Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/emancipatory-spirituality/spirituality/page/11/)
Tikkun olam is itself the realization that every human life is unique and distinct from every other human life; that the odds against human life ever having occurred in the universe are so overwhelming that we can conceive of it only as a miracle; and that this miracle requires us, because we are human, to tend to the world that receives us at birth and from which we eventually depart.
America is not an “honest broker” nor is it working on a just solution to the conflict. Our government, largely as a result of pressure from our community, provides blanket support for Israel.
In the kabbalistic theory of tikkun olam, it is our human responsibility to find all those pieces of light that escaped the big creation bang of the original vessel and put the world back together again. When I allow myself to clear my head of my own prejudices and preconceptions, I am always surprised by where I find those pieces of light.
Specifically, I have suggested two basic guidelines: the egocentrism test, which assesses the extent to which spiritual traditions, teachings, and practices free practitioners from gross and subtle forms of narcissism and self-centeredness; and the dissociation test, which evaluates the extent to which spiritual traditions, teachings, and practices foster the integrated blossoming of all dimensions of the person.
Many happily munch on their hamburgers without a thought to the land destroyed for cattle grazing, or the immense cruelty in the raising and slaughter of the billions of animals we use for food each year. Mothers continue to prod their youngsters to eat their vegetables, unaware of the poisons involved in their production, not to mention the water and air.
These are lean times for utopian thinking. We know too much about its dangers and failures. What within previous utopian experiments, from communism to kibbutzim to ’70s communes, undermined them? Human nature? Our particular cultures?
No matter how difficult it may be in a world filled with pain and cruelty, there are moments when it is important to stop looking at all the problems and focus on all the good.
Perhaps no field of biology evokes the fear of loss of the sacred more than neuroscience, the biology of the brain. Yet sacredness and meaning pervade the musings of many neuroscientists. How do we understand the brain in a way that promotes enchantment, and not disenchantment, in day-to-day life?
The intuited contingency of nature and the felt certainty that it didn’t have to be this way have led humans ever since they could think to ponder the question, where did it all come from?
What’s the greatest mystery facing every person on the planet? Ultimately, it’s some version of the age-old “Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going?” So far, no one has a satisfactory explanation for the existence of nonphysical minds in this otherwise physical universe.
Artists who create icons and sacred music often describe their activity as a form of prayer. I think too that if nature is understood, in some sense, as the work of God, then seeking to discover the ways of nature through science might also be experienced as a form of prayer.
Don’t worry, we are not about to join the creationists with their rejection of evolution and insistence that God planted all those dinosaur bones to test your faith. The fact is that most liberals and progressives, in fact, most people who have completed high school, have been heavily indoctrinated into the dominant religion of this historical period, the religion of scientism, and as can be expected, will feel deeply uneasy — if not feeling that they are outright disloyal — if they consider the possibility that another worldview is not only possible but plausible.
I think that if you’re looking at the world today and you’re not heartbroken and you’re not grieving, you’re not conscious. The question is, if we know that things can be done, what are we called upon to do?