Soul Trait Studio: Iyyar 5785
Practice guide for the Soul Trait Studio mussar practice for Iyyar 5785 focusing on the soul trait of patience.
Each month I host an open session called Soul Trait Studio, a mussar practice session focused on the soul trait of the month. The current month is available to all and previous months are available to subscribers at the monthly, yearly, or beloved levels.
Come when you can. All registrants for the month will receive the video the following day. The Soul Trait Studio is cancelled, but you can registration for futures sessions now - no charge but your time.
I consider your time to be the exchange for this offering, which is why I don’t charge money to register. While it is always an option to attend on your own time, via the recording I send out the next day, these sessions remain free of monetary charge because of those who do commit to attending in real time.
More About
Mussar Practice eBook with guides to each soul trait of the year (Devotaj.com)
Making Mensches: A Periodic Table (JewishCamp.org)
Cultivating Spiritual Qualities for Well-Being: Patience by Melissa Buyer-Witman (Sefaria.org)
Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings (Chapter 14 & 40) by Alan Morinis
Everyday Holiness by Alan Morinis (Chapter 8)
In Search of the Holy Life: Rediscovering the Kabbalistic Roots of Mussar by Ira Stone and Beulah Trey (Chapter on “Sufferance”)
Mussar Torah Commentary , Barry H. Block editor (Parshiot Vayeitzei & Sh’lach L’cha)
Four Steps to Develop Patience (Psychology Today)
How to be More Patient (MasterClass)
Monthly Practice
Note: we rarely get through all of this during the 90 minute session, so consider the entirety of it to be an invitation for your personal practice this month. This guide will remain available to all until the end of the month. Previous monthly guides are available to subscribers at the monthly, yearly, or beloved levels.
Opening
Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and listen to the wind
All comes together; all falls apart
Forming anew your beating heart
Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and draw yourself near
The rocks are your keepers
Tell them your stories
Now it is safe to be here
A river flows from within you to where you will go
The current carries you home
Let your life unfold
Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and you will receive
Life wants to meet you where you are
Not where you think you should be
A river flows from within you to where you will go
The current carries you home
Let your life unfold
Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and you will be shown
The love that was always lifting you up
You are never alone
A river flows from within you to where you will go
The current carries you home
Let your life unfold
Slow down child, slow down (x4)
Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and listen to the wind
All comes together; all falls apart
Forming anew your beating heart
Slow Down/The Mother’s Response by Kohenet Riv Shapiro
Soul Trait of the Month
Last month: Nisan | Moon of Speaking | Simcha (שמחה) Joy | Na’arah (נערה) Maiden
Now: Iyyar | Moon of Healing | Savlanut (סבלנות) Patience | Meyaledet (מילדת) Midwife
Next Month: Sivan | Moon of Receiving | Emet (אמת) Truth | Neviah (נְבִיאָה) Prophetess
Cheshbon HaNefesh:
What does savlanut (סבלנות) patience mean to you right now.
What does it mean to act with savlanut she’be gevurah?
What does it meant to behave with gevurah she’be savlanut?
Text Study
Partnered text study. One per breakout room.
Explore what the text teaches you about savlanut AND what other soul traits it helps you recognize as being keys to unlocking savlanut such:
Anavah (ענוה) Humility
Sh’tikah (שתיקה) Silence
Dan l’chaf zechut (דן לכף זכות) Judging Others Favorably
Nedivut (נדיבות) Generosity
Rachamim (רחמים) Compassion
Erech apayim (ארך אפים) Slow to Anger
Text 1:
The Hebrew term for patience is savlanut (סבלנות). It shares its linguistic root with sevel (סֵבֶל) which means suffering and sabal (סַבָּל) which means a porter. What could these three words possibly share in common? The answer is that being patience means bearing the burden of your suffering. You tell yourself that I can bear these feelings on my inner-shoulders. holding them aloft and not crumbling under their weight.
Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings (Chapter 14)
Resource: Shoroshim (Root Words)
Text 2:
Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (amazon | bookshop.org)
Text 3:
By the time it came to the edge of the Forest, the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, “There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.
The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne (amazon | bookshop.org)
Note: Often misquoted around the internet as “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
Text 4
In Walking: One Step at a Time, Erling Kagge poses this question: “What is the point of moving slowly from place to place?” He replies, “Everything moves slowly when I walk, the world seems softer, and for a short while, I am not doing household chores, having a meeting or reading manuscripts. A free . . . [person] possesses time. . . . [Ironically,] time moves more quickly when I increase the speed of travel. . . . When I am in a rush, I hardly pay attention to anything at all.” To Kagge, walking is not only a slow way to travel, but it has a quality of savlanut. I, too, have experienced the way time thickens only when I slow my pace. On a walk in the woods or in the neighborhood, an expansive sense of time opens me up to the possibility of surprise, creativity, and to noticing that which, in a more frenetic frame of mind, might pass me by.
The Mussar Torah Commentary, Vayeitzei, by Rabbi Daniel S. Alexander (amazon | bookshop.org)
Text 5
We poor myopic humans, with neither the raptor’s gift of long-distance acuity, nor the talents of a housefly for panoramic vision. However, with our big brains, we are at least aware of the limits of our vision. With a degree of humility rare in our species, we acknowledge there is much we can’t see, and so contrive remarkable ways to observe the world. Infrared satellite imagery, optical telescopes, and the Hubble space telescope bring vastness within our visual sphere. Electron microscopes let us wander the remote universe of our own cells. But at the middle scale, that of the unaided eye, our senses seem to be strangely dulled. With sophisticated technology, we strive to see what is beyond us, but are often blind to the myriad sparkling facets that lie so close at hand. We think we’re seeing when we’ve only scratched the surface. Our acuity at this middle scale seems diminished, not by any failing of the eyes, but by the willingness of the mind. Has the power of our devices led us