I recently came across a powerful comment from Lessons in Tanya that I believe is important to reflect upon:
Now, we are constantly taught that one should be wary of spiritual intentions which outstrip one’s current spiritual pace; spirituality must be earned in an environment of honesty.
Lessons in Tanya, Vol. 2 p. 616
Spiritual growth, like all other areas of life, requires goals. Who do we want to be? How do we get there? What path should we take? We have desires for being different, more connected to the divine, to Gd, to our inner self. Yet, growth is a not a 0-60 in 3 seconds endeavor. It is a steady, daily process of taking step after step, rising slightly more each and every day. The above is a reminder that while we have desires to be an ideal self, we must strive towards it, not force it forward, for speeding things up is fraught with dangers of falling hard and fast.
Today, take the first step towards your goal. Don’t rush, don’t let the desire for growth push you towards taking shortcuts. Move forward step by step, day by day and you will find true Spiritual Honesty.
Are you or someone you know struggling to maintain one’s spiritual growth? Are you looking for strategies to stay along a path and jump too far forward? Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com
We are standing on the precipice of another year in the Jewish calendar. As always, it is a time of introspection (it’s never too late to think back over the year). What do we want different? What are our hopes for the upcoming year? Where do we even begin?
One of the customs many have on Rosh Hashanah is to eat certain foods that symbolize our prayers and hopes for the new year. The source for this custom is mentioned in a couple of places in the Babylonian Talmud:
Horayot 12a and Keritut 6a
אמר אביי השתא דאמרת סימנא מילתא היא [לעולם] יהא רגיל למיחזי בריש שתא קרא ורוביא כרתי וסילקא ותמרי
Abaye said: Now that you said that an omen is a significant matter, a person should always be accustomed to seeing these on Rosh HaShana: Squash, and fenugreek, leeks, and chard, and dates, as each of these grows quickly and serves as a positive omen for one’s actions during the coming year.
In addition to the above mentioned foods, see the chart below for what many do today, which adds to the Talmudic list.
In my pre-Rosh Hashanah reading yesterday, I came across a discussion of this custom. At first glance, many of us would think this is a bit like magic, that somehow my consumption of one food or another has the power to invoke change in our lives. How can it be that by eating an apple dipped in honey I should be able to ask Gd to grant us a sweet new year? Is it merely magical thinking? Is it really that simple?
In response, perhaps we are looking at the custom all wrong. According to the essay I was reading, we need to rethink the word siman(symbol). If we see the notion of symbol in the sense of planting a seed, as in a famous idea about how to read the stories of Genesis as “The actions of our forefathers are symbols for the children,” we can begin to appreciate the practice of these symbolic foods. If our actions become lessons for our children, then in a way, what we do is the equivalent of our planting the seeds for our children to learn from the good and bad in our lives. Hence, we can say symbols are seeds being planted.
On Rosh Hashanah, when we eat these symbolic foods, we are also planting seeds. We are praying, we want the upcoming year to be better, sweeter, with our successes at the forefront and our enemies vanquished. We want a year of positivity, a year in which the naysaying voice in our head is quieted down so we can see and feel the growth we are all experiencing, even when we don’t realize it. Through these foods, we aren’t performing magic tricks. We are taking the first step to real growth, naming what we want and hoping that this first step is a seed that germinates and sprouts for us along our journey of this upcoming year.
Many of my posts have been about the planting of seeds and taking first steps. This is the essential philosophy of New Beginnings. We are always presented an opportunity for a new beginning and while things might seem to be on a continuum, they are also a series of beginnings if we choose for them to be. I truly believe that each day we are doing is a day of growth and change even when we ourselves don’t see it as such. Each pitfall along the way, for there will be setbacks and challenges, are also growth points if and when we are ready to see them as such.
May this year, 5783, be a year in which we see the growth we are all doing, a year of peace in our lives and in the world, a year of less worry over the things we can’t control and most of all, a sweet, good and healthy year to all.
Want to take your hopes and wishes for a new year and really concretize them? Looking to solidify and continue 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 celebrate the 100th posting on this blog/website. As I reflect on the number 100, I find myself going back to my piece last week about the number 99 and prefer to see this post as number 99 + 1. I am grateful to have been able to share and reflect on a variety of topics with all my readers and look forward to continuing along on this journey of exploration.
For this post, I found myself trying to determine what the 1 of 99 + 1 could symbolize for me or what we could learn from this equation instead of merely sitting with the number 100. Fortunately, a colleague of mine in our local BNI group pointed out an idea about 1 as it relates to 1% of one’s day.
1% of the day is the equivalent of 14 minutes and 40 seconds. Imagine if we were intentional for just 1% of the time. What can you get accomplished in 14 min. and 40 sec. a day? According to this piece, TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE BY CHANGING JUST 1% OF YOUR DAY, we underestimate how much we can grow in this short burst of intentionality. We underestimate how establishing this small routine might very well be the mere opening to use more time with intentionality.
Similarly, in any long term activity we desire to take on, if we just take one piece at a time, we can find the greater success. For me, the achievement of this blog is not the total posts so far, but it is in each piece I write. Whether exceptional, plain or even subpar, each piece is a unique undertaking. And while it adds up over time, my focus can only be on the 1. Time is the same. I might be setting aside X hours to do a task, yet if I then break that down further and further to manageable moments, I will more likely come away with a better outcome. Too much and we get overwhelmed.
New beginnings: A blog about spirituality, chaplaincy and renewal 