Welcoming the mystic within us in the midst of suffering
None of us can escape the fact that suffering is a part of the process of this life journey for we humans. Whether it is the mass suffering of groups of people inflicted by one group against another, the result of a tragic accident, the result of an illness, or the difficulty we experience when we lose someone we love, we all experience suffering. While it may be true that some of we humans are incapable, for whatever reason, of emotionally experiencing loss and some are unable to experience physical pain, the absence of the ability to experience loss is itself a tragedy. Of course, if one is unable to experience suffering one then has to know that one was not able to experience the absence of suffering. In other words one is not able to experience a connectedness with both one’s own being or with other life forms.
Often, in times of our own suffering or the suffering of someone we love, we pray to some divine being, a universal force or the angels who we think/hope can intercede in the conditions or events which are leading to the suffering.
Sometimes the best we can hope for is the interruption of signals to the brain which certain drugs might provide. Our prayer might then be that the we or someone we love not experience pain and can heal or let go as quickly as possible.
When we pray, to what or to whom are we praying? What are we expecting to happen? Is this divine being or beings going to suddenly heal someone or see “reason” from our perspective? That does, at times seem to happen. For no reason that we humans can explain a cancerous tumor will suddenly shrink and perhaps disappear, an event will change the outcome of a situation, or someone will suddenly have an ah ha moment of insight which leads to the outcome we so desperately wanted.
Prayer so often posits or envisions a being or a force which is separate from the person or the persons praying. There are those, however, such as the mystic Rabbi Lawrence Kushner who offer another possibility. In an interview with Krista Tippett on the NPR weekly show, On Being, Rabbi Kushner suggests:
“Now I'm going to give you another metaphor. Just another metaphor. Relax. Same big circle that represents God but the only difference is is that the little circle that represents you and me is inside the big circle. And that is a more Eastern — it strikes us as a more Eastern model, but it's — as Scholem demonstrated, it's widely available in Western religious tradition as well. And the goal in that model is not to pray to God or have God tell you what to do, but to realize that you have been all along, contrary to all of your illusions, a dimension of the divine, and in moments of heightened spiritual awareness, the boundary line, which is the little circle defining you inside the big circle, momentarily is erased. Momentarily is blurred and it's no longer clear where you end and God begins.”
In my mind this makes absolute sense. Even though many people, including Rabbi Kushner, might posit this understanding as the opposite of reason, I understand it differently. Rabbi Kushner says:
“I think what our generation seems to be living through is the realization that rationalism is only part of the answer. I think, I’m not the first one to notice this, that Auschwitz and Hiroshima were perfectly rational decisions and behaviors.”
My understanding is that events such as Auschwitz and Hiroshima could be considered rational only if one believes that there is some person or groups of people who are not part of the divine. As we know Hitler did not think of parts of himself or any of the groups (31 designations/insignias although some were overlapping) as part of the divine or as he termed it “the master race.” As anyone who has studied the historic Hitler from the perspective of such scholars as Dr. Alice Miller, he was, in fact unable to see the divine or the human worth in parts of himself and his heritage. Additionally, the term rational in my mind, implies one “think” in terms of a small slice of history. If we look at Auschwitz or Hiroshima in terms of the fact that once anyone justified the use of such a terrible weapon of mass destruction many nations could and have both developed and threatened to use such weapons. This does not seem rational to me. How could we not have predicted that such would happen?
Rabbi Kurshner posits: “This is a definition of a mystic. A mystic is anyone who has the gnawing suspicion that the apparent discord, brokenness, contradictions, and discontinuities that assault us every day might conceal a hidden unity.”
Whether we are looking at climate change, the concept of “six degrees of separation,” or all the events - those labeled as both positive and negative – of our individual and collective life journeys, these have all brought us to this moment. This moment interacts with and will interact with all other moments. This tells us that we have to come to the conclusion that there is indeed a unity in all that happens. Is this true even with suffering?
What is suffering? It can be many things including:
· The experience of physical pain whose cause medical personnel can identify or which the layperson may, at times, be able to identify.
· The experience of emotional pain which is often related to the grief one is feeling over a loss of a person(s) or even the loss of one’s own ability to function in some way.
· The experience of taking in the suffering/grief/existential angst of another.
