Josh Gold
“..and inside the cave found a vast treasure trove of such immense wealth that it could have changed his life, a long time ago. Everything could have been so different.”
“Lamed-Vav Tzadikim: Sacredness in the Ordinary”
“It is said that at all times there are 36 unique people in the world, and that were it not for them, all of them, if even one of them was missing, the world would come to an end. These 36 are referred to as the Lamed-Vav Tzadikim. Tzadikim means a righteous soul.
A Talmudic statement to the effect that in every generation 36 righteous “greet the Shechinah,” the Divine Presence .
These hidden saints held to keep God from destroying the world on account of their virtue and faith. Legend maintains that they are each extremely modest and upright, often concealing their identity behind a mask of ignorance and poverty, and usually earning their livelihood by the sweat of their brow. They are the cobblers, carpenters, farmers and janitors. These are the salt of the earth.
On very rare occasions, one of them is “discovered” by accident, in which case the secret of their identity must not be disclosed.
The lamed-vavniks do not themselves know that they are one of the 36. In fact, tradition has it that should a person claim to be one of the 36, that is proof positive that he is certainly not one. Since the 36 are each exemplars of anavah, humility, having such a virtue would preclude against one’s self-proclamation of being among the special righteous. The 36 are simply too humble to believe that they are one of the 36.
Since no one can be quite sure who these special people are, all we can do is guess. That speculation immediately increases the potential candidates a million fold or more. Take this a step further and anybody could be one of the 36 (“that jerk who’s driving in front of me at 30 mph in a 60 mph zone”). This kind of reasoning comes awfully close to the Hindu concept of everyone-is-divine, which is expressed in such greetings as “Namaste” or “Jai Bhagwan” both of which roughly translate as: “The Divine in me bows to the divine within you”.
Each member of the Lamed-Vav is an ordinary person performing simple acts of compassion and kindness. The Way of Goodness is not lit as clearly by a star far away in the sky as it is by millions of shining candles along the path. Anyone you know could be a Lamed-Vav. It could be you, but you would not know it.
Abraham Harold Maslow said, “The sacred is in the ordinary…it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbours, friends, and family, in one’s own backyard…travel may be a flight from confronting the scared–this lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.”
Perhaps through simple acts of grace, kindness and compassion from one to another we can keep the world intact and there will be peace.
The ordinary is where I find the sacred and heroic.” —Marcus James Fidel, MD
Just one of so many tiring examples: In the change rooms at the pool where I go to swim, an accountant and a committee of frightened people have deemed that a shower should take one and a half minutes. It then auto disconnects with people half rinsed of soap suds, with 30 seconds of pause in case you have the temerity to press the water flow button again. So people wait for the flawed reasoning of this fear and lack based sad person’s automated misuse of technology anyhow, and repeat, often walking out half way through the second shower. And then the water runs for a minute for nothing.
Time is wasted. Water is wasted. People’s intelligence is insulted. The lack of trust screams loudly in the silence of the deceitful act. All because some sad pathetic caricatures of humanity participated and agreed in flawed thinking. Inspiration fearing committee thinkers crippled by bias, prejudice and fatal ignorance they chose to posses, did not take the trouble to use the facilities themselves in the manner that a reasonable person would.
Why choose to espouse poverty thinking? This sad mind state reflects much of cramped, unhappy, spiteful, constricted fear-of-lack that exists nowhere other than in minds seeking to stay prisoners of The Matrix, or Plato’s Cave of the blinded. These, knowing no better, “forgive them, they know not what they do,” seek to generate a false reality for others IN A UNIVERSE OF UNIMAGINABLY INFINITE ABUNDANCE.
Where and how did this mental, moral and spiritual disease originate?
That people should work a thousand times harder manufacturing poverty where none exists, in the face of eternal abundance constitutes an ungrateful blasphemy, does it not?
“That jerk who’s driving in front of me at 30 mph in a 60 mph zone..” As with supermarket checkouts, what a wonderful opportunity to practice finding your core in dynamic centred meditation. More so when arriving late someone is yelling at you for something that in the grand scheme of things will not make a jot of difference!
It is patience and compassion such individuals need. Younger I used to yell, but that only makes them more vitriolic. It begins by being patient and forgiving with ourselves first.
Rudyard Kipling encapsulated spiritual maturity in his perennial poem, “IF”
“IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!”
In today’s world it would end thus: “Then you will finally have become “human,” my friend!
There is an allegorical myth of the person who inherited a key and sat begging in squalor all his life outside of a locked cave door. When the beggar was very old, following a lifetime of begging, a passing child asked him, “What is that thing near to your heart dangling from a chain around your neck.”
The beggar responded, “I do not know,” I inherited it.”
The child, curious as all children naturally are, suggested the obvious, “It may be a key, you should try it on that door to the cave.”
But being fearful, the beggar refused, contradicted and made lots of logical arguments about, frightening possibilities and “what if’s.” After all, he was older and, “knew better,” than a child.
As it happened, the day before the beggar died the child, now a wise person, was passing by again and suggested, “What have you got to lose? You are dying. Why don’t you try the key in the lock just to find out?”
So the beggar did, and inside the cave found a vast treasure trove of such immense wealth that it could have changed his life a long time ago. Everything could have been so different.
Then he died, thinking regretfully, “I could have”, “I should have,” “I might have,” and, “Why did I not.”
Love songs and poems suggest that, “love” is to be found somewhere else, outside ourselves, something marriage has mostly and repeatedly demonstrated is not true.
Another may indeed trigger the better part of ourselves, that treasure trove within. For are we not all kindred spirits? But in projecting it, we lose our grounding, our universal connectedness by seeking it where it does not exist.
In claiming it, centering it and sharing it, it comes back multiplied from pretty much everywhere. An interesting lesson from the universe.
Perhaps the 36 Lamed-Vav Tzadikim have the potential to be seven billion and, “That jerk who’s driving in front of me at 30 mph in a 60 mph zone,” is just what I need at that particular moment to bring out the best in me!
Perhaps when each of the seven billion realizes this fact, the universe will unleash its infinite abundance without reservation, unlock that cave door and this world will become very different from the fear, lack, shame, intolerance and war riddled hell that it has been made into for everyone else, by the mentally, morally and spiritually unwell.
Perhaps you and I can start noticing the obvious right now. It may make a difference! Where two or more gather and give their energy to a belief, that belief becomes real and ends up controlling us.
What are we going to choose?
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