THIS IS NOT YOUR SITUATION. This is the situation of almost all human beings: their roots are weak, and without strong roots the promise of a healthy blossoming of thousands of flowers (dreams and visions) is impossible. Why are the roots weak? They are kept weak. In Japan they have trees four hundred, five hundred years old, and six inches high. It is considered to be an art. To me it is simple murder. Generations of gardeners have been keeping those trees in this situation. Now, a tree which is five hundred years old... you can see its branches are old, although small; it is a very tiny old man tree, but it shows on the leaves, on the trunk, on the branches. And the strategy that has been used is this: they plant a tree in a mud pot which has no bottom, and then they go on cutting the roots -- because the pot has no bottom. When the roots come out and try to reach the earth, they will cut them. They will not do anything to the tree; they will simply go on cutting the roots. Now for five hundred years a family has been continuously cutting the roots. The tree may live for thousands of years, but the tree never blossoms, it never comes to fruition. The same has been done to man all over the world. His roots have been cut from the very beginning, about everything. Every child has to be obedient. You are cutting his roots. You are not giving him a chance to think whether to say yes to you, or to say no. You are not allowing him to think, you are not allowing him to make a decision on his own. You are not giving him responsibility -- you are taking responsibility away, behind the beautiful word `obedience. You are taking his freedom away, you are taking his individuality away, by a simple strategy -- insisting that he is a child, he does not know anything. The parents have to decide, and the child has to be absolutely obedient. The obedient child is the respected child. But so much is implied in it that you are destroying him completely. He will grow old, but he will not grow up. He will grow old, but there will be no blossoming and there will be no fruition. He will live, but his life will not be a dance, will not be a song, will not be a rejoicing. You have destroyed the basic possibility for all that makes a man individual, authentic, sincere, gives him a certain integrity. In my childhood... there were many children in my family. I had brothers and sisters myself, then there were one uncles children, and another uncles children... and I saw this happening: whoever was obedient was respected. I had to decide one thing for my whole life -- not only for being in my family or for my childhood -- that if I in any way desire respect, respectability, then I cannot blossom as an individual. From my very childhood I dropped the idea of respectability. I told my father, I have to make a certain statement to you. He was always worried whenever I would go to him, because he knew that there would be some trouble. He said, This is not the way a child speaks to his father -- `I am going to make a statement to you. I said, It is a statement through you to the whole world. Right now the whole world is not available to me; to me you represent the whole world. It is not just an issue between son and father; it is an issue between an individual and the collectivity, the mass. The statement is that I have renounced the idea of respectability, so in the name of respectability never ask anything from me; otherwise I will do just the opposite. I cannot be obedient. That does not mean I will always be disobedient, it simply means it will be my choice to obey or not to obey. You can request, but the decision is going to be mine. If I feel my intelligence supports it, I will do it; but it is not obedience to you, it is obedience to my own intelligence. If I feel it is not right, I am going to refuse it. I am sorry, but you have to understand one thing clearly: unless I am able to say no, my yes is meaningless. RABBI THEBU
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 10:26:01 +0000