If you are someone who has been blessed with financial well-being or wealth, you have a special opportunity to advance the process of spiritual development. You can become living proof to others that it is possible to live a life in which the pursuit of money is not the bottom line.
But money can also be a burden and a curse.
Shabbat (the Sabbath) is not simply about going to synagogue. It is a 25-hour spiritual, meditative, psychological, and intellectual process which involves a withdrawal from the normal consciousness of domination and control over time and space. On Shabbat, we enter into a consciousness that is focused on awe, wonder, amazement, celebration, pleasure (through food, sex, and intellectual exchange), aloneness, and community. As the psalm for Shabbat proclaims, “I rejoice in Your work, O God. I will exalt in the works of Your hands!”
The globalization of Spirit requires that we overcome the false dichotomy between changing ourselves and changing societal structures. At times we may be inclined to say, “I need to work on my own head first, then later I’ll try to change society.” But this strategy can be the beginning of a slippery slope toward narcissistic self-absorption, just as the “I’ll change society first and then worry about inner life” strategy can be a slippery slope to the insensitivity and spiritual obtuseness of most contemporary political movements. Emancipatory Spirituality encourages a living synthesis of individual and social transformation.
Many of us find the notion of “commandments” oppressive and hierarchical. Yet we know that a community cannot be built on the principle of only doing what feels right at the moment––it requires a sense of responsibility to each other.