Pop Music = Pot music

If you think drugs have never done anything good for us, then do me a favor: Go home,
take all your CDs,
all your records and tapes,
and burn 'em. Because,
you know those musicians,
who've made all that music
that's enhanced your life throught the years?
RRRReally fucking high on drugs.

Bill Hicks


The basic question nobody asks is
why do people take drugs
of any sort?
Why do we have these accessories to normal living life?
I mean, is there something
wrong with society that's
making us so pressurized that we
cannot live without
guarding ourselves
against it?
John Lennon


Oh well, they'll stone you when you're tryna be so good. Wanna hear something funny?

That Bob Dylan song, rainy day woman #12 & #35, until the secret of AShaN was revealed, I would have sworn that's how 420 became a pot culture buzz word. because 12 * 35 =, of course...

For some period of time, I was convinced that marijuna was the aspect of Israel, as they both are persecuted similarly, and have had similar effects on the culture, that is, causing it. Is that an ethnocentric thing to think? I've moved away from actually believing it as opposed to just observing it...

Rock and Roll would have been without the Jews, but maybe not without Jerusalem and Mount Zion. Elvis and Bob Dylan maaan, set everybody else up.

The folks at Jewsrock sent me a link with This Piece, sweetly inviting me to post it here. It's the story of the Semetic Journalist who turned the Beatles on to Pot. Can you imagine the zchus, being the one who turned the Beatles on to pot? Gevalt.

I don't need no doctor

Six things were done by King Hezekiah,
three of which met with approval
and three with disapproval:

He caused the bones of his father to be transported on a litter of ropes,
and this was approved of;

He caused the bronze serpent to be broken to pieces,
and this was approved of;

He hid away

The Book of Healings,

and it was also approved.

(pesachim, perek heh)


So... mysterious mystery mystifying mister me, back when i was young.
Torah, as was reveled to our forefathers, on sinai and, presumeably since, includes everything any jew would ever need to know. There's great apocryphal stories of rabbis curing brain cancer and ressurecting friends they'd accidently killed... just because they learned gemara really well, right?
That was one of the promises in yeshiva when we were young: keep learning this stuff, and you'll learn the secrets of EVERYTHING.

If it's forbidden, you don't need it. If it's important, guidance for how to do it better is in there SOMEWHERE, and if the Rosh Yeshiva didn't tell you, it's because you're just not on the level or something. Or, maybe we forgot one or two things, what with our greatest scholars and teachers being killed in the holocaust.

I took that as a given, even as I would become skeptical of some strictures as high school came and when, skeptical of the whole Yeshiva system and it's ability to give over whatever it was Torah was really about, I still accepted that the definition of Torah was all that I was promised it was, and that any flaw in it as received was more a flaw in the giver and the reciever. Anything I needed to know, had to be in there somewhere, and if it wasn't part of the culture anymore, that was just because, in the rush to survive into modernity, we were bound to put some stuff down so we could run faster.

Around the third year of high school, dissapointed with every Yeshiva I had attended, sick of looking in insular situations for the expansive, worldly knowledge that could maybe make me a better and more useful/interesting global citizen, I switched to an awesome alternative high school called Urban Academy, where I was immersed in a variety of gentile cultures for the first time really. I learned, besides all the specific class things, alot about truth (both sides are usually right, it's just a question of learning how to listen and communicate,) love (fall in love with close friends at your own peril) and was forced to confront many of the yeshivish assumptions that I had been willing to accept for lack of any reason not too.

Apparently, some people really didn't believe in God, they weren't just pretending, and even more surprising, alot of people did and do. I was a pretty frum agnostic at that point, open to evidence about God's non-existence, but having a hard time believing it on faith. Never quite stopped keeping shabbos, though always happy to end it as soon as the stars came out. I was interested to see what a better morality people would have developed free of religion, and although stealing from record stored and big corporate supermarkets seem justified to me, especially for the descendants of slaves who built this country, I could never bring myself to toss off the yoke of jewish heaven. Seemed dishonest or something.

And, at some point, I started hearing more about this thing, marijuana? The hip-hop music was all about it, and sure, i'd heard of it before, but i'd never heard any distinction made between it, and say, crack, or LsD, or heroin... it's all drugs right? I'd noticed that my favorite musicians were overdosing from heroin and not cannabis, but i'd never really realized that it was just a plant in it's natural form. Huh. that's funny.

And of course, as time went by, I got more into the rock radio music, 311, sublime, old Nirvana, eventually following them into classic Dylan, and reading old beatnik stuff... And the idea of marijuana fit into my personal rebellious cosmology.

Every Yeshiva trained kid in the world knows that the government of the great Empire
a) Doesn't value good or truth as ideals except in public, and are happy to manipulate and/or kill you if you threaten their power and security.

b) Isn't nessarily run by very wise people, so even if they're not lying, could very well be just wrong out of arrogance or stupidity.

Raised by an Ecuadorian mom aware of the crimes of the church and the state against the natives in the Americas (Mami, why don't we celebrate Colombus day? Didn't he discover America? No, people where already here. He just stole it from them), I had no trouble doing somthing just because it was illegal. My family still laughs about the cousins we smuggled in from Canada in the backs of cars.

I was fat, generally cynical, depressed and un happy. One day, I was enjoying a sunny day, and also just felt so physically unpleasant... I prayed to God for something that wouldn just let me appreciate the things I appreciate a little more.

One day, some of my thuggish friends were going uptown to go buy a nick bag. I tossed 'em 5 dollars and asked them to bring me something back. They did, and happily taught me how to roll a blunt and smoke it with them.

And it was nice.

And then i had some left over, i smoked it later, by myself, in the cheapest bong I could buy on west fourth st. Fortunately, i was taught how to remove seeds and stems, it took a while before I learned when to break up and when not to break up.

Eventually, I started smoking more ritually, and more exclusively, more with closer friends or alone. And I started having really transcendant experiences.

Once, I sat and saw infinity go around in a circle, infinite circles full of circles, spinning. I had been familiar with the concept, but I'd never EXPERIENCED the concept before.

Once an idea hit me, what if thoughts travel on a tachyon stream, backwards and fowards through time. I looked at my friend and told him, and he said, wow, I just thought the same thing. And I said, yeah, I know.

Years later in Jerusalem, i'd ask Moish Geller which of us thought of it first, and he'd say, neither. you were both just on the same frequency.

Once, I just felt so happy, and suddenly realized that I hadn't felt very happy or free since I was
four years old. For the next day, and from then on, I was suddenly nicer to everyone.

Once, I was just so filled with love for everyone, because it was clear: God is One, and everyone is just part of me that's hurting, so how can I be angry at them, etc.

And once, I just stared at the bright orange Yellow color of my brain.

It was so good, and only seemed to make me smarter and more sensitive. I did notice that if I smoked too much, especially during the day, I would get these kind of blind headaches, what I'd later learn was called "burnout." I learned also how to offset it, what i'd learn was called melatonin depletion, by not smoking uring the day, or every day, something I was always careful not to do.

And amidst all this, I wondered: How could it be we didn't know about this? How could it be we don't have a tradition of marijuana from the Rabbis, from the Torah? Surely, it must be in there somewhere.

And, of course, eventually i'd go to Israel, and explore. And I found what seemed like the answer, for why we didn't have a Jewish herbal tradition that was as much a part of our lives as any of the rest of it.

King Hizkiah
Hid away
the book of Healings.

Why?
What was this book of Healings?
Attributed to King Solomon, at the peak of Israelite wisdom culture, it was apparently a book of herbal and other potions and possibly incantations and or rituals designed to cure all known diseases.

Why did King Hizkiah hide it?
He was afraid of it being used for idolotry.
What could that possibly mean?

R' Nachman talks about
The power of every kind of Grass
each one has it's own unique song
It's own unique power
to heal
And it's own star
It's own angel, telling it to grow.

If you do something
and it works, consistently.
You might think it's because of that thing that you did
and take for granted that it's gonna work that way
that's idolotry

Lets say you have a friend
whom you love because of who you think they are
and your relationship with them depends
on them being who they were
that's idolotry

carving the poor guy
into wood and stone
Instead of letting them be alive
and growing all the time

Medicine
Is that really what we want our tradition to be about?
the tradition we had about how to cure a runny nose?
Is that all Torah is supposed to be?
Consistant things you can do to provide a desired effect?
Chas v' Shalom.

Everything you thought you knew
about how to heal
throw it away
So that you can hear what the rest of the world knows

Someone else in the world
will always be focused
on ways to make money
and ways to be healthy
Israel is for focusing
on what no one else will bother focusing on.
The secret meaning behind everyday things.

Learn wisdom from all the nations
Learn medicine from all the scholars
You don't have to build new idols
Thanks God, there's enough old ones being circulated throughout the world
being made all the time
The job of Israel is not to make new idols
But to tell you what the old ones really mean.

Let someone else build the structures, build the empires
We'll just stand outside, by the fringes
and see clearly from our place what's going on
and when the time is right
and it's clear to us what it's doing and how to do it cleaner
you'll ask us to.

Torah IS Wisdom
filtered through good eyes
until it becomes guidance

Please don't confuse the trigger for the effect
And don't assume that the same medicine
is always what you need.

Pray for guidance
Pray for potency
Pray for healing
Amen

Medicine is not holy. It's better!

And the other reason no psak can ever prohibit marijuana is... and this is one of the deepest halachic principles EVAR...

Rabbis have no authority over medicine. It's just not their field.

How do we know this? The gemara in Brochos is chock full of folk cures for different conditions, olive oil soup with beets for fevers, incantations for choking on bones... And a pious person might think, he's required to use these particular treatments for such conditions... Or at least that our tradition, given us by the Lord God Himself, would have the correct thing to do for any sickness, right?

For that matter, any strictly religious person would have to imagine that he'd rather die than use something non-kosher for medicine. Wouldn't God appreciate that so much? I mean, if the halacha is the true reality, it would stand to reason that we couldn't heal ourselves except by it's prescriptions, right?

I'll tell ya, I had a moment once... It was one of the most powerful psychedelic clarities i've ever had, and it was relatively drug free. It came from a gall stone, at the right time.

After I left the morrocan Breslov Yeshiva, after I left Bat Ayin the second time, I was a bit orphaned yeshiva wise, but still desperate to continue my education. There was some very important Torah that I still longed to learn, where could I go?

At the time I was going on sunday and thursday nights to shiurim offered by a man named Dovid Hertzberg Z''l. The Z''l part wasn't part of his name yet, he adopted it later. His book of jokes is available in perpetuity on www.rebshlomo.org, and his light will shine until the very last day.

Long white beard, short stature and suh-ch a smile, Dovid is generally acknowledged by the Israeli Shlomo Chevre as being Shlomo Carlebach's greatest disciple. Yehoshua Witt was his closest, Moish Geller, maybe his earliest... Dovid was the smartest, most learned, and most bestest, in some profound way. Real chassidis generally downplays book learnin', so to become a learned scholar means you just really wanted to, for some other reason.

Dovid once told me, when I asked him about his religiousness back when he was young, y'know what Shlomo gave over to us? Hashem loves you no matter what, whether you do any mitzvos or not. And if you love him so much too, you might wind up doing some, just because.

I hired him as a private teacher for like a year, until I got arrested in the old city with a big bag of grass and was forbidden from going back there for a while.
When I called him to tell him he laughed.
I tried to tell him further, because I felt so terrible--
"Dovid, to keep from staying in jail, I gave them someone's name-- not your's, chas v shalom---"
Huh. well, i hope it was someone you didn't like.

