Fulfilling a Calling
A plan in the heart of a man is like deep water, but a man of understanding draws it out. Proverbs 20:5 NASB
Plan – The Jewish Learning Institute workbook, How Happiness Thinks, is a treasure of rabbinic and modern mental health collaboration. It’s designed to take the reader through exercises that uncover roadblocks to true happiness, and at the same time, provide directions from ancient and modern sages for encountering happiness. In the section titled, “The Joy of Being You,” the authors provide eight “Key Points.”[1]
- It is easier to overcome life’s challenges from a state of enthusiasm and happiness than from a state of sadness.
- While we are blessed with many talents and strengths, their full power often remains dormant. Joy unleashes our potential and drives our strengths to flow outward.
- When we are happy, we create joy in the divine realm. This supernal ecstasy results in the flow of increased blessings.
- The letters forming the Hebrew word “besimchah” (with joy) are the same letters that spell “machshavah” (thought). Happiness is a product of our thought processes and attitudes—not our circumstances.
- The way we perceive ourselves is crucial to happiness. Both a negative self-image and an inflated sense of self-worth are impediments to happiness.
- Proper humility provides a self-concept that is very conducive to happiness.
- Humility means engendering a positive self-concept by acknowledging our intrinsic worth and our competence, while still avoiding a sense of entitlement. We recognize that our accomplishments are due to things gifted to us.
- A greater level of humility is when our concept of self slips below the threshold of awareness and we are completely focused on fulfilling life’s calling. Because we are purposeful beings, we find happiness when we are focused on our purpose.
Reviewing these points, we discover another example of the Hebraic view of being human, that is, the interconnectedness of life. Emotions, attitudes, thinking and self-image are all involved in living joyfully. In fact, the Greek world of tripartite men disconnects essential elements of human happiness. Happiness is a state of total life experience, not a compartment of existence. Now we can better appreciate Yeshua’s “beatitudes,” all of which begin with something like “happy” or “lucky,” not “blessed.”
If I see the world as a glass half-empty, my perception will color all of my experiences, including my cognitive investigations. If I see the world as a glass half-full, everything changes. First and foremost among those changes is the sense of gratitude for all that I have been given. I experience humility—and an appreciation of wonder. That produces joy! Oh, happy the man who lives in a world of awe. His life is filled with serenity.
Topical Index: happiness, joy, humility, gratitude, Proverbs 20:5
[1] Rabbi Mordechain Dinerman, Rabbi Yanki Tauber, David Pelcovitz, How Happiness Thinks (Jewish Learning Institute, 2014), p. 34.
Slaves are not happy. The degree that I am experiencing slavery at any given moment is going to be revealed by my happiness index. I now believe that happiness is one of those barometers, like the ego, that make me aware of my state of being. The more I try to grasp the dissonance of understanding we suffer from in regards to these two very important aspects of our personalities, the more I can see that both are a blessing designed to help us realign ourselves, but we are taught instead by the world to ask of them what they were never designed to give us. Like Balaam’s donkey, we tend to beat these poor animals that are attempting to carry our understanding of ourselves into providing us with what they can only reveal to us.
My ego is no more capable of serving me with the love it so desperately requires than happiness can provide me with the underlying fulfillment of purpose that it is but a mirror of. We ask our egos to love us and we chase happiness like an elusive white rabbit (thank you, Monty Python’s Search For The Holy Grail). This is like asking the mirror to make us beautiful, or the weatherman to send us rain. The freedom we so need to be able to love and to be happy eludes us, for we are seeking freedom from our thermometers when we should be pulling the key to the door out of our pockets. I know, I have suffered from this insanity too. Society is slap full of promises of ego strokes and happiness services and formulas. We want the paycheck without showing up for work, which just reveals one of the two glitches I am convinced we are born with; this glitch being the belief that there really is something called Something For Nothing; the other glitch in our messed up belief system, of course, being the desire to have the nonentity called Us’s And Thems’s, or, bigotry, be true. We really, really want these two false beliefs to be so. Why? Because I think they provide us with the justification we need to sin. But I digress.
