28/40

77% Weekly Newsletter
ROTB logo


The 77% Weekly
The 40/52-weeks-a-year,  quick-reading, thought-lingering, spiritual-religious newsletter.

Religion-Outside-The-Box is a donation supported not-for-profit empowering adults to find and be with (the) God (of their understanding).  

# 28 / 40

Spiritual-Religious Drug Problem.

We have a serious spiritual-religious drug problem – both as individuals and as a culture.

We
are perennially trying to alter our experience of reality whenever we
feel emotions that make us uncomfortable – like sadness, anger or
boredom. We self-medicate by forcing ourselves to have happy thoughts,
buying stuff to give us a momentary high, or surfing the internet for
hours at a time.

This is the antithesis of the notion of acceptance (1, 2, 3,) touted by all spiritual-religious traditions as well as the Beatles in the song Let It Be.

We need to get sober!

Somewhere,
somehow, many of us learned and internalized the notion that we
oughtn’t (ever) feel bad or uncomfortable. Consequently, we believe we
should do whatever is necessary to keep ourselves from feeling anything
other than “good.” Our attempts to NOT experience “negative feelings”
requires us to constantly self-medicate. This is unhealthy, delusional,
and exhausting.

The source of our collective misconception (I
have some theories) isn’t as important as understanding the
repercussions of continuing to believe it: MISSING OUT ON LIVING A FULL
LIFE
.

Real life (a.k.a. a non-disassociated existence) includes times
of sadness, anger, and boredom.

If we are constantly on the run
from feeling a certain way, we’ll never know how far to run or even
what we are running from. (I’ve found that my sadness and anger, most
of the time, pass quite quickly when I just allow myself to feel them.)
As absurd as it may seem, most adults have never sat through a full
cycle of their feelings.

While we might not like it – I hate sitting in my boredom – there is nothing wrong with feeling sad, anger, or bored.

In the past, I’ve shared my favorite Robert Frost quote and it’s time we revisit it:

The best way out is always through.

So, my spiritual-religious advice for the week: don’t do spiritual-religious drugs; learn to be comfortable in your discomfort.

 

With love,



Rabbi Brian

And, yes, we’ve talked about this topic in different ways in the past. (1, 2)

The 77% Weekly


The 77% Weekly: The Religion-Outside-The-Box Newsletter
helps people find and be with (the) God (of their understanding) 40 out of 52 weeks a year.


Why 77%?
Two reasons:
1) 40/52 = 0.76923. The newsletter is sent every Monday except the last of each month.
2) In school 77% was a passing grade and ROTB wants to remind you that life isn’t graded, it’s pass/fail.


Religion-Outside-The-Box is a donation-supported,
non-denominational, internet-based, 501c3-tax exempt religious congregation.

Rabbi Brian Doesn’t Understand

In the 18th century, in Hannipol, a small district of Khmelnytskyi Oblast, in present-day western Ukraine, there was a rabbi known as Reb Zusya. Zusya, a pious man, taught about humility and had a strange habit of referring to himself in the third person. Instead of saying, “I am hungry,” or “I don’t understand,” he would say, “Zusya is hungry,”

Read More »

Travesty

I rewind the etymology podcast 15 seconds because I missed the details about the origin of the word travesty. I want to listen again—more closely—so I learn it, so I can recall it later in conversation… because if I tell you how travesty—from “traverse” and “clothing”—came to mean “shockingly unfair,” you’ll think I’m smart. Lost in that thought, I suddenly

Read More »

The Soup We Are In

Most of the time, even when we don’t really need to be rushing (and sometimes without realizing we are rushing) a really large percentage of us rush anyhow. Seems we are angled forward, always striving to get ahead. I get it. It’s the soup we are in. Our society conflates productivity, hurriedness, and worth. We take on the flavors around

Read More »
77% Weekly Newsletter
77% Weekly Newsletter