American Mussar

21st century Jewish spiritual practice for an authentic and meaningful life

Why Gratitude is Not Enough This Thanksgiving: A Mussar Perspective

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gratitude is not enough
Gratitude helps us recognize abundance, and to be Generous

“My son was volunteering at a homeless shelter. In walked one of his high school classmates. I’m proud that he ran into the kitchen and helped there so his classmate would not see him.”

A friend told me that story, right here in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most wealthy areas in the world. Everywhere we see earth shaking companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple. The downside of this wealth is astronomically high real estate prices. But that alone does not account for the high level of homelessness. People all over the country are struggling with financial and food insecurity, even as some of us become more financially secure.
While Thanksgiving is a holiday that is rightly associated with being grateful, Gratitude is not enough for those who practice Mussar. Gratitude bring confidence and peace of mind. When we recognize the richness of what we have, we have an opportunity to See those with less, and to fully recognize their humanity. It would be a shame if we kept the abundance we are feeling for ourselves. 
Rabbi Ira Stone defines Mussar as learning to bear the burden of the other. We don’t do this spiritual practice for ourselves, but to help us show up for other people. Judaism teaches that everyone should give charity (Tzedakah), even those who receive Tzedakah. If giving would endanger one’s life, then we are asked to give words of comfort.
For whatever reason, I don’t volunteer in shelters or soup kitchens, although I always contribute to the food drive. I’m looking for ideas on how else I can be Generous. I’d love to hear from you. What do you do to be Generous?
You might also like my post from last year Celebrate Thanksgiving Like A Mensch. Or if you’d like to rekindle your Gratitude to become more open to Generosity, try the 15 Minute Gratitude Challenge. 
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Turn Shame to Sadness This Yom Kippur

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shame to sadness
Shame lives in darkness

Even when I would not be caught dead in other Jewish spaces, I always went to services on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. In part, this was because my father stressed how important it was not to work on the High Holidays. “Don’t give the anti-semites an excuse to put down the Jews who do care by going to work yourself,” he would say to me. And he was and is right.

But that did not mean that I had to go to services. There was something else, a renewal that came from the exercise of looking within and trying to improve myself. I loved the long lists of sins. I read them carefully. But there was one problem:

I felt shame every time I found a sin that applied  to me, which was frequently.

Rabbi Brene Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.” She further teaches that while guilt is a healthy, adaptive trait to help us feel bad when we fail to live up to our values, whereas 

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.” 

Shame is not the point of Yom Kippur. Indeed, if shame was making it harder for me to change, it was undermining the opportunity for personal transformation that Yom Kippur brings. 

Turning Shame To Sadness

When we do our spiritual accounting on Yom Kippur, we will find places where we missed the mark. How are we to react? If we don’t feel any emotion, we are unlikely to change. Yet if we feel too badly, spiraling into shame, we can paralyze ourselves into inaction. So lets try to find a different emotion.

Fear? I don’t like Fear as a motivator – indeed research shows it is effective for short term but not long term change.

So what about sadness?

shame to sadness
Sadness looks you in the eye

Sadness, like guilt, is uncomfortable. It looks you in the eye, and leaves the door open to compassion. Compassion and self-compassion are exactly what we need in order to change.

If you start to feel that crushing shame, ask yourself the following 10 questions:

  1. Have I felt this feeling before?
  2. Did I actually damage the relationship?
  3. What can I do to repair?
  4. What happened?
  5. What is my reaction?
  6. What am I sad about in this situation?
  7. What will the impact be on me?
  8. What is God’s truth about the situation? (If you are unsure of the Divinity, think of it as looking at the Truth from the perspective of the Universe, that sees all sides and perspectives.)
  9. Who will I NOT talk to about this? (Here you are exercising the soul trait of Silence, to prevent you from amplifying and more energy to this negative situation that is required.)
  10. What other explanation is there for this?

By fully inhabiting the situation, you’ll open the door to transform those shame feelings into sadness. Rabbi Alan Lew of blessed memory called the High Holidays a journey from “hard-heartedness to broken-heartedness…the journey the soul takes to transform itself.” (This Is Real p.8)

Given the choice between shame, which undermines the ability to change, and sadness, a gateway to personal transformation, I’ll take sadness every time. 

Which will you choose?

Want to know which soul traits might be making it hard to turn shame into sadness? Take the Soul Trait Quiz

Images by Kevin Jesus Horacio and  Irena Carpaccio on Unsplash

Prune Your Life For Growth: A Mussar Elul Practice

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elul mussar practice
Explosive growth after this bush was pruned

Three weeks into Rabbi school, I have just one thing to say: I can’t believe how much work it is.

