308. Higher Faith
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There is sub-rational faith --faith in dogma.
Then there is super-rational faith --intuitive knowledge, consciousness of a higher reality, a glimmer of the infinite within the finite human being.
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By the time we can speak, we have learned a whole western lifestyle.
And a whole western thoughtstyle.
A whole western set of innate knowledge.
I have friends who insist that their innate spirituality requires them to put their palms together, Protestant-style, to pray. But they learned that in a public nursery school or kindergarten. That is NOT the way Jews pray. Jews distinguish between the right and the left. The right gives, the left receives. Ironically, the pre-Christian ways of life all knew this. But she thinks Protestant-style right/left-equal-hands comes from her innate spirituality.
We cannot recognize our innate knowledge unless and until we re-cognize it--ie know it when we see it again. We see it again, we re-cognize it, in Jewish practice. A Jew who has been brought up without exposure to Jewish practice has no place from which to RE-cognize it.
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Innate knowledge has a unique quality, as of course you know, that is difficult in English. But English is all I've got so here goes: It seems to me that Innate knowledge, when revealed to us in a flash of insight blossoming it is preceded, almost heralded by a sense of certainty, and its original sense or aroma, is that it always has been and always will be true.
The best English I can come up with to reflect this innate knowledge is...Innate Knowledge.
I would love to see a more attractive phrase.
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The problem is that when it speaks from within us, we have to use our brains to listen, and the heart gets involved too, and there is a lot of business and noise in the brain and heart.
Makes me think of how a husband can annul a vow (i.e., Chochmah can elevate Binah, who gets dragged down by the emotions/kids with which/whom she is so involved -- because Chochmah is not involved in any of that muckiness).
So how do we get the Chochmah to elevate us, so we can listen to the enumah when it speaks to us? (I bet I could find this in Tanya...)
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I heard about two men, each married but childless. They both went to the Lubavitcher Rebbe when he was alive and asked him to help their wives conceive. To each of them he gave the same instructions--"hang a pair of shoes from the ceiling of your bedroom."
One of them was very sophisticated and tried to figure out the symbolic meaning of hanging shoes from the ceiling.
The other had a simpler approach: He hung the shoes from the ceiling.
Guess which one's wife conceived?
Does that tell you anything about the symbolic value of keeping kosher?
Hint: regardless of the symbolic value of a mitzvah, the actual action, the actual doing, is serious, important, vital. It will change your life.
HINT: We live in a world which is based on Greek thought, a world in which symbols matter more than actions, and our inmost thoughts are influenced by this milieu. We cannot totally rely on what "feels right" or what we think our "intuitive" knowledge seems to be.
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Good point. The word does have that subjective connotation. Oy, English.
Nevertheless, how do we convey the sense that emunah is innate, that it speaks from within us?
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I think that your definition of "Super-rational faith" as a "glimmer of the infinite" and "consciousness of a higher reality" provide clarity. On the other hand, "intuitive knowledge" seems to obscure clarity as it allows subjectivity as previous comments indicate. If I may, perhaps "flash of eternal knowledge" may better define your meaning.
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We need to rely on the collective intuitive knowledge of the Jewish People over 3300 years. I.e. halacha.
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How do we approach the fact that people contradict each other in their intuitive knowledge of Gd? For example, one person is utterly convinced that keeping kosher is pure symbolism, while the other is equally convinced that kosher laws should be taken literally.
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I had a conversation with a devout Christian recently, and it was on this topic that we parted ways, albeit amicably. His point was that the concept of "intuitive knowledge" (I described to him the Jewish concept of the soul being an actual part of G-d within you) could lead to everyone just making up their own rules. I asserted that most people know inherently what's "right" and that, if they err, it's with foreknowledge that they're doing wrong, no matter what their excuse or rationalization.
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