Chapter 18. We take a deeper dive into the notion of love and fear of Gd being “a very near thing,” so near in fact that it is embedded in our DNA. We discuss how this spark always exists, which oftens comes out at times when our backs are up against the wall. I also expound on how this concept is another sign that the Alter Rebbe’s approach is one of encouraging even those who seem so far removed that there is always an opportunity to change. We cannot despair of being stuck.
All episodes can also now be heard on Apple Podcasts – here
Do you want to work on taking the actions of your life and find meaning in all you do and who you are? Are you struggling with your spiritual growth. Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com
Today I find myself thinking about losing and finding our voice in life. Many of the people I have worked with have expressed that their journey is one of “finding my voice,” meaning finding the ways to express “who am I” to the world. Often, this reflection emerges in a moment of rupture in someone’s life, when the person recognizes that a new opportunity is open to them to explore.
How do we foster this search to “find” the voice that we feel we let go of to an extent within a relationship without causing a detriment to relationship? How do we reclaim our independent, individual self without betraying the love and care we gave and received in the relationships we had?
I believe we tend to carry a multiplicity of emotions battling each other at every moment. One example that I see most often is in the midst of grief, it is very common for people to also express feelings of relief and gratitude that the deceased is no longer suffering. This feeling arises at the same time as the pain and sadness we feel about the death of the person. Too often, this conflicting emotional state leads to a sense of guilt and becomes a primary barrier to effective grieving. One of the tasks we work on is living with both types of emotions simultaneously, acknowledging and sitting in our sadness as well as admitting and embracing the future life we will build in this new stage of being.
Second, as one continues to search for and claims there “I,” it is crucial to express an acceptance of the changed reality. How many times do we feel that accepting the reality is a betrayal? To find and reclaim our voice, we need to have the space to express how relationships do create boundaries around our lives that often are not our ideal. This is not a lament on compromise or on pulling back the self for the sake of the whole. Being able to dwell within a relationship requires us to balance self and other. Yet, this can very often feel and be experienced as restrictive, which again, we were/are afraid to be honest about. When we suddenly don’t have to make the choice between self and other, many people express a guilt about feeling happy to do things they couldn’t do before. Yet, as this a normal feeling. As I work with people, I encourage people to embrace this feeling while recognizing and exploring the struggle that this feeling brings.
Through engaging in this struggle, I have found people eventually come to find the “voice” they want to come to forefront. By reclaiming our voice, we claim that the new path in front of us is the one we must walk, regardless of where it will go. While we can’t know where the path will lead, with our “voice” we have a powerful tool to help us explore our next journey, our new beginning.
Are you searching to reclaim your voice in the midst of change? Are you struggling in the midst of grief with embracing the next part of your life’s journey? Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com
Chapter 15 – This chapter describes the difference between the beinoni who is considered as not serving Gd vs. the one who is serving Gd as the distinction between the person who does just enough vs. the person who goes above and beyond to do a little extra. The Alter Rebbe derives this from a talmudic discussion about learning something 100 vs. 101 times, for the extra one time shows a revealed sense of love for the subject as opposed to just learning to fulfill an obligation. This concept is one which has powerful spiritual growth implications as I refer to during this podcast. I also discuss how this argument opens the door to a discussion of accepting those times when you aren’t able to go above and beyond (which we will return to again in subsequent discussions).
Do you want to work on taking the actions of your life and find meaning in all you do and who you are? Are you struggling with your spiritual growth. Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com
Every so often, it is important to come back to certain basics of spiritual growth as a means of reflection. Perhaps, even more than that, it is important to habituate ourselves in practices that enhance our spirituality while at the same time finding ways to make the habits into something that continues to feel new. One of those is the opening words of the Amidah,
ה’ שפתי תפתח ופי יגיד תהילתך
Gd, open up my lips and my mouth will share Your praises.
While we could offer the same thoughts on the entire prayer piece, the Amidah, at least as it pertains to the opening 3 and closing 3 blessings, this line in particular is quite special and meaningful.
First, if we consider the structure of the prayer service as a whole, much of what we have already done before getting to the Amidah is praise of Gd. Second, if the point is that this prayer is like a gateway prayer to further prayer, why here, why now? Third, if we are really in this place of struggle, how can we even presume to open our mouth with a prayer to be able to pray?
As I find myself focused on this line, I would offer that a prayer before prayer is the most profound and important of prayers and that it being in the midst of prayer, not at the very beginning of each service is also of crucial importance. If you are like me, by the time you reach the Amidah, you are of two minds. There is the anticipation of having opportunity built in for more personal reflection while at the same time much energy has hopefully been exuded to reach this place. As such, I would offer that the line introducing the Amidah is the chance to regroup and recharge. It is a chance to remember and reflect on how we can only say these prayers because Gd has granted us the ability to speak these words.
