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What We Don't Know CAN Hurt Us!

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” –Carl Jung Do you ever find yourself repeating a pattern in your life that you seem helpless to avoid? Or find yourself in a situation wondering how you got yourself into this mess? Chances are excellent that you are in the grip of an unconscious pattern or motivation. Carl Jung also said that we…

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The Danger of Being Certain

Please check this out, let me know if you like it. thanks!

“It ain’t what we don’t know that gets us in trouble, it’s what we know for certain that just ain’t so.”   – Anonymous In the Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, Rabbi Kahana is quoted as saying that if the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court,  unanimously finds an accused person guilty, he is acquitted. Why? Because we have learned that tradition dictates that a judgment must be postponed awhile in…

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The Soul's Long Journey

“To what does the journey of the soul compare? To a person who planted a vineyard in his garden, intending to grow sweet grapes, but it grew sour ones. He saw that his planting didn’t succeed. He notched it and broke it off and cleared out the sour vines, and he planted again a second time. ‘Until how many times?’ [his students asked.] He said to them: ‘To the thousandth generation.’ ~ Sefer…

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The Fullness of the Earth

"The fullness of all the earth is (G!D's) glory!"

“The Fullness of all the Earth is (G!D’s) Glory!” 

“You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” 

-Isaiah (Isaiah 6:3 and 55:12)

I’ve always thought that Earth Day should be called Humans Day, because it’s really not about saving the Earth. She’ll do fine without us. It’s about…

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The Enemy is Fear

"The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear." -Mahatma Gandhi

“The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

The purpose of fear is awareness. And when we are fully aware, our fear becomes our friend. Fear wakes us up, tells us to look alive, because we need to pay attention to what is coming, right now. The word “Beware!” is actually a contraction of “Be Aware!”

When Gandhi says that fear is our enemy, he means we must not be…

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Running Against The Wind

"I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to reach my destination."

“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

-Jimmy Dean

I love  river rafting on a hot summer day. Sometimes it’s good just to go with the flow. But I also love to sail with my wife on the Cape. And then we use the flow to go where we want to.

So it is in every day. It’s the better part of wisdom to discern when going along for the ride…

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Friendship as Food

The primary joy of life is acceptance, approval, the sense of appreciation and companionship.

“The primary joy of life is acceptance, approval, the sense of appreciation and companionship of our human comrades. Many men do not understand that the need for fellowship is really as deep as the need for food, and so they go through life accepting many substitutes for genuine, warm, simple.”

-Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman

The psychological researcher Harry Harlowe demonstrated that primates…

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No Place Like Home

Home & Heart "If you go anywhere, even paradise, you will miss your home." -Malala Yousafzai

“If you go anywhere, even paradise, you will miss your home.”

-Malala Yousafzai

Dorothy may have had it right. There is a story of Yankel, the tailor of Pletstk, who dreamt he saw a bridge in Rome guarded by a soldier with a treasure buried beneath it.

In the morning Yankel packed his bag and journeyed to all the way to Rome. When he arrived, he saw the bridge and soldier, just like in his…

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Not The End Of The World

"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end." — John Lennon

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” 

— John Lennon

A friend once gave me some sage advice: “Joe, the only thing that’s the end of the world, is…the end of the world.” In other worlds, every situation, no matter how dire, is not the End of Times, unless, of course, it IS the End Of Times.

Most of what we experience, no matter how painful, distressing, or…

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Seeing Where We Are

“Sometimes I go about pitying myself while I am carried by the wind across the sky...”

“Sometimes I go about pitying myself    while I am carried by the wind across the sky…”

-An Ojibwe(Chippewa) song, from Path On The Rainbow

My daughter was stuck on the tarmac, her flight delayed, but unable to leave the plane. She called me, a plaintive, aggrieved tone in her voice. “Dad, we’ve been sitting out on the runway for 90 minutes now! What a pain.”

I listened calmly, a smile forming…

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Give More, Get More

"The soul that blesses will have abundance! In watering others, he waters himself abundantly."

“There is one who gives away freely and prospers more! There is one who holds back more than is right, but still lacks. The soul that blesses will have abundance! In watering others, he waters himself abundantly.”

– King Solomon Ben David, Proverbs 11:24-25

My friend Freda Black sent me a story  about a farmer who grew excellent quality corn. Every year he won the award for the best grown corn.…

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Planting For Those Who Come After Us

Planting For Those Who Come After Us

“Honi the Circle Maker was journeying on the road and he saw a man planting a carob tree; he asked him, “How long does it take [for this tree] to bear fruit?” The man replied: “Seventy years.” He then further asked him: “Are you certain that you will live another seventy years?” The man replied: “I found carob trees in the world; as my forefathers planted these for me so I too plant these for…

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Turning Teaching Into Idols

Turning Teachings Into Idols

“The Torah warns us not to turn G!D’s commandments into idols.”

–Menahem Mendel of Kotsk

Torah means teaching. This quote from Menahem Mendel warns us not to mistake the teaching for the Divinity it points toward. If we make a religious or spiritual maxim into a rigid unyielding principle; if we worship the teaching itself over our fellow humans; if we sacrifice ourselves or others on the altar…

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Full Work for Full Wages

Full Work for Full Wages Are you giving fully for what you are getting?

“In the same manner that an employer is forbidden to deny the poor employee his salary, or hold back what is owed him in any way, the employee is also forbidden to deny the employer the true effort of his work by wasting his time, either in pieces or the day as a whole.”

-Maimonides

Not only should employers, who usually have the upper hand in the employee/employer power dynamic, pay their…

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Sweeten the Lemonade

The pure righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light - Rav Kook

“Therefore, the pure righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not complain of evil, but increase justice; they do not complain of heresy, but increase faith; they do not complain of ignorance, but increase wisdom.”

-Rav Kook

A friend of mine teaches a life metaphor about lemonade. If the lemonade is too sweet, he says, we don’t try to take some of the sugar out; we…

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Schooled By Light

"..to change my heart. I will begin to study it, and try to become a scholar of The Light."

“If a rock, though extremely hard, can be hollowed out by water, how much more so should it be possible for The Light, which is compared to water, to change my heart. I will begin to study it, and try to become a scholar of The Light.”

-Rabbi Akiva

This beautiful act of faith and surrender by Rabbi Akiva has many lessons to teach us. We know that biologically, light can be invigorating,…

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Light Trumps Darkness

  “A little bit of light dispels a lot of darkness.”

-Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi

In Bereshit, commonly known as the book of Genesis, the first action taken and the first words spoken by Elohim (literally “gods”, not God as usually translated), are “Let there be light! “And, of course,  there was light.

Now it follows that if we are indeed created in the Divine Image, then we can create light…