They will say, “Yes, this makes sense. This is a better way, a healthier way, a truer way. Still, it’s not for me. It’s too hard; I cannot do it.”

Therefore, the Torah emphasizes the importance of two steps. First, we need to recognize the truth. This is the intellectual stage of “know it today.” This stage is critical, but it is still only on a theoretical level. It must be followed by the second step: to internalize that which the mind comprehends. We need to accept emotionally the ramifications of this understanding, and be willing to act upon it. This is the second stage, to “ponder it in your heart.”

The second stage of practical acceptance should nevertheless be rooted in the initial step of intellectual comprehension. As the Sages taught (Berachot 13a), “First accept the kingdom of Heaven, and then the yoke of [practical] mitzvot.”

It was in a small group of women who had come together to tell our own stories that I first received a totally new understanding of hearing and speaking. I remember well how one woman started, hesitating and awkward, trying to put the pieces of her life together. Finally she said: “I hurt… I hurt all over.” She touched herself in various places as if feeling for the hurt before she added, “but… I don’t know where to begin to cry.” She talked on and on. Her story took on fantastic coherence. When she reached a point of most excruciating pain no one moved. No one interrupted. Finally she finished. After a silence, she looked from one woman to another. “You heard me. You heard me all the way.” Her eyes narrowed. She looked directly at each woman in turn and then said slowly: “I have a strange feeling you heard me before I started. You heard me to my own story.” I filed this experience away as something unique. But it happened again and again in other such small groups of women. It happened to me. Then, I knew I had been experiencing something I had never experienced before. A complete reversal of the going logic in which someone speaks precisely so that more accurate hearing may take place. This woman was saying, and I had experienced, a depth hearing that takes place before the speaking – a hearing that is far more than acute listening. A hearing engaged in by the whole body that evokes speech –a new speech—a new creation. The woman had been heard to her own speech.

We empower one another by hearing the other to speech. We empower the disinherited, the outsider, as we are able to hear them name in their own way their own oppression and suffering. In turn, we are empowered as we can put ourselves in a position to be heard by the disinherited (in this case other women) to speaking our own feeling of being caught and trapped. Hearing in this sense can break through political and social structures and image a new system. A great ear at the heart of the universe –at the heart of our common life—hearing human beings to speech—to our own speech.

...The phenomenon of women speaking runs counter to those theologians who claim that God is sometimes silent, hidden, or withdrawn (deus absconditus), and that we must wait patiently until “He” deigns to speak again. A more realistic alternative to such despair, or “dark night of the soul,” would see God as the hearing one—hearing us to our own, responsible word. That kind of hearing would be priori to the theologians’ own words. It might even negate and ruffle their words and render them unable to speak until new words emerge. Women know hearing to speech as powerfully spiritual, and know spirit as movement and presence hearing us until we know and own the words and the images as our own words and our own images that have come out of the depths of our struggle.