Knowing about Someone vs. Knowing Someone

"To know another human being in their essence, you don't really need to know anything about them - their past, their history, their story. We confuse knowing about with a deeper knowing that is non-conceptual. Knowing about and knowing are totally different modalities. One is concerned with form, the other with the formless. One operates through thought, the other through stillness." - Eckhart Tolle

I realized this truth independently after being targeted by others (and targeting others) for conceptual labeling. I haven't met many people who seem to both understand the difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone and behave accordingly. Many people seem busy instead trying to digging the past, history, and story of others they meet for the first time, believing that this way they will know them better.

The most subtle, hence problematic, form of this confusion is concepually labeling ourselves. So many people seem so sure of their self-identities, which are nothing but illusions of their egoic mind. The truth is that to paraphrase what Christ Niewbauer wrote at the end of his truly insightful new book entitled No Self, No Problem, we aren't the name someone gave to us, we aren't the gender that was assigned to us, we aren't the job that we work at, we aren't the social roles that we play, we aren't the age society tells us we are, we aren't the intelligence society defines us as, we aren't our level of education, we aren't the body that others define us as, we aren't the thoughts in our head, we aren't the memories that we think happened, we aren't our preferences, we aren't our desires, we aren't our emotions, we aren't our beliefs, we aren't our reactions, we aren't our expectations, and we aren't the movies that play in our mind.

Since I came to fully realize this mental distortion of myself and others, I've been both careful not to conceptually labeling others and reluctant to cooperate with others in their unconscious attempts to know about me for conceptually labeling me. I have been quite successful in preventing myself from falling into this trap, but I haven't been equally successful in saving myself from becoming a victim of conceptual labeling by others.

In most cases I could discern a drastic change in the way they relate to me the moment they unconsciously gave me their conceptual labels. Then I stopped being a unified being and became one tiny fragment of a whole they have disected conceptually. In some cases they even shared with me, again unconsciously, the conceptual labels they gave me by verbally categorizing me. Some of these labels were really ridiculous, to say the least. I was intrigued with the mental ingenuity of certain people.

Dream State

"When we are in the dream state, we do not know what we are doing. We are simply acting out of deep programming. But once we have seen the true nature of things - once Spirit has opened its eyes within us - we suddenly know what we're doing. There's a much more accurate sense of whether we're moving or speaking or even thinking from truth or not. When we act from a place of untruth anyway, in spite of our knowing, it's much more painful than when we didn’t know our actions were untrue. When we say something to someone that we know is untrue, it causes an inner division that is vastly more painful than when we said the same thing and thought itwas true." - Adyashanti

If I am to define a dream state as a state in which one is totally identified with one's own egoic thoughts, and speaks and behaves accordingly, then many human beings must be in a dream state. I myself had been in such a state and a very deep one at that my entire life until one life challenge woke me up and I gradually started to disidentify myself from my egoic thoughts.

So I know very well how someone who is in a dream state speaks and behaves. I can't say I've completely stopped speaking and behaving this way, but when I do, I can at least detect this quite immediately and prevent my speech and action from being hijacked by my egoic thoughts.

Recently I've started to wonder whether I've really come out of the dream state or I may have come into a much deeper dream state. Though I'm not sure yet, one thing seems certain. I've lost a common "language" with most of the people I know or encounter. I've lost the ability to relate to most of the things I read or hear from most people with the exception of Jewish and non-Jewish nondual masters as they seem nothing but reflections of what now seems to me as illusions of the ego.

I'm quite sure that many people who still remember me in the "classic" dream state find what I say weird. One great consolation is that I'm not suffering at all from loneliness in spite of the seeming sense of separation.

Do I regret coming out of the "classic" dream state then? Not at all, especially because my life then was difficult not only to myself but also to others around me. But my new life hasn't necessarily become easier so far, at least for me, since I came out of this state.

So if my posts in general and this one in particular sound weird to you, please don't blame yourself. ;-) But if they happen to resonate with you, you and I may share the same "language". :-)

Completion of a Three-Year Course in Chabad Chassidus in Jerusalem

This week I formally completed a three-year course in Chabad Chassidus I started in November 2018 at Torat Hanefesh School of Jewish Psychology in Jerusalem. This is by far the most meaningful and lifec-changing learning experience I've ever had in my entire life so far. When I started this course, I couldn't imagine that it would have such a profound effect upon me not only intellectually but also spiritually.

It was in December 2017 that I first encountered a teaching of Chabad Chassidus when I started tasting Jewish life coaching in Jerusalem as a client. I was introduced to one of the most fundamental teachings of the Tanya, which is often called the "Oral Torah" of Chabad Chassidus and was written by its founder Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi also known as the Alter Rebbe - we have the animal soul and the Divine soul, and life is an incessant war between them. I was fascinated by this teaching and took an interest in Chassidus in general and Chabad Chassidus in particular, and told myself I would like to study this and other teachings systematically in parallel with Jewish life coaching.

After asking a number of people I decided to study at the above menioned school as one of the few schools in Israel where those who haven't become Chabadniks can study Chabad Chassidus systematically. My initial plan was to taste it for one year. But by the end of this one year it was clear to me that I would like to complete this three-year course.

Now that I have completed it, I have a sense of accomplishment, but his completion is only formal. I feel I've just started to scratch the surface of this vast sea of Chassidus in general and Chabad Chassidus in particular. During these three years of formal study I also built a rather big personal library of Chabad Chassidus thanks to three bookstores in Jerusalem: Heichal Menachem, Pomeranz, and Yahad. So the new challenge as an independent student now is not the lack of learning materials but their abundance. There are so many profound books written by the seven rebbes of Chabad as well as other Chabad rabbis.

I have also been encouraged to start spreading these foundains of Jewish wisdom to others as one of the best ways to deepen my own learning. I'm planning to start this soon. Perhaps the most important change this study has brought into my life is joy, and this is what I would like to share with others most.

Chassisus can be characterized as nondual Judaism, and Chabad Chassidus is intellectually the most sophisticated nondual Judaism. I've read quite a few books by teachers-cum-practitioners of other nondual traditions and teachings, including Advaita Vedanta and Zen as well indivitual nondual masters. So there are a number of similarities between the two, but there is one fundamental difference between the two - the nature of joy and its manifestation. The joy that engulfs the whole being of a true Chabadnik is dynamic rather than static. This dynamic joy is what I haven't felt so far in those practitioners of other nondual teachings I've encountered. But this doesn't mean that joy à la Chabad is not something frivolous but something serious. Yes, serious dynamic joy, which you canwithness, especially, in the so-called farbrengens.