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More About Me: The Ongoing Lifelong Search For Your Essential Self – By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
WHAT I WOULDN’T give to know more about me. I really hunger for it. I mean, who am I, really? It’s not that I don’t recognize myself when I look in a mirror, or don’t answer when I hear my name called. I know the name on my driver’s license is mine, and when I see a picture of myself, I recognize it.
To a point. In fact, the earlier the picture, the less so. I mean, I know the picture is me when I was much younger because that’s what I have been told. Sometimes I can even remember the clothes, or the place the picture was taken. But other than that, and when I don’t recall anything, it’s like I’m looking at the picture of someone else. I just don’t relate to it, and I feel I should be able to.
It’s kind of a natural amnesia. Obviously the memories are there, tucked away somewhere deep in my brain. I might even be able to invoke them if I think hard enough or return to some place from the past that can jog my memory. But for the most part, I draw a blank, even though everything I am today is the product of all that past.
So I once took a trip down memory lane. I decided to try to recall my earlier years somewhat, and collected pictures and stories from them. And even though it was at best very partial, it worked somewhat, and quite automatically. As I reached out to my past I found my past reaching out to me, and where we connected, it felt like going home…to me.
You know what is amazing?
How little we know ourselves.
You know what’s even more amazing?
How little we think we have to know ourselves.
Everyday, billions of people just take for granted that they are who they are, and that’s all that matters. If they act “out of character,” and they all do at some time, it’s just a bug in the program, and usually someone else’s fault. Besides, what’s out of character if you don’t really know who the real character is?
But it’s more complicated than this. The problem doesn’t begin with birth. Our bodies may be new each time we’re born (yes, each time), but our souls, the essence of who we really are, are always the same. They’ve already lived multiple times in different bodies, in different periods of history, with totally different experiences.
But it’s the same soul each time, or at least a part of it. The journey may seem different for each body, but it’s one long expedition for our souls through them all. It’s one very long passage through history with a single goal that began the first time we came into this world, and will finish the last time we do.
And most people haven’t a clue what it is. Most people have no idea that they are here to accomplish something very specific, other than to survive. The outside world distracts them away completely from their inside world, unless some kind of personal crisis forces them to take a look, and usually with the help of some very well paid shrink.
They should take a low paid kabbalist instead.
Some folks out east get it, a little. They divorce themselves from the material world in order to stay focused on the spiritual one. They get into things like meditation to shut out the outside noise to become better attuned to the inside silence. Let’s face it, they’re a lot more serene for it. No one out there takes anti-depressants.
But serenity is only one goal, at least for a Jew. Being one with nature and yourself is a great and worthy objective. However, it does not necessarily provide the most important knowledge necessary for a totally meaningful stint in this world. A spiritual one, yes. A truly meaningful one, not exactly.
For example, Kabbalah teaches that when a person dies, angels meet them in the grave. They come with only one question which, at first, seems easy to answer. They ask a person, “What is your name?”
My name? I have at least two in this lifetime, Hebrew and English. I had different ones in previous lifetimes, which I obviously don’t know. Which one do the angels come for? Do they want all of them?
No, none of those names. The angels have come for one name only, because this name stays the same in each incarnation. Kabbalah calls it the Shem b’Tuma, the Impure Name, and it has a lot more to say about why we’re here in this world than any name your parents could give you, even if they were divinely inspired.
Because, as random as life may seem and as insignificant as we may feel, we would not be here if we didn’t have to fix something. And whatever we have come back to fix has less to do with our Shem b’Kedushah, our holy Hebrew names our parents gave us at birth, than our impure name, the one that points out our inherent spiritual shortcoming.
So, sure, take a trip down memory lane. But when you do, lookout for signs of spiritual weakness along the way that define your personal challenge in life. More than likely, the pictures that remain are the ones when you looked your best. Enjoy them, but the ones you need should reveal the opposite…your spiritual vulnerabilities. They aren’t the essence of who we are, but for all-intents-and-purposes, they impact our lives as if they are.
Knowing what they are is true empowerment. Knowing what they are is knowing yourself intimately.