· The grief or fear of a current situation or potential situation. Many people, for example, have expressed deep suffering over the loss of faith in the political system of the United States to use a current example.
· The grief or fear of facing one’s own humanness – of accepting that one is not who what has thought oneself to be.
Yesterday I was with this lovely couple who are both living with physical illness which restricts or limits their ability to physically and mentally do many of the tasks that they are used to doing. Historically these very giving people are used to being servants in the finest sense of the term. They both come from a background of a deep religious/spiritual faith which has allowed them to teach and help others in a variety of ways. One of them can do very little other than focus on basic care – eating, resting, sleeping and other functions of daily existence. The other is still able to do some teaching but she is also limited both by her own physical limitations and the need to attend to the needs of her partner/spouse. He especially experiences the suffering from the physical/medical issues and from not being able to function as he normally would. In both realms the suffering is very intense and very real. They both affect and interact with each other. One might say that he currently has an opportunity to grow spiritually. While I believe this, I think it is difficult to say this without running the risk of minimizing his suffering or coming across as patronizing.
Yet, on another level, we all know that we are human and that an important part of being human is to accept that our worth is contained as much in our ability to accept as it is to give. On yet, another level, our spiritual growth is related to or even dependent on our ability to accept that it is enough to quietly be part of the divine. When we are able to do this – when I am able to do this – even the intensity of my physical suffering will decrease. For then, as Stephen Levine would say, we have begun to learn what it means to be with our pain or suffering which is different than being our pain or suffering. We have begun to redefine our notion of rational. What was formerly rational may now seem irrational and what was formerly may now seem rational.
It is possible that prayer is coming to this place of being present in the midst of the divine – of accepting that, as Rabbi Kushner suggests – that we are already inside the circle. We do not have to achieve or to perform to get there. It is out of the acceptance of being there that we are able to give because we can and not because we need to.
Prayer is, as the Rabbi suggests, that place where we suspend what may have seemed rational and accept what seems mystical – “This is a definition of a mystic. A mystic is anyone who has the gnawing suspicion that the apparent discord, brokenness, contradictions, and discontinuities that assault us every day might conceal a hidden unity.”
Written March 11, 2016
None of us can escape the fact that suffering is a part of the process of this life journey for we humans. Whether it is the mass suffering of groups of people inflicted by one group against another, the result of a tragic accident, the result of an illness, or the difficulty we experience when we lose someone we love, we all experience suffering. While it may be true that some of we humans are incapable, for whatever reason, of emotionally experiencing loss and some are unable to experience physical pain, the absence of the ability to experience loss is itself a tragedy. Of course, if one is unable to experience suffering one then has to know that one was not able to experience the absence of suffering. In other words one is not able to experience a connectedness with both one’s own being or with other life forms.
Often, in times of our own suffering or the suffering of someone we love, we pray to some divine being, a universal force or the angels who we think/hope can intercede in the conditions or events which are leading to the suffering.
Sometimes the best we can hope for is the interruption of signals to the brain which certain drugs might provide. Our prayer might then be that the we or someone we love not experience pain and can heal or let go as quickly as possible.
When we pray, to what or to whom are we praying? What are we expecting to happen? Is this divine being or beings going to suddenly heal someone or see “reason” from our perspective? That does, at times seem to happen. For no reason that we humans can explain a cancerous tumor will suddenly shrink and perhaps disappear, an event will change the outcome of a situation, or someone will suddenly have an ah ha moment of insight which leads to the outcome we so desperately wanted.
Prayer so often posits or envisions a being or a force which is separate from the person or the persons praying. There are those, however, such as the mystic Rabbi Lawrence Kushner who offer another possibility. In an interview with Krista Tippett on the NPR weekly show, On Being, Rabbi Kushner suggests:
“Now I'm going to give you another metaphor. Just another metaphor. Relax. Same big circle that represents God but the only difference is is that the little circle that represents you and me is inside the big circle. And that is a more Eastern — it strikes us as a more Eastern model, but it's — as Scholem demonstrated, it's widely available in Western religious tradition as well. And the goal in that model is not to pray to God or have God tell you what to do, but to realize that you have been all along, contrary to all of your illusions, a dimension of the divine, and in moments of heightened spiritual awareness, the boundary line, which is the little circle defining you inside the big circle, momentarily is erased. Momentarily is blurred and it's no longer clear where you end and God begins.”
