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By Alan Morinis That each of us is a holy soul is a notion completely alien to modern sensibilities. Few people think like that, and fewer still proclaim this ancient and profound insight. Have you seen the billboard or heard the radio spot reminding you that you are a holy soul? Not likely. When I look in the mirror and I peer deeper to seek a reflection of my true nature, the images that are easiest to grasp are of citizen, identity, consumer, doer, but who sees his or her own face, looks into the eyes, and recognizes: “soul“? Because few of us have been given any hint as to who we really are, spiritually, we have built and live in a world that directs us away from thinking about ourselves as souls. The sad result is that we then set priorities for our lives that are out of step with our own deepest fulfillment and interests. When the majority of us do that, as is the case today, we find that precious human qualities—traits we desperately need if our species is to preserve this planetary home of ours, and solve its problems—are in very short supply, personally and collectively. Truth has become the rarest flower in a forest of lies and deceits we live among. The quality the Mussar teachers call menuchat ha’nefesh, which translates literally as “calmness of the soul”— is nowhere to be found in our frantic, harried and restless lives. Just in the course of our own lifetimes, haven’t you seen standards of respect for human life and dignity plummet to unfathomed depths? To a person who lives soulfully, traits like truth, tranquility and honor are of central importance. The person who has no notion of their own spiritual essence may still manifest such qualities, but likely only when they are directed toward some material benefit he or she thinks is useful, rather than for the sake of the elevation and purification of his or her soul. I want to focus on another quality that sharply and clearly distinguishes a person who lives in connection with his or her soul from one who doesn’t. That quality is joy. Unlike the other traits mentioned above, joy [simcha] is by its nature a soulful quality. The soul experiences joy, whereas the ego can only know lesser experiences, like happiness or fun. In my new book, Every Day, Holy Day, due out this Fall, I wrote this about joy: “Moments come when the heart dances in the light. So much more than the experience of fun or even happiness, joy erupts when the inner sphere scintillates in its completeness. An experience touches us to the depths of our souls, and in that moment we are graced with a vision—if only fleetingly—of the flawless wholeness and perfection of it all. Then the heart fills and flows over, even amid the brokenness of this world.” What this is saying is that joy is dependent on spiritual insight and connection, not life-conditions. I’ve heard many stories from my wife, a palliative care physician, about people who experience great joy even as cancer or another disease takes them on a short journey to their final departure. And in my time in India, I met people whose material circumstances seemed to warrant depression, and yet whose hearts radiated joy. Is that just denial? Is it recourse to a religious opiate in the face of intractable social and economic hardships? The Alter of Kelm, Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv (1824-1898), helps us understand that joy can erupt in almost any circumstance because joy is not dependent on external factors. Many of us will know this from our own experiences, and I wonder if you can recall a moment when your hearts suddenly filled to overflowing with joy, in the most unlikely situation. And the contrary is also true—no matter how luxurious and well-endowed a person’s life may be on the material plane, we all know that is no guarantee that he or she will ever taste joy. The Alter of Kelm wrote of joy in a letter that he sent to his son, Rabbi Nochum Velvel. I was working on it recently, with great and skilled translating help from Josh and Noga Gressel. The Alter has much to say in the letter, building up to a paragraph where he delivers the main message. He reflects on our material existence, saying: “corporeal man thinks enjoyment in the world consists of eating, and drinking and the like, this material gluttony, and the truth is not so. The material desires are only to keep him alive, so that his limbs will continue to function.” His subject, like ours here, is joy, and he is pointing out that the route to joy does not lie in material pursuits or satisfactions. That in itself is a message worth underlining, especially for those of us who live in a world that tells us repeatedly that salvation lies in possessing things. I heard a radio report recently that featured an interview with a man who was first in line to get an iPad in his town. The man described his racing heart and sweating brow as if he had just had an encounter at the burning bush. “The truth is not so,” cautions the Alter. When we know and understand that nothing material generates joy, we also understand why material circumstances also can’t interfere with joy—it is an inner effervescence that is as available to the sick, poor and dying as to the healthy, wealthy and vital. If not from food, drink, pleasure, possessions and the like, where does joy come from? The Alter’s thought here is complex, though in the end it resolves down to a simple message: “All the elements of the world are always at work in their complexity and interdependence, day and night, layer upon layer, because their intricate composition continues day and night. And, in every moment, man is involved with composition after composition, as is known through observation. And he is found enjoying all of the world, in its multiplying quality from all the world, because he always harbors life within himself.” I understand him to be saying that we interact with this complex world in many ways and we experience many things all the time. At one level, all those interactions revolve around distinguishing what we like from what we don’t like, what gives us pleasure and what does not please us. But go down deeper to another level of what takes place when we live in this world, and the distinctions that engage us are suddenly of no significance whatsoever. What we see in ourselves at that deeper level is the simple and bare fact that we are sentient beings having experiences and making distinctions: the root of the matter is that “he always harbors life within himself.” Later, the Alter makes that message entirely explicit: “People of understanding do not find this strange; they understand that the essence of joy for a human being is life itself.” He reiterates: “Man is alive! That fact alone is enough to cause him to live with a full measure of great joy, so much so that there’s no need to wish for anything more. And that is the joy of life.” His message is disarmingly simple, though it takes us to a place so far from ordinary consciousness. The conditions that we find ourselves living in at any given moment have no capacity to generate and bring about joy. Rather, it is recognition of the very fact of being alive, and living in connection with that truth, that is the source and the generator of joy. A person who is aware of the mere (!) fact that he or she is alive (Alive!) and sees and feels life to be a gift, this person has opened the door to the experience of joy. Contact with this teaching has the capacity to bring you to a moment of joy right now, because, with the Alter’s guidance, you may be experiencing the shockingly profound realization that you are the embodiment of a great gift right now: alive and conscious. Jewish tradition encourages us to cultivate the conditions that will lead to more joy, more often. “Ivdu et HaShem ba’simcha”—serve God in joy. Nor does “the Shechina [Divine Presence] dwell in a place of sadness.” The guidance we need to live a life of greater joy is also revealed in a traditional source: “To the straight of heart—joy! [L’yishrei lev—simcha!]. The Alter of Kelm does not cite this source, but another to make the same point. The verse he relies on is: “A man because of his sins.” According to the Alter’s interpretation of Rashi, “A man because of his sins” means that a person who seeks joy will do what is necessary “to overcome and remove his confusing failings, and then he will understand his enormous, awesome joy.” To rephrase: a person who knows which traits are challenges on his or her personal spiritual curriculum, each one of which drops a veil or curtain over the inner light that gives clear vision, and who does the work to master these traits -- he or she “will be privileged to understand never-ending joy.” Because they will no longer sin. Because their hearts will be straight. Because there will be no obstacles obstructing their vision of the great truth and the great gift that is: life itself. Joy erupts when the inner sphere scintillates in its completeness.
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