Toward a Meaningful Life

Simon Jacobson

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780062013163
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: History

Toward a Meaningful Life is a spiritual road map for living based on the teachings of one of the foremost religious leaders of our time: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Head of the Lubavitcher movement for forty-four years and recognized throughout the world simply as "the Rebbe, " Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in June 1994, was a sage and a visionary of the highest order.

Toward a Meaningful Life gives people of all backgrounds fresh perspectives on every aspect of their lives—from birth to death, youth to old age; marriage, love, intimacy, and family; the persistent issues of career, health, pain, and suffering; and education, faith, science, and government. We learn to bridge the divisions between accelerated technology and decelerated morality, between unprecedented worldwide unity and unparalleled personal disunity. Although the Rebbe's teachings are firmly anchored in more than three thousand years of scholarship, the urgent relevance of these old-age truths to contemporary life has never been more manifest.

At the threshold of a new world where matter and spirit converge, the Rebbe proposes spiritual principles that unite people as opposed to the materialism that divides them. In doing so, he continues to lead us toward personal and universal redemption, toward a meaningful life, and toward God.

I

MAN

1

BODY AND SOUL

One Person, Two Worlds

The human spirit ascends on high; the spirit of the beast descends down into the earth.

—Eccelesiastes 3:21

Man can never be happy if he does not nourish his soul as he does his body.

—The Rebbe

A man visiting the Rebbe complained of a lack of meaningfulness in his life. Yes, he had a successful career and healthy family, but at the end of the day, he felt lonely and empty.

“Do you ever devote time to your soul?” the Rebbe asked him.

“How can I have time for my soul when I am so consumed with work and family?”

“There is an old saying,” the Rebbe replied, “that when two people meet, it is two souls against one body. Because bodies are self-centered by nature, they cannot join forces—each pursues its own physical needs. Souls, however, are selfless by nature, so when two people join forces, their souls converge. May I suggest that you and I resolve here and now to designate a time each day to study and pray, and do an additional good deed. This will nourish your soul and give focus and meaning to all that you do, rather than your being controlled by the random forces of your life.”

WHAT IS A SOUL?

Have you ever just burst out in tears for no apparent reason, finding yourself in deep sadness? That is the soft voice of your soul, crying out for attention, asking to be nourished with at least as much care as you nourish your body.

Have you ever experienced a truly sacred moment, when, despite the constant turmoil of life, you felt a profound sense of awe and belonging? That, too, is the voice of your soul, expressing a deep satisfaction with its intrinsic connection to the forces of spirituality.

We use the words body and soul constantly, in different contexts. But do we know what they really mean? What is the nature of soul? What is its relationship to the body?

The soul manifests the very reason for our existence; it is the one part of our being that directly reflects our connection to G-d, our creator. Even though it is not tangible and is hidden within the body, the soul is the very fabric of who we are. While the body encompasses the material aspects of our lives, the soul encompasses the spiritual. The body is driven primarily by having its physical needs met. This does not imply that the body is inherently bad; it is not. It was created by G-d and is initially neutral, with great potential for good. But it is the soul that energizes and guides the body to do good deeds and connect to the divine. The soul is transcendent by nature, for “the flame of G-d is the soul of man.”¹

There is a built-in dichotomy, therefore, between the tangible nature of the body and the transcendent nature of the soul. Look closely at the flame of a candle, and you will see an approximation of your soul—the flame licking the air, reaching upward, as if toward G-d. And yet the wick pulls it back to earth. Similarly, your soul is constantly reaching upward, while your body holds you back with its insistent demands for physical sustenance or gratification. The question for each of us is, Do we choose to be the flame that rises upward or the wick that holds us down?

To be a wholesome and healthy person, your body and soul must work in harmony. We need not choose one over the other, indulgence or abstinence; we can and must merge body and soul. And this means uniting the body and soul to fulfill the mission for which we were all put on earth: to lead a meaningful, productive, and virtuous life by making this physical world a comfortable home for spirituality and G-dliness. Every one of us fulfills this mission using his or her unique abilities and talents, whether a person is a teacher or a parent, a businessperson or a scientist. We must all seek to become aware of our mission and actualize it by conducting our lives from minute to minute, from day to day, from year to year in accordance with G-d’s laws.

The dichotomy of body and soul is everywhere we look, and there are many labels for it: form and function, matter and energy, materialism and spirituality. In a book, for instance, the words on the page are the body and the ideas behind them the soul. The same is true of every aspect of our universe, because the universe itself is composed of a body and a soul—its material components and the spiritual components that give it life. So the first step toward creating unity throughout the universe, the first step toward spiritualizing the material, is to first unite your own body and soul.

Leading a meaningful life means being able to pierce the outer, material layer and connect to the energy within. This is not an easy task, for the body operates with sensory tools (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch), while the soul traffics in the suprasensory (emotions, conscience, intelligence, and most important, the subliminal spiritual forces). And the energy within is not a quantifiable energy as defined by physics—there is an element of mystery to it that defies measurement. It is not just a force; it is the force we call life. And there are elements of life that we have just begun to discover.

Look around you today. It is obvious that many of us are searching for inner peace, happiness, or calm, searching for our soul. But are we using the right tools with which to search? Because we have grown so reliant on our sensory tools, we often feel as though they are the only ones at our disposal. But how difficult it is to try to grasp the meaning of our souls using only the five senses! It is like using your eyes to hear a piece of music. Still, because the call of the soul is so persistent, we never stop searching.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO KNOW THAT I HAVE A SOUL?