My challenge is to remain a whole person while doing all this work. I don’t want to neglect my family relationships, nor get away from my spiritual practice. Studying Torah and Jewish history for 30+ hours a week does not in itself bring spirituality into my life.

One of the ways I have kept in touch with my spiritual side is through Elul Mussar practice. I never heard of Elul until a few years ago. It is the last month of the Hebrew calendar, and is traditionally spent in contemplation to prepare for the High Holidays. Both Elul and Mussar have let me to start practicing the Soul Trait of Order. I need to be organized and plan in order to get my work done, and to remain a whole person.
Then last night, I read something that touched me. In his wonderful book “This Is Real, and You Are Completely Unprepared.“ Rabbi Alan Lew of blessed memory, asked the following: What unfinished business is giving us a torn mind, “tearing our focus away from the present-tense reality of our experience, from the present moment, the only place where we can live our lives.” (p 84-85)
For me, this aligns with the teachings of Rabbi Marie Kondo, who teaches us to let go of things cluttering our lives. Which brings me to my first website, idolbuster.com. I wrote my first book as a serial on the idolbuster blog. I haven’t posted on that blog in years. Nor have I kept it up to date, meaning it is a security risk.
But more importantly, this website gnaws at me. Not in a big way, but at least a few times a month, I ask myself: What I should do with it. It used to mean so much to me. Can I just cut it loose?
Earlier in the year I got rid of the Dr. Greg Marcus Facebook page. And today, I turned off the automatic renew of the domain, giving me 5 weeks to archive it.
Which brings us to an Elul Mussar Practice.

************Here’s the Elul Mussar Practice*************

Let go of something in your life. What are you holding on to that no longer serves you? It might be “stuff,” something virtual like my old website, or it might be something emotional, like decades long anger.
It is no easier letting go of something painful than it is to let go of something that was once positive but is no longer serves a purpose. There is always a nagging voice “it might get better,” or “it might be useful someday” or just a rehash of the past hurt.
Elul gives us an opportunity to spend a month working our way up to change. You don’t need to change everything, but one small and lasting change is priceless.
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The mantra I use for Order comes from Pirkei Avot 5:10 – First things first, and last things later. For this practice, we can modify it to “last things never.” I don’t know about you, but I am way too busy to get to the last thing on my list. I was even before I went back to school.
So, I’ll prune away a few things that no longer serve me, thanking them for their service, and composting them so that they may bring life to something else.
What can you prune from your life to enable new growth?
Reply below and let me know. I answer every  comment.
The High Holiday Mussar Workshop is a wonderful opportunity to identify something to prune from your life, and establish a practice with your freed bandwidth for personal growth. Scholarships available. Learn more here.

A Generosity Mussar Practice I learned By Donating My Computer

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generosity mussar practice
A small and obvious action led to something deep that was hidden. Photo by Ben Kolde on Unsplash

After an amazing year of working on the shadow-side soul traits, my Mussar practice was in a rut. My focus was on learning Hebrew, looking ahead to Rabbinical school, and taking care of my daughters who had their wisdom teeth out in successive weeks. And don’t get me started on the ups and downs of the Warriors quest to win another championship.

None of which actually preclude my Mussar practice, although each of them are feeding my Evil Inclination, to distract me from what is important. To be clear, Mussar is never far from my thoughts, but I haven’t been systematically working on a particular soul trait, with a mantra, mindful action and journaling. Hence, my Mussar practice is in a rut.

That started to change when I decided to donate an old computer to clear out space on my cluttered so-called desk. I erased the memory, re-installed the operating system, and posted on Nextdoor for ideas on where to donate it.

I was shocked at how many people wanted it. I got the expected suggestions for schools to give to college bound kids, and non-profits. I did not expect a personal request from a young adult working full time and going to school. Or this note

“…we have a single mom who works for us as a cleaner & has just started her 1st set of classes to become a preschool teacher.  A MacBook Pro would be an AMAZING gift to her.  She is hard working & wants to better her life so her kids have a better life too.”

The person I choose is local, working, in school, and is always posting on Nextdoor offering to housesit or to feed pets. She wrote to me, “Words can’t describe how grateful I feel reading your message this morning.”

After I read this email, I felt profoundly different, in a way that can be explained by the Mussar masters. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto wrote in Path of the Just “One who perceives a quickening of his outer movements… conditions himself to experience a flaming inner movement.” Or put another way, taking action changes our inner world.

Teachings about the soul trait of Generosity go even further. One of the spiritual traps we can fall into is a “stopped up heart.” This is a barrier that prevents us from connecting with others. Perhaps it is a result of past hurts, or just something that has happened as external events or internal habits distract us from what is important. Whatever the cause, giving to others is a way of opening the heart.