And that's how I wound up going to the newly formed Yeshiva Eish Kodesh on Moshav Modiin. A settlement stared by Shlomo Carlebach for the community that had started to grow around him in Israel in the late seventies, the Moshav had been longing to start a Yeshiva since it's inception, almost doing so twice before, to no avail. They now were trying again, having recieved a large donation from someone to make a lace named after Eish Kodesh Gilmore, who had grown up on the moshav, and been killed by an Arab terrorist a year earlier.

Some of my closest friends and most inspiring teachers were studying there. It was a good deal-- free food, whole grain and dee-licious, beautiful location, surrounded by cool people, with our own magical forest next door. Great community, if you know anyone who'd be good here, invite 'em along...

Tragic flaw-- The desire to be recognized as a "real" Yeshiva and thus, have potential access to government funding and acknowledgement. This is one of the great weaknesses of many radical moovements within any culture, especially judaism, the need to be acknowledged as valid by the mainstream authorities. In some ways it's beautiful, the longing to be understood and respected for who you are, and the compromises that come from it are so debilitating and neutering.

The yeshiva, in an attempt to be "authentic" hired these Litvish certified Ravs to come and teach. Understand-- This is like hiring buisness executives to teach economics... at a communist school. The kids were all geniuses, learned in both the reveal and hidden parts of the torah, with insight and text skills that would put them on a par with any master of a previous generation, being schooled on, like, the laws of petty bullshit, in the driest way possible, by people who were pretty ideologically opposed to most of what Shlomo Carlebach's torah was about.

And, humble fools that we were, we tried to indulge the teachers. We tried to come to their classes on time, to participate and engage them... and it felt like such a waste of time.

So we focused on chavrusa learning, just taking the opportunity to finally spend time with the books we'd been hearing about for so long, but never had a chance to hang out with. Me and Sharya Witt did a siyum on the apocraphal teachings of Elijah the prophet, as revealed in the 3rd century c.e. to I think R Yishmael? Me and Yehuda Witt learned much of the mei hashiloach inside and slow, Shalom Aaron Dym did a siyum on Nedarim (my favorite line from him, an alumnus of the finest yeshivas in minnesota and the Mir in Israel, "When do they call you a Rabbi? When you can finally read the Shulchan Aruch by yourself?") we'd hit up the Noam Elimelech now and then, the Kedushas Levi, the sepher ba'al Shem Tov, Steady doses of the Zohar most mornings (Elyon Shemesh likened it to the first bong hit as soon as you wake up)
and, of course, Rav Nachman, when in doubt.

Some great Torah came out of there. Yehuda Witt made a grea argument for the mystical value of drug use, based on R Nachman, to one of the straight Rabbis one morning, that basically sure, you might be able to get through life with out herbs and medicine, just living off prayer alone... but then the herbs and medicines you'd use wouldn't get lifted up into the service of god like they would if you'd just bring them into your healing! So really, it's higher to incorporate them.

Any how. Came the day. I had a pain in my side, a light one, i figured was just, you know, stiffness from not yoga-ing enough. right under my ribcage on my right side, it just would not stop. I kept kind of stretching there to try to deal with it, and one of the locals at the Moshav noticed me doing this.

Hey... (he asked) You haven't been drinking the tap water unfiltered, have you?
"uh... yeah... we ran out of filters for the brita"
"Uh oh... we used to have trouble with that alot... there's alot of sdiment in that water... it looks like you've got a gall stone."

And so, i started filling bottles with filtered water from different people's houses around the Moshav... and drinking, as per my orders.

Now, understand, I was very deeply conflicted at this time. When there's one clear order of what the classes being taught are, and all your focus is invested in these things, a clarity and peace follows, I don't have to worry about what i'm doing and is it worthwhile. No existential conflict.

I had been experiencing life under a very kabbalistic lens, and felt very compelled to justify to myself anything I was doing, all the time. Is this really what G-d wants from me right now? Is there something more important I could be doing?

