Posts
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: CHUMASH CANDESCENCE:
A STILL SMALL VOICE: FORWARD
If we are blocked with ego, pride, resentments, fears, selfishness, and belligerent denial of God, we will not hear a word from God. God never turns his back on us, but we, with false pride, or 'righteous anger,' turn our faces from Him. When we do so, who are we facing?
God took us out of Mitzraim, the land of Egypt, the land of the 'narrow space', because that is exactly what the Hebrew word for Egypt means. Yet how many of us have put ourselves back into a bondage of self? How many of us are our own Pharaohs? When we block our channel with our own narrowness, we will never let God's Guidance in.
When we live by the words "don't just sit there and do something," we are saying we know better than God.
When we learn to trust and have faith in God, that He is in charge, even at times in our life that it seems that no one is in charge of anything except the demons of chaos, and can 'be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10), then we are on the path of Jewish Spirituality and Renewal.
When we truly understand: "Akavya ben Mahalalel said: Reflect upon three things and you will not come to sin. Know from where you came and where you are going and before whom you are destined to give account and reckoning. From where have you come?--from a putrid drop. Where are you going?--to the place of dust, worm, and maggot. Before whom are you destined to give account and reckoning?--before the supreme King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be he."'( Mishna Pirkei Avot 3:1), then the slings and arrows from others who are detached from God due to their spiritual illness bounce off us.
This leads us to the true definition of humility, really knowing that the word 'humble' is from the Latin, and Aramaic, Humus, ground up, as in dirt, (or today chick peas in the Souks).
Humility is:
"Perpetual quietness of heart.
It is to have no trouble.
It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore;
It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore;
to wonder at nothing that is done to me,
to feel nothing done against me.
It is to be at rest when nobody praises me,
and when I am blamed or despised,
it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and pray to my Father in secret and be at peace,
as in a deep sea of calmness,
when all around and about is seeming trouble." (Dr. Robert Smith)
It is my hope and prayer, that the teachings in Chumash Candescence, calling upon the wisdom of our sages as far back as 4000 years hence, can help bring about a Jewish spiritual change and renewal, can help uncircumcise the hearts that have grown a tough foreskin over them, and for those who are still full of resentments for their fellows, and hence most likely to God, [for who can say they love God, who they can not see, and not love a human standing before them, who is the image of God who they can see], have God grant them a new heart to replace the hole in their chest where a cold stone has grown. [Ezekiel 18:31]
Living a life full of fears, jealousies , resentments, emotional dishonesty, all stemming from a detachment from God, is not the way God intended us to live. He wants us to be happy, joyous and free and at peace with one another.
The main purpose of having a personal relationship with God, is to understand that we are all from one Heavenly Father, and one set, allegorically, of human parents. We are all attached. When we deny another, or hate another, or gossip about another, we are only hurting ourselves.
"The Torah's ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. — Proverbs 3:17-18
Shalom.
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
For Talmudic Discourses and other essays, explore:
Delicious ideas to please the pickiest eaters. Watch the video on AOL Living.
