Show Transcripts

SW01: Who Am I? 

Hello, I’m Irwin Kula and welcome to “Simple Wisdom.”  We live in an age in which there is so much change and so much choice that sometimes it’s hard to know what to do – it’s hard to know where to stand.  “Simple Wisdom” brings the insights of ancient tradition to the challenges of daily living – to help make life more creative and more meaningful.  

Today we’re going to talk about a very difficult and mysterious subject – who we are.   A wise sage once said, “Nothing is more mysterious to us than who we are to ourselves.”  Well, today we’re going to delve into that question. First, we are going to explore how we are really not who we think we are – we’re much, much more. Then I’m going to try to give a definition of what that much more is.  And last, we’re going to talk about what it would mean if we could live on life – if we could make all our choices from that place of knowing who exactly we are.  

Before we began, I was experimenting with an ancient wisdom tradition with Franco – the tradition is called “Who Am I?” or, if you do it with someone else, “Who Are You?”  If you do it yourself, you say: “Who Am I? – I’m Irwin Kula. Who Am I? – I’m a rabbi.”  Actually, you shouldn’t say that – you should say whoever you are.   “Who am I? – I’m a father.”  – and you begin to peel away who you are. Before we began, I did a few of these with Franco [an audience member] – and I learned his name is Franco, he’s the son of his mother, he’s generous, he’s sensitive, he’s a professional.  And, actually, we’re going to do a few more just to model this.   

Irwin: “Who are you?”

Franco: “I’m creative.”

Irwin:  “May you be blessed.

Who are you?”

Franco: “I am lonely.”

Irwin: “May you be blessed.

Who are you?”

Franco: “I am intuitive.”

Irwin: “May you be blessed..

Who are you?”

Franco: “I am complete.”

Irwin: “May you be blessed.”           

Franco is wonderful and if we continue to do this – if we did 30, 40, 50 more questions -- it would get more and more difficult and we would learn a lot about Franco but, much more important, Franco would learn a lot about who he is. But here’s the strange thing.  Each one of those definitions – each of those responses – actually, individually, is not who he is and collectively all those responses don’t really capture who Franco is and you could get that just from looking at him.  No matter how many responses he gave, there’s more Franco than whatever those responses are.  You see, we’re much more than all of the identifications – we’re not our body though our body is incredibly important, we’re not our thoughts though our thoughts are incredibly important, we’re not our personality traits though our personality traits are incredibly important.  We’re more than all of that.  We’re more than all our roles. I’m more than a parent to my child.  I’m more than a child to my parents.  I’m more than a lover to my spouse.  I’m more than a colleague to my fellow workers.  I’m more than all of that.  I am all of that but much, much more and deep down we know that – we know it intuitively – it doesn’t exhaust us.  

Sometimes when everything is stripped away and we do one thing after another after another, we’re no thing at all.  It’s like peeling an onion -- you peel it and you peel it and you’re no thing – in fact, one of the great mystical sages, the 18^th century Maggid of Mezeritch, said: “You can’t really know who you are until you’re no thing.”  You can’t really know who you are until you are no thing!  Now cultures have a lot of names for that – wisdom traditions have a lot of names.  One name is actually I AM that’s before I am this or I am that, and you know what’s amazing about that name?  “I am” is one of the first names of God in the bible.[1]  I Am. Sometimes the “this” or the “that” that comes after “I am” actually keep us from being who we really are.  We can be imprisoned by the “thises” and the “thats” that I am. Some wisdom traditions name this the Buddhist when you get to that no thing. Christians call it Christ consciousness. 

