The King is in the Field

Hi everyone!
I hope you had a great week and have an even better weekend!
Yesterday, August the 11th, marked the 1st day of the last Hebrew month of the Jewish year - Elul.
Elul is the month that precedes Tishrei - with the high holidays of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot.
The Jewish Mystics liken Rosh Hashanah to a time when the people come to crown the King in His palace.


But in the month of Elul, the King comes to the field to visit His People. In a spiritual sense, G-d Reveals Himself to our souls and Draws us closer.
He Gives us a special opportunity & ability to connect to Him in this month, to get in touch with our Judaism and Spirituality much more smoothly.
This experience of re-connecting is known as 'Teshuva.' Improperly translated as repentance, it really means to "return."
But to return to our soul and its mission means to change from our daily patterns, and who wants to change?

Many, myself included, suffer from what psychologists define as a "victim mentality."
Let's take a pauper for example: Sadly there are times when a person feels the need to resort to begging for his livelihood. At first ashamed, one who begs can oftentimes pass a certain point where it isn't hard anymore for him to beg. It even becomes hard to stop! To extract himself from his new mentality. My friend once saw a guy in Brooklyn who always begged in his neighborhood -
driving a nice volvo that same day!
Someone explained to him that the guy was now comfortable with it.

We may not be paupers (thank G-d), but we can still be suffering from a victim mentality in our personal lives.
We're stuck, we're in a rut. So many things we do, we do b/c it's become a part of our routine, our mentality. It's become who we are.
I can slip to such a point that I think this is me!
Teshuva means returning to your real self.
But we all know how hard it is to realize how far one has fallen, and even harder to extract oneself from this new mentality.
Comes the month of Elul - a special, opportune time to take the things you thought were you, but really aren't,
and get in touch with who you really are. Not the worldly mentality we have become accustomed to,
but rather the internal, Divine mentality our souls naturally possess.
The King is Ready - All we have to do is go out to greet Him.

Shabbat Shalom!

Daniel
--
May you be written & sealed for a good & sweet year!