I found the inspiration for this in thinking about something from last week’s Torah portion. As Moses is arguing with Gd about not wanting the job of leading the Israelites from Egypt, he tries one last argument (Exodus 4:10-12):
But Moses said to יהוה, “Please, O my lord, I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to Your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”
Now go, and I will be with you as you speak and will instruct you what to say.”
In addition to the irony of Moses using this as a final argument after seemingly having many words for excuses, what is most interesting is the point that it is not Moses who is able to speech on his own but Moses who is able to speak and argue because Gd allows him to argue.
In other words, we may be praying, expressing praises and wishes to Gd, but it is important to be regroup and ground ourselves time and again in the midst of prayer with the notion that Gd gives us the ability to pray and offer these words. Each prayer service is a journey, and on a journey it is important to take stock and recognize where you have come from, where you are and where you are going.
As we work on spiritual growth as it pertains to our prayerful lives, may we recognize the importance of knowing from Whom our prayers come and to Whom we direct our prayers.
Part of spiritual growth is being able to confront one’s imperfections. This confrontation allows us to hone in on those areas of weakness that we wish to work on. While most often we work towards cultivating our strengths and reinvigorating the tools we have to overcome weakness, we don’t always allow the discomfort of admitting to the weakness to be a tool as well.
In a recent article exploring The Role of Vulnerability in Jewish Life, the author, Akiva Garner, shed light on a few points which stuck for me as it relates to a spiritual/religious approach to the concept of being vulnerable.
Here are few highlights (I recommend reading the whole piece as it provides a thorough approach to this important topic).
In defining vulnerability, Akiva suggests the following thesis:
Vulnerability is not tantamount to one oversharing all their difficulties to the world; rather, it is more directly a person’s willingness to present themselves to others as someone aware of, and comfortable with, the fact that attempts to succeed are often inseparable from failures to get there.
Vulnerability is the ability to be honest about being human and being imperfect. From this premise, we can confront many aspects of religious/spiritual life. As an example, he offers the following reflection on prayer:
Prayer is a meditation on humanity’s dependence on God, an admission of the petitioner’s weakness. It is, in some sense, about realizing that what we have comes from God and that what we hope to obtain is possible with the help of God. Expressions of this approach span the wide sea of Jewish thought, from the Kabbalists[2] to Rambam’s Moreh Nevukhim.[3] By the same token, many modern figures have emphasized the importance of this notion in one’s encounter with God. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein was fond of quoting Friedrich Schleiermacher, who understood the essence of piety as identifying “the consciousness of our absolute dependence… of our relation to God.”[4]
A third passage, one better known in the Orthodox Jewish community, as it relates to our imperfections, is a famous letter from R. Yitzchak Hutner to a student struggling against the weight of the great sages of our tradition:
Rabbi Isaac Hutner understood the importance of this very tension, and he depicted his attitude toward it strongly in a celebrated letter to one of his students:
It is a terrible problem that when we discuss the greatness of our Torah giants (gedolim), we actually deal only with the end of their stories. We tell about their perfection, but we omit any mention of the inner battles which raged in their souls. The impression one gets is that they were created with their full stature. For example, everyone is impressed by the purity of Hofetz Hayyim’s speech. However, who knows about all the wars, the battles, the impediments, the downfalls, and the retreats that Hofetz Hayyim experienced in his fight with the evil inclination?! As a result, when a young man who is imbued with a [holy] spirit and with ambition experiences impediments and downfalls, he believes that he is not planted in the house of Hashem.[8]
In responding to a student distressed by his spiritual shortcomings, Rabbi Hutner does not guarantee that if the student simply works harder things will turn out well, nor does he merely encourage the student to keep trying. Rather, R. Hutner instills within him the comfort that his trial and error will be worthwhile. He ensures the student that his struggles are normal and that authentic achievement does not come without failure along the way. In such an instance, vulnerability is thus not only the modality of being a struggling person but also the courage to expose oneself to others as being as such, allowing oneself to be seen as imperfect in an effort to affirm the normalcy of life’s difficulties and comfort those around us.
This passage always gave me a sense of resolve that we must remember that to be great means to try and try again and always keep trying. It also means when we presume others have achieved perfection, it might be that we are seeing the perfection from the standpoint of hindsight and veneration, not the reality in front of us.