Contemporary thinkers call it the acorn because an acorn has infinite possibilities and you don’t even see it yet in the acorn. And at the no thing before all of the different responses – at that no thing we’re potentially everything. Some cultures call it the higher self—the witness – the observer. Jewish wisdom has a particular name for that experience and it’s not really a place because it’s not like there’s some metaphysical nugget core inside of us.  Jewish wisdom calls it Image of God based on the very beginning of the Book of Genesis when the human being is created in the Image of God.[2]

Now don’t worry about the God stuff, just take in the metaphor for a second – Image of God.  What is an Image of God?  Well, the ancient sages had a remarkable conversation about what that means and it happens in a discussion about capital punishment not surprisingly, since capital punishment potentially takes the life of someone.  They’re asking – they’re having a conversation about what does it mean to be a human being.  After all, you may take a human life and they are discussing what the witness should be warned before a capital case – because whatever they want for a civil case is not sufficient to the severity of a capital case and this is what they say – first, they say to the witnesses: Do you know before you’re going to witness and testify in this case – do you know that if you save one life, you’ve saved an entire world – and if you destroy one life, you destroy an entire world?  Do you know that every human being is of infinite value at the core place – at that no thing – at that “I Am”?  We’re of infinite value. You may remember that phrase – “if you save one life you save an entire world” from Schindler’s List at the very end of that movie.  And Schindler is obsessed with saving one more Jew and one more Jew and one more Jew and he realizes that if he could have sold his car that could have been two Jews and they give him a coin at the very end of the movie – the Jews give him a coin – on which it says:  “If you save one life you save an entire world.”

You see, each of us is everything – each of us is an entire world. Now I know that sounds like a cliché, but imagine if we lived as if everybody had infinite value. You see an image of man -- a Renoir is worth millions, a Van Gogh is worth millions -- but what is an Image of God worth?  What would you pay – how much would you spend to save your child’s life?  Imagine we live in a world in which 40,000 people a day die of hunger for [lack of] a few cents of water and food.  Look how far we are from that intuition that we all have – that our lives are of infinite value.  

The second thing the rabbis suggest as the content and meaning of that no thing – of that “I Am” – of that special space after everything is peeled away – is that all of us are equal, every human being is equal, at that place you’re equal – of course, because you’re of infinite value and infinite value equals infinite value – that’s very different from images of man. Images of man are not all equal.  Some buildings are worth more than other buildings.  Some paintings are worth more than other paintings.  A 1,000 dollar bill is worth more than a one dollar bill. But an image of God at the core space that no thing – each one of us is equal.  And the last intrinsic -- what I call an intrinsic dignity -- is that we are each unique.  At the place where we’re no thing our lives, without being a replica of anyone else’s life, without being a facsimile, without being a copy, is completely our own destiny and there will never be, for all of eternity and all the way back, somebody like us.  

Allow yourself to meditate for a second on what it means to be unique. It means if you see one human being, you haven’t seen them all.  That’s not like coins – all minted the same way.  If you’ve seen one human being, you haven’t seen them all – if you see all Jews the same way, if you see all African Americans the same way, if you see all people the same way – then you’re not reflecting the intrinsic dignity that each one of us is unique.  Imagine what it would be like to live from that place in which we all know every one of you is of infinite value and every one of you is equal, every one of you is unique.   What would it mean to live from that place – what kind of choices would we make – but what makes it so difficult?  What undermines the credibility?  Well, in fact, day-to-day life undermines the credibility of that intuition every single day.  You turn on the TV and you see violence, you turn on the TV and you see death,  you turn on the TV and you see prejudice, you turn on the TV and you see hunger and sickness – and that undermines the credibility that we are of infinite value, that we are unique and that we are equal.  

Then on the personal level – every single time we’re hurt and every single time we’re betrayed and every single time someone does damage to us or criticizes us – what happens is we build a hard core, a hard shell around that soft core, that soft no thing and that hard shell which, of course, we put up to protect ourselves.   Here’s the paradox – at the same time that it protects us, it imprisons us from knowing who we most deeply are, and then we act off the protection – we act off the hard shell and not off who we really are.  

