Wow, Yehoshua ( I forgot your real name again, sorry!) so many important points get glossed over in your posts. They are like an outline! So I will elaborate a bit on some things you wrote (I wrote these long posts as snippets during work, a minute here and a minute there through the day):
You are writing like you are pretty concerned with how you are thinking...do you sometimes feel like you are getting wrapped up in
thinking about your
thinking? I know I do. And I see that as part of my addiction, mainly. I do it so much less now, thank G-d. Using the brain that got me
in all this trouble is not a wise choice to make, I think (
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/wink.png)
). Eventually, thinking gets a little straightened out and definitely keeps getting straighter and more useful...but why push it? What's the rush? For the ego-comfort of pretending we are 'in control' of things that are still so influenced by the subconscious and emotional payoffs that we cannot yet even see? Our intelligence will gain the mastery over this together with the dynamics of relationships? That sounds like just more fantasy, to me. And I used to live in it. I am not saying that you do - just modeling it for you by admitting experience, and wondering out loud.
You wrote that you wondered why Jews are so successful in the world. You know, the huge percentage of Jewish Nobel prize winners in physics, medicine, etc, etc. The success of many Jews in business is surely part of that same phenom, too. It calls to mind Mark Twain's "Concerning the Jews" (hey - that ol' Sam was another username guy, too!). It is amazing. The economic success of Israeli industry (see the book, "Start-Up Nation"). If only we could make it in basketball...
My thought on that is like this: My parents (holocaust survivors) pushed higher education soooo hard. When I got serious about learning Torah in EY, I saw that for a Jew, Torah learning is where genius is. The laws of blessings we are to make on great geniuses shows us this. For while we are enjoined to make a blessing on a Hippocrates, there is no blessing at all on an Einstein, being that genius was only given to Jews to use for deeply knowing G-d, period.
Interestingly, they say we use only 'a fraction' of our brain power, whatever that really means. But if so,
why do we have all that brain capacity? (And how
do the evolutionists explain these kinds of things? Just another redundant system from the OCD-evolutionary-mommy? Whatever.) Looking at the depth and breadth of Torah (the revealed parts and the esoteric) tells me that there is so much to learn - we'd each need a
boat load of 'brains' to get where our Tatty wants us to get! And the sforim tell us this is just a drop in the ocean - and they are not kidding. Typical of Yiddishkeit - G-d says to us "lo alecha hamlocha ligmor" (Mishna, pirkei Avos): You cannot make it to where you are truly destined to reach in life - but if you give up on yourselves, you lose. But if you work at it never give up doing what is truly in your power to do -
even though you will not 'make it' - I will take you places you could never have dreamed of reaching. And regarding addiction - every recovering addict understands and
lives this very point in his or her recovery. We do not do it, He does.
This may be part of what the great Rabbi MC Luzatto means in Messilas Yeshorim where he writes, "v'hachassidus ha'amiti - rachok hee mitziyur sichleinu" - "we cannot possibly even
imagine what the goal ('chassidus' - true piety)
looks like." What we
do know is that chassidus is about love (the word 'Chessed' means 'love' or 'kindness' bourne of love, not of justice), so chassidus is service of G-d using true love to go beyond law [which [i]is[/i] nature] and human capacity. But the extra capacity we are born with hints at our destiny for much, much greater things than we can possibly wrap our minds around. We are so far from cows. Our job is the impossible: to reach G-d.
So, getting back to my parents...I believe they inherited something but forgot what it really was. They were born and bred with the old Jewish idea of scholarship is valuable - which had already been twisted by 2 generations of 'emancipated' European Jews before them into 'secular education'. Hence all the prewar Jewish intelligentsia. Our earlier forfathers always knew that a mind (not a 'mime') is a terrible thing to waste, for Jews are here to know G-d and have Him known in this world! It's part of what Rav Noach Weinberg used to call 'Jewish Consciousness'. Many Jews retained the awareness that above all else, we are destined to be true philosophers and people with profound knowledge and understanding of the only act in town (G-d) and that we are the key to the
rest of mankind knowing G-d.
And it all goes back to our beginning: the Exodus. G-d repeatedly announced that He is performing all the plagues and miracles in Egypt
NOT to finally get those pesky Egyptians to let His Jews free, but (and I quote Him): "so that Egypt will come to
know that I am G-d," and know that "there is nothing else like Me, anywhere." Thus, we Jews - in enslavement or freedom, whether we know it, like it, or not - are primarily G-d's tool for teaching the world what G-d is. It's what "a kingdom of priests"
means. (Rav Avigdor Miller z"l used to speak about that point a lot.)
So you didn't work out this morning. Nu. But you took care of these kids fairly well, you were honest about some things and faced them, you did a few other things right, and you are even one of the few humans concerened about G-d's Torah and His Rashi. I suggest you consider practicing letting yourself live and grow, without tying yourself down to perfectionism or to figuring everything out.
Whew, that was fun. Hope it will be helpful to you in some way, chaver.