Reb Jeff
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Learning about Jewish Prayer from Yoga

8/24/2011

 
I think I found my new yoga teacher today. Scott at geoYoga in Stuart has a quirky sense of humor to go along with a deep understanding of the spiritual underpinnings of the practice. Also, he completely wore me out with a long class in the Florida heat.

It was something he said, though, near the end of the class today that really caught my attention. "It is in our practice that we discover our most authentic selves. It is the goal of every spiritual practice to do so."

I've been thinking all day about how much that applies to the practice of prayer in Judaism. By entering deeply into the words of prayer, we discover ourselves connected to a reality far greater than ourselves, yet, paradoxically, a part of ourselves. My own most meaningful prayer experiences have been those in which I found myself uttering the words effortlessly, as if they flowed from a place within me like water spilling from an open faucet. In such moments, prayer feels like an expression of a deeper self, one that underlies the masks we present to the world to project our desires and to hide our fears.

This is what prayer does and can do. It helps us to answer the most simple and the most difficult question we can ask ourselves: "Who am I?" By reciting the words of the worship service, we discover a place within ourselves that precedes words, a place where we connect deeply with the truest truths about ourselves. 

I know that this is not the way that most Jews think about prayer. Judaism is such a wordy tradition and the liturgy can be quite intimidating with page after page of dense Hebrew text. The worship service can seem like an ordeal of just trying to get through all of those words. Viewed this way, Jewish prayer hardly seems like the kind of experience that would allow a person to enter deeply into self-awareness.

But all of the words of the siddur are just variations on a theme. Nearly the entire prayerbook can be summed up in a few phrases: "There is a Creator who wants to be known and who wants to transform your life. Let the Creator in, and you will find yourself within the Creator. Once you do that, the path of joy and fulfillment will be open to you." All of the prayers in the siddur are just poems saying this in various ways. We have to say it in so many different ways only to keep us searching for ourselves. The siddur is the can-opener of the soul—a tool for opening ourselves up to receive this truth. 

Prayer is not, as so many people imagine, something that we owe to God. Nor is it a way of asking God for the stuff we want. Prayer is a practice that we give as a gift to ourselves. It is a way of delving deeply into ourselves and discovering the great truth that connects us all.
Susan Le Gresley
8/25/2011 12:29:45 am

Thankyou Reb Jeff, I love this post. Definately 'food for the soul'. I wonder if many people are frightened that if they allowed our 'Creator' to open us up that they would have to face their own 'can of worms'. This is just not so. When we offer to let Him in, He does not come accusing us, and showing us the ugliness of our lives, He comes with a 'picture' of what we will look like when we have allowed ourselves to become fully immersed in Him. Beautiful, pure and holy, and fit for his service.

Reb Rachel link
8/25/2011 01:39:20 am

I'm so glad you found a new yoga teacher! I must admit that I envy you your yoga practice; I haven't done yoga in years, and I can't seem to figure out how to make time for yoga and work and parenting right now. :-/ Perhaps I am working on some other metaphysical form of yoga: parenting asanas?

Anyway: I think you know that I very much agree with this vision of what prayer is and does, but I'll say so anyway. Thank you for teaching me, over these last many years, to understand and experience and lead prayer with this in mind.

Barb L.
8/25/2011 02:51:10 am

I definitely like this can opener analogy. There are some phrases in the prayers that get me every time and others that I rush through. I also think the power of the niggun, of wordless prayer, takes me to a place that liturgy alone cannot.

Ava Pennington link
8/27/2011 09:13:48 am

Definitely something to chew on. Thank you!
I humbly offer a little more food for thought:
Perhaps the question "Who am I?" is not broad enough. Maybe the better questions that prayer helps us answer are, "Who is God?" and "Who am I in relation to Him?" Then we may indeed discover "the great truth that connects us all"!

Rick Berger
9/2/2011 07:54:40 am

Good to hear that you have a new teacher- teaching is the act of becoming teachable, at least for me.
Wanted to share a happy accident- I clicked on a link from my facebook to a newspaper and saw a story about you on their front page of their website.
You are terribly missed and my very best to you and the three beautiful women in your home- really wish I could be working with Talia next week...


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