This is exactly where I was with my Mussar rut – too focused on tasks and my own stuff, and not enough on the external world. Giving away the computer to a specific person opened my heart, and got me out of my rut. Which brings us to a Generosity Mussar Practice:

**************Here’s the Generosity Mussar Practice***********
Give something other than money. If you are able to give financially, that is wonderful. What else can you add to the gift? If you are giving money to a homeless person, give attention and dignity, by making eye contact and saying hello.
If you work all the time, give some undivided attention to someone you love.
And if you have an old computer you aren’t using, give it away.
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The point of a Generosity Mussar practice is to open the heart.

Once you’ve successfully done an act of generosity, do another one the next day, and again the next. Can you do one extra generous thing seven days in a row?

I guarantee that if you try to push yourself, you’ll find the voice of resistance in your head. In his book Everyday Holiness,  Alan Morinis points out that this voice can take many forms, like rationalization, or fear. By stepping into this resistance, we can learn more about what holds us back. Each time we give anyway, we open the heart just a bit more.

In invite you to join me in doing one generous thing every day for the next seven days. I’ll start my day with the mantra “Open your hand to open your heart,” and will journal about my experiences at night.

If you’d like to join me, or have another thought, please comment below. It doesn’t matter when you start. Generosity can and will open your heart to the wonderful souls you share the earth with.

I’ll update my generosity practice every day on Facebook. Please come join and follow along.

Three Mussar Lessons From Game of Thrones.

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mussar lessons from game of thrones
Our choices define who we are

Yes, I am a total Game of Thrones fanatic. My wife and I got hooked on the books early on, and have waited patiently for each new book or season to come out. As you may recall, Mussar teaches that Patience is enduring an unpleasant situation, and when it comes for waiting for new books in the series, Patience is our only recourse. While I promised three Mussar lessons from Game of Thrones, consider this lesson on Patience to be a bonus.

Mussar Lesson 1: You don’t get the end you want. You get the end you get. I have been somewhat baffled by the complaints and petitions about GOT season 8. 1 million people really want to redo the entire season?
The lesson for us is Humility. Mussar teaches that Humility is about knowing one’s proper place in the universe, as Alan Moranis wrote “No more than my place, not less than my space.” At times all of us have been in a position that we wish for a redo. If you want to redo something that you said or did, you may have an opportunity to try again, apologize, or revisit. But if you are looking at the acton of another, it is your place to rewrite what they have done?
The same is true of our own lives. We control very little, and are but a small part of the universe. We can fight the universe or recognize our place in it. One of the lessons for Moses not entering the promised land before he dies is the reality that we can’t control when we go. We can spend our last days fighting and filled with regret, or we can spend them in thanks for all the gifts we have been given.
Mussar Lesson 2: Good and evil get pretty muddy. As George RR Martin says in this wonderful interview with Stephen King,  “In my view, the battle of good and evil is waged within the individual human heart. It is our decisions – we are all partly good and partly evil. We make decisions every day. We may do a good thing on Wednesday, and an evil thing on Thursday, or a selfish thing.”
If you’ve read my book, this will remind you of the conflict between the Good Inclination and the Evil Inclination. Remember that these are translations of Hebrew phrases, and evil is a challenging translation. In Game of Thrones, the evil decisions tend to be truly evil with a capital E. Take Daenerys, for example. As Tryion explained, we could overlook some of her brutal decisions early on because she was killing evil men. But when she burned Kings Landing, there was no where to go but to admit how bad she was.  But it didn’t have to be that way. She also had a forgiving and compassionate nature, and could have chosen a different path.
None of us are totally good nor totally bad. Learning to tolerate our mistakes, and becoming mindful of our choices are key building blocks on the path of the mensch. See this post on Choice Points for more.
Mussar Lesson 3: Joy has many faces. Arya Stark said “Death has many faces.” And wow, did we see a lot of death in these books and shows! 
Yet tens of millions of people found joy reading and watching. The joy we feel comes in different forms. The acting, the effects, the twists and turns. And many of us enjoy discussing each episode – some prefer to argue that X or Y should have happened.
We should not take for granted the joy we get from entertainment. In the first Mussar book Duties of the Heart, Rabbi Bachya ibn Pakuda wrote the danger of not feeling gratitude for things we take for granted. “Many good things are left unenjoyed, and the happiness to be had from them is tainted either because people do not recognize the good in it, or they do no realize its value.” 
Entertainment is a gift. It is not our place to change or rewrite it. We take what is offered, and make of it what we will.
What is some of the good you’ve found in Game of Thrones? Please share below.
Take the Soul Trait Quiz to see where a Mussar Practice can influence your life.