The Litvish Ravs were pushing us to come to their classes and learn their torah more, of course. I occasionally would, wondering, maybe this is what G-d wants me to learn. maybe that's why i'm here today.

On the other hand, it felt very much like a waste of time, re-learning things I already knew, but on a shallower level. Is it just my arrogance that makes me feel that way? How do I know if i'm learning the right Torah?

So I'd learn something else, and wonder, is this what i should be learning now? It's not so inspiring, is that just because i'm not really looking at it right?

And maybe I should be davening now instead... or working somehwere... Lord! what should I do?

And suddenly, the gall stone hit. And then, it was so clear what I had to do. So clear, that I laughed through the pain, and cried like a baby. I was free.

Suddenly, i didn't have to be holy any more. I wasn't allowed to be. I wasn't allowed to look at any holy books, or pray, or think about any Torah ideas at all. I was in the bathroom, pissing all the time, and Torah is forbidden there. How liberating!

Suddenly, I was less a mystical slave, and just a pissing robot, and all I could do was go through this stone. And with that freedom, lots of other things became clear.
Why I was born in williamsburg. The truth of health some how being totaly dominant over the truth of religion... why? If all this service is so divinely important, why should we give in to infirmiry, and ever let ourselves be prophane?

Because health is realer. Religion is just allegorical. Profound if you're doing it right, but health is actually What Is Happening, universally.

There's a talmudic maxim, there is no Torah from the Goyim, but there is wisdom. What's the difference? Torah is local tribal ritual and ethics, a personal language. Wisdom is universal. Torah can be learned from wisdom, and visa versa.
And what does it mean by wisdom? What is the wisdom that we are open to learning from the whole world?

Jewish culture traditionally is very closed to outside ideas and influence, or at least, it likes to try to be. Ideas from the outside culture are resisted, unless they can be given a good source for in the tradition. The assumption is that true morality, all of it, can be found and learned out from the corpus of Torah, while worldly ideas can be fleetingly popular and can be spread by corporate entities through ignorant people independant of reliable truth. Ideas have to be approved by your rabbi in order to be digested, is how it seems to work.

But medicine? Whatever they find out new, we'll take it, if it works. Maybe beecause medicine, unlike religion, can be proven and tested.

More to come on the jewish herbal medical tradition, and why there isn't any. And why marijuna brings the whole world together. (hint: because it's good.)

nebuch, I love you need You so, it's not true

Isn't it something?
those which remind us most of G-d
are what distract us the most from G-d

sounds like a duck, looks like a duck

How do you know your friend is God?
Everything they say is true.

Do you know anyone like that? Who do you believe in?

stoned simple

I'm reading a story this past shabbos, the R' Nachman classic Sophisticate and Simpleton. Like every R' Nachman story, except maybe a little bit more so, it features profound insights about the nature of the structure of religious tendancies
and where they can take us.

The running theme in this blog seems to be the mystery of what is justified clouding of the senses, the two ancient jewish standards of drug use, life drug vs. death drug both having to do with blindness.

As we pointed out earlier, the hebrew word for drug, SaM reminds of the hebrew word for blind SuMa. Because drugs help us forget somethings so that we can focus on others, like dancing, hunting, playing, davening, and/or living, as is known.

Also known, ideas are drugs. Boundary presrving ideas are the aspect of death drugs, preventing cancerous growth, boundary shattering ideas are the aspect of life life drugs, because life is defined by growth. Uferasta, yamma v kedma, freak out, north and outh, east and west.

This story is about the problem of simple faith. What's the problem with faith? Only if it's not true. What's if it's always not quite true?

There's a problem with chakira, probing for truth. It's disruptive, to whatever you're probing, and you'll never see more than you're willing to. The problem with what's traditionally called the Scientific method is that you only ever get what you want. I can prove, using math and logic, how wrong you are. Does that bring you closer to me? To "truth"?

