Spiritual?

Part I

I ended my last posting with the promise, “In the next instalment, we’ll explore some things I have realized about the place where we are right now, the starting point from which we are departing on this shared journey.” What I had in mind when I wrote those words was to explore a realization I had about myself, that despite being raised in a thoroughly Jewish home, in truth I was an orphan as far as Jewish spirituality is concerned. But as I started writing about that, I saw that there was something that needed to be dealt with first, before we go into that subject, and that is the nature of spirituality itself. Yes, I was a spiritual orphan, but what do I mean when I mention “spirituality”? It’s going to take me two posts to lay down this basic foundation for what comes next.

My focus here is meant to be more than a discussion of an abstract concept. Everything takes place within wider frameworks within which those things make sense, or don’t. I marvel at people who believe the most outlandish conspiracy theories, which to me are laughable for their lack of credibility. But if I wanted to understand how someone else could actually believe in Jewish space lasers, for example, I’d have to investigate the framework of belief through which the conspiracy theorist sees the world. That doesn’t make it true or right or acceptable or anything else; it’s just an example of how we carry on within frameworks of understanding that remain largely invisible to us, even though they have profound influence on what takes place within them.

Now before plunging into the topic of spiritual orphanage that was on the tip of my tongue, I want to explain what I mean by “spiritual.” We’re going here into one of the fundamental elements of the framework through which I have come to see the world since I became a student of Mussar.

For about ten years now, Rabbi Avi Fertig and I have been working our way through the thoughts of Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, known as the Alter of Slabodka (1849-1927), that were published in Hebrew in a book called Ohr HaTzafun (The Hidden Light). The very first chapter in that book is called, “Something and Nothing in Creation” and in it the Alter says:

A superficial view of the universe implies that there are two separate forces, “heaven and earth,” in other words: a spiritual force in the heavens and all that is above, and a material force for all that is in the earth below…. However, a deeper view reveals that this assumption is not correct, because one can see even in the most physical, earthly material a spiritual force that is the foundation of all its essence and being. This is known [to us] for there is no possibility whatsoever to point a finger at any given substance and declare that [what is seen] is itself the essence of the substance, because the smallest measure of the substance, if one wants to strip it from the force through which it is constructed and its elements combined, behold, it will crumble and scatter until it is dust and ashes. And even these pieces are constructed from many tiny particles that are beyond our senses to perceive or our vison to see because of the fineness of their reality, until the point of actual “nothingness.”

The Alter was deconstructing the material to point of nothingness at about the same time as Einstein was developing his theory of relativity, and there is a remarkable congruence between their perspectives. Just as Einstein was able to identify that even things that appear to us to be solidly material and physical are, in fact, structures that at their core are just configurations of energy, so the Alter said the same thing, only he saw that the essential element from which everything is built up is spiritual. In his words:

God created the earth with a spiritual core, and this is as the verse says (Mishlei / Proverbs 3:19): “By wisdom God founded the earth,” which is to say, that the entire foundation of the world is wisdom, and that is spiritual.

Einstein pierced through the appearance of solid materiality to identify energy as fundamental building block of the universe, and the Alter would say that even the material force of energy is composed of something more fundamental, and that is spiritual.

The Alter’s student, Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz, who served as the spiritual supervisor (mashgiach) of the Mir yeshiva in Belarus, expresses the same idea in a different way. He draws the distinction between the natural (teva) and the supernatural (ma’alah min ha’teva) and then says that the distinction is an illusion. The natural and the supernatural are one.

In the sixth chapter of his book, Da’at, Chochmah uMussar, which I have been learning through for several years with my partner, Robert Barris, Rav Yerucham says:

There is no distinction whatsoever between nature and supernatural, and one who merits to things that are supernatural does this within nature, and the matter of nature and supernatural is nothing other than levels that the Creator imprinted on that which is created, and it emerges that there is no distinction between them, because this and that is a reminder of God, except that the level of supernatural is greater than the level of nature.

These two primary teachers from within the Mussar tradition are guiding us to see that divinity permeates every molecule and subatomic particle of the universe, as well as everything that is constructed from them. Spirituality, then, is not something we can acquire but is a matter of tuning our hearts and minds to the spiritual dimension that pervades all of reality.

Good! I’ve said it. Spirituality is awareness of the divine in everything and everywhere always. But I need to add one more dimension to this understanding.

I’m assuming you know what I am talking about here because we all have moments when a penetrating awareness of the spiritual shows up right in the midst of our apparently “natural” world. Seeing the red streaking that is a cardinal in flight or an eagle soaring majestically, hearing our baby gurgle, or rounding the corner to run right into the kaleidoscopic colours of a sunset are all experiences happening within nature, but the experience can cut through our habitual awareness to reveal in profound clarity that we live embedded in a divinely-infused world.

I wonder what experiences of yours correspond to these examples I have given, when you have felt with such certainty that the transcendent has burst through into your mundane consciousness? I know you will have had them because it is part of the human experience; all I am doing is giving language to name and categorize instances when we touch the profound spirit that is, in fact, present in every moment, including the most mundane.

I have a bit more to say on this topic before I rejoin my train of thought about being a spiritual orphan. Next post, I’ll pick up the discussion of spirituality by drawing an important distinction between a spiritual experience and a spiritual life. They are not the same. Coming soon.