Day 6 of 60

Tuesday, August 25Elul 5
DEVELOPING SENSITIVITY

Ask yourself: How sensitive are you to the world around you? Do you have a plan for developing/increasing your sensitivity?

Exercise for the day: - Make a special effort to increase your charitable giving, beyond your natural tendency.- Place a charity box in your home, office and car. Teach your children to give of their money and time to others. - Before you eat focus on making a blessing, with added intention, thanking G-d and concentrating on the spiritual energy contained within the food that you are about to consume.

I try to be sensitive to the world around me; sometimes I am more so than others. Of course, there is a level way beyond the one that even my best self of today has achieved.

I will try to concentrate on infusing more awareness of the spiritual energy inherent in the food I am about to consume, in addition to being thankful to HaShem for it.

I do not know that I will be putting more charity boxes out around me and my environment. I will try to do charity by stopping throughout my day to have in mind others around me and to pray for their welfare. Perhaps, putting out charity boxes will help me as a visual reminder of my goal.

==========================================================================

When the Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak was a child, he was walking in a garden one day and he ripped off a leaf and began rubbing it with his finger. His father rebuked him, "What right do you have to rip a leaf from a tree and mistreat it for no purpose at all?" When the Rebbe grew up he said that this incident had a deep impact on his life. It taught him to be sensitive to everything.

If a person is sensitive to a leaf on a tree, he will, without a doubt, be sensitive to all life forms—most of all to his fellow human beings. This is the essence of tzedakah ("charity"), one of the three pillars upon which the world stands (Torah and prayer being the other two). Tzedakah is sensitivity in action.

Sensitivity to life is the goal of many of the practices of the Torah. Some of them appear deceptively simple—for example, take the act of making a blessing before eating.

On a basic level, a blessing on food is saying thank you to God. That makes sense—whenever anyone gives you something, you say thank you. And if you can thank the waiter who brought you the food, you can definitely thank the Creator who created it.

But on a deeper level, the blessing has a profound meaning. When you are hungry, you want to put that food in your mouth immediately. But the Torah says, "No, you can't." First, you must be sensitive to the environment, to every fiber of grass, every cell of life, because everything that God created has sanctity to it. You have no right consume a part of creation unless you are sanctifying it.

It's true that many people just make blessings by rote, without sensitivity. That is mechanical Judaism. But if you understand and appreciate the concept of a blessing, you know that little daily acts like it can sensitize your life.

Day 5 of 60

Monday, August 24
Elul 4

THE TRUTH WITHIN

Ask yourself: To what extent do you see religion as oppressive? To what extent is the religion in your life man-made or self-made? Have you gone to the source? Have you had the experience of hearing the truth resonate in your heart? Did you embrace it or reject it?

Exercise for the day:
Commit to regularly attend a Torah class that will help you in at least one area of your life (which you identified yesterday) where you have not made been able to make meaningful progress on your own.

I understand the concept of religion as freeing, rather than oppressing. I do not see it as imposed by any other human. My problem comes in when my yetzer hara plays up my desires that will keep me from realizing the freedom of constantly doing HaShem's will and makes me feel like "I" want something else and if a I submit to HaShem's will I am forfeiting something more enjoyable!

Isn't it amazing that I can "know" something very clearly and yet am so able to convince myself of the total opposite.

That is where the idea of Torah classes comes in to play. It helps me visualize and clarify the beauty of the path I know is the better one for me and to strengthen my desire to follow it and to reinforce my resolve not to be swayed from it.

Again, I am having a bit of a hard time relating the exercise to my chosen area for improvement. True to the influences of "my land", my father's home", and "my birthplace", I am beginning to doubt whether I chose a "good" area. I am beginning to doubt whether I am doing this "right". But I am travelling here on a journey, and I will continue along as I originally set forth. Every area of my life is important and impacts on myself and others around me. And, every area that needs improvement can be used in the service of HaShem and to improve my service of HaShem. This is what I must keep in mind.

