Tidying Up Languages Professionally and Privately

One of the first outcomes of the gradual (and still ongoing) process of my spiritual awakening is the realization that language belongs to a rather superficial level of our being and doesn't constitute the core of our essence. One of the first decisions I took as a result of this realization is to switch my professional involvement from languages and linguistics to souls and spirituality.

This way I've decided to leave academia, including linguistic research, and have already abandoned all my activities involving the languages that used to occupy me professionally and privately. I've left, among others, my partipation in the organized Esperantist movement.

Yesterday I was even called a "traitor" by one Esperantist. I'm quite sure that many other Esperantists who know me may be thinking the same way though they may not tell this to me face-to-face. And as I expected, almost all my previous relationships with those people who were connected to me through our common involvement with Hebrew, Yiddish and/or Esperanto have disappeared. I'm not sorry for this seeming loss as I myself am unable to find any "common language" with many of them and keep feeling identified with their linguistic ideologies, which don't seem to me to be stemming from a sufficiently high level of consciousness, whether personal or collective.

The ideology that some "neutral" common language is a prerequisite for the unification of us human beings sounds quite naive to me now after my intensive study of Hasidism and spirituality, for we are already united at the level of our souls, and all we have to do is to awaken spiritually by taming our egos and raising the level of our consciousness through spiritual study and work.

In my "heyday" I used to live in six languages - Hebrew, English, Japanese, Yiddish, Esperanto, and Russian. But now I use only Hebrew and English privately and Japanese as well professionally. Even after experiencing some "divine storm" that triggered my spiritual awakening has left me with no use of Russian, I continued to study it, mostly out of personal nostalgia and also party as a kind of mental workout. But this week I decided to stop my study of Russian to reallocate the time and energy I used to spend for it (and other linguistic activities) to my study of Hasidism and spirituality. Now I feel totally liberated from all the linguistic "yokes" I used to carry with me.

Taming Facebook Before It Tames the Ego

I continue observing even with more interest how Facebook tames many of its personal users, or to be more precise, their egos. Not only Facebook but also all the other social media platforms must have some structural problem that allure many of their personal users and their egos. Many of the posts shared with "friends" stem from the ego, looking, often mindlessly, for instant gratifications from like-minded "friends" in the forms of approvals.

One of the assumptions that lie behind these ego-derived posts is a blind faith many of their writers seem have that they are their names, occupations, appearances, actions, etc., but in reality they are all illusions made by the egos. Many personal users are also tempted by their egos to write about what are actually nothing but distractions, both minor and major.

I'm not writing these things to try to criticize them as they are after all victims. I'm simply worried that unless they become aware of this built-in problem in Facebook, it will tame their egos more and more, which in turn will tame their souls more and more.

We must be extremely mindful in order not to allow Facebook to control or even hujack our lives this way. I've noticed a correlation between the target audience and the type of posts - if I'm ready to share a post only privately with my "friends", it's more likely to stem from my ego and be meant to satisfy it. So all my posts in my personal page are public. If I see I can't make a post public, I simply don't publish it in Facebook, assuming that it's ego-derived.

We can also minimize the negative effect of Facebook by limiting our exposure to ego-derived posts. In this respect I'm grateful for those rabbis and spiritual teachers who share their more soul-derived posts with us in their business/public pages. My main personal (i.e. non-business) use of Facebook is to follow such spiritually inspiring people and being spiritually inspired by their post.

The Book of Tanya as an Ultimate Guide to Self Life Coaching

One of the main reasons for my intellectual and spiritual fascination with (Chabad) Hasidism is the Book of Tanya, which is a class of Chabad Hasidism "compiled" by its founder Shneur Zalman of Liadi ("The Alter Rebbe") more than 200 years ago. I got acquainted with what I can now see as an ultimate guide to self life coaching not only for Chabad hasidim but also for other hasidim and non-hasidic Jews as well as even non-Jews when one Chabad emissary I had become acquainted with one year before in the Jewish Community of Kansai (and Chabad of Kansai) in Kobe, Japan several years ago took me to Ohel Chabad at the Rebbe's Ohel when I visited New York City for some international conference on Hebrew language and literature held there.