I have to be free to be happy and to experience love. A slave is not in a position to experience either. Therefore, freedom is the key in our pockets that we must use in the lock of our self-imposed private tyrannies. Yes, only I can prevent unhappiness and unloving in my life. Oh dear, and I thought these conditions were brought about by exterior people and circumstances; but no, only I can chain myself in my own basement. What keeps me from happiness and love? Avoidance of my purpose. What reveals to me my purpose? Um, that would be my schoolmaster, which is the Law. Why do we need the Law? Because we are born lost; we are born not knowing our purpose. I am convinced we are all born with the two above beliefs glitched in. I can never remember a time when I did not either believe, or want to believe, either one, but both stand directly in the way of being able to see my purpose. The only way I have found around either belief is the Law. That “law of liberty” shows me the way out of my private hell, for it puts the horse back in front of my cart again, and I quit chasing what should be chasing me (“surely goodness and mercy shall FOLLOW me”).
Happiness and love do not give me purpose, so chasing them is futile. Purpose gives me both, but to find that I have to go to school. Torah puts the key to my freedom back in my hand. I have to turn it in the lock, however. Jesus does not do that for me, nor did He die so that I would not have to. Purpose is not a self serve dish, nor is it served to me. Purpose, come to find out, IS obedience. Happiness and love? Side effects. Who knew? Bet you weren’t born knowing that, either.
Cliff Notes again: we are not born knowing our purpose. Instead, I am convinced that we are born with two major impediments, or, beliefs, that stand directly in the way of being able to see our purpose. I am talking about what we have to be believing at some level to be able to justify sin to ourselves. We want to believe that there is such a thing as Something For Nothing. We also want to believe that there is a difference between ourselves and others. I call this the Us’s And Thems’s, or, bigotry. (Both, of course, are false, which makes us insane to believe them.) I think these beliefs also cause us to suffer from the insanity of thinking that happiness and love will give us purpose, so we chase both, when the truth of the matter is that only purpose can provide either. How, then, do we find purpose? The Law is the only source of this knowledge left in the world, and only obedience to it can fulfill our purpose.
Does the metaphor of a half full/half empty glass depend upon what is in the glass… sweet wine or bitter dregs? Must we learn to joyfully accept whatever God gives us to drink even if our taste buds never concur or do we drink simply because we must drink in order to live?
I choose awe.
(And He who created it!)
Respecfully disagreeing with you Skip, is my life situation and experience. about 2 years ago I began to apply Phil 4:8 to my tongue, while knowing I was beginning to change my thinking so I literally cast out immoral, negative and selfish thoughts. I had read a sermon series by Neville Johnson about the Sermon on the Mount and recognized the beatitudes were the first literal life instructions by the son of god to the nation prepared to become sons of god,which expanded later to the gentiles, and the blesseds in front of each of the lifestyle instructions would be fulfilled as mankind surrendered to their cross and obeyed the Great Teacher. Shortly after that, when people asked me how I was, I would say BLESSED. It brought new and different responses from strangers and friends when I concluded conversations with MAY GOD BLESS YOU. It was kind of like speaking the SHEMA over people, and positive repsonses came on their faces. It seems the word Bless and Blessed has some unique sound effect to people and within me. I am continuing this practice daily, as well as opening most conversations and greetings with SHALOM instead of Hi or Hello. So shalom!
I am so glad to here of your life change in direction. What a miracle in the making! Thanks for this.
Now, as to the Beatitudes, it is an unfortunate legacy of mis-interpretation that even suggests these are blessings and/or instructions for Kingdom living. See my book, The Lucky Life, which demonstrates that there is no textual evidence for such a claim. It is the result of the translation of the Greek (rather than Hebrew) into Latin and the subsequent 1500 years of Catholic teaching. You might enjoy the book as an exegetical exercise, although obviously it will not change the application you have experienced.
Thank you for today’s words of wisdom.
