RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: ECO-JUDAISM: HUMILITY REPLACES EGO FOR SPIRITUAL RENEWAL
FROM BLUFFTON SUN FEBRUARY 2012
BY RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
Shalom and peace:
Today we will continue learning from Judaism's Talmud, today teaching us a trait for which we should strive. The first is: '' Have a good conception'' Derek Eretz Zuta 3:5.
How we think, how we form ideas, determines how we act, including teaching. As Dr. Bob Taylor, a psychologist asks: "How could such highly-educated and precisely-trained professionals veer off the path of objectivity?" His answer is simple. We are humans, Homo Sapiens. And we will continue to make wrong judgments, until we learn to divorce ourselves from ego, meditate for answers, and move toward becoming Homo Spiritus.
When we conceive ideas based on ego, including fears and resentments, we are having cognitive bias. This results in "perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment or illogical interpretation."
These biases helped us in primitive times, but wreak havoc in our lives today. The Semmelweis reflex is the ''predisposition to deny new information that challenges our established views,'' while the confirmation bias involves the ''inclination to seek out information that supports our own preconceived notions.''
The overconfidence effect involves unwarranted confidence in one's own knowledge. This is dangerous for clergy, teachers or legislators to have, yet we see it often. The fundamental attribution error, involves the tendency to ''attribute other people's behavior to their personalities and to attribute our own behavior to the situation.'' When others act idiotic, ''they have the problem. '' When we act even more idiotic, we can rationalize ways to justify it.
So the behavior of having a good conception, doing away with ego, and arrogance, and pre-conceived notions so that we can learn and teach properly, is all important, for clergy as well as parents, anyone in a profession or social situation; in fact all of us.
Our second trait to be attained is: ''Be as the lower threshold, upon which all persons tread, and still it lasts even when the whole building is demolished.'' This advice is not advising us to be a door mat. It is using a building as an analogy to life. Stay as humble as the lower threshold. Don't take ourselves, our kudos, our belongings, so seriously.
All things pass away. In the end we are left with our spiritual inner selves. The building gets demolished, but the lower threshold still remains.
I work with many people now, due to the economy, who have literally lost their ego filled homes, their cars, their memberships in country clubs, and even synagogues or churches. And they have lost the pseudo-friends that they had because of the money spent in these institutions. They are left with only the lower threshold. And now they are learning, for the first time in their lives, to live spiritually.
Living with Jewish Spiritual Renewal doesn't mean taking a vow of poverty. It is quite the opposite. But it does mean living a life where we know that our adult toys are far less important, than our relationships with family, true friends, and the Divine.
Rabbi Arthur Segal is an international lecturer, author, and teacher. Visit him at www.JewishSpiritualRenewal.org . Follow him on FaceBook at 'Arthur L Segal', on Twitter at RabbiASegal, or his blog at http://rabbiarthursegal.blogspot.com . Email at RabbiSegal@JewishSpiritualRenewal.net
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