Ole Mrs. Thompson from Prairie Lakes gave in to her grandchildrens and got herself a computer with this thingamgig called AOL, and I don’t know what AOL stands for no how. But it din’t work, and so she called up the company to complain.
What’s wrong ma’am, asked the solicitous agent.
“Well I turn the darn machine on” says Mrs. Thompson, “and it chirps, ‘You’ve got mail’ and so I put on my sweater and go down the driveway to the curb, open up the mailbox, and there’s no mail!!”
Ole Mrs. Thompson ain’t stupid. She simply has a notion that has been tried and true for decades; mail is at the curb. And this notion that has served her so well for so long is now hindering her technological advancement. Her grandchildren associate mail with icons and mouses and clicks. Mrs. Thompson must unlearn her knowledge –that mail is delivered by USPS – in order to master the new knowledge. She must break her long-standing concepts before this new one can gain space in her head. She must strip away her wisdom of years and the accomplishments of maturity and be open like a baby.
It’s not just a problem old dogs have, great athletes and astute CEO’s find new tricks challenging –yesterday’s laurels become today’s chains. Last month three pull-ups was a goal, a challenge and then an achievement. This month three pull-ups is down in the doldrums. You must forget Bavli to learn Yerushalmi was the counterintuitive Talmudic dictum.
This holds true for anyone who wants to achieve, and Jews are nothing if not achievers. And the greatest frontier, the toughest challenge, is right inside.
When you’re composed you’ve “got yourself together”, right? No. You don’t. When you ‘re composed you are merely in control of showing only what you think the person in front of you should see, or on a deeper level, what you want to see about yourself. When you “lose it”, when you break down, then another side of you, a deeper aspect of you, comes forth.
So when you are composed you are fragmented: the other parts of you are not present in the same way. When you break down, in tears that either fall from or well up in the eyes or get caught in the throat, you break down the barriers of that cause fragmentation. When you break down then, yes, there is a destruction involved, but that breaking down spurs new growth. Like a seed planted, it dissolves in the soil and then the life force of the earth creates from that blueprint an oak tree.
The Yiddish expression, S'eis nisht do aza ganze zach vi a tzubrochene hartz translates poorly, so poorly ess taigt auf kapores: there is nothing so wholesome as a broken heart. When we break our fragmentation we become whole: more healed in the process.
It is painful work though, to break down your defenses; you need to feel very safe to do that.
This is a crucial element of any learning, but certainly of the Rebbe’s insistence on the Mishanic dictum osay lecho rav, get yourself a rabbi. Rabbis are very much like doctors; as my rabbi told me: you tell the doctor your foot is extremely painful, he pokes and prods and marvels at how well you withstand the pain and then you say, oh, I forgot to tell you doc, it’s the other foot. He (she) can’t help you unless you are able to open up and that can be enormously challenging. Hence the necessity of Pirkei Avot insisting: get yourself a rabbi.
Sometimes you only open up when the pain is too great or outside circumstances impose -- an ‘awakening from above’ in the words of the Zohar- isarusa de’le’ayla. Sometimes you can soften yourself up slowly, methodically, with focused, articulated intent –an ‘awakening from below’ – isarusa de’le’tatta. The former is dramatic and therefore fleeting, the latter is neither. Elul is the latter, an opportunity, a season ripe for self-reflection, self-discovery, when the pain of it all is more endurable and the rewards more readily available so the process is more endurable.
Hearing the shofar, regularly, even daily, eases the process as it jump starts it. The words of King David, the most Jewish of poet-mystic –warriors, evoke many of the qualities that help this hard, and immensely rewarding, work.
The month of Elul affords this; that is why we blow the shofar – a most Jewish of instruments. The shofar has a triumphant ring, the heralding hear ye hear ye of kings of yore and of collegiate teams marching onto the field to begin their match. But the shofar also has a plaintive, searching, haunting quality and it is the combination of the two that makes the shofar an effective, evocative tool in self-discovery.
And self-discovery is what creation is all about. “And all creation should know that you created it” our chazzan sings hauntingly on Rosh Hashanah. Which if you think about it is quite radical. The purpose of creation is re-self-definition. But you could only do that if you break apart your previous though pattern. Or if you prefer, you can keep going to the curb to check on the mail.