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Robert Monk

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Robert is Currently Reading

Robert Monk is currently reading

The Second Sex

by Simone de Beauvoir

bookshelves: philosophy, currently-reading, psychology

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Robert Monk said: " This is outstanding writing, an adult introduction to psychoanalysis, Marxist philosophy, and existentialism, all on the path to a classic statement of feminism.

Coming from the existentialist perspective of constructed social values, the arguments f ...more "

May 12, 2012 08:07AM · see review

Robert Monk is currently reading

This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation

by Alan Lew

bookshelves: currently-reading, philosophy

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Robert Monk said: " I give it 3 stars for now 'cause I'm only 50 pages in.

I'm finding it a good introduction to contemporary Jewish religious thinking/practice, because of its references and brief discussions of the different holidays and -- as I think -- its way of spe I give it 3 stars for now 'cause I'm only 50 pages in.

I'm finding it a good introduction to contemporary Jewish religious thinking/practice, because of its references and brief discussions of the different holidays and -- as I think -- its way of speaking to the kinds of practices readers are actually experiencing today.

As usual, I also like much of what I learn about the Jewish calendar and the way cycles and time(of year) play into what you're trying to do spiritually at different times.

Some sketches of things that strike me along the way:

Days of Awe as 'dress rehearsal for death'.
This sounds terrible, and is, in the radical sense that doesn't necessarily mean 'bad'. Dying is so inherent in who we are that one of our great tasks in living has to be to come to see it as an essential part of this good life we are leading. To die well becomes much easier if a) we have lived well and b) we have prepared ourselves and those we love, to accept it. All the steps of Teshuva [(re)turning/repentence] strike me as very well suited to staying atoned with those around us (prepared to leave them, and preparing of them to let us go). And even if we may not have lived a good life, if we have practiced a little and learned something of how to atone with God, if we have found a way to feel our place amid the pervasiveness of all Being, then we may be able to die unburdened from guilt and hang-ups, through the liberation that comes when we are able to be wholly present in ourselves while ALSO feeling ourselves to be in the presence of something that pervades all being. This simultaneous self-and-Everything reminds me of the book "Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart".

"No matter how great a person may be, he cannot leave his real home. All of his judgments are derived from there." -- Rabbi Solevetchik
This is so particular, unique (new), and true-ringing. Its implications move outward and inward at the same time. I think of myself as perspicacious and right-judging, with uncommon ability to detach myself and my interests from judgments. All of that could even be true, yet my judging could still be derived from home (and that might not make it false, either). Lew quotes this amidst discussion of returning (home), and its function as a step at the end of the annual Jewish calendar (and in end-of-life rituals). It speaks both to our limits as spirits in time, and to a well we can go to, a place to atone and reinforce ourselves with the part of ourselves we can never change -- our true home.

"Forgiveness means giving up our hopes for the past."
Insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results. We position ourselves to relive trauma in an unconscious effort to relive the same past but have it somehow be good instead of bad (our unconscious is indomitably sly but not always wise). For things less traumatic, we want to be vindicated, in the past: impossible! We want our role to have been the good and the right and the true (truth-telling), even if it probably never is completely any of those things. We hope for all this naturally, and only by reflection, returning and repentance -- begun with letting go of hope about the past -- can we form atoned beliefs and new behaviors for the present. ...more "

Dec 21, 2010 03:29PM · see review