Removing the "I"

Rabbi Melanie Aron

April 4, 2003

Just after 9-11, I was responsible for planning a program for our local Jewish professionals, a group called CAER council of agency executives and rabbis. I wondered what we needed most at that difficult time. Did we need more information; a briefing from someone who could share news and analysis, assess the situation or prognosticate on what was likely to happen? Did we need to improve our skills at specific tasks, pastoral work, public relations, or security? Did we need help networking with resources up the Peninsula, or around the country? What we decided we needed most was stress relief and so we brought in an expert from El Camino Hospital's stress reduction program.

This stress reduction was important not only for each of us as individuals, but also for us in our professional capacities. One of the effects of stress is that it negatively impacts our decision-making processes. Stress is like wearing blinders, you see fewer options, your range of vision is narrowed. Stress makes you brittle and more likely to see things in extremes of black and white. Think of how things are when you are talking about something on a casual basis, just exploring a topic in conversation. Then think about what its like to deal with that topic in crisis mode, when a decision must be made and fast.

I think our situation today, in the midst of this difficult and controversial war, is akin to that of the first few weeks after 9-11. Our state of mental health is nationally similarly impacted. Unlike our parents and grandparents who experienced World War II through weekly newsreels at the movie theatres, we get our news minute by minute 24/7 We are vicariously living every up and down, amplified sometimes by disinformation and by the media's need for excitement to keep us tuned in. And though political analysis and information are important, and it is vital that we take time for serious discussion of the moral issues before us (and the appropriateness of different courses of personal activism) there is also a place and time for centering activity- especially on Shabbat.

Meditation is one of the techniques often used for reducing stress. It has been found to be extremely effective and to have numerous proven medical benefits. Rabbi Litvack spoke about meditation here at Shir Hadash when he talked to us in January about Jewish Spirituality in Ten Minutes a Day. Dr. Luskin talked to us about it when he came before the high holidays a year ago and talked about Forgiveness. I went to an American Leadership Forum program this year, and at the Business school of Santa Clara University, of all places, heard about the importance of a spiritual practice yet again.

Why does meditation work? Perhaps because it enables us, for a few minutes, to tune out that "i" which works so hard all the time.

As you are listening to me right now, you may also be engaging in a dialogue with yourself- agreeing or disagreeing with what I am saying, wondering what you need to get done tomorrow, reviewing something that went on during the day that continues to bother or upset you. This inner dialogue can be very exhausting, and so we benefit from those times when we are so engrossed in what we are doing that our two I's, the doing I and the reflecting "i", merge. For some of us this happens in personal prayer, when there is no "i" watching the I pray. For some of us this is achieved through meditation, as we take time to still the mind. And for some of us this can happen through music. Often if we are singing with all our hearts, or playing an instrument with concentration, or even listening intently to a piece of music for some period of time, we merge into the music, and achieve that focus which relieves the active mind.

Rabbi Larry Kushner, our Reform modern mystic, writes about that 'I" in his book, "God was in this Place and I, I did not know." He notes for starters the seemingly unnecessary use in this verse from the Bible of the word, anochi, I. But Jews have assumed for millennia that the Torah does not waste words. That extra I is there for a reason. It is a reminder that what is the greatest barrier to the awareness that "God is in this place", I, or what the Hasidim identify as ego or conceit. Rabbi Kushner calls us to become like Jacob, to become aware that God was here all along and the reason I didn't know it is because I was too busy paying attention to myself.

The Hasidim speak of it in this way.

"Have you ever seen a wolf?" The rabbi of Kotzk asked one of his Hasidim.

"Yes", he replied.

"And were you afraid of him?"

"Yes."

"And were you aware of the fact that you were afraid?"

"No", answered the Hasid, "I was simply afraid."

If we can find times in our lives when we are simply praying, simply singing, simply being, then we like Jacob will wake up with a start to a different awareness of the divine in our lives.