Weekly Consciousness Tune Ups
In 1973, just days before the Yom Kippur War, Israeli intelligence received many communications indicating that Syrian and Iraqi forces were mobilizing. Yet the chief of military intelligence at the time, Eliahu Zaira, said it’s not happening. He and his team believed, with complete certainty, that the threats were not true, that there was no need to fear, that a war was simply not happening. They claimed to have received information that appeared contrary to the rest of the communication.
This incident is referred to as “The Conception” and was heavily investigated back in the day.
Quite literally, on the night before Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Israel, where traffic literally ceases and silence and serenity permeates the streets of the entire country, telegrams from Cairo and Damascus were sent to Israel, stating that they would be attacking tomorrow. Hundreds of thousands of lives later, it became obvious that the threats were real.
Thousands dead, tens of thousands wounded, and all because someone, somewhere, had complete certainty in something false.
This is a dramatic illustration of a simple point. All too often, we get locked into belief systems and are blinded by those beliefs, as though it’s March 8 and your friend is insisting it’s the 4th of July - even though all of the calendars, clocks and computers say otherwise.
We need to know sometimes we are wrong. We must have total certainty in the path we’re on, in the way we live our lives, but not in other things.
Have you ever found yourself in the midst of an argument, and you can no longer hear the other person? As though your ears actually turn off? In those moments, it’s obvious how we block off everything we hear because we are too blocked in.
But we also need to watch out for the more subtle shut off valves within.
Something doesn’t let us budge, and as my father and teacher often says, “for all the right reasons” we hurt, blame, and often cause damage to ourselves and others. There is no doubt that Zaira thought he was doing the right thing, and that he believed his decision would do no harm - quite the opposite. But again, we need to come to terms with the fact that sometimes, even with the best intentions, we are wrong.
The person we are right now, with both our Light and our limitations, exists because we are locked in to certain things. When we open ourselves up to other things, people, opinions, stories, facts, and details; then we can really let the Light in.
All the best,
Yehuda
72 Name of the Week
chet hey lamed
34. forget thyself
I now transcend the limits of my own being. I cling to the Tree of Life. Happiness finds me now that my ego is out of the spotlight. I can get out of my own way, letting go of all stubbornness.
