The flexible mind

The mind is ironically both the greatest source of wisdom yet also the greatest inflexibility, as Winston Churchill, a brilliant understander of human personalities said, “a fanatic is someone who won’t change his mind, and can’t change the subject!”

Why is it, that the very source of wisdom, which should be the most flexible, for wisdom should be able to hold conflicting views, yet we find people hold onto their wisdom as if it some kind of rigid truth?!

We even know, that the Pythagorian group, actually murdered Hippasus for revealing a different number that they erroneously mathematically disagreed with!

From Socrates to Galileo, killing someone for their opinion, is a shameful part of others inflexibility to change their own!

The flexible mind suggests, the most important thing is to realize that the reason these heinous barbarism happened and is happening today from Jihad etc. is because people attach their identity to their opinions.

So now, its not about truth, it’s simply about MY IDENTITY! and that’s why there is religious jihads, for people assume their religion is their identity, not a mechanism of truth!

And this is where the genius of Judaism comes in, namely, that our great sages, from Abraham till the Rebbe – whose Yor Tzeit we celebrate tonight – taught us, that truth itself, similar to Einstein theroms expanded by Heisenberg, actually, is flexible!

Now, how can that be?

As perhaps the greatest mystic ever, Rabbi Schneur Zalman teaches, teaching a child truth doesn’t preclude the child learning a greater, deeper insight into the same truth he was incapable of learning in childhood, later!

Hence, as, relative to God we are not even like children, the very Torah, the very wisdom God taught, remains – within parameters set by the Torah – open to change, and ultimately God is not a static rock, he is a “living, thinking, breathing, conscious, loving, encouraging father!” Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom – let your email find you!