Maintaining Proximity to God

"Just like me, they long to be, close to you." - The Carpenters.

Judaism talks a lot about closeness to God and cleaving to Torah. We spend a lot of time wondering if we are close to Him. Or judging another person's closeness to Hashem using Halachic law as a guide. But what I believe we really need to focus on is maintaining the proximity to God rather than measuring it.

In this study we sought to address several limitations of previous research on attachment theory and religion God by (1) developing a multidimensional scale of attachment to God, and (2) demonstrating that these scales are predictive of measures of personality and affect after controlling for social desirability and other related dimensions of religiosity... Consistent with prior research on adult romantic attachment, two dimensions of attachment to God were identified: avoidance (vs. security) and anxiety.

After statistically controlling for social desirability, intrinsic religiousness, doctrinal orthodoxy, and loving images of God, anxious attachment to God remained a significant predictor of neuroticism, negative affect, and (inversely) positive affect; avoidant attachment to God remained a significant (inverse) predictor of religious symbolic immortality and agreeableness. These findings are evidence that correlations between attachment to God and measures of personality and affect are not merely byproducts of confounding effects of socially desirable responding or other dimensions of religiosity.
- The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

Reattaching ourselves to God is a daily struggle. It is the struggle we were born to do.

1. Proximity Maintenance: We wish to be near or close to our attachment figures.

2. Separation Anxiety: When separated from an attachment figure we experience distress.

3. Secure Base of Exploration: The attachment figure functions as "home," our emotional "base camp."

4. Haven of Safety: When hurt or fearful or distressed we go to the attachment figure for protection, healing, and/or comfort.

ORIGINAL POST

I get up a little before 6am every day. My children go to two different schools which means many teachers and two sets of school cultures and a variety teaching styles. It's fine because actually I have seen that these things honor my children's very different and unique personalities.

The only one inconvenienced is Mom; and being 'inconvenienced' by my own children is my pleasure to deal with as their Mother. Yes, it is tiring for a disabled, single parent - but that's what I owe them. I look at them and remember - they are Hashem's gift to me; my gift to Him will be raising them as "connected" adults. So much in life disconnects us, it is up to us to reboot and get back to our default setting.

THE CAT AND THE MEAT
- Rumi

There once was a sneering wife
who ate all her husband brought home
and lied about it.

One day it was some lamb for a guest
who was to come. He had worked two hundred days in order to buy that meat .
When he was away, his wife cooked a kabob
and ate it all, with wine.

The husband returns with the guest.
"The cat cat has eaten the meat," she says.
"Buy more, if you have any money left!"

He asks a servant to bring the scales,
and the cat. The cat weighs three pounds.
"The meat was three pounds, one ounce.
If this is the cat, where is the meat?
If this is the meat, where is the cat?
Start looking for one or other!"

If you have a body, where is the spirit?
If you're spirit, what is the the body?

This is not our problem to worry about.
Both are both.
Corn is corn grain and cornstalk
The divine butcher cuts us a piece from the thigh, and a piece from the neck.

Invisible, visible, the world
does not work without both.

If you throw dust at someone's head,
nothing with happen.

If you throw water, nothing.
But combine then into a lump.
That marriage of water and dirts cracks open the head and afterward there are other marriages.

translation by Coleman Barks

It's hard for us to connect. It's supposed to be. Bills to pay. Clothes to wash. Calls to return. Clean the house, clean the yard. And then, Judaism - like many other religious practices - has rituals, daily prayers. But the latter is meant as tools for us to reconnect. Yet we often see them as chores.

Far too often we go through the motions. The motions of being a good parent, an understanding friend or an observant Jew. But is it possible these seemingly insignificant moments in our personal history, the news, the weather and even our disagreements with others are trying to tell us something? They are synchronistic taps on the shoulder by Hashem saying, "Hey... I'm right Here!"

I have a hard time getting angry. But one thing that does anger me is companies and political parties & figures who attach God to their names, products or platforms. Theocracy is wrong. It's idolatry. And its just sick to think that any one person or idea has cornered the market on God. The prophet Amos, like Moses before him, declared that God was not aligned with Power but with the oppressed (thats me & you, down here on the ground!) God is deeply personal and familiar to me in a way that He may not be to you. That's part of why I blog, to understand.

Rabbi Bonder (in his book Yiddishe Kop) explores four realms of reality: Information (the apparent realm of what is apparent),
Understanding (the hidden realm of what is apparent),
Wisdom (the apparent realm of what is hidden),
and Reverence (the hidden realm of what is hidden).

In order to discern the presence of the invisible in the visible universe, we must move beyond consensus thinking and repetitive behaviors.

The challenge is to open up to questions, similarities, paradoxes, inversions, and different brands of logic.

Then through the process of commitment, we are able to learn from mistakes and our ignorance.

Fools can teach us; so can absurd happenings. (Book Review)

We pay a lot of lip service towards the altruism we want others to think we each possess. But do we do it? Do we back up our fine words with action? Do we remember that there is a Higher Power watching us? An unconditionally loving parent who doesn't want us to harm one another and has given us tools, such as Torah, to draw ourselves closer to His protection and love?

Or do we, as in the Matrix, take the blue pill and figure its just too much effort? Relax and put yourself on autopilot. Are we really plugged in and logged on to God?
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On roots and branches
Rav Michael Laitman
ReligionAndSpirituality.com

(excerpts)
To understand the phenomena in our world, we first must understand their origin.

If we honestly examine reality, we will have to admit that we have no idea why things happen the way they do. In every field of human knowledge — exact sciences, social science, medicine or culture — we are unable to thoroughly and accurately explain why things unfold as they do. If we could, we would be able to prevent future misfortunes from occurring. Once something has gone awry, we may rationalize its causes in a thousand different ways, but at the end of the day, the best we'll come up with is a calculated guess.

Here are a few examples: "If I had been wearing my warm coat when we went out last night, instead of trying to look chic in my leather jacket, I wouldn't have been sick today." "The dollar is plunging because of the huge trade deficit." "The Knicks are losing their home games because the players feel more pressure at home."

To really understand why thing happen and how they evolve, we must look deeper than at the level of results. We need a tool that can probe the depths of our souls and discover how things work at the level of cause, rather than at the level of effect.

Probably the most basic principle of criminal law is that ignorance of the law does not exempt one from punishment. In much the same way, you cannot jump off a building and say, "Oops, sorry, I didn't think. ... "

The only difference between these spiritual laws and physical laws is that we don't see the spiritual laws because we are detached from spirituality.

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Just Do It and Feel the Burn.

- Barbara