Yom Kippur: Save Your Soul. No Parking.

 I'm taking a class, an interactive soul-stirring, mind blowing class called the Elevation Seminar. It's more than I can explain in a blog but it involves connected to your higher thinking, soul searching and elevation. I'm not sure I'm at the elevation part as I'm still looking for my elevator,  but I'm getting a lot out of the class. One thing that is clear to me is that we frequently loose sight of our real selves in our day to day lives. Our thoughts and emotions and daily tasks take hold and we forget why we're here, and our mission. Prayer or conscious living is not just something to do on a high holiday, once a week or even daily. It's a moment to moment existence. A friend of mind told me she had it all figured out. She was going to change. To do so, she would let everyone know by wearing a sign around her neck that says, "Reconstruction site. Under new management." She has it right. This is the time of year to deconstruct, reconstruct and create a new management plan.

So as Rosh Hashanah has passed by and Yom Kippur is upon us, it has given me much opportunity to think, ponder and well, get myself under new management. I was pondering my strategy the other day during services, when I realized  I was fidgeting. Well it was more like vibrating. I thought maybe I was "elevating" but then came to realize I was just freezing cold. The woman next to me felt compelled to give me a back rub and warm me up and calm me down. I'm not sure if I was fidgeting from the cold or just sitting still for so long. The men, donning multiple layers of suits, jackets and religious clothing, appreciate it when the synagogue temperature is at an arctic level, which means the women need thermal blankets. I can't even imagine the girls wearing mini skirts and sandals. They are more like popsicle sticks by the time the service is over (must be some kind of karma), if they make it through. Anyway, while I was thinking and shivering, I became aware all to keenly of a recent visit with a client of mine who happens to live very close to a synagogue in the area. She, not being Jewish said, "It's your holiday right? I can always tell as the members of the temple down the road double park and block us out of our own street. It's not the parking I mind, it's the double parking. Then she proceeded to quote me from the new testament." She had me with the parking and lost me with the scriptures. 

Ugh, what to say to that? I'm sure she was wondering where the members are the other 363 days of the year. It was too much to explain to her why most of our tribe shows up two days out of the year to be religious, why they don't use the provided shuttle  (I wasn't going to explain the whole 'well if they weren't driving there wouldn't be a problem at all') and why a religious holiday would not make people more sensitive. I, now as their token representative,  had to come up with something that could explain such disregard to her neighborhood and reassure her that we did not need Jesus to mend our ways, though I was in agreement that our ways do need mending.

I thought about maybe reminding her of what it's like to drive around town on a Sunday morning waiting at green lights for patrol officers to let out 10,000 church members. That probably would not go over all that well, nor was it really relevant.  Well, I was about to warn her about the upcoming Yom Kippur parking fiasco, but then I thought I'd have to explain about what Yom Kippur is about and why changing oneself replaces having someone else save you; and, why there might be more cars double parking on her street on the day of atonement. 

I was about to explain but then I stopped and said, "Honestly I have no excuse and it comes down to this. Awareness. It's not that the people don't know that they're double parking. It's that they've forgotten who they are." 

Awareness means we are conscious. Consciously connected to our Source. It means at any given moment we realize we have a set of values that were gifted to us (and I'm not suggesting that the unconscious parkers do not have any values). If we realize that, then everything we think, say and do is done so consciously.  

I know. We will stumble. It takes practice. That is part of the lesson.  It's hard and it seems near impossible. Those resolution lists never work because we don't really want to change, to know who we are.We kind of like ourselves, our status, our way of doing things. Change means that there's something I've missed out on. I forgot my purpose. I forgot who I am. But that's exactly what we need to do. We need to remember ourSELVES. And well, sometimes it's just buried underneath a lot of mess. But Yom Kippur is an exploration process, a rebuilding process, and then a birthing process. You get to start over. It's like the "get out of jail" card in the Monopoly game. The only difference is you have to work for it. 

As I left her house,  I suggested putting out orange parking cones that might help keep people off at least one side of the street. She said, "Well, they might not even notice those. You can't imagine how they park with such disregard."

"Oh, but I can, " I replied.

We discussed putting signs in the cones that reminded them that G-d was watching. 

Then I said,  "Maybe you should put signs in the cones that say, 'Your mother is watching. Thou shall not park here."

"Why would that work?"

"Just trust me. It will."