Ratzon

The largest distances in the universe are found between Man and God, Man and his full potential, and Man and an Other. Yet man can meet God in a cup of coffee, manifest his Soul with a pencil, and melt into an Other with a smile.

@VaadHaBadchanim A Friend wrote: “He actually died 8 years ago but death was too afraid to tell him.”

@VaadHaBadchanim Chuck Norris took out the entire Iranian regime after his petira.

There is a mishnayos sign up for Chuck Norris to be completed by his shloshim. All of the mishnayos have already been claimed by Chuck Norris.

Psychiatry is an attempt to deal with the soul while denying its existence.

I had the opportunity to speak with a writer who I have enjoyed and admired for years. In our conversation she mentioned that there are writers who “write in a way that speaks to something beyond the meaning of the writing itself”. And I thought, “what a delicious sentence, coming from an author who does just that.” And she said, “I don’t quite know what I mean, it’s like something beyond the meaning, do you know what I mean?” And we both laughed.

“A mind that’s all logic is like a knife that’s all blade. It cuts the hand that wields it.” —Rabindranath Tagore

@brianmaierhofer This needs to be written as an entire book

Many people who developed hyperattunement as children are often labeled as “empaths” in adulthood, but this is a misconception. The difference is crucial—while hyperattunement can feel emotionally rewarding, it’s not true empathy. True empathy is rooted in differentiation, the ability to maintain a clear sense of self while still being attuned to the emotions of others.

Deficiencies exist, at their core, to keep us humble. When we become too overly identified with the Soul, with an idealized image of who we are, we lose relationship with Self. For idealism is a flash, a static moment in time, that can only serve as an inspiration. An opening to an energy that we reflect on. Energy that moves us, changes us, can open our hearts and change the direction of our lives. Idealism, and the Soul, can never be ingested and can never be metabolized. They are not meant to be. Idealism is an image. Images capture a moment that never portray reality, for time rolls and images are static. Experiencing Soul is always the revelation of an image. When we attempt to identify ourselves as being Soul, we are identifying with an image. Some call this Spiritual Grandiosity. To compensate for this, the psyche throws us off balance. Pulling us out of the image we call our "idealistic Self". Turning us towards fragmentation, confusion, deficiency. Making us do wrong, getting our hearts and minds to experience the rough edges of lived experience. Attempting to break the frigid static hold that the perfect idealized image keeps us bound to. Bringing us to earthiness. Until we can open a conversation between our idealized self and our lived experience. Until heaven and earth converse. Until we accept the Garden of Eden and hell within us. The possibility of being both a tzaddik and a rasha. Halevai Beinoni. סולם מוצב ארצה וראשו מגיע שמימה

@NhavsMaimonides Absolutely- It’s not reciprocal…

The fact that God provides food, health, or anything else, however you understand it, belongs to the realm of nature and human psychology, and has nothing to do with worship. Someone can recognize all of this to be true, and fail to keep a single command. If you serve God because He satisfies your needs or knows your thoughts, you have turned the Divine into a functional utility.

The Mussar movement’s flaw: If you try to change your desires and inclinations, you are serving yourself—it is no different than pursuing them. If you follow the command despite them, you are serving God. This is why our Sages said: a person should not say “I do not want to eat pork”, Rather, one should say, “I do want them, but what can I do? My Father in Heaven has decreed against them for me”.

@NhavsMaimonides Not transactional. Does God create man? Does God give man food to eat? Does God clothe man? Does God give man meaningful moments? Does God satiate man’s needs? Is God interested in man’s health? Is God יודע מחשבות, שומע תפילות?

@RatzonAdam So God services man basically? A reciprocal relationship?

@NhavsMaimonides I’m ok with it being irrelevant to worship and also the imperative for self growth as a psychological imperative for the sake of the person… desired by God.

@RatzonAdam That’s the religious demand. If one wants to treat it like he wants to treat his backache, by all means. But it’s all irrelevant to worship.

@NhavsMaimonides So… what should one do with their feelings of גאוה?

You’ve misunderstood. I’m not arguing that resisting one’s inclinations ends up reinforcing them..that’s a psychological question. I’m saying that even perfect self-discipline, if pursued for its own sake, is still self-worship, and no different in principle from indulging desire. Perfecting yourself is seeing yourself as the ends, it’s anthropocentric, not theocentric. The issue isn’t feeling heroic, but whether the command is being used as a means to that feeling. If it is, then one serves the feeling. If one sees the feeling is merely incidental, because the command is the ends, then one serves God. The command is not to fight the heroism, but to see it as religiously insignificant.

@NhavsMaimonides @shnayor @sechelist And also must be dealt with for the cow might die.

@RatzonAdam @shnayor @sechelist The psychological experience is no different then the cow’s experience of hunger

@NhavsMaimonides I’ve read through some of your writings and wonder something of your use of language. How would you answer? What is Judaism? By extension, what is God, outside of His commandments?

Perhaps… but now the argument feels philosophical. Which is nice but doesn’t account for the experience that actually is. IE- a fantasy is a figment of imagination… that is a real experience… hence fantasy is real. The ontological gap is, actually, experienced. And needs to be dealt with.

No, we are in fundamental opposition. You treat the “ontological gap” as a psychological problem centering the universe on human feeling. Speaking of “experiencing ourselves as divine” is turning God into a means of self actualization. In truth, there is no bridge between the contingent and the Necessary Existent, your existence is not real in the true ontological sense. Every attempt to cross this imagined gap is only human experience mistaken for truth. Judaism does not exist to validate the self or alleviate suffering, but to recognize that your “self” and “suffering” is nothing , and God alone is the only true Being, which is a reality apprehended only through self negation expressed in the service of the Commandments, and not through subjective sensation.

@NhavsMaimonides @shnayor @sechelist Of course— I still don’t see a disagreement… in my words, that ontological gap is, quite precisely, what is at the root of human suffering, the quicker humans learn of this, the quicker we can get to knowing who we are and who we aren’t…

Not at all. Although your existence is wholly derived from and sustained by the Necessary Existent, this entails no partition or inclusion within the Divine Essence, for God is absolutely transcendent. Your existence being contingent means that there’s an ontological gap , that you cannot be called “existence” in the same sense at all. You do not share in His being, you are a shadow cast by His Will.

So His “involvement” is that nothing is independent of Him. Everything is taking place within Him. Nothing exists outside of the truth of His existence. Regardless if they are deemed a commandment of His by a religious text. So, we are in agreement. I don’t see how a person’s psychological need to experience one’s self as a self is outside the realm of His existence. To experience one’s self as divine, as of God. And what trouble there is in saying that Soulfulness is a sense of something intrinsic and can be experienced…

None whatsoever. Your coffee and your nose-picking do not possess true existence. The only relation they have to God is that they have no independent being. They, along with you and all contingent existence, exist solely by virtue of the truth of His existence, and that’s the extent of the “involvement”

@NhavsMaimonides @shnayor @sechelist This needs more elucidation. I don’t see how radical de-sanctification can work with Judaism. For example, if God is the only true existence what involvement does God have in my drinking a coffee? Or picking my nose?

@RatzonAdam @shnayor @sechelist I answered: What is Judaism—Judaism is the radical de-sanctification of the world. What is God outside the realm of his commandments—God is the only True existence.

@NhavsMaimonides @shnayor @sechelist Yes… and what about the questions I asked. What is Judaism? What is God outside the realm of His commandments?

@RatzonAdam @shnayor @sechelist And contingent existence*