As to how to find Torah classes that relate to my area, I will have to keep my eyes and ears open; I will have to relate the classes I do find to my area. And, most importantly, I will have to turn to HaShem to help me out.


==================================================================

The Ethics of the Fathers teach, "No one is free except the one who is immersed in Torah study," in effect identifying the practice of religion—the study and observance of Torah—with freedom.

Yet many people don't think of religion as freeing. They think of it as limiting, dogmatic, oppressive.

This is because the religion they have been exposed to is an invention of human beings. The religion they know is not the religion of G-d; it is not the religion of the Torah.

If your experience of religion is not freeing, then you have fallen into a man-made trap.

Freedom is Divine; it cannot be human. As soon as it's human, then there's someone who's in control of it, someone who wants to sell it to you and own it. That is when religion becomes another form of slavery; it becomes oppressive because it has lost its Divine nature.

That's why the Torah was given—so that there would be a permanent record, a source that everyone could refer to. As a result, Judaism has remained a religion of uncommon strength, one that over and over again has defied being hijacked by people.

The Talmud teaches that every one of us is taught the Torah before we are born. Its meaning is ingrained in our psyches, and upon birth we're made to consciously forget. But the truth resonates. So when we hear it, we know. Great masters or teachers can't give us anything we don't already possess; they can help us in one thing only—to open our own pathway to the truth within.

Ask yourself: To what extent do you see religion as oppressive? To what extent is the religion in your life man-made or self-made? Have you gone to the source? Have you had the experience of hearing the truth resonate in your heart? Did you embrace it or reject it?
Exercise for the day:

Commit to regularly attend a Torah class that will help you in at least one area of your life (which you identified yesterday) where you have not made been able to make meaningful progress on your own.

Day 4 of 60

Sunday, August 23Elul 3
LEARNING TO BE FREE

This is where you need the guidance of the Divine Torah blueprint. It tells you how to access your soul, how to achieve freedom in every part of your life, from the moment you wake to the moment you go to sleep, and even while you're asleep.
Ask yourself: To what extent have you used the guidance of the Torah to access your soul? To what extent are you familiar with what the Torah teaches in this regard?
Exercise for the day:Identify one area in your life where you badly need the objective guidance of Torah because you have not been able to make meaningful progress on your own.

I will continue to use the same area that I have chosen from day 1. Honestly, I never even considered that this area can be helped by Torah guidance, but I am totally willing to consider that it can be because, after all, as the writing states: the Torah is our guide in all matters of life. For sure, nothing I've tried so far has worked. For sure, other areas where I called HaShem for help have been successful...and many proofs and guidelines came to me right from the Torah in those areas. So I am willing.....

============================================================
Identifying damaging patterns and personal bias is an essential step on a journey to freedom from our personal bondage.

In one way or another, we're all enslaved—by our psychological demons, or by social standards, by our parents' words and attitudes, or by our responsibilities, by the consequences of the mistakes we've made, or by our careers, employers, or employees.

Learning how to be free is what is called in the Torah "leaving Egypt."

The Hebrew word for Egypt is Mitzrayim, which literally means "narrow" and which represents all forms of enslavement, be it dependency, conformity, subjectivity—whatever it may be in your life that sets up obstacles, limits, or constraints.

To be free, you must leave your personal Mitzrayim. But freedom is not enough. You can be free for a while and then be enslaved again. This is why forty days after the Israelites left Egypt and tasted freedom for the first time, they received a guidebook—the Torah—on how to maintain freedom.

Look at your own life. There were undoubtedly many times you felt free, you felt inspired, you felt you could do anything, but then old patterns and biases took over. You couldn't maintain that inspiration. The resolve to change was there for a moment, but you couldn't sustain it.

This is where you need the guidance of the Divine Torah blueprint. It tells you how to access your soul, how to achieve freedom in every part of your life, from the moment you wake to the moment you go to sleep, and even while you're asleep.
Ask yourself: To what extent have you used the guidance of the Torah to access your soul? To what extent are you familiar with what the Torah teaches in this regard?
Exercise for the day:Identify one area in your life where you badly need the objective guidance of Torah because you have not been able to make meaningful progress on your own.