Of course, being vulnerable can also be fraught with certain challenges that we must recognize. Akiva suggests the following in his conclusion:
Firstly, one might be vulnerable simply with the hope that others should resolve his problems on his behalf―with the assumption that the pity he receives from others might exempt him from contributing to his own efforts to overcome his difficulty. This must be avoided for vulnerability to remain a healthy trait…
Furthermore, the argument that has been made here is not that we should be vulnerable in order that we become complacent with our difficulties and collectively give up on them. There lies a tremendous distinction between being comfortable failing and being satisfied with failure;…
Lastly, embracing vulnerability should be done with the value of tzniut in mind. Sharing personal, emotional experiences must be done in a context which is comfortable for all parties; artificially attempting to accelerate a relationship by leaping immediately to sensitive information can wind up doing more harm than good…
Much of my work with others is in confrontation our humanity, imperfections and all, exploring the possibilities for the road ahead, building off the successes and failures of our lives before the moment of wanting a new beginning. We would do well to work on bringing our vulnerable, imperfect selves into all we do, from a place of strength, for it is within the recognizing our humanity is a strength, not a weakness that we can grow and support others in growing spiritually and emotionally.
Yesterday, as I was sitting and scrolling through Facebook and Twitter, I was seeing reminders of the big Daf Yomi Siyum HaShas (completion of the daily study of one page of Talmud a day which takes 7.5 yrs to complete) event that took place Jan. 1 2020 at MetLife stadium and other venues around the world. In seeing these posts, I began to reflect on the drive to maintain daily disciplines, whether study, prayer, spiritual practice, new hobby, etc. What does it take to maintain these self-driven desires for improvement, for growth? How do we start a daily routine and keep it going without becoming self-absorbed in it to the detriment of those around us?
Here is an outline of how to best work towards true goal setting and change:
What do we want to change? Before getting into the muck of why and how we want to bring about change, we must first name the change, either in specific or in general terms. Name the thing we want to do different.
Why do I want to change? What is motivating the change? For some, it is the humdrum nature of the lives we are currently living. For others, there is a deep yearning of the soul for growth and connection to something far greater than ourselves. Maybe we feel stuck, lost, drained. And maybe we need to make a better change to foster better, healthier habits and choices. Regardless, in order to set goals and maintain change, the motivation for why needs to be clear and needs to be constantly reviewed so as to remember why we started down this path.
How do I bring about the change in behavior? Truth is, this might be the toughest category to reflect upon. Making a big change to establish a new routine and/or goal requires a multiplicity of smaller changes which can affect others. Do I need to change my sleep habits? Do I need to delete an app from my phone that I’m addicted to? How do I balance a new routine with the needs of my family? These questions and many others require time and discussion as we work on scheduling and establishing this new thing. As such, each of us needs to take a two prong approach. On the one hand, begin the journey. Don’t wait for everything to line up perfectly because it never will. On the other hand, make sure those around you support you as best they can. It can be hard for others to fit your change into their lives. For true spiritual growth, we need to be working toward finding a balance of our desires with the needs of those around us.
Don’t overthink – With those other three suggestions, remember to not overanalyze and overthink the journey. It is easy to get paralyzed in all the details of how to make it work instead of just Do It. Sometimes, the doing makes the rest fall into place. Sometimes it will be imperfect. Sometime it might even be going through the motions. But as you do and you build step by step, seeing how far you have come will help motivate on those days it is more difficult to get going.
Don’t get overwhelmed by the process. Going back to the Daf Yomi as an example, it is easy to feel like the task is too big. I know that studying a page a day can be very challenging, which is why I have failed at it more often than I remember (by fail I mean I fall off and stop). I am in the midst of trying again. This time, my motivations have changed and my focus is different. I hope to maintain the success and am proud of how I try each day, even when it is far from an ideal situation.
These 5 ideas are how I work on setting my goals and how I work with others to set and maintain their spiritual growth and work.
May each of us find the motivation and focus to succeed along the path we wish to set before us in our spiritual and emotional growth.
Set goals for this year and looking to uncover and solidify the why and how of making the goals stick? Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com
Last part of Chapter 7. We discuss two situations, one in which regular penance, teshuva, will uplift the negative to positive and one in which the effects of teshuva will only bring about change in the spiritual realm post-death. I also briefly discuss how our mission is to plant the seeds and see what will grow and change from the seeds planted.
Do you want to work on taking the actions of your life and find meaning in all you do and who you are? Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com
We are in the midst of Hanukkah. This is a time of celebration, joy and lots of fun activities and food (especially those who love fried foods like latkes and donuts). It is also, and perhaps moreso, a time of reflecting on how we are to have faith in things working out even in the seemingly impossible situations of life. By reflecting on the liturgy of the 8 day festival, which speaks about the overcoming of overwhelming military odds and the lighting of candles, going from 1 candle on the first night to 8 candles on the last night, one added every night, as a reminder of the story told of finding enough oil to only last one day which then lasted eight days, we have an opportunity to take stock and reflect.
