« 500 Days of Summer | Main | Light, Dark, Emotions, Will »
November 07, 2009
The Act of Will
I'm sure it's clear to the two people who read this blog that I have been silent for months at a time. I continue to be a student of culture, but without the discipline to put my thoughts to paper. Additionally, the things that pull me closest to paper are brought forth by my weekly sojourns in a sanctuary and I've feared those weren't my thoughts to share.
Well, no more. The rebbetzin encouraged us to share our love of Ohr Hatorah with family and friends, and this is the primary place for me to express my ecstatic appreciation of all things cultural.
Brief background: I grew up at a conservative shul in the Valley. I learned to sing and to daven there. And my rabbi, the one who taught me for my confirmation, committed suicide. There's more I could say about my troubled relationship with organized Jewry, but I'll leave it there for now.
Rabbi Finley leads Ohr Hatorah with an eye towards explaining spiritual psychology, to prepare oneself as a receptacle for the Divine. His teaching is grounded in a neo-Hasidic interpretation of Kabbalah.
Experiencing Shabbat at Ohr Hatorah can be the most enlightening, soul expanding experience of your life. Or, if you choose to focus on the oddities, it can leave you feeling terribly isolated.
The rabbi is in the midst of teaching about Roberto Assagioli's The Act of Will. Last week, he suggested that anyone interested in purchasing the book, look for it on addall.com, which is a bookstore search engine. Through AddALL, I found a used copy and it arrived on Friday.
The best thing about studying Assagioli is that it isn't difficult to read his writing. Unlike Abraham Joshua Heschel's God in Search of Man, this book is written in perfectly modern language. It's theme can be overwhelming; but the map to a coherent existence that it offers is priceless. Some of us yearn for a deeper existence and a life of meaning must be pursued consciously. By understanding the qualities of will, the types of will, and using will to harmonize our sensations, feelings, impulses, imagination, thoughts, and intuition we can lift ourselves to a higher realm of consciousness.
Assagioli's Relationship Between Self, Will and Other Psychological Functions
Today's study session focused on this diagram, along with his egg diagram as maps to self awareness that can lead to a life of consciousness, where you reflect and expand your core truth rather than swaying with the winds of modern life.
I've only scratched the surface of the subject (I'm only on page 33 of the book), but it feels profoundly true and a helpful instruction manual for living a life of virtue. Here are some definitions, gleaned from the book:
Repression: implies unconscious condemnation or fear (or both!) and the consequent endeavor to prevent the repressed material from emerging from the unconscious to consciousnessPerhaps when I have finished the book, or the rabbi finishes his series of study sessions on this topic, I'll be able to offer a more comprehensive description of the act of will.Endurance: It has been found that refusal to accept suffering can often create neurotic conditions, while generous acceptance of unavoidable suffering leads to insight, growth, and achievement.
Initiative, Courage, Daring: This quality has two roots: one is the recognition that full and lasting security is fundamentally an illusion. The other incentive toward courage is the enhancement and stimulation given by danger, by risk.
In the meantime, think about this: what core values define you? How do you actively emanate these values on a daily basis? Do you work daily to live a life of consciousness?
Here's hoping I slow down long enough to breathe deeply and internalize these teachings each day.
Posted by cj at November 7, 2009 05:01 PM