It took me several years since them until I became ready for opening myself both intellectually and spiritually to this book and its teachings with eternal and universal relevance to anyone who is seeking for their soul purpose in life and struggling to liberate their soul from the control of their ego in their thoughts, emotions and actions.

I started reading books about Tanya, including introductions to it, in September as a preparation for studying it. After about four years of intensive self-study I started studying Tanya itself at long last last week both by myself and in my weekly pair study ("khavruse") with my hasidic-born but currently non-hasidic haredi "rebbe".

In the last of my weekly visits to Heichal Menachem, a Chabad bookstore in Hebrew and English near Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, I encountered what seemed (and still seem) to be the ultimate guide to this ultimate guide to self life coaching - The Practical Tanya 1, The Practical Tanya 2 and The Practical Tanya 3 by Rabbi Chaim Miller (cf. Not Just for Hasidim Anymore by Rishe Groner (Tablet Magazine 2017-05-22).

Since I purchased this set and started using it for my new daily study of Tanya, the book has started to look totally different - without these guides Tanya looked like a mysterious abyss refusing my access to it, but now it reveals itself more transparently as a collection of layers of Jewish classical sources as well as elucitations and original additions by the "compiler". Rabbi Miller has done an amazing job of making this barely accessible Chabad classic easily accessible to modern readers even with little or no background in the teachings of Chabad Hasidism. The table of contents augmented with the titles added to most of the original titleless chapters by Rabbi Miller as follows shows how relevant this book can be no less relevant to us in the 21st century:

The Basics

• 1 Am I good or bad?
• 2 The place of G-d in you
• 3 Your three brains
• 4 Your inner/outer selves
• 5 Total immersion in the Divine
• 6 The darker side
• 7 Negative energy (I)
• 8 Negative energy (II)

Your Inner Struggle

• 9 The war inside you
• 10 The tzadik
• 11 The rasha
• 12 The "inbetweens"
• 13 The beinoni's complex life
• 14 Living in the "now"
• 15 The best version of yourself

Soul "Hacks"

• 16 When meditation fails
• 17 What is within reach?
• 18 Dormant love in your soul
• 19 What your chochmah feels like

Highest Consciousness

• 20 Nondual Judaism (I)
• 21 Nundual Judaism (II)
• 22 Denying that G-d is within you
• 23 Nondual Torah
• 24 Don't be delusional
• 25 Recalling your soul's devotion

Negative Emotions

• 26 Handling negative emotions
• 27 You're wonderfully imperfect
• 28 When your mind wanders
• 29 Spiritual insensitivity
• 30 How not to judge others

Positive Emotions

• 31 From depression to joy
• 32 Love your fellow as yourself
• 33 Feeling G-d; feeling joy
• 34 You can be a "temple" for G-d

The Power of Action

• 35 Why your struggle is worth it (I)
• 36 Why your struggle is worth it (II) / The purpose of creation
• 37 Why your struggle is worth it (III) / Reward for a mitzvah / Importance of the body

The Power of Kavanah

• 38
• 39
• 40

Reverence and Love

• 41 A crash course in emotions
• 42 On the path to reverence
• 43 The full spectrum of emotions
• 44 More love meditations
• 45 Worship through compassion
• 46 How to mirror G-d's love
• 47 Your daily Exodus from Egypt
• 48 The paradox of the tzimtzum
• 49 Love and transcendence
• 50 Love from the "Left Side"

The Shechinah

• 51
• 52
• 53

Now I face the same challenge that the Chabad rabbi faced when tried to "infect" me with his enthusiasm with Tanya at the Ohel several years ago. Every time I try to share my new enthusiasm with it with other people who are unfamiliar with it and often even antagonistic to Hasidism in general and Chabad in particular, I hit the brick wall of indifference, if not hostility. But I've already learned that nobody can't be truly convinced and changed by others. The only thing I can think of now to arouse others' interest in Tanya is for me to continue studying it and start incorporating its teachings in my life so that these people may notice my positive change and start asking me what I have done.