Beyond the Instant by Mark Wildes

Author:Mark Wildes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510731868
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2018-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

What can I do differently?

I believe we also need to ask this question when it comes to our religious lives. Ours is a generation that feels spiritually disconnected. We wonder why we’re not feeling as connected to God, to our religious heritage, or even to the other members of our spiritual community. It may be true that there are lots of people who may have turned us off to religion, or perhaps we were never exposed to the most positive of religious experiences in our childhood. But we must consider what responsibility lies with us too. What am I doing to feel more connected? Am I truly making efforts to feel more spiritually connected or am I just expecting to feel something without putting in the work?

And if I am putting in effort, am I simply doing the same thing today as I did yesterday? I always say to my students: Torah is to the soul like a drug is to the body. Just like the body gets used to certain drugs, and therefore one must vary the medication for the body to continue to be impacted, as we mature and develop, our soul also needs more to stay connected to its Divine source. This is therefore why we always need to be growing and developing ourselves spiritually—always learning something new or finding a deeper insight into something of which we are already aware. In the Jewish faith, this could mean taking on a new mitzvah (precept of the Torah) or deepening our understanding and commitment to those mitzvoth we may already be observing. Otherwise we become lethargic and sluggish. We stagnate and we become unhappy. But the solution starts with looking inside. We could easily point to all sorts of external factors responsible for our spiritual stagnation: the rabbi isn’t sufficiently inspiring, my Jewish educational background is too limited, my friends aren’t interested in being spiritually involved. All are legitimate “reasons” for not pushing ourselves forward, but at the end of the day we cannot control other people and we can’t change the past. We need to get beyond the external factors and follow Achashverosh’s example of “he thought again,” always asking ourselves: what could we do differently?

The next time something goes wrong, be it at work, in a relationship, or in your spiritual connection, instead of looking elsewhere, look within. Leave behind the external factors and explore what you may be doing to contribute to the situation. God’s command to Abraham, “lech lecha” literally means “Go into you.” Leave the external and go into yourself because that’s where you will find the root of the problem, and hopefully the solution.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.