The story goes, there's two kids, grow up in a village together.

One is naturally drawn towards sophistication, studying all manner of wisdoms and disciplines, the other, although intelligent, is simple, living a straightforward, humble approach, without any sophistication. Nonetheless, the two love each other very much.

R' Nachman might be the most specifically personally influencial Rebbe in my life, and the forward movement of Judaism's knowldege of self, appreciation of what it is doing to us and how to own it. The messiah will speak in his language, he maintained, giving over his Torah. And like any other Rebbe worth a second look, he's saying much more than he appears to.

The only Torah I'm impressed by is the Torah that sees the virtue and weaknessat once in whoever and whatever they're talking about. Superfun gnostic reading of all the great mystical masters features seeing the bad guy as Godly as the good guy, and recognizing their perspective without needing to be controled by it.

"The sons were beginning to get older, so their fathers said to them,
We do not have the means to support you.
Do whatever you will be able to."

The Simpleton went and learned the trade of a shoemaker.
The Sophisticate, however
felt that he had deep understanding
and did not want to occupy himself with such simple work.

He made up his mind
that he would go out into the world
and see
what he could do.

He went to the marketplace and strolled around.
He saw a large wagon with four horses in harness
rushing through.

He called out to the merchants,
"From where are you?"
"From Warsaw," they replied.
"Where are you heading?"
"To Warsaw."

He asked them
"Maybe you could use a helper?"
They saw that he was bright and diligent
and found this pleasing.
They took him on
and he went with them
serving them very well
on the road.

However
he considered himself quite sophisticated
and when they came to Warsaw, he decided
"Now that I am in Warsaw, why should I be bound to them?
Maybe
there is some better place.

I will go and see what I can find."

Do you ever feel like there must be some better place
than the one where you
are
at?

That's what
all yearning
all motion
and movement
assumes

There must be some better place.
Jerusalem
Is better than here.

And everyone has heard
the profound simple truth
there is nowhere better
God is right here
Just open your eyes

But my heart longs
I can settle it with breath
with words
with gentle brush strokes
with reminders
if I really want to

So the sophisticate goes out and finds other jobs, and has to work really hard. This is one of the main patterns of the story, The sophisticate has to work harder for his sophistication, eventually being tortured by Azazel in a bog of sticky mud, all because he won't believe that there is a devil. How could it be there's a devil? If God is one, how could it be?

Meanwhile, the simpleton accepts everything simply, even things that are clearly not true, and for that, his reward is joy and great success.

Since he was simple, he had to study
very much
very slow
to master his craft
and even then
he was not very expert in the craft.

Did you ever feel this way?
So humbled
by what you where studying
That you knew you might never master it
And had to study every part of it
so slowly
so deeply
just to get anywhere?

He got married
and earned a living from his work
simple
and not expert in his craft
so his livelihood was very meager and limited.

Since he had limited skill
he had to work constantly
and did not even have time to eat
Rather
while working
while making a hole with the awl
and drawing the shoemakers thread through
he would bite a piece of bread
and eat.

Throughout this
he was always very happy
Filled with joy at all times.
He had every type of food, drink and clothing.

He would say to his wife

"My wife
give me something to eat."

She would give him a piece of bread
and he would eat it. Then he would say

"Give me some soup with groats"
and she would cut him another slice of bread.

He would eat it
and speak highly of it, saying
"How nice and delicious this soup is!"

He would then ask her for some meat
and other good food
and each time he asked
she would give him a piece of bread.

He would enjoy it
so much
and praise the food
very highly
saying
how delicious it was.

It was
as if
he were actually eating the food he had asked for.

Actually, when he ate the bread, he would taste in it any kind of food he wanted. This was because of his simplicity and great happiness.

