I have a confession to make, and I’m a little afraid to do it, because it might burst your bubble a bit. But we’re nothing if not honest on Soulful Jewish Living, and so I feel like I need to come clean.
I’m not as good a mindfulness practitioner as you might think.
I know, I know: You probably expect that I’m this Yoda-like figure who spends most of my day meditating and communing with Divinity and making things levitate (okay, maybe not that). You might think that I wake up and perfectly practice all the things we teach here: I open my eyes with intention, I express gratitude to the Creator for another day, I’m perfectly present in every moment, I’m basically Mary Poppins.
If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
The truth is that I work on this stuff just as much as anyone else. When I tell you I’m on the journey with you, I really mean it. I have to work at this, just like everybody.
I find that one of the things I have to work at most is not becoming distracted: By my thoughts, by literal and metaphorical shiny objects, and, of course, most of all by that shiniest of shiny objects, my phone (and my computer). Yes, your mindful host is guilty of wasting away time scrolling on Instagram or going down some internet rabbit hole and then wondering, 45 minutes later, what happened?! While the practices we talk about here help a lot, it’s work, and my batting average is far from perfect.
I say this for a couple of reasons. First, it’s to reassure you: we’re all working on this (okay, maybe you don’t have to work at it—if so, call me, because you should be hosting this podcast!). The second, and related reason, is to reassure all of us that this isn’t new: people have been suffering from the inability to stay on course since Adam and Eve, who couldn’t even manage to hold it together for an hour before they messed up.
All of that brings us to the second of the Ten Commandments, which we’re exploring during this miniseries. The Torah recounts God as saying, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Today I want to explore how we can understand this instruction as a statement about mindful awareness.
Last week, exploring the first of the ten, we talked about grounding in the reality of the Oneness–capital O–that grounds all of existence. That’s the starting point, and our aspiration is to stay connected to that all the time. But, like so many good intentions, our minds can wander from this one. So along comes the second of the Ten Commandments to say: Hey, remember that intention from last week? To stay connected and grounded in that awareness of the Big-O Oneness? Come back to it–and keep coming back to it, every time you slip.
In the Book of Psalms, we find an expression of this same idea, but in much more poetic form: Shiviti Hashem l’negdi tamid, I have set YHVH—the source of being, the breath of life, God–I set YHVH before me always. In Jewish mystical practice, this verse is pretty central. You can find it written above the ark in many synagogues, and lots of Jewish artists have made “shiviti”s for people to put on their wall.
The point is to help remind ourselves of this commandment: not to become distracted, not to put things at the center of our lives that aren’t grounded in that Oneness that animates the universe. Find yourself too focused on work? Shiviti. Distracted by TikTok? Shiviti? Just feeling uncentered, what we call in Hebrew pizur nefesh—an unfocused, scattered sense of yourself? You can always come back: Shiviti.
I think that’s what this second commandment really means: Now that you’ve grounded in the Oneness, come back to it as much as you can—even as you know that your attention will wander.
To help do that, I want to review one of my very favorite basic Jewish meditation practices.
As usual, find a comfortable position. It should help you feel awake and aware, present.
If you like, gently close your eyes or soften your gaze.
And now take a few good deep breaths. Allow your body to arrive. Allow your mind to settle.
If it’s comfortable for you, make a kavvanah, an intention, to be present with the breath. In and out. In and out. In and out. Aware of the air coming in through your nostrils and out through your mouth.
Just be present with it, noticing the rising and falling of the belly and the chest, perhaps. In and out.
After a little while, it’s likely that your attention may have wandered. Maybe it went to something you need to do later today: what am I going to have for dinner? Did I remember to take the garbage out? What about that email I have to send?
This is how the mind works. We set a kavvanah, an intention, and far more often than not, we stray from it.
When we become aware that our mind has wandered, that’s the gift of awareness. And, it’s our opportunity to gently bring our attention back to our kavannah, to do this practice of shiviti. We can align our attention with our intention. And when we do that, we’re realigning with the Oneness. We’re practicing the Second Commandment.
The Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, taught that wherever your mind is–there you are. So if we want to place Divinity at the center of our lives, we have to bring our full awareness—in body, mind, and heart—into the work. To quote the hokey pokey, that’s what it’s all about.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.