Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life

The great rush of words (I don’t mind that we pray as quickly as we do) works as a kind of antilanguage. It wipes my mind clean of language and conceptual thought.

Deep down we know; what we see of the world is not really the way the world is but merely the way we are capable of perceiving it, the product of the limited capacities of our eyes, our ears, our minds, and our hearts. Deep down we know; however the world was one moment ago, it no longer is. It has changed.

Judaism is primarily a discipline that endeavors to imbue every moment of our lives with a sense of the transcendent.

Pain is often the differential between how we want things to be and how they actually are. Pushing pain away indicates that we wish it were somehow otherwise. Turning toward it, being with it, on the other hand, releases us from the pain of

this relationship was clearly the beginning of my productive life. I had been floundering through life up till then, but suddenly I felt nurtured and enabled in a way that brought out all my most important talents and allowed me to express them. It opened the possibility for my becoming who I am, who I always was, who the world needed me to be.

There was suffering that could not be controlled, that could not be submitted to the intellect’s rage to order and pacify our experience.

Pachad refers to projected or imagined fear. According to Rebbe Nachman, suffering is the state of being afraid of something that we don’t have to be afraid of. This

Breathing out, we let go of the world we have imagined. Breathing in, the life we actually inhabit begins to emerge, to take shape.

From that moment at Sinai forward, leaving the community becomes a taboo. Al tifros min ha-tzibor—“Never separate yourself from the community under any circumstances”—the rabbis of the Talmud warn us severely. Now the idea of leave-taking needs to be reinterpreted. Now it becomes an inner process. Hitbodidut, the Hebrew word for a physical leave-ta

The world is far deeper, richer, more mysterious, and more beautiful than you imagine. So stop imagining it. Even just for a few moments a day, inhabit it without giving it a name.