What if we're eating poison? Can our simplicity make it genuinely good?
No. Maybe. Once we know
there's no going back to simplicity
Only finding a way around

Once a voice is heard
speaking the truth we hadn't noticed
for our simplicity
it might be more trouble defending against it
than just accepting it
and changing our world
a little bit

The main thing is to know
all the new truth
(if you haven't seen it, it's new to you)
Can never
invalidate the old delusion
that was true too
somehow.

Similarly, he would say,
"My wife, bring me a drink of beer."
She would bring him some water
but he would praise it and say
"How delicious this beer is."

"Give me some honey wine."
She would give him water
and he would speak
so highly of it.

Theoretically
It's better to be a fool
and believe everyone.
But the sophisticate is my friend
Can I believe him too
and still be happy?

how simple
and infinite
can my faith be?

How much
can I trust my God
and all her beautiful lies?
If I love her
Then I want to believe her no matter what.

How do I know someone is God?
Everything they say is true.

Nothing written down is ever a lie
R Nachman says
It's only context that makes anything
less true.

It really is wine
If your heart is open

As for the simpleton
For most people
he was a joke.
Here they had what they wanted
someone to laugh at
as they desired
because they considered him insane.

People would
come to him
especially to engage him in conversation
so that they would be able to ridicule him

But the Simpleton would merely say
"Just don't make a joke of it."
Please
Don't try to make it
like it's doesn't matter
If the other person would assure him
that he was not making a joke of it
the Simpleton would listen to what he had to say
and engage
in conversation.

He did not probe the other person's motives
more deeply
to see if this
in itself
might be a means of mocking him
since he was a very simple person
and he avoided such sophisticated ideas.

However, if he saw that the other's intention
was clearly to mock him
he would say

"So what
if you prove yourself
smarter than I?
You will still be a fool.
What am I
that it is such a great thing
to be smarter than I am?
Even if you are
you will first be a fool."

There were times at the Breslov yeshiva, where I'd meet people getting progressively more complicated in their simplicity, ignoring much of the world as being to complicated to be worthwhile, and just trusting God to work it all out.

Oh God
make clear to me
as much as you ever want me to know
you know only
how much I can handle

It was through simplicity that I ever became complicated
Coming under the influence
of the sages of the generation
and all their profound heresies
Thank God.

Yaakov Sack once told me
all kinds of truths
about how bad it really is
and how much we refuse to deal with it
And I thanked him
And he skoffed, and said
"you'll never benefit at all from these truths"
"no one ever does"
"no one ever will"
And I thought wow
Now that's mesiras nefesh

I don't care if it hurts, I tell my God sometimes
Just show me
And then when it hurts to much
I can either make it stop
Or I can stop being afraid

The problem
Is what comes after you stop being afraid.
I once stopped being afraid to lose things
So I started losing things
big things
expensive things
that were really useful
So I went back
to being afraid
but only just enough

The truth about things
even expensive ones
you can always get another
and sometimes it's worth losing them
If you feel like it is.
how far can we see things out?
How long can we deal with the truest
unfiltered
suffering
in the name of truth?
Only as long as it's worth it

Whatever
that means.

This is the big problem with religion, or Idolotry as we call it sometimes. It works. It makes you happy, satisfied, in all the ways nothing else can, maybe. Some people get so digusted with some part of the lie, that they take their chances with the suffering, and see if they can't get the same buzz somewhere else. This is the problem, in judaism, why we're so afraid of worshipping the wrong God. We know that it might work, and don't want to wind up depending on someone else's long distance provider. Who wants to be a slave? Only to someone you love already, can you devote yourself. Nowadays, we're out growing gurus and tzaddikim, but what will take their place, when the act of loving and trusting the god in someone so much is so good and so deep?

Fall in love with those who give you so much freedom and ask you with curious interested, desperately open eyes into being. It might be the only way. A rebbe who doesn't make you their rebbe is not listenable, not anymore, hopefully. Let's see how much we can be all the honesty we're looking for, and listen for the honesty in each other, make each other right with our ears, and the shells around our language will just slip off gently on our lips and fingertips. Amen...