What does Proverbs 3 remind us, trust in God and knowknow/acknowledge him in every situation.
Laurita. and I thought it was only work that brought happiness. Or does it depend on what work we choose to do…
Seeker, being in the right place brings happiness. Many times more work only brings more misery. Therefore, it is not work, per se. It’s what you said, “what work we choose to do”. Work smart. If the work is not producing happiness, there is a good chance that it is not the right work, at the right time, in the right way, even though it may LOOK like righteousness. There is no way I can know what the right place at the right time is. No way. If I am not yoked, and acting my place as the second mule, and not the determiner, which is the lead mule, I still won’t know. I have to know the will of my Father, too, but that is not something that I can divine. I have to ask, and follow, minute by minute. Torah can show me the steps, but it still does not show me the order. That order is going to be determined by the last step. Definitely a yoke situation, which is continual faith. I will never know ahead of time. Skip says even heaven leaves that at least somewhat open. This, folks, is a real dance.
As Jetro invited Moses in the Prince of Egypt… We must learn to join the dance of life.
Simple prophecy hard to apply. The prophets told us that the Messiah would come Isaiah told us that he would suffer for our behalf when he did on the cross he said not my will but yours but even so prior to that in the garden no one could wait even one hour and pray with him. When he carried his cross he needed help. We need help too those around us need help but as we lay our down we will pick it up again in the end this is reverse thinking we lose to gain. Remembering we are a family no one should be alone ever prayer intercession keeps us connected keeps us living Keeps Us strong to the point where it’s the Lord and each member individually and corporately wow
As far as they go the eight points seem good but isn’t there a glaring and fatal absence in them, that being any direct mention of God?
Yes, there are hints of something from without ourselves in the words, “blessed, divine realm, supernal, and, gifted to us”, but ultimately it sounds extremely Humanistic. If there is not a direct acknowledgment that obedience to God is the source of our happiness all is vanity. (Isn’t there a whole book written on such uselessness when the sole purpose of the acquisition of wealth, power, fame and hedonism is happiness?)
How many men have striven their whole life to achieve their purpose; accomplished it and yet died unhappy? There is a blatant variable missing from this eight-point formula.
I am sure you refer to Ecclesiastes, which I will be lecturing on in Virginia Beach in a few weeks. Ecclesiastes does NOT suggest that HAPPINESS comes from obedience to God. Qohelet only says that this is all that, in the end, really makes any difference. He does NOT say it will make you happy. And perhaps that’s the point. Happiness is a HUMAN project. Introducing God into the picture in any direct way only means that all those humans who do not follow Torah are, ipso facto, unhappy. But that obviously is not the case. So let’s step back from our religious preoccupation and ask about human happiness. Then, after we settle that one, we can go on to JOY, something quite different than happiness and the real goal of spiritually aware Man.
Let’s do keep talking about happiness. I also want to be introduced to the human who has found happiness outside of obedience. I have yet to be introduced. I see a lot of unhappiness, however, as well as a lot of spaced out people who are employing altered states in an effort to find peace, but, truly happy? Really? The older I get, the less I believe it, for a TRULY happy immoral person seems to be a unicorn, a myth. Find one for me!
Wait, I think you made a false dichotomy here. Truly happy and non-religious does not mean truly happy and IMMORAL. What about the person who claims no religious affiliation but lives a life of integrity, compassion, honesty? Why consider only the difference between BELIEVER/HAPPY and UNBELIEVER/UNHAPPY?
Did I say “religious”? Tons of moral (um that would be loving) people are happily living in the light that they have opened their hearts to. YHVH says He has children everywhere. We will know them by their happiness – I do mean their love.
Right you are. Thanks.
I got sidetracked for about a week and am just trying to catch up on the TW’s that I missed and normally read each day. As I read this I was reminded of something I read recently that some in the community may already know, but it was new to me:
A pessimist is a person who see difficulties in every opportunity. A optimist is a person who sees opportunities in every difficulty.
Simple but true!