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Travel Brochures and the World to Come Rabbi B. Shafier
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"Jamaica: White beaches, cloudless skies, endless oceans. Once you go, you know."
If you watch people when they look at these pamphlets, they often get a far-off gaze in their eyes as they imagine themselves traveling to those exotic lands. This is interesting because most people who pick them up have no intention of ever going to those places. They're nice to look at, interesting to see, but it has nothing to do with me.
This seems to be the way we view the World to Come. Intriguing! Fascinating! I love the descriptions. But it has nothing to do with me. Don't get me wrong; being close to the Divine and enjoying eternal bliss sound wonderful. It's just that I have no intention of being there. You see, by the time it happens, I will be dead. My nishamah might be there. My soul could end up there. But me? I will be dead and gone. So this whole discussion is interesting, but irrelevant.
I AM A PHYSICAL BEING
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes "must-reading". Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here. Oh, granted, I have a soul — whatever that is — but it has little to do with me. I am this body. Ever since I can remember, I've been inside this body. Everything that I have ever experienced is through it. I guess this is all there is. And life seems to confirm this. If you punch my arm, it hurts me. If I stub my toe, I feel pain. I and my body are one. So obviously, when this body is buried in the ground, I am dead. Gone. Extinct. And the World to Come is irrelevant.
Of course, we are supposed to believe otherwise. The problem is that in our heart of hearts, this is how we feel. The question is: how do we get our feelings in line with our beliefs? Here is an illustration that may help.
WINNING THE LOTTO
If we could stop time and ask what you were feeling at that moment, you would probably answer, "Elation. Great joy. Fantastic happiness. I mean, I WON!!!" Then if we were to ask you who felt it, you'd say, "What do you mean who felt it? I felt it."
That's true, but was it your arms, your head, or your chest that felt it? Was it your back, your shoulders, or your legs?
The answer is none of them did. You felt it. Even if your legs were numb and your arms were tied up, you would still feel that tremendous sense of joy. So who felt it? Not your body, not your physical housing — you felt it. You felt pleasure. You were ecstatic. That sense of pleasure isn't dependent upon your body. In fact, it has no connection to your physical state of being. But you experienced it.
On the other side of the spectrum, imagine that someone is screaming at you, calling you every nasty name in the book. "You worthless excuse of a human being. I didn't even know that people as low as you could exist." Hearing those words causes you pain. You feel hurt. It's not your heart that feels it. It's not your nerves or your synapses that feel embarrassed. You do. True, you feel with your fingers, taste with your tongue, and smell with your nose, but it is you that experiences it. You are the one who occupies the body and controls its destiny. You are the master of the ship.
There are many things that you feel that aren't physical in nature. The full gamut of emotions, from love to hate to rage to jealousy, are things that you feel. You feel proud of your accomplishments. You feel appreciative of kind gestures from others, and you feel hurt by cruel words that people say. It isn't your heart that feels the pain. Euphemistically, we use expressions like a broken heart, but what we really mean is that you have been hurt.
You enjoy listening to music and looking at beautiful landscapes. You feel a sense of awe when you view a majestic mountain. You are moved to tears by the sheer power of the ocean. You are grieved when a friend dies. You are ecstatic when your sister has a baby.
The single most life transforming thought a person can ever come to is that when your body dies, you will live on. You — with all of your feelings, thoughts, and memories — step out of the coat called the body.
JewishWorldReview.com regularly publishes uplifting articles. Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Interested in a private Judaic studies instructor — for free? Let us know by clicking here.
Comment by clicking here. JWR contributor Rabbi B. Shafier is the author, most recently, of Stop Surviving, Start Living, from which this essay was excerpted.
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© 2011, Rabbi B. Shafier | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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