Jewish Musings, Sunday, June 16

[louise]

What’s on your mind — how to make kugel? This week’s Torah reading? Life goals? Prayer? We are all engaged in weight loss/weight maintenance journeys and we are all Jewish or at least interested in Judaism. We like to eat, we like to discuss. It is our goal here to provide each other support on our journeys, to share experiences, to call on our rich cultural heritage and texts, and to help each other grow spiritually.

Some of us take weekly turns starting the thread:
Frieda (hopefully)?
Holly
Lee
Louise
Lynne
Peachy

[louise]

In the torah reading yesterday we read the priestly blessing:
May the Lord bless you and protect you:
May the Lord show you kindness and be gracious to you:
May the Lord bestow favor upon you and grant you peace:
In our liturgy the congregation responds to each line with “ken yehi ratzon” (may it be God’s will)

I once had an experience with Metta Meditation and I remember that it brought the priestly blessing to mind for me. This time the association came in the reverse. I found a concise description on the web: Loving Kindness or Metta meditation is a centuries old practice that originates from the Buddhist tradition. It involves repeating a set of phrases sending out your wish that you, and all beings, be happy, peaceful, and healthy. You begin by saying these phrases to yourself and then to an increasingly wider group: starting with someone you love or feel close to, then someone neutral, someone you have some negative feelings about, and finally expanding this out to all beings.

Typically you would offer yourself:
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I be safe.
May I be at ease.

After meditating on this you would then go on to a person you are close to and offer:

May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be safe.
May you be at ease.

And so on, moving outward to others increasingly outside your circle.

For those of us who tend to err on the side of cynical it might sound a little simple and sugary on paper. But as Sharon Salzberg, leading meditation teacher and author of Lovingkindness, puts it:
… in reality, the practice of loving-kindness is about cultivating love as a strength, a muscle, a tool that challenges our tendency to see people (including ourselves) as disconnected, statically and rigidly isolated from one another. Loving-kindness is about opening ourselves up to others with compassion and equanimity, which is a challenging exercise, requiring us to push back against assumptions, prejudices, and labels that most of us have internalized.

Doe this resonate with you? Maybe you would offer some other wishes for yourself? for others? What comes to mind?

[lee058]

Good morning everybody. Hope you are all well and SAFE! Please pray for Israel.

Re today's topic: I try to remember multiple times a day to send out good energy.

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[peachymom1]

Good morning everyone, and shavua tov! First, thank you to Lee for last week. I had a bad stomach bug and felt pretty bad on Friday, so I didn't get here. Regarding emotions (Lee's Friday topic), I would say that I am definitely an emotional person, and I'm sure everyone I know would agree with me. In my much younger years, many (including me) saw this as a weakness, something to get a handle on and be able to control about myself. But you might as well tell me to change my eye color. I could give an appearance of different-colored eyes by wearing colored contact lenses, just as I could try to disguise my emotions or make them seem other than what they are. But that doesn't change reality, it only distorts it. When I got into therapy, I learned to accept and embrace who I am, and I learned that emotions are just emotions. They're not good or bad, they just are, and it is completely normal and human to have whatever emotions we have. It's what we do about them that matters.

Louise, I love the meditation you shared. It's wonderful just as it is. But for me personally, I would add to it:

May you CHOOSE TO be happy
May you CHOOSE TO be healthy
May you CHOOSE TO be safe
May you CHOOSE TO be at ease...

Not all of these things can be chosen, of course, and certainly not at all times. But I believe we do have the ability to take charge of at least a portion of our own happiness, health, safety and feeling of being at ease. We can be active participants, not just passive receptacles for whatever the universe decides to send our way.

I especially like the idea of wishing/praying for these things for others as well as ourselves. If everyone in the world were to do that, what kind of an amazing peace might be possible?

[gazelle18]

I think this is wonderful! And I like Peachy’s version as well. I approve of the idea of mantras; they help to re-center me when I need it.
One of the things I like most about this particular mantra is the differentiation of the different states we would wish to be in. Happiness, healthiness, safety, and ease. I especially like this last one : ease. The state of being “at ease” is, to me, the ultimate .