Saturday, August 22Elul 2
IDENTIFYING PERSONAL BIASES

I again included the original material in its entirety. I am leaning towards doing this every day. It will be good to be able to review the lessons, as well as my personal journey inspired by them. I fully believe that working and reworking these can help me progress.
===================================================================
Ask yourself:
Are you able to identify where you blindly follow convention (or politically correct opinions) and where your path is truly your own, arrived at by you through careful consideration?

Exercise for the day:
Select one significant event of the past day and identify how your reactions and behaviors were shaped by each of the three levels of subjectivity named above.
Describe what role the damaging pattern you identified yesterday played in these reactions and behaviors.
=============================================================
Truthfully, it really isn't easy to identify where I am following convention and where I am strictly following my own considerations, since even when I think it is my own consideration, those considerations are the result of my life's experience. It is difficult to separate myself so completely. But, I understand the concept and why it may be important, although I do fear that I could take this too far and over-analyze things and doubt myself even more than I already do.

I am trying to find a significant event from yesterday, and I am stuck right there. There doesn't seem to be anything significant. That horrifies me. Time is such a gift; it is so precious. An entire 24 hours past and I cannot point to the significance of it???? Help.

The only way I can use this information to do today's exercise is to examine why my day had no significance.

It is because of the very thing I am working on. When I avoid doing what I feel that I 'should' due to all my crazy fears. When I do not do the things I should, obviously I am not doing what I feel is signifcant. I avoid them by 'wasting' my time on other things. This is shaped by 'my land' because the reason for my fear could very well be that I am afraid that I will not be successful at what I should be doing and will 'look' bad in the eyes of others (and myself). Is it shaped by 'the home of my parents' because of the attitude I got within my family that I am the youngest, least capable, usually not successful at carrying through any project from conception to completion, and always felt insignificant and incapable of doing things on my own...always felt that I was only good at assisting others? It is influenced by 'my birthplace' in that I am worried so much about how successful I will be whereas I should just do what I should to the best of my abilities and be content with that, allowing for future improvement if I learn more. I should not even be thinking that I should 'know it all'. I should be very OK with the fact that although I may do my very best, it may fall far short of someone else's minor effort.

It may also be because I simply do not attribute significance to things that really are, and should be considered, significant. This may be influenced by 'my land' in that I measure significance by what the world 'out there' would consider important enough to make a difference. In truth, each moment is significant; each interaction with others is significant; my 'little' life is significant. HaShem put me here for a reason; I cannot be insignificant. It may be influence by 'the home of my parents' as explained above that I felt insignificant. And, it may be influenced by 'my birthplace' in that I am too self-absorbed, believing that I should be so great and accomplishing these huge, widely recognizable, feats of spirit, courage, ingenuity, wisdom, esthetics, etc.

What role did my avoidance of doing what I feel I am not good at and/or worried about play in the above reactions and behaviors? Well, I think it is quite obvious. When I keep running from the things I feel I cannot do well and/or I am worried about, I keep reinforcing my feelings of insignificance and incompetence. I never allow myself to test those feelings and to move beyond them by the evidence of action. And, I never allow myself to improve because I cannot get further if I don't even take a step at all.
====================================================================
By telling Abraham, "Leave your land, your birthplace, the home of your parents, and go to the land that I will show you," God instructed us, his descendants, that there are three forms of subjectivity we need to leave behind when we set out on the journey of self-discovery: "Your land" represents the first level of subjectivity—the influence of society and community, and peer pressure, which affect us in deep and profound ways. We all want to be liked and accepted by others, and we adjust our behavior accordingly. The "home of your parents" represents the second level of subjectivity—parental influence, which can be so subtle that we don't even recognize it. Often, we don't realize how deeply the attitudes of our parents permeate our own attitudes and behavior, for good and for bad. "Your birthplace" represents the third level of subjectivity—inherent self-love. Each person is blinded by his or her selfish interests; no one is immune from that. This does not mean that we must completely discard all good things that we have learned from our parents or our community, but it means that, first of all, we must become aware how these influences affect our behavior, our opinions, and our thought patterns. Only then can we begin to know who it is that we are and what it is that we think, know, and believe. Similarly, personal bias or self-love—which isn't a crime in itself—becomes a crime when we don't acknowledge it, and when it begins to distort our vision.Ask yourself: Are you able to identify where you blindly follow convention (or politically correct opinions) and where your path is truly your own, arrived at by you through careful consideration?Exercise for the day:- Select one significant event of the past day and identify how your reactions and behaviors were shaped by each of the three levels of subjectivity named above. - Describe what role the damaging pattern you identified yesterday played in these reactions and behaviors. Excerpt from 60 Days: A Spiritual Guide to the High Holidays, by Simon Jacobson. ©Copyright The Meaningful Life Center, 2009. All rights reserved. www.meaningfullife.com.