Because your sensory tools are so predominant, you almost need to turn them down in order to experience that which is within. If you were to suspend your senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, what would you be left with? Initially, this may be a terrifying thought—that you would be left with nothing. But you are not left with nothing: you are left with yourself. We only need our senses to interact with the world outside ourselves. You don’t need eyes to see yourself or ears to hear yourself. You know you are there, without using any sensory tools; it is simply an awareness, a totally separate sense.

So we are fully alive without our senses. Without the soul, though, there is no life. Yes, there is the bodily struggle to survive, but life as we understand it is all about the pursuit of meaning, the search for our soul, the quest for G-d. When a scientist explores the laws of nature, he feels compelled to lift the curtain and see what is going on beyond the limits of our external senses. When a young child pulls apart a toy, he is looking for the same thing: the secret that makes it work. This curiosity is a staple of human nature.

It is the same with our own beings. If we don’t acknowledge all the forces that drive us, including the soul, we will never understand ourselves. And if we are not aware of how the soul works, we will be unable to nourish it. Fortunately, when the soul is starved for nourishment, it lets us know. No matter how much one may try to silence the soul, distracting it through material bliss, it will always cry out, letting you know that a part of your life is missing. This may take the guise of anxiety, aimlessness, an emptiness. A yearning for something more.

Without experiencing the soul, there can be no personal growth, because it is the soul that expresses dissatisfaction, which is the motivation for growth. The body, as long as its own selfish needs are being met, has no desire for transcendence. The soul gives your life direction and unity. The material world—that is, the world of the body—is fragmented; the soul is the hub around which all our physical activities unite. If you were to observe your body’s material drives during the course of a day, you would see it going around in circles or in jagged bursts of desire, randomly picking the stimuli that attract it at that given moment. The soul connects all these fragments; it connects the trivial to the paramount, and the material to the spiritual.

The soul also teaches humility. Whereas the body is selfish, the soul is humble. It provides us with the capacity to rise above ourselves, to see others’ needs and to respond with sensitivity. Without a soul, the body’s selfish desires can enslave and ultimately destroy us. The soul is our transcendent side, always reaching upward like the candle flame, always trying to reconnect us with G-d. The body may try to keep us earthbound, but the soul has the power to lift us above and beyond.

A beloved rabbi, when he was yet a young child, was playing with a group of other children who were climbing a ladder. All his friends were afraid to climb to the top, but he had no fear. Later, his grandfather asked him, “Why were you not afraid to climb and the others were?”

“Because as they climbed, they kept looking down,” he replied. “They saw how high they were, and they were frightened. As I climbed, I kept looking upward. I saw how low I was, and it motivated me to climb higher.”

WHY IS THERE SUCH CONFLICT BETWEEN BODY AND SOUL?

The body and soul are in perpetual battle; all human conflict stems from the dichotomy of body and soul, the tension between our corporeal selves and the need for transcendence. Why is this so?

Because G-d created the body and soul in two distinct phases, taking dust from the earth and then blowing into it the breath and soul of life.² Why did He create our body and soul separately, unlike all the other creatures? So that man would always recognize that there are two distinct forces in life, the material and the spiritual. The material side is lowly, like the dust of the earth, while the spiritual side comes from the deepest place possible—from G-d.

In the beginning, body and soul were united. The body recognized its role as a vehicle for the soul’s expression, and the soul recognized its need for the body to actualize G-d’s will. Adam and Eve, therefore, “were not ashamed” of their nakedness,³ for it was as innocent as the nakedness of a newborn child.

The first sin, though, created a self-consciousness; the independent selfish ego was born, divorced from G-d’s will and intentions. Adam and Eve’s “eyes were opened” and they became ashamed of their nakedness,⁴ because they experienced their bodies as a distinct entity and they sensed their sexuality as separate from their divine mission. One human agenda was split into two: our material desires and our spiritual desires. Since that moment, our mission includes restoring the harmony between body and soul.

So we are really composed of two distinct elements, like the twin brothers Jacob and Esau, battling within their mother’s womb. Jacob was the innocent man, the scholar, while Esau was the warrior, the man of the field.⁵ The body is the warrior within us, the aggressive force with the power to tame the elements of this world. In this material world, the body serves to protect the vulnerable soul. A body without a soul, on the other hand, would be a dangerous aggressor with neither focus nor conscience.

And yet the split persists. To the soul, the body is initially a hulking presence in constant need of indulgence. While the soul wants to reach for spiritual ecstasy, the body needs to eat and sleep. To the body, the soul is initially a nuisance, a conscience, that is always limiting the body’s behavior.

Why would G-d create the potential for such a conflict? Because the soul needs to be challenged and the body refined, and the tension between them ultimately brings out the best in both. Ultimately, the body and the soul must realize that they are each stronger with each other than without. It is the very resistance of the body that brings out the creativity of the soul, while the soul’s guidance allows the body to use its strength for the good. A rushing river has a certain amount of energy, but when the river is dammed and that energy is harnessed, it is multiplied many, many times over.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THIS CONFLICT?

The first step in dealing with the conflict between body and soul is to acknowledge that the struggle exists, and be aware of the two distinct forces. As long as we think we are a single entity, we are existentially confused, and that confusion causes paralysis. We shuttle between the demands of the soul and the body without ever recognizing the need to fuse the two. One day we are virtuous, the next we are selfish; one day we are motivated, the next we procrastinate.

We relieve the tension between the body and soul not by negating one of them but by integrating them toward fulfilling...