[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] {Disarmed} Fwd: I want to send you a special blessing (from me, Michael Lerner)

[KroegerD at aol.com]

A Yum Kippur message worth reading:

This may not be a holy  season for you, but for those of us who observe it,
tonight, Friday night Sept.  22nd,  is the commencement of ten days of deep
reflection on our own lives,  who we have been, and who we wish to be. And
also a time for deep reflection on  our society, religious institutions,
politics, economics, and culture. On our  web site at www.tikkun.org we have
a copy of the workbook we put into Tikkun  magazine as a way of helping
direct our attention at some of the central issues  that each of us needs to
face (and I¹m sure you can add more‹in fact, if you  have ideas for how to
revise this for next year, please send them to me).

In the Jewish tradition, we say that the ³book of life² is open from now
till the end of Yom Kippur on Monday night, October 2nd. In that book of
life  our fate for the next year gets written and then at the end of Yom
Kippur it is sealed. In Tikkun, we¹ve transformed that imagery into a deep
spiritual truth:  we are taking a ten day period to examine what changes are
needed in our lives,  and how seriously we will take the (full year) process
of making those changes.  By condensing the period of heightened attention
to ten days, we are making sure  that we have a time when these issues are
totally ³front burner² in our  consciousness. If we haven¹t been able to
make any progress in self-awareness  and steps toward change in those ten
days, then in a certain sense our fate is  sealed: we will continue to
receive the karmic consequences of being the way  that we are at the current
moment, and to the extent that we want that to  change, this ten day period
becomes a spiritual retreat and intensive short-term  psychotherapy to work
out what we need to be. This is not just an intellectual  trip‹it¹s a real
focus on our emotional lives and our spiritual lives as well as  our
societal lives.

You don¹t have to be Jewish, of course, to use these  days in that way.

And you also don¹t have to be Jewish to be part of the  course that I¹m
teaching in Berkeley and San Francisco the weekend of October  13-15: An
Introduction to a Judaism of Love. It¹s my take on Judaism and how its
insights might be of value to everyone (not just Jews). I¹d particularly
recommend it to Christians and Muslims who think about theological issues,
to  people who are spiritual seekers of some sort, and to Jews who never
heard a  version of Judaism that made sense to them. So even if this doesn¹t
particularly  appeal to you, I am almost certain you know someone who would
be excited enough  about this to want to come out here to do it. To
register:  www.BeytTikkun.org.

I want to bless you that this coming year be a year  of deep personal
fulfillment for you, a year of health, a year of love, a year  in which you
become much more of who you are when you are the fullest embodiment  of the
God or spiritual energy or loving power of the universe. And I want to
bless all of us that in this year we see some major movement toward societal
sanity, environmental responsibility, peace and non-violence, social
justice,  human rights and a flourishing of hope overcoming fear.

Love and  blessings, and as we say in the Jewish world, shana tova u¹metuka,
a good and  sweet year.

Michael

Happy New Year 5767

Michael

Rabbi Michael Lerner RabbiLerner at tikkun.org