Rosh Hashannah (Day 1)

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, transcribed recording

Everybody knows that on Rosh HaShanah you are standing before G-d, but the question is on what level? We are not being counted on the level of details, we are being counted on the level of "all".

Every person is the combination of two things. Let’s take a girl who is very beautiful, her eyes and ears are beautiful, but this is all details. But then there is something else, the "all" a person is. There might be a person who is very talented in Mathematics but sometimes the all is not talented. A lot of big scientists are talented in everything but the all in them is stupid. Then there is a person who is not only talented in every detail, but the "all" is talented and the all is beautiful. There are a lot of yiddelach who are Jewish in every detail but the all of them is without religion, the all of them. And then there are people who maybe their details are not so religious, but the "all" of them is so beautiful. So in a nutshell, on Yom Kippur we are standing before G-d on the level of details because on Yom Kippur I confess every detail I did wrong, but on Rosh HaShanah I am standing before G-d on the level of my all.

Adam Philips, Missing Out
There is always what will turn out to be the life we led, and the life that accompanied it, the parallel life (or lives) that never actually happened, that we lived in our minds, the wished for life… the risks untaken and the opportunities avoided or unprovided. We refer to them as our unlived lived because somewhere we believe that they were open to us; but for some reason they were not possible. And what was not possible all too easily becomes the story of our lives.

David Brooks, “The Moral Bucket List” NYTimes April 11 2015

There [are] two sets of virtues, the resume virtues and the eulogy virtues/ The resume virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral - whether you were kind, brave, honest, or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

We all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the resume ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light. Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.

You figure as long as you are not obviously hurting anybody and people seem to like you, you must be OK. But you live an unconscious boredom, separated from the deepest meaning of life and the highest moral joys. Gradually, a humiliating gap opens between your actual self and your desired self.

Rambam, Hilchot Teshuva, 1:3

At present, when the Temple does not exist and there is no altar of atonement, there remains nothing else besides teshuva.

Alan Lew, This Is Real and your are Totally Unprepared, page 157

Teshuva begins with a turn, a turn away from the external world and toward the inner realm of the heart

Exercise:

What is my single more important goal for the coming year? What change do i wish to make immediately in my daily (weekly) schedule? Which person do i want to spent more time with this year and how will I accomplish that goal?
I believe that the first small step I could make in order to gain more agency, and make some changes this year would be to ______.
One think i constantly procrastinate about it ______. I do not take care of it because of ______. What would help me get to it sooner would be if I _______.

Dr. Allan Wheelis, "Will and Psychoanalysis" Journal of Psychoanalytic

Some persons can proceed untroubled by proceeding blindly, believing they have traveled the main highway and that all the intersections have been with byways. But to proceed with awareness and imagination is to be affected by the crossroads, which one will never encounter again. Some persons sit at the crossroads, taking neither path because they cannot take both, cherishing the illusion that if they sit there long enough the two ways will resolve themselves into one and hence both be possible. A large part of maturity and courage is the ability to make such renunciations, and a large part of wisdom is the ability to find ways which will enable one to renounce as little as possible.

Rambam (1138-1204) Hilchot Teshuva 5:1

Free will is granted to all people. If one desires to turn to the path of good and be righteous, the choice is theirs. Should s/he desire to turn to the path of evil and be wicked, the choice it theirs... human beings are singular in the world with no other species like them in the following way: that they can, on their own initiative, with knowledge and thoughts, know good and evil, and do what they desire. There is no one who can prevent them from doing good or bad.

Exercise

One thing I constantly procrastinate about is_______. I do not take care of it because of _________. What would help me get to it sooner would be if I _________.

Something about myself that I'm not so happy about but that I do no believe will ever change is __________. I do not feel I can ever change that because of ____________. Is my perception really true?

Even though it was very difficult at the time, if I had not gone through _____ and learned from it, then I would not be the person I am today

Alan Lew, The Is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, pg 156

No one does it but us. But we can't do it by ourselves either. The possibility of transformation always exists but we have to consciously turn toward it in order to activate it. At the same time, our initiative can only take us so far. After that we have to have faith. We have to depend on the universe to support the flowering of our intention.