15/2/10
Today I finally crawled out of bed and into the sunshine! I'm not 100%, but it feels good to be well enough to go to Yad Lakashish - it's totally my happy place. <3 Today was hysterical. I started humming while I was working and the whole room joined in! It was awesome! Rebecca and I went to lunch at New Deli (yay for having my appetite back!), and we had afternoon classes. It's been glorious out these past two days! I LOVE IT! Wearing shorts and tank tops makes me happy. =D Tonight was slightly stressful, but I'm going to focus on the thoughts that came up during my Genesis class. Our teacher was rambling a lot today, so my mind wandered a lot, but I read over my wanderings and they were actually quite interesting, and I want to share/explore them.
These ideas are all very disconnected. so bear with me!
We started with Decartes's famous idea that "I think, therefore I am". While a thought-provoking phrase, we focused on the accompanying phrase by Martin Heidiger that "If I think, therefore I am, what calls for my thinking?". An interesting contrast from Decartes's deist view, this idea made me wonder, what does enable me to think? I hold my ability to think very dearly. More than anything, my mind allows me to experience the world in ways that are uniquely mine and mine alone. It also connects me to others through shared ideas, emotions, philosophies, and world perceptions (the sky is blue, etc..). Theoretically, it is God that allows me to think, but in relation to Decartes, what is sacred and divine is that which cannot be understood by mankind. In that case, is God simply a combination of ultimate truths that we strive to discover? I can see that as the "God" behind my mind. What makes people think? The desire to understand. What don't we understand? The scientific and religious mysteries of life. So, I think (subconsciously) to understand the mysteries that books and teachers and life experience cannot explain. In some ways, even ancient text understands this desire to understand the big picture. In classical hebrew, the verbs come before the nouns, so that the emphasis of the sentence is not on the subject, but on the action that is being performed. Thus, when reading the story we studied today of Jacob wrestling with the Angel, Jacob is not as important as the idea of one wrestling with God. I see this as an attempt to show the importance of the lessons of the stories of the Bible rather than the Biblical figures themselves, which is what this class is technically all about.
Somewhere in these wonderings (which were actually related to the class), I drifted off into my own tangent. We mentioned something about the idea of legacy and trees and "what will be here after me". I started thinking about what remains when I'm gone, and I started to scare myself! Death is not scary to me because it's the end of life, it's scary because of the idea of the end of consciousness. The idea that I might one day simply cease to exist is terrifying! This means completely cease, no spirit, no heaven, no looking down on the future, no reincarnation, just poof. Worm food. Well, not for me because I'm being cremated, but that's a different subject... Anyway, it scares me to think of "where do I go?". Not me physically, but me spiritually. The thoughts, feelings, experiences, and soul that make up Rachel (or any other person). Deep down, I don't think we simply "poof". As stupid as it may sound to some, I'm a firm believer in past lives and reincarnation. I think there are parts of some people that are so connected to things that have nothing to do with their own lives that parts of our pasts must stay with us. The unbelievable empathy that I've felt and seen others feel for situations and people that they cannot comprehend on an actual experience level must mean something beyond an open heart. Every show I've done, every song I've sung, I've experienced (and watched others experience) a connection to something beyond my 18 years. What some call "Old Souls" I think are simply people who are more deeply connected to past lives than others. What I started wondering about today was the idea that regardless of whether one was connected to a past life, that a past life could be connected to oneself. That is to say, when I die, will I be able to look through as me into the new me. This makes no sense outside of my head... I think a piece of what I'm trying to say is that sometimes when my conscience is screaming at me, it almost feels like a part of me has already done what ever it is I'm about to do and already knows whether or not to do it, like I've already lived a part of my life and now that Rachel is yelling at current Rachel about her decisions. Now I sound like I have multiple personality disorder.... Oy.... I have no idea if I made any sense, but I thought I would try. Does anything I tried to express make any sense to anyone?????
That's all for tonight. Tomorrow is the second Kuma orientation, and I'm spending all day again at Yad Vashem... hopefully will have a meaningful blog to write tomorrow!
Endless love,
Rachel
P.S. If you're going to be in Los Angeles from March 30th to April 4th, I want to see you! Please email me! <3 <3 <3
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