Historically, there were two ways to get at that no thing place – to get at that intuition – that experience that we are of infinite value and unique and equal.  The first in Jewish tradition was called tikkun hanefesh – inner repair – that’s kind of like the meditation we did for who are you and who am I – in which we strip away on our own.  We go inside and strip away all of the hard shell stuff.  Now historically, Judaism -- while not denying that method – was always worried about that method.  It felt that if you went too inside you could get lost.  In fact, there is a very famous story of four great sages who went into the pardes – into the mystical paradise – one went crazy, one killed himself, one never came back, and only one in four was able to re-engage the world.[3]  And so Jewish wisdom was always suspicious of that method. Our version of that would be a spiritual narcissism of some of the new age stuff.   

Judaism privileged another method – the method called tikkun olam – the repair of the world.  To act in the world as if -- and those are the most important words here – as if we were images of God, knowing full well that you don’t experience it yet because of all the stuff in the world – you act as if.  Imagine what it means to act as if every single act either moves you towards recognizing that you’re an image of God or moves you away. Every act – imagine a scale[4] – and you put an act on the scale and it moves towards life, towards a realization of who you most deeply are – or away, away from who you most deeply are.  The scale metaphor is really vivid and there’s no such thing as an insignificant act – every single act – do you screen a phone call or do you not? – be impatient or not? – every act has the potential to break through that shell and help us discover who we most deeply are, which we always are.  That’s the paradox – we’re always images of God – but the great project of being human is to realize that in our own lives and create the political and economic and social structures out there so that people can realize it, too.  

And that’s a big project.  How do you do it?  Well, first, you better be sensitive to your choices and we always know deep down what’s the right choice or the wrong choice, don’t we?  Think about a time when you’ve wrestled with a choice – let’s say should I cheat on my taxes or should I not?  Shall I continue to work and be home late for dinner and not see my children before they go to sleep or should I get home and see them before they go to sleep?  That’s one of my issues.  Do I be impatient with my children or not?  Do I have an affair with that person or not?  Big questions, and we know when we’re wrestling with them – you know what happens.  There are always two voices and sometimes there are more – I have a board of directors inside – I have parents and I have religious leaders and I have the contemporary culture.  I have a whole board of directors of voices, but you know what the real problem is – who is the chairman of the board? The chairman of the board is that no thing, when everything is stripped away – who am I? – that chairman of the board is an Image of God. 

Here are a few hints on how to make the right choices.  When you feel that wrestling, it means you’re not sure. The fainter voice is always the voice that’s right. By the way, there’s a term for that. The still small voice. That still small voice is your deepest self or God -- the same thing.  And you have to listen very carefully -- that’s why the central word in Jewish wisdom is shema – listen – listen very carefully and you hear that faint voice and here’s the weird thing about the faint voice.  The more you listen to the faint voice, the louder the faint voice gets.  And it always means that there’s a short-term sacrifice for some long-term gain – always!  I have to put down that work now – that’s a short-term discipline – for the long-term gain that I’m going to be able to hang with my kids.  The short-term gains I’m not going to have and I’m not going to have that affair.  And do you know what the long-term gain is?  I’m going to be pushed to develop a genuine relationship with my wife – or another way of putting that is, if you actually engage in wrong behavior, there will always be a flash of excitement – there will be an energy – like a drug high, but you know the problem with the drug high and not that I know – the problem with the drug high is that you come down and there’s a rebound effect and you get diminished. So listen to the small still voice and you’ll make the right decision.  

The second way to know is to ask yourself this question in a moment of choice: what would I do if my child was making this decision – if the child I loved and cared for was the person making the decision – what decision would I want him or her to make?  Make that decision and you will be right.   