In my work with people as a Spiritual Life Coach, we work to take the little jug of oil a person has uncovered, the desire to foster a change in life, and step by step craft the desired goals into a New Beginning. This is true for those dealing with grief and loss, with transitions in life and those just searching for a renewed sense of meaning. Fostering lasting change is miraculous in that it is often difficult to sustain the step by step growth. Too many of us struggle because we want to reach the end quickly and without fail, not realizing that the goal can only be reached one step at a time. This attitude can lead to failed opportunities and missed celebrations for milestones we reach along the way. Time and again, we each can find the ways to support and care for ourselves so that we may find the new lights we are trying to light in our lives.
As we light for the last time tonight, filling all 8 spots on the menorah, we should take a moment to reflect on the night by night process of how we got here. Some of us have felt rushed during the holiday, maybe not being home for every night, yet, we have continued to do in some way shape or form. It wasn’t a straight and perfect ride, yet we have arrived at the culmination point. I think this is true of our work of change as well. The process of change is not perfect. It has bumps and ditches along the way. Yet, when we reach a milestone moment, when we have a breakthrough that gives us the push forward to the next part of the growth journey, we should take the time to celebrate the imperfect, bumpy path we have taken to this point.
May we be blessed to appreciate the bumps along the way and the arrival to points along the path. May we remember to celebrate the incomplete as much as we come to enjoy the complete.
I previously described the Jewish practice that upon awakening, we start our day with words of gratitude for being alive another day, Modeh Ani.
With these words we offer words of recognition for the renewed opportunities we have as we start the day. Each day allows us to press refresh, and as I highlighted in my previous post, if we can overcome the fear of pressing refresh, we can truly take a first step. Today, I want to suggest that are acknowledgment of gratitude each day is part of taking this first step.
I came across a deeper, more mystical approach to this declaration of gratitude. Maharal, Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, who lived in the 16th and early 17th centuries, suggested that the gratitude we are expressing is more than just about the return of our soul, our life, for another day. It also represents our expressing gratitude for the world being renewed again for another day. In other words, when we go to sleep, from a natural perspective the world continues to exist. Yet, if we take the perspective of ourselves asleep, the world ceases to be. When we wake up, the world comes back into focus, coming back into existence like we do.
I found this deeper level of renewal inspirational. If it is not just us, but the world starting over in our eyes when we start the day, when we wake up from sleep, it means we do not need to live our lives enslaved to what was. Of course, we don’t find ourselves waking up in a different bed, in a different place, but we do have the chance to make the world what we want to each day. By deliberately acknowledging and expressing this gratitude for the opportunity for the new, we always have the chance to take that first step to something new.
May we find each day as an opportunity to reinvest in the opportunities for renewal we have in front of us.
You have the opportunity to start again. If you are struggling to begin the process of starting your next journey in life. Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com
Yesterday, I came across this motivational quote on LinkedIn (here). It was a beautiful reminder of the opportunity we have each day to have a “do-over.”
Today, I find myself focused on these words again as I consider the notion of mistakes. We all make them (except for certain people who shall remain unnamed 😉) and if you are like me, you have a multiplicity of negative feelings that can overwhelm you. How many of us relate to this vicious cycle. We mess something up, feel guilty about it and then start to avoid or justify our errors instead of confronting them. Often this avoidance, guilt, etc. comes from feeling shame (for a perspective on the challenges of shame, see here). Deep down, we wish for it to magically disappear, like being able to have a do-over in a video game. And while it can never just disappear, the mistake, the lost opportunity, doesn’t need to remain what defines us.
In order to find this do-over, we need to overcome different fears including:
fear of embarrasment.
fear of being uncomfortable
fear of the unknown
fear of failure in starting over (see here for another post on fear of success)
This is no easy task. Yet, I believe we innately do this all the time. Each day brings a series of unknowns, even in the familiar. We could either shrink away from what the day’s schedule could bring, because plans always change, or we could embrace the myriad possibilities potentially before us. If we embrace the unknown, if we accept that we are imperfect and can practice self-forgiveness, we will then others embrace forgiveness as well, recognizing mistakes happen and we can try again. And if we are ready to start over, we will find new opportunities even in the seemingly monotonous, routine.
As it relates to spiritual practice, for example, how often do we find ourselves recognizing how distracted we become in moments of hoped for focus. As a personal example, which I’m sure I’m not alone in, is how often my mind wanders during prayer. All of a sudden, I find myself saying certain words, wondering how I got to that part of the service. I could just give up and say, oh well, I missed out so why bother refocusing. Or, as I try to do, I restart my efforts to find focus, often with some momentary success. The point is, we have opportunity to shift midstream and continue forward in an improved manner, even if we missed out up until this point.
If you are searching for that new opportunity, new beginning, I hope you find ways to overcome your fears to find the opening to a road ahead full of possibilities.
New beginnings: A blog about spirituality, chaplaincy and renewal 