Saturday, July 10, 2010

Original Incompletion & More vs Enough


As this world was created incomplete, so was man.
Original Incompletion.
Man’s assignment is to continue to complete himself (becoming more godly) via his ‘soul curriculum’ and, in doing so, complete the world (spiritualize the material) for re-ascension.

But this incompletion intensifies the fear of extinction causing man to seek physical immortality, in effect, to be God (a quest as old as Babel as new as Richard Branson). The principle strategy to achieve this immortality to extinguish the fear of bodily extinction (or at least palliate it) is acquisition (‘Cain’ as in Cain & Abel, Wells’ Citizen Kane, or Countrywide’s Chairman of the Board).
Acquisition is the framework/filter of action, whether in crass Duddy Kravitz conniving or genteel academic cut throat smiles (least I be redundant) that is fear rather than faith driven. Some Judaic thought finds faith – not courage – to be the opposite of fear as courage is a derivative of faith.
Derived from acquisition compounded by the incorrect feelings of defect/deficiency of incompletion is the never ending ‘if only’ More.
And of course, one ‘more,’ one ‘if only’ solved, another ‘if only,’ ‘more’ is promoted as acquisition cannot buy immortality (though a few vanity monuments).

Where there is no flour, there is no Torah; where there is no Torah there is no flour.
Talmud saying

Enough balances this material short visit and its exigencies of daily material life in dialectic with faith and remembering our assignment to continue to complete our incompletions. Enough, in and of itself, requires the courage of faith in the face of the daily surrounding tsunami framework of ‘More.’
(The irony is, in time, More becomes less – “more, better, now becomes less, worse, later” and that’s the less-on. Furthermore, as one Rabbi stated, ‘the more possessions, the more worries’ but that’s another story.)
The Enough framework frees man from running up the down escalator of ‘more’ while meeting the requirements of material life during one’s short stay.

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