In life, you don’t get all the answers at once.
First you must absorb and live with one simple truth. Then, later, you must find another truth—one that may seem to conflict with and negate all you previously learned.
Then, from that confusion, emerges a higher truth—the inner light behind all you had learned before.
The enlightenment of having been, enlightened = Under - standing.
Just a comedy.
I love and thank G-d for it all and for you guys as well!
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True and awesome! Reply
gradual answers in life Personally I wonder what it would be like to get all the answers at once; it makes no sense to me. I can barely absorb one answer at a time! Hopefully I will live a long time and at the right time, be ready for the next answer! G-d willing! Reply
Sponge
Absorb like a sponge what you've learned from Torah following instructions with one always (shem).
Thank you ( so true)
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Frequency This occurs to me everyday. It occurs in retrospect, present, and in the future. Reply
Gradual Truth Thank you for the words of encouragement! It is so true that I learn one thing, then down the road realize another thing, which on the surface can negate the previous, yet further may not be so at all! Well, anyway this gradual truth helps me to remember my Creator! So I should not get so frustrated with my clueless or confusion! Amen. Reply
That's funny
Dear Rabbi,
Yeah. The big question may be creating all of it. (sigh). The more I know, the more clueless I feel.
Anyway, thanks.:)
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Re: Question (Prague)
When, after your stint down here, you get to the Big Mahogany Desk above, and you get to ask all the questions, you may just be privileged to hear, "Yes! Those are the questions!"
Why does everyone assume that at the core of the universe lies a great exclamation mark? Perhaps there lies there are great question mark, and from that question all things are formed.
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Question Is this a never-ending repeating pattern until you reach Abraham's level? I notice that this has been going on for quite some time now since I began studying the Torah and it leaves me little shaken up. It's some ride--but oddly I seem to produce better work, deeper friendships and I easily spot lies in myself and in others--but I'm hoping there's a point where it just reaches an equilibrium---does it ever or when it does do I die? Reply
scientific truth
Science looks for patterns, and usually finds them, and bases its predictions and its machines and etc on those patterns.
Torah says that it's all from G-d, Who is not bound by those patterns but prefers to operate within them.
So anything can happen at any time. It may look naturalistic, but at the same time it may be a miracle.
You may even have experienced a miracle, but tried to talk yourself into believing it was natural.
When my miracle finally happened a few months ago, I knew it was a miracle. Outwardly, nothing happened, but I could feel it. And, of course, I had heard the words spoken to me, telling me to accept what was being done for me. But I don't talk about it to most people. I am not interested in arguing about it. I know what happened. It was a very tiny miracle, but it was still a miracle.
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Gradual Truth Sometimes people feel that science and religion conflict. The mistake some people make is trying to substitute one for the other. Each addresses a different level of truth -- or at least an attempt at finding truth. That's not to say that there can't be some sort of relationship between each, however. Scientific discoveries get me thinking about God's handiwork, but God is transcendant, so you can't look at God through a telescope or a microscope. Fundamentalism calls for an absolutely literal reading of holy books, while Atheism argues that scienctific discoveries and technological progress has eliminated the old-fashioned, superstitious need to believe in the Super-natural. I am neither an atheist nor a fundamentalist. I pray to thank God for my life and good fortune, and to apologize for my sins. I would even dare say that taking holy books too literally at times might actually interfere with the symbolic lessons contained therin. Reply
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.... can one say it comes from Socrates? Hegel, we don't want to know, so to speak.
It occurs again and again in the Five Books of Moses, and it differs from Hegelian dialectic in more ways than one.
For one, as Rav JB Soloveitchik pointed out, resolution lies at infinity.
For another, the thesis and the antithesis are preserved as truths--as we see in the Mishnah, where contrary opinions are cited.
Perhaps a third: the third point is not a rejection of the first two, but an illumination.