Dear Enid. It sounds like a painful situation and I hope it resolves soon and in a way that works for you and the other person. You write that you are contemplating the role of trust in your life, and I'd like you to consider that there may be a focus for the trust that is not you. In truth, no one controls the outcomes that derive from their actions. You may want one thing and another happens, but that should not necessarily undermine your sense of having done the right thing. All we can do is make the best effort we can, and then hand it over (i.e., trust). As it says in Pirkei Avot, "It is not ours to complete the task."
Becoming aware of where the fault lines lie is a huge step to accomplish. The little tremors of everyday life reveal those lines and so learning from our everyday experience can spare us a lot of grief and harm that can come when a big earthquake hits.
Thanks for this reminder, just when I need it (which is probably true every day). In one relationship in particular I think I need to lean into Kavod/Honor more deeply. When things get difficult I tend to walk away, which doesn't actually resolve anything, just leaves me feeling resentful. I need to honor both myself and the other by staying and having the difficult conversation in a respectful way. I think Gevurah/Strength is another middah needed to help me keep my cool and set healthy boundaries.
Judith, what you describe is exactly what it means to have a spiritual curriculum. You say that you see Kavod/Honor as calling out to be worked on and cultivated, and that is to say that that middah is on your personal spiritual curriculum. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter identified coming to that awareness as the first stage of Mussar practice. The second is to equip yourself with a behaviour that disrupts the pattern. In your case, it might be to forbid yourself to walk away. At this stage, you don’t need to say anything or do anything, you just need to commit to staying in the kitchen when it gets hot. Then, in time, there is a third stage when you bring out different behaviour and, in even more time, change the pattern.
I've been finding myself on a different path from an old friend. There are heartbreaking elements in it. The middot that has come up is to trust and have faith in how I handle it. I think if I expend all sorts of energy ruminating about it I'll take the " right " action and won't fail. I have lost sleep and came down with a cold. in the meantime, I had come up with a compromise solution and haven't changed my mind. I think I have an easier time in interpersonal relationships than in trusting myself and having faith I will be o.k. Faith and trust are speaking to me to examine!
I look forward to the next post on Hitlamdut. Something that one of my mussar teachers Rabbi Marc Margolius said is that Hitlamdut is "Non-judgmental curiosity" - What do I notice arising in this moment in my body, my thoughts, my feelings? What “buttons” are being pushing?
Well, think about this. The root of the word hitlamdut is L-M-D, which refers to learning. To my mind, curiosity does not go far enough. To fulfill hitlamdut, you need to dig into your experience to ferret out the lessons, and then you need to think about and analyze the lesson, to be sure you learn it. “Non-judmental curiosity” sounds to me like a form of mindfulness, not hitlamdut.
I also love the idea of the tremor and the earthquake. The surfer working on maintaining equilibrium is another one of my favorites. I know whenever we are asked, "and what middah do you need to work on?" my answer is usually, "all of them." It's why I like the part of the practice where we work on a different one each week. Serendipitously, they always seem to be appropriate both to the weekly parasha as well as what's going on in my life, and I can often find where at least one or two other middot fit into the scheme.
Alanna, just to give you some comfort, Maimonides’s son, Avraham ben HaRambam, wrote a Mussar book called HaMaspik l’Ovdei HaShem which focuses on a number of middot, but the second chapter is called “They are All Connected.” That fact needs to be recognized and factored into our thinking. But since we can’t work on all of them at once, we break that down to individual middot, recognizing that working on it in isolation doesn’t mean that it exists and functions in isolation. It doesn’t!
Dear Enid. It sounds like a painful situation and I hope it resolves soon and in a way that works for you and the other person. You write that you are contemplating the role of trust in your life, and I'd like you to consider that there may be a focus for the trust that is not you. In truth, no one controls the outcomes that derive from their actions. You may want one thing and another happens, but that should not necessarily undermine your sense of having done the right thing. All we can do is make the best effort we can, and then hand it over (i.e., trust). As it says in Pirkei Avot, "It is not ours to complete the task."
I appreciate the idea of a tremor and an earthquake. Makes zerizot an important middah for whatever other middot I need to work on.
Becoming aware of where the fault lines lie is a huge step to accomplish. The little tremors of everyday life reveal those lines and so learning from our everyday experience can spare us a lot of grief and harm that can come when a big earthquake hits.
Thanks for this reminder, just when I need it (which is probably true every day). In one relationship in particular I think I need to lean into Kavod/Honor more deeply. When things get difficult I tend to walk away, which doesn't actually resolve anything, just leaves me feeling resentful. I need to honor both myself and the other by staying and having the difficult conversation in a respectful way. I think Gevurah/Strength is another middah needed to help me keep my cool and set healthy boundaries.
Judith, what you describe is exactly what it means to have a spiritual curriculum. You say that you see Kavod/Honor as calling out to be worked on and cultivated, and that is to say that that middah is on your personal spiritual curriculum. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter identified coming to that awareness as the first stage of Mussar practice. The second is to equip yourself with a behaviour that disrupts the pattern. In your case, it might be to forbid yourself to walk away. At this stage, you don’t need to say anything or do anything, you just need to commit to staying in the kitchen when it gets hot. Then, in time, there is a third stage when you bring out different behaviour and, in even more time, change the pattern.
I've been finding myself on a different path from an old friend. There are heartbreaking elements in it. The middot that has come up is to trust and have faith in how I handle it. I think if I expend all sorts of energy ruminating about it I'll take the " right " action and won't fail. I have lost sleep and came down with a cold. in the meantime, I had come up with a compromise solution and haven't changed my mind. I think I have an easier time in interpersonal relationships than in trusting myself and having faith I will be o.k. Faith and trust are speaking to me to examine!
Thank you Alan!
Thank you, Carole.
I look forward to the next post on Hitlamdut. Something that one of my mussar teachers Rabbi Marc Margolius said is that Hitlamdut is "Non-judgmental curiosity" - What do I notice arising in this moment in my body, my thoughts, my feelings? What “buttons” are being pushing?
Well, think about this. The root of the word hitlamdut is L-M-D, which refers to learning. To my mind, curiosity does not go far enough. To fulfill hitlamdut, you need to dig into your experience to ferret out the lessons, and then you need to think about and analyze the lesson, to be sure you learn it. “Non-judmental curiosity” sounds to me like a form of mindfulness, not hitlamdut.
I also love the idea of the tremor and the earthquake. The surfer working on maintaining equilibrium is another one of my favorites. I know whenever we are asked, "and what middah do you need to work on?" my answer is usually, "all of them." It's why I like the part of the practice where we work on a different one each week. Serendipitously, they always seem to be appropriate both to the weekly parasha as well as what's going on in my life, and I can often find where at least one or two other middot fit into the scheme.
Alanna, just to give you some comfort, Maimonides’s son, Avraham ben HaRambam, wrote a Mussar book called HaMaspik l’Ovdei HaShem which focuses on a number of middot, but the second chapter is called “They are All Connected.” That fact needs to be recognized and factored into our thinking. But since we can’t work on all of them at once, we break that down to individual middot, recognizing that working on it in isolation doesn’t mean that it exists and functions in isolation. It doesn’t!