In my mind this makes absolute sense. Even though many people, including Rabbi Kushner, might posit this understanding as the opposite of reason, I understand it differently. Rabbi Kushner says:
“I think what our generation seems to be living through is the realization that rationalism is only part of the answer. I think, I’m not the first one to notice this, that Auschwitz and Hiroshima were perfectly rational decisions and behaviors.”
My understanding is that events such as Auschwitz and Hiroshima could be considered rational only if one believes that there is some person or groups of people who are not part of the divine. As we know Hitler did not think of parts of himself or any of the groups (31 designations/insignias although some were overlapping) as part of the divine or as he termed it “the master race.” As anyone who has studied the historic Hitler from the perspective of such scholars as Dr. Alice Miller, he was, in fact unable to see the divine or the human worth in parts of himself and his heritage. Additionally, the term rational in my mind, implies one “think” in terms of a small slice of history. If we look at Auschwitz or Hiroshima in terms of the fact that once anyone justified the use of such a terrible weapon of mass destruction many nations could and have both developed and threatened to use such weapons. This does not seem rational to me. How could we not have predicted that such would happen?
Rabbi Kurshner posits: “This is a definition of a mystic. A mystic is anyone who has the gnawing suspicion that the apparent discord, brokenness, contradictions, and discontinuities that assault us every day might conceal a hidden unity.”
Whether we are looking at climate change, the concept of “six degrees of separation,” or all the events - those labeled as both positive and negative – of our individual and collective life journeys, these have all brought us to this moment. This moment interacts with and will interact with all other moments. This tells us that we have to come to the conclusion that there is indeed a unity in all that happens. Is this true even with suffering?
What is suffering? It can be many things including:
· The experience of physical pain whose cause medical personnel can identify or which the layperson may, at times, be able to identify.
· The experience of emotional pain which is often related to the grief one is feeling over a loss of a person(s) or even the loss of one’s own ability to function in some way.
· The experience of taking in the suffering/grief/existential angst of another.
· The grief or fear of a current situation or potential situation. Many people, for example, have expressed deep suffering over the loss of faith in the political system of the United States to use a current example.
· The grief or fear of facing one’s own humanness – of accepting that one is not who what has thought oneself to be.
Yesterday I was with this lovely couple who are both living with physical illness which restricts or limits their ability to physically and mentally do many of the tasks that they are used to doing. Historically these very giving people are used to being servants in the finest sense of the term. They both come from a background of a deep religious/spiritual faith which has allowed them to teach and help others in a variety of ways. One of them can do very little other than focus on basic care – eating, resting, sleeping and other functions of daily existence. The other is still able to do some teaching but she is also limited both by her own physical limitations and the need to attend to the needs of her partner/spouse. He especially experiences the suffering from the physical/medical issues and from not being able to function as he normally would. In both realms the suffering is very intense and very real. They both affect and interact with each other. One might say that he currently has an opportunity to grow spiritually. While I believe this, I think it is difficult to say this without running the risk of minimizing his suffering or coming across as patronizing.
Yet, on another level, we all know that we are human and that an important part of being human is to accept that our worth is contained as much in our ability to accept as it is to give. On yet, another level, our spiritual growth is related to or even dependent on our ability to accept that it is enough to quietly be part of the divine. When we are able to do this – when I am able to do this – even the intensity of my physical suffering will decrease. For then, as Stephen Levine would say, we have begun to learn what it means to be with our pain or suffering which is different than being our pain or suffering. We have begun to redefine our notion of rational. What was formerly rational may now seem irrational and what was formerly may now seem rational.
It is possible that prayer is coming to this place of being present in the midst of the divine – of accepting that, as Rabbi Kushner suggests – that we are already inside the circle. We do not have to achieve or to perform to get there. It is out of the acceptance of being there that we are able to give because we can and not because we need to.
Prayer is, as the Rabbi suggests, that place where we suspend what may have seemed rational and accept what seems mystical – “This is a definition of a mystic. A mystic is anyone who has the gnawing suspicion that the apparent discord, brokenness, contradictions, and discontinuities that assault us every day might conceal a hidden unity.”
Written March 11, 2016
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