Letting Go of Resistance

One of the most important things I've learned by attending and finishing a three-year program in Chabad Chassidus, or to be more precise, pschology based on its teachings, in Jerusalem is the set of faith and confidence - "faith that everything is good" and "confidence that G-d will give me the power to discover that everything is good."

Having understood this teaching in theory, I've moved the stage of internalizing it and implementing it in my daily life. The present life situation somewhere in the Diaspora serves as a perfect testing ground for this experiment precisely because I continue to have the same challenge because of which I had to make a very difficult decision to leave Jerusalem after living there for 24 years.

If this is the first time for you to be exposed to this deceptively simply teaching, you may wonder how everything could be good. The fact is that when the world looks dirty, there are three possibilities: 1) the world is really dirty, 2) your glasses that look at it are dirty, 3) both the world and your glasses are diry. In most (or even all?) cases your glasses are the culprit. "Glasses" are a metaphor for the ego.

As the first step in this experient I've decided to let go of the first major obstacle - resistance. What I've started to try since a few weeks ago is not to resist when I encounter something that seems "dirty". The resistance I'm trying to let go includes that to the very thought that something seems "dirty".

Quite expectedly, I've already encountered two incidents that have been frustrating me, to say the least. In my previous state of consciousness I might have accused the people who are involved in these incidents. I really need a leap of faith to see something positive in these seemingly negative experiences. But I can also ready feel that at least this meta-experience of coping with these experiences, if not these experiences per se, is positive and helps me train my spiritual muscles, so to speak.

Ghost of Israeli Bureaucracy

* This post may be boring for most people. But you may find it amusing if you like a tragicomedy. Anyway, I've warned you. ;-)

There is one thing that has been following me "faithfully" since I left Israel at the end of September 2023 - Israeli bureaucracy, or to be more precise, the "ghost" of one of its manifestations.

I seem to have underestimated its "faithfulness". I was naive enough to imagine that it would also leave me with my physical departure from Israel. But I've turned out to be completely wrong.

I first realized how formidable this specific manifestation of Israeli bureaucracy was since I became self-employed. Then I also realized that someone else had been struggling with it for me for many years, sparing me a lot of time and energy.

Two months before I left Israel, I received some incomprehensible letter (by snail mail) from one of the "bastions" of Israeli bureaucracy. Fearing that I wouldn't be able to deal with the issue from afar, I ended up visiting it six times in my last month in Jerusalem.

The letter was about something I had (not) done a few years earlier, so I barely remembered what I had (not) done. Every time I visited this "bastion" physically, I was told something else by someone else. It was only in my sixth visit that someone who accepted me helped me decipher this enigmanic letter and confirmed that the problem mentioned there didn't exist in the first place.

After I left Israel, I discovered that even this sixth "gatekeeper" failed to identify and help solve the problem. Having looked for ways to contact this "bastion" from afar for a long time and tried all of them, I was forced to realize that there is no way to contact it except by visiting it physically. In short, I remain stuck in this swamp.

As of now, I don't know yet when I'll be able to visit Israel for the first time after leaving it a little more than a year ago. And there is no guarantee that I'd be able to identify the issue and solve it even if I should visit this "bastion".

In the meanwhile I've made a hypothesis that these "gatekeepers" of Israeli bureaucracy create unnecessary difficulties to invent redundant jobs and justify their salaries. This may also apply to bureaucracy in other countries.

The only consolation I find in this swamp is that I don't have to work as part of such bureaucracy.

Gratification of the Ego

It's tragicomical that I haven't met any active linguist still working in academia who isn't controlled by language instead of controlling it. Since I realized how language controls us, I tried to explain this in language to some of my former colleages in linguistics, but I don't think any of them understood my intention. In short and again tragicomically, I don't have any common "language" with them any more.

The fact that most human beings are controlled by language and aren't aware of this isn't restricted to active linguists but is common to most human beings.

I for one have completely lost my interest in linguistics as it's totally powerless in helping us liberate ourselves from the mental prison of our ego with language as its gatekeeper.

In the meanwhile I've found a new "hobby" to observe how those who seem to have blind faith in their intellect, including many active linguists and other researchers still working in academia, use language to gratify their ego.

My most favorite manifestation of the gratification of the ego by many of these people is their inability to resist the temptation to start calling themselves in both speech and writing with a new academic title they've just acquired such as Dr. and Prof. I can easily recognized new PhDs as many of them start calling themselves Dr. Blah Blah.

Another favorite of mine is what seems to be their greatest pleasure in academia - emailing the (now electronic) offprint of their newly published article-shmarticle to as many people as possible, often by neglecting to put the addresses of the recipients on the Bcc line and putting them on the Cc line instead, resulting in a flood of public congratulations sent to all the receipients. For quite some time after leaving academia I had the "honor" of continuing to experience this specific gratification of the ego and often the resulting mutual gratification.

Some social media platforms, especially Facebook, have become perfect places for satisfy this insatiable desire of the ego. In addition to occasional posts for bragging about their "success" in seeming humility those with the most bloated ego list all the "glorious" life events and titles of theirs in their respective profile section.

These and other manifestations of the gratification of the ego are enabled by language. It gives its unawaked users an illusion that they are what they think they are, while the truth is that these life stories are nothing but experiences and not experiencers.