Re’eh
What is the one step before choosing?
Reflection by Rabbah Dr. Mira Niculescu, Or HaLev Teacher:
“Parashat Re'eh starts, in these words,
רְאֵה אָנֹכִי נֹתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם הַיּוֹם בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה
`See, I place before you today, blessing and curse. `
It may look at first hand like a logic of the stick and the carrot.
Actually, it may be the exact opposite. It may be really a statement about free choice, the agency we have in life. Rashi talks about it as he comments about the formulation of the sentence, as if someone was placing before us on a table different items of food and that we have to pick and choose.
And that is the truth of the human condition. I may not get punished from the outside if I don't live by the values that are mine. So really, I am deeply free.
But there is one step before choosing.
It's the seeing, Re'eh, this is the key word here.
If I don't see, if I don't have awareness, I don't really have free choice.
What enables me to have free choice is to be able to see deeply, ‘this is right, this is not’, and ‘this is where I want to engage, and this is where I don't want to engage’.
And this is where mindfulness practice comes into play.
It's the step before choosing, the step before action.
It's the choice we make, in meditation practice, to sit every day and make time to look deeply. Meditating strengthens our awareness, and enables us to see the choices we have and act in a way that is truly chosen, truly free.
This Shabbat, on the day we are invited to pause from our usual activities, how about making time to sit somewhere quietly, and do nothing?
This is how seeing arises. Let us give ourselves this gift of seeing, this gift of awareness, this gift of freedom, this Shabbat."