Or the third hint is to ask yourself this: if someone I loved deeply and respected (maybe a parent, maybe a spouse) was watching me – what decision would I make?  That’s like projecting a God, but it’s not a God who is looking out to punish you – it’s a God who is looking out to help you make the right decisions because, after all, we’re all images of God. You make the right choices and actually you realize who you most deeply are.  That’s the paradox – you are an image of God all the time, but the only way to realize it is to act in the world in a way that affirms it and to be treated that way by other people so it is affirmed in you.  Another word for tikkun olam (engagement in the world to repair) is the very simple word “service” and in Hebrew the word for service is avodah, which is also the word for prayer which means any single act that shifts towards life is really prayer.  Prayer isn’t taking a prayer book and praying – praying isn’t being in church and praying – any act that tips the scale towards life is a prayerful act.  And you know there are moments where we see those kinds of acts and there is a breakthrough. When a child gets abducted and an entire community – an entire country – puts its attention to that child as if that child is of infinite value, it breaks through our hard shell, and when we come home that night we treat our children differently. When miners are stuck 250 feet underground and the entire community and the entire country worry about seven, eight, nine miners as if they are of infinite value, then we go to work the next day, we treat our colleagues differently at work.  That’s what service does. 

I was in Uzbekistan a few years ago – we were involved in the rescue of former Soviet Jews and we brought a planeload of Jews, 250 Jews, to Israel.  We get off the plane, I go off, and there I see that two beefy security guys are running towards the plane – and I’m from New York.  I like to see accidents, I like to see stuff, I’m watching to see what’s going on.  These two beefy security guards -- and I figure there’s a bomb – they run up onto the plane and three minutes later they come down and they’re holding this 80 year old man who has one leg missing and can’t walk and they’re bringing him down in the most gentle way and putting him in a wheelchair on tarmac.  That’s infinite value – 100 years ago that person was left to die – and now he has such value and he’s brought to another country for freedom.  

These breakthrough moments – it’s in the World Trade Center when that young man stays with the person, his friend, in a wheelchair and winds up dying – there’s a breakthrough because you recognize this person understood that this wheelchair bound friend was of infinite value and he was equal to him and his uniqueness couldn’t be squelched. There’s a breakthrough when that last burn victim came out of the hospital three months ago from the WTC terrorist act and he had one comment, that’s all he said.   They asked him, “What are you going to do now?”  He said: “I’m going to think less of myself and more of others.” That’s a breakthrough of service that gets through that hard shell and we recognize everyone is of infinite value and everyone is equal and everyone is unique. What we need to do is to remember that.  

Now I’m going to give you two practices to do that can help you – practices that you have to do – if you don’t do the practices, it doesn’t work.  It’s not about the practice, it’s about the goal – but you have to do the practice or there’s no goal.  Here’s the first practice. All of us have traits that block us from being who we most deeply are – for some of us it’s impatience, for some of us it’s greed, for some of us it’s laziness.  Whatever it is, pick the trait, spend one week watching yourself every time that trait reveals itself, and make a note in a notebook at the end of the day.  I was impatient today when this colleague came into my office who always seems to come in and asks me questions right at that moment when I have work to do.  I was impatient today – I got home and I was not home very long when my kids got on my nerves right away.  All they asked is to play.  Impatient!  Don’t judge yourself, just watch where that trait blocks that you’re an image of God – that’s called the tikkun midot – watch and repair your characteristics.

A second practice is, of course, the practice that Franco and I did – ask yourself, “Who am I?”  Do that for one month every day for five minutes.  At the end of the month I promise you, you will be a transformed human being, understanding yourself better than you ever could have imagined.

Finally, the last practice is do service for someone without letting anyone know.  It’s critically important that you don’t let anyone know because service as we spoke about gets at who we most deeply are.  

Now you do these practices and actually you’ll begin to uncover your image of God which is what we most deeply want to be – we actually are more than we can ever imagine. As I think about it, it may well be that the question “Who am I? is the wrong question.  Maybe the question is the very question in the bible – not who am I, but where are you?  Where are you in relationship to your being an image of God because, after all, we know exactly who we are – we are images of God.  What we’re not sure about sometimes is where we are in relationship to that.  Do these practices, meditate on some of the ideas that we spoke about today, and in fact what you will realize is that you’re far more than you can ever imagine. You are an image of God. It may not be in the Garden of Eden anymore, but we are on the way to a promised land.  We act in light of our God-ness in service to life and to each other and that’s Simple Wisdom.  Thank you very much.  I’m Irwin Kula and I look forward to seeing you again. 

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