Friday, August 21Elul 1, 2nd Day of Rosh Chodesh Elul
BREAKING DAMAGING PATTERNS

Ask yourself: In what areas of your life are you repeating old patterns? In what ways are they damaging to you?
Exercise for the day:- Identify and describe one damaging pattern that you want to break in the coming year. - List one thing you must do in order to break that pattern.
==================================================================
Today's posting spoke to me so much, that although this is a record of my personal journey and work for these 2 months, I felt I wanted to post the entire lesson. So it is down below to be able to reread it and refresh its lesson again and again.

Areas where I am repeating old patterns:

• computer usage (devours time! Time that could be spent oh so productively)
• speech (devours people, mood, spirit)
• lack of personal contact with extended family/friends (loss of a gift, conveys lack of caring,loneliness)
• putting off what I am not confident in and/or worried about (a mess, a fear, a worry, a lack of serenity)

In the coming year, I want to break my pattern of:

• Avoiding what I am not confident in/afraid of

In order to do so, one thing that I must do is

• spend a minimum of 15 minutes doing that very thing at least one day a week (to start)
• and work my way up to daily,
• and then further to more 15-minute sessions per day.

===================================================================
Moses' Elul journey actually begins seven generations earlier, with Abraham's journey.

In the Book of Genesis (12:1), G-d speaks to Abraham and says: "Go from your land, your birthplace, the home of your parents, to the land that I will show you."�

This is very strange because when you tell someone to travel, you specify the destination in detail, but you don't describe over and over again the point of departure. After all, the person knows where he/she is leaving from.

But here G-d tells Abraham to leave his land, his birthplace, and the home of his parents—three descriptions of his present location—and then, when it comes to the destination, He only tells him to go "to a land," without naming it or even hinting at where it is.

Chassidic thought, which gives voice to the inner dimension of the Torah, explains that in truth this verse is really a commandment issued by G-d to each of us: "Go on a journey of self-discovery. Leave behind anything that might hold you back. And then I will show you the landscape of your Divine soul—the true you."

If you want to discover your higher self, this is the secret.

Many people get inspired and motivated to go on such a journey; they actually pack their bags—literally or metaphorically—and set out on their way. But after a while, they end up coming right back where they started, repeating the same old patterns.

Good intentions are pure and real. When you decide to leave, you really want to get someplace. But you have so many things weighing you down, so many "golden idols." So the key to meaningful change is not so much knowing how to get to a new place, it's knowing how to unload the past, so that it shouldn't shape your future and bring you back to your old patterns.

Day 1 of 60

Ask yourself: Do you believe that self-transformation is truly possible? Do you want to change? Are you prepared to resolve to do so?

I absolutely believe that self-transformation is truly possible. That is a basic tenet in Yiddishkeit. Without this belief, where is the concept of Teshuva. And, how could we be expected to work on ourselves?

Oh my Lord, I do so much want to change. I yearn for change.

I am prepared to resolve to do so. I pray for Divine assistance to help be consistently stand by my resolution and to be guided properly to achieve the right changes in the best and most pleasant possible way.