BLOG 15: IS YOUR GPS WORKING?

 

15. Blog: 26^th  Nov. Oct 09

Is Your GPS Working?

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

‘The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing’. (Steven Covey). The most important thing is whatever you are doing right now. (The Kotzker Rebbe). ‘Just do it!’ (Nike). Three wisdom teachings. A recipe for a full and meaningful life.

Covey’s word-play seeks values clarification and prioritization. The Kotzker’s insight provides life’s journey with depth and beauty. Nike makes it happen.

A perfect formula. The only problem: The GPS seems to be malfunctioning. We entered the right addresses: Monday morning workout, Tuesday night family time, Thursday study group, daily meditation, etc. But it didn’t happen. Got to bed too late Sunday night and didn’t get up in time for that jog. Tuesday night came but family members had other plans scattering in all directions. The Simons dropped by Thursday night and, well, we couldn’t ask them to leave, could we? Actually, am having a hard time focusing in the mornings, mind is wandering, meditation just too challenging, too much on my mind.

Sounds familiar? Face it, the problem is not with the GPS! The problem is you. The calm and pleasant voice, the soul’s Tom Tom, informs you where to go at each turn but you are simply not listening! The plan is there – but you don’t have the ‘zitz fleisch’ to follow it through.  The good intentions lack commitment, fore-planning and finesse. You know the main things, but don’t protect them as main things. You are doing what you are doing, but doing it at the wrong thing. You are assiduously clambering up life’s ladder, but it’s leaning against the wrong wall – doing it, but undoing it!    

The world’s most profound wisdoms aren’t worth a cracker if you lack strength of character. The key lies in true consciousness and awareness. So here are Laibl’s three rules for getting the job done:

a)      On Sunday afternoon take five minutes with your wall calendar, Microsoft outlook, i-pod, or note pad. Make three appointments - with yourself. Clear three half hour time frames for physical, spiritual, and family events. Protect those appointments with the dedication you reserve for business and medical appointments.

b)      Prepare for those protected times by checking out the landscape: prepare any equipment you may need. Make sure the people you seek the company of have cleared their own time frames for you. Review preparations and arrangements the night before.

c)       Give each event three minutes quiet thought just before it takes place. Build that extra time into your appointment time.

Don’t let life slip by. You don’t want to find yourself lying on your deathbed wallowing in the sorrow of lost time, complaining, “I just didn’t have the time”. Wrong! You did.  But you lacked true commitment to the radical act of living. The GPS was working perfectly well thank you. You just kept steering in different directions.

Do it, (Nike), mainly (Covey), now (Kotzker).

 

Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.org ;     Laibl’s blog site: www.spiritgrow.blogger.com ;    Spiritgrow web site: www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCentre.org

 

14. Blog: 19^th Nov. Oct 09

Living in the ‘Now’

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

‘Chochma’ trans. ‘wisdom’; defined in the Kabbalistic system as the source of Divine creation; explained in Chabad psychology as the creative element in thought process - the locus of consciousness.

Spiritual ambience stems from Chochma consciousness. This state of awareness and mindfulness defines the moment, providing it with definition. It becomes the lens through which the soul perceives the moment of ‘now’.

Most people deny the soul a perfect lens. They deny themselves the freedom to draw on their optimal Chochma flow. The consequence: they can’t live in the ‘now’. All too often the ‘fishing expedition’ into the mind is tarnished with past guilt and regret, or distorted by worry and anxiousness about the future. Their moment of ‘now’ has no opportunity to get a ‘shoo-in’. Their lives are entrapped in time warps, trapped lives, lives devoid of the joy of ‘being here, now!’.

When the Kotzker Rebbe was asked what is most important? He replied: what you are doing and thinking right now!

The ‘now’ can become a locked door due – a result of emotional-non-intelligence. Tattered emotions cannot force this door open.  But it can also become a spacious vestibule – a gracious hallway leading to new vistas, creating new opportunities, defining another possible future.

Right now, at this moment, there are infinite possibilities and futures open to you. Choose one and the door closes behind you – as quantum physics notes:  the waves of uncertainty collapse into the reality of this moment of choice. Choose wisely and the immediate future also aligns with joy, purpose, and enlightenment. To do so requires skillful application of Chochma potential. And this, in turn, requires spiritual space and consciousness in the moment – living in the ‘now’.

The most poignant moment for the practice of Chochma consciousness is relationship. To touch another with the eyes, to read the other’s soul, to enter into symbiotic oneness with mind, heart and spirit – these are the moments of true worth and entry into a higher state. Most people wait for this to happen.  They wait for the right person.  They wait for the right moment. They wait for the right resolution of problems and issues. They wait till they can ‘afford it’. They wait for life to serve the moment up on a silver platter. And they wait, and wait - forever.

The template of creation seeks the ongoing practice of human mastery - training, discipline and mentoring by a wise one. (The Kabbalah was passed on generationally through individualized mentoring). Such dedication and commitment to Chochma-consciousness opens the doors to ‘right moments’. True spiritual warriors know that waiting doesn’t cut it. They realize the power to create moments. They don’t see ‘silver platter service’.

Become a spiritual warrior. Live in the ‘now’.  Seek enlightenment in classic mastery works such as ‘the Tanya’. Engage a spiritual teacher. Find a personal mentor. Train your ‘chochma’. Make your life truly meaningful. Evolve significance in your life. You don’t need to wait for that opportunity to visit the Himalayas sitting lotus-positioned at the foot of some guru. It’s within your reach – right around the corner of your home, right on your desk computer e.g. Chabad.org . Or email me. Happy to advise. We can all help each other along the road less travelled. In the words of the Mishna: ‘…Now go and learn’.                                              

- Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com     - Laibl’s blog site: http://www.laiblwolf.com/blog/     – Spiritgrow: The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site  (soon up after extensive ‘renovation’)   www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org

 

BLOG 13

13. Blog: 5^th Nov. Oct 09

Trans-Atlantic Personalities

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

Europe is old. It’s a haughty matron, head held erect, yet realizing within that age has taken its toll. Steeped in history of religious wars, national dominances, glorious architecture, and decadent church and barony, its sun is waning - its last gasps at relevancy reflected in an abortive quest for pan Europeanism: power.

The Americas are a brash and brassy teenager. The suburban go-getter is inventive, fast-talking, enthusiastic and lacking all of the old world savoir-faire. This lad is not interested in royal intrigues or dukedom of castles. He is about markets, challenges, and the exhilaration of wow!

Lands imprint the psyche of its inhabitants. The smooth, correct, cool, and lean European. The uncut American diamond, raw around the edges, innovative and fast talking.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe once attributed the quality of Hessed (generosity and compassion) to the national character of America. It has been good to the Jews.  It has been good to many peoples – a veritable melting pot of refugees escaping the ‘enlightened’ technologies of the Last Solution or those allergic to the cigar smoke of a dictatorial Cuba, or those fleeing the nouveau Asian dictators, and those escaping from drug warlords of South America and Mexico. Where else in the world do you find a body of legislation protecting the rights of illegal aliens and providing them with services and support? Certainly not on that old continent across the ocean whose niceties belie innate intolerance, anti-Semitism, and petty national jostling and beatific pontification from Rome.

I watch the pan handler, the busker, the tramp on a busy New York avenue. What strikes me is not the thousands that pass by, anticipating outcomes of in their next sales meeting. What impresses me are the many dozens who take the time to stop and drop a coin anonymously into a hat, an outstretched hand, or a fiddler’s case. You discover the spirit of a nation not by its majority actions but by its still small voice within – the minority who are the soul of the nation. I walked the streets of Vienna and observed the same human shame, embarrassment and anguish in the faces of those who are forced to beg. But the litmus test of response registered indifference. The minorities are tolerated, not integrated. Same in Copenhagen, Milan and London.

A nation is born, grows, and ages. Sometimes we observe the death throes of a people –a civilization. Inevitably birth takes place somewhere else contemporaneously.  The process takes decades, even centuries, like the eonic death of a dwarf star and the slow motion cataclysm of an emerging new sun.

The Jews are an anomaly. We should have died a thousand deaths. And here we are, always figuring centrally in the emergence of new nations, disproportionate in Nobel prize lists, sitting on governmental advisory bodies in countries around the globe. We exist against all odds – bonded, despite ourselves, a people, a culture, a civilization, propelled mysteriously through the passage of time by a spiritual energy that is indefinable – yet historically and patently visible in its effects and results.

To endure means to enter into a synergistic relationship with the energy of the time-wave of the moment.  A collective exercise as well as an individual challenge. Where are you on the graphic axis of this synergy? Are you riding the wave of Jewish survival to shore? Or will you go the way of the sun-set of Europe? Live life with Jewish vibrancy.  Don’t just go through the motions – the old talk of allegiance, loyalty, fealty. Become an agile spiritual surfer with dexterity of spiritual footwork. Catch the right wave. Be brash, be brassy, be innovative – but always led by the compass of an ancient wisdom that teaches us historical mastery.

 www.laiblwolf.com

 

blog 12

12. Blog: 29^th   Oct 09

Red Square - Revisited

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

The air was damp. The cold arctic pushed the ever-present dampness to seep into the skin with blistering force - a typical Moscow autumn day.

My first visit to Russia.  A connotation of dictatorial suppression of human freedoms and ideals. The camouflage of communist clichés about equality and egalitarianism could not forever hide its truth of  terror and apparatchiks. My spiritual antecedents had been carted off to Siberia for expressing their truths. And here was I – in Red Square, outside the gates of the infamous Lubyanka Prison – the friendly home of the KGB, Cheka, and its antecedents – a building so tall that Siberia could be seen from its basement (as the Russian joke goes).

Thumbing my nose at its massive gates and smiling within - how the wheel turns! I had just come back from one of the most moving Shabbatons I had ever conducted, just outside Moscow, with a karge participation of latter-day refuseniks. These refuseniks weren’t defying a malicious secret police as had their predecessors. The new ‘refuseniks’ are defying the more pervasive and cancerous effects of freedom, economic opportunity, and social acceptance.

I sang, prayed, and conversed with latter day heroes. Keen, single minded about their Jewish quest to the point of simplicity (some might misinterpret as naivety), we spent hours oscillating and vibrating in subjects like nationalism, ritual, identity, Mitzvot, music, emotion, Talmud, mysticism, adversity, feminism. These Russians are intellectual, genuine, and determined to be Jewish to the core. The softness of western Judaism does not appear in their sharp edged keenness to authenticate their previously estranged lives.

After leaving the retreat centre 50 K from Moscow, I visited the Chabad centre in the heart of this newly emerging cosmopolitan city. And what a centre. Many a Jewish community centre in wealthy USA would be envious of these premises, six stories high, with basketball courts, swimming people, gym, classrooms, three restaurants, and a magnificent synagogue. All run by bearded Rabbis, Chassidim to boot! This is a Chabad centre to reckon with – and it’s the major player in town. And Jewish to the core!

So think to myself: here we are in Australia, USA, and even Israel – free to choose linkage to our historical past, free to express as Jews, free to explore the wisdom baggage of centuries. How many of us take these liberties to heart? The Russians do. Those who had trodden warily under the watchful cameras of the secret police are now thumbing their noses at their former tormenters and transforming a former Jewish stutter into a fully expressed Jewish soliloquy.

I left Moscow with a sense of elation. I aspire to be a latter day refusenik like those I had met here for a brief weekend. They taught me much more than I taught them – of that I am certain.

 www.laiblwolf.com

 

 

BLOG 11

11. Blog: 23^rd  Oct 09

The Surrealism of Warsaw

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

I had vowed never to set foot in Poland. The extermination of my family there had indelibly marked that country with a glaring DO NOT ENTER stamp embossed in my heart and mind. Poland was the ’killing-fields’ that took my family, my people – the seat of systematic destruction of Jewish Europe. But the call of a Chabad emissary crosses boundaries of reasoned decisions and emotional bias. It touches the soul. So I went.

 

 As Divine providence would have it, my flight schedule required me to spend a full day and a half in Warsaw. So I allowed myself to venture out to the government sponsored Jewish memorials. First stop – the station where cattle trucks took my people from the Warsaw ghetto to their gaseous liquidation. A somber grey stoned square suitably inscribed with a few fitting quotations. This token gesture adjacent to a school of psychology – a surrealistic contrast: murder alongside an institute dedicated to human insight.

 

Next stop – a memorial to the Warsaw ghetto uprising. An imposing slab with the grotesque sculpture of tortured fighters hewed three dimensionally out of raw stone. On this particular afternoon a huge crane hung limply on the large adjacent site.  The foundations for another Jewish museum to rise from the ashes of the six million. Another ‘virtual’ attempt to jog future memories, to record history.

 

Memories and history. There is no Hebrew word for history. A cannibalized word, ‘historia’, doesn’t cut it. ‘Historia’ is the stuff of academic debate - cold, detached narrative. Scientific, methodological, meticulous. A bit like the records room of the crematoria

 

The authentic Hebrew, the holy tongue, has only one word which approximates consciousness of the passage of time  -‘zecher’ – to remember. ‘Historia’ is not ‘zecher’ .  One is passive, and the other active.  One is an ‘add-on’ to a brain-centred storage house – the other an active prod to bodily emotions.

 

The crane; another museum - ‘historia’.  But how do we transform cold detachment into the motivational heat of human motivation? ‘Zecher’ –  by allowing the memory of my murdered forebears to express through my hands, feet, heart and mind. By creating a truly experiential memory which only comes through a bodily involvement with a living tradition, a recollection of our first encounter at Sinai, a consciousness of life itself through the prism of Jewish eyes. I must live Jewish. Not just a cerebral Jew; not even merely a cardiac Jew, and certainly not a culinary Jew.  A Jewish life that is practiced with the hands and feet – Mitzvot.

 

I flew out of Warsaw, still vowing not to return. But I was not the same person. It was no longer a matter of ‘historia’.  

 

 www.laiblwolf.com