The Angel in Your Dream

Dear friends, 

One of the greatest polemical books in the Jewish canon is The Kuzari, a medieval book by Rabbi Yehudah Halevi. The book tells of the idol-worshipping King of Kuzar, who has a recurring dream, in which he is visited by an angel who tells him: 

כוונתך רצויה אך מעשך אינו רצוי
Your intentions are desired, but your actions are not desired.

The king understands that God is both pleased and displeased with him. He must keep his intentions of serving God, but change the ways in which he does it. The king then engages in philosophical, religious and theological conversations with a philosopher, a priest, an Imam and a rabbi, in an attempt to figure out which practice he should adopt.

At the heart of the book is a challenge to us all: can we ask ourselves the question posed by the angel. Where are our intentions good, but our actions not?

The question seems to me the stuff of dreams. Something that can gnaw at our subconscious at night and unnerve our days. But there have been times in my life, in which I've managed to locate a discrepancy between action and intention, moments in which I was telling myself I am doing one thing, but in effect doing another. During those times it is as if my body is serving someone else. And perhaps the strangest thing about it is that while it does that, buried in the back of my own mind is the full knowledge that this is taking place; that I am setting aside the connection between my mind and my body for a time, and living with the pain of that split.

Last week I related some of my military service, and several of you expressed interest in that experience. In my own limited conscious understanding of my self, there is no other experience I've been through that better embodies the angel's axiom about intention and action. The intention was to give back to the collective, to do my part, to protect life, to participate in the shaping of our world. The action was to uphold an occupation of a militaristic nation state.

People really do want to do good. I believe that about almost every person. I believe that about myself, and I believe that about you. But I know that our actions don't always result in goodness.  The angel asks: Where are we not acting out our true selves? Where are our intentions taken hostage by someone else's agenda? Where are we supporting causes and projects that bring about our internal corruption or our national combustion? Where are we living someone else's life?

If we can find those places we might be able to unclog the channels between our pure intentions and our misguided actions.

If we can pose these questions to our waking, and more importantly perhaps to our dreaming selves, maybe we will be able to enjoy the deep satisfaction of having both our intentions and our actions desired by that mysterious force who keeps consciousness flowing.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha