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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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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.