I’m a big fan of, and advocate for, therapy. I think every human should have a therapist to meet with and talk to. Some might need more sessions, and some might need fewer, but all would be well served by having a moment to sit with a professional and dig deep into their souls. I make time each week, or sometimes every other week, to meet with my therapist. I disclose this not only to be transparent, but to also destigmatize mental health care for all of us.
Over the years, my conversations with my therapists have been on all sorts of issues. I’m sure when I was much younger, I spoke more about my relationships with friends and teachers and my parents. As I got older, there were conversations about relationships, marriage, career and eventually about being a better parent. Over the course of all these years, I’ve unearthed an enormous amount of regret and have plunged headfirst into trying to find a path to self-forgiveness. It turns out we humans are very tough on ourselves and when we look into the magic mirror that shows us the within, we often see things we’re not happy with or proud of.
In the תורה/Torah we find the golden rule we’re all familiar with:לֹֽא־תִקֹּ֤ם וְלֹֽא־תִטֹּר֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י עַמֶּ֔ךָ וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י השם/You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow as yourself: I am ה’. (ויקרא יט:יח) When looking a bit closer at this text, we find something very deep, we’re not allowed to hold a grudge against others, and we are to love others as we love ourselves. If the recipe for not holding grudges to other people is loving them, then perhaps the recipe to not holding grudges against ourselves is self-love. In order to love others, we need to love ourselves. We know that and we live that. We know the more hurt and wounded we are, the less we’re capable of compassion and understanding of others. We know the more lost and wandering we are, the less capable we are of seeing people and how lost they’ve become. It’s when we sense we have value, and the ability to come back from bad things, that we become strong and capable of great love and support of others. This is an essential aspect of self-growth and self-realization.
In the words of Psalm 51:12: “Create a pure heart in me, God; and renew a true soul within me.” We come to God when we are crushed or when we need to be uplifted. We come because coming to God shows we matter. If God is concerned with our state and our behaviors, then we have value and worth to God. We turn to God because we recognize we can be better. The optimal word there must be “can” as in “it is 100% possible for us to be better”. It’s when we’re deflated and unable to see past our pain that we fail to recognize we have the power to be better and not drown ourselves in self-loathing. Earlier in the same Psalm (51) in verses four and five the psalmist states: “(4) Wash me thoroughly of my iniquity, and purify me of my sin; (5) for I recognize my transgressions, and am ever conscious of my sin.” We often find ourselves unable to move forward and are stuck in our own hurt and pain, which is the ever consciousness that’s being spoken of. When that happens, we would do well to look in the same mirror again and tell ourselves we’re not alone. We’re in good company with people all around us who have messed up. We need to look into the mirror and see the spark of Divinity that’s within all of us. We need to look and recognize that God is with us when we do wrong so we can change and do right.
I’d like to leave you with the words of my colleague, Rabbi Alan Lew, from his book This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared:
[I.] Self-forgiveness is the essential act of the High Holiday season. That’s why we need heaven. That’s why we need God. We can forgive others on our own. But we turn to God, Rabbi Eli Spitz reminds us, because we cannot forgive ourselves. We need to feel judged and accepted by a Power who transcends our limited years and who embodies our highest values. When we wish to wipe the slate clean, to finalize self-forgiveness, we need heaven – a sense of something or someone larger and beyond our self.
[II.] Self-forgiveness is difficult largely because we hold ourselves to such high standards, higher than it is possible to live up to. And it is precisely when we are hardest on ourselves that we are most tempted to bury our misdeeds – to hide from our reality, to deny weakness, to deny that we’ve done anything wrong.
[III.] The relentlessness of the High Holidays – the long days in synagogue, the constant repetition of the prayers, the fasting – wears down our defenses and helps us open to the truth of our lives. The aspect of the High Holidays that is most helpful in this regard is their holiness. The sense of the sacred is attenuated in the modern world, to say the least. Still, these are and have never stopped being the High Holy Days, the Days of Awe, the days that convey a quality of holiness we can all feel, even if we feel it only dimly. It is precisely this holiness that helps us forgive ourselves. These days create a context of holiness, and if we pay close attention, we begin to notice that everything in our lives is suffused with holiness, even those “faults” we thought we had to forgive ourselves for. Even that behavior we took to be wrongful, we now realize, has a holy spark at its center waiting to be released. This is the essence of self-forgiveness.
Pages 126 – 127
