Spiritual Stubbornness
Following up on your Principles
(Excerpt taken from Human By Choice: A Kabbalistic Path To Self Help)
Rabbi Eliyahu Yaakov
Arguably the best basketball player to ever live is Michael Jordan. He has a highlight reel that could go on for hours and a handful of championship rings. However, the interesting thing is that if you were to look at most points scored in individual performances, you find that Jordan is not at the top of the list – he’s not even close! So what makes him in the eyes of so many the best there ever was? Was it just his acrobatics on the court?
I think there are three fundamental factors: 1) excellence 2) consistency 3) steps up in big situations.
We can learn from this the small emphasis given to the individual with one miraculous game next to the guy with ongoing great performance. There is a certain value bestowed to this disciplined consistency in the world of sports and we will see that it applies in spirituality as well.
A Stiff-Necked People
After the Jews perform the sin of worshipping the golden calf, God tells Moshe of His plans to annihilate this “stiff-necked people”. God’s complaint is that after all He has done for them and all they have seen with their own eyes, how can they take to idolatry? Now hear Moshe’s response in defense of the Jewish People in attempt to get God to rescind: “They are a stiff-necked people” -that’s not a typo, nor is Moshe attempting a biblical version of an insanity plea. Moshe is saying that while the Jews messed up, the mess up came from a good spiritual source: stubbornness. Of course when a person is wrong they must acknowledge it and change their ways, but the capability to stick to one’s guns in the face of adversity; to have a clear path and follow up on it no matter what gets in the way -this is a spiritual trait. Living a life in which you have truth and the physical obstacles do not affect your reaching the place it leads you is to live above the physical; to live beyond its grasp.
Moderate Extremism
To use stubbornness in the correct way means to act in accordance with your principles and beliefs even when you don’t feel up to it; to act spiritual even when you’re not inspired and not in the mood. The person who acts in an elevated manner only when he feels high is not far above the slave we spoke about in the previous chapter. He acts on a whim and when that whim is gone, so is he.
This idea is made practical in an 800-year-old article focusing on personal change frequently read before Rosh HaShanah. The author writes that it is better for the development of one’s self-control to leave over a bit of one’s appetite at every eating occasion than to fast one day per week. Again, we see that working on one’s self in a reserved but consistent manner does more for one’s growth than taking on extreme yet sporadic initiatives.
‘No Exceptions’
It has been my observation, however, that as small as the advance one is making is, the consistency itself must be taken on in the extreme. This means NO EXCEPTIONS. Sometimes a person will “decide” on changing yet somehow manage to explain away every situation that comes up as being an exception to the rule. Even if it is “justified”, there has still been no movement on the ground. The point here being that if one wants to act differently, then act differently. If not, then don’t. But don’t convince yourself you are different when things somehow manage to stay the same.
This reminds me of an interesting Jewish idea. It is taught that a situation in which you may have sinned is worse than the situation in which you definitely sinned because if you definitely sinned, you know you have to ask forgiveness through which you will receive atonement, whereas when there is a doubt we often find it easier to rationalize that there was no wrong committed and we end up never apologizing nor receiving atonement.
This fundamental principle of ‘No Exceptions’ was my advice to a student who decided to take upon herself to start keeping kosher. If you are going to switch something in your life that will define you differently – whether it be going from a person who doesn’t keep kosher to a person who does keep kosher or going from a person who yells to a person who doesn’t yell – the only way to do it is with the rule of ‘No Exceptions’. If there are exceptions then you cannot define yourself as a person who doesn’t yell. Maybe you are a person who yells less, but you’re not a person who does not yell. Now, there may be mess-ups. We are not perfect. But a mess-up and an exception are not the same thing. A mess-up is after the fact; an exception is before the fact. And so, once one has committed (meaning ‘No Exceptions’) to enhancing his behavior, one of the main areas of concentration is to be conscious of one’s commitment thereby averting the mess-up.
Committing to Our Children
The ‘No Exceptions’ principle is one of the most important things to be aware of when it comes to raising children. If you preach a desired behavior to your kids, even if you follow it up with action most of the time, when there is room for exception then the child sees that the rule is not written in stone – and if it’s not in stone it’s not a rule, rather a suggestion. And just as you have come up with your own set of priorities as to when to apply this desired behavior and when it can be overridden, the child comes up with his own set of priorities. Now, you may ask why your child’s policy of application does not mirror yours. The answer is that it does. Just as you choose to break your own rules when you feel like it, the child has does the same. Just as you get overcome by the situation because you have a big business deal and the family members are bugging you about something you feel is miniscule and you yell, march off, and slam the door, so too when you are trying to get prepared to go to a family wedding but the child has an important cartoon episode to watch he will get overwhelmed and do the same.
The principle is: If you break the rule, the rule is not you.
I was once a guest at a large Shabbat meal where the host, a successful life coach, made the following guarantee to everyone present: If you never say “No” to your child, your child will never say “No” to you. This does not mean that the child will always agree to do whatever you say, but just as you refrain from lazily shouting “No!” to your child in an attempt to avoid dealing with a mess or having to give him an explanation, so too the child will not respond to you with an abrupt “No” when you make a request of him. The end of the story is that I can personally attest to the success of this theory. Just as my wife and I refrain from saying “No” as if it is a four-letter word, it is simply not in our daughter’s system to use it. Try this method and I assure you it will make the terrible-twos a lot less terrible.
Again, the key here is consistency to the extreme. We are not talking about fasting 24 hours strait once a week. We are talking about actions that are less extreme, but consistency that is completely extreme. We are talking about a non-stopping consistency to a commitment that overrides anything that will come our way.
National Independence
We find this independence of constraints demonstrated in the concept of matzah, the unleavened bread eaten on Passover. The Passover Haggadah refers to it as ‘Poor Man’s Bread’, yet the reason given for eating it mentioned in the Torah is “because you left Egypt in a hurry” – So, is matzah the bread of freedom or the bread of poverty? The answer is that they are both precisely one and the same. Poverty is the exemplification of freedom. The concept of poverty is that it is just the person alone and independent – nothing is attached. If we could put the state of poverty in a freeze-frame, it would be a pure unobstructed individual – without any wealth or possessions. The Jews leaving in a hurry paints this picture of unhinderedness aswell. It is an attempt to not live under the foothold of time; to try to live beyond its grasp; to demonstrate the free spiritual individual living above the limitations of the physical. Similar is the idea behind the wearing of a white robe on seder night -no color is mixed in; no external influence. This is what it means to be truly independent. Pure simplicity, the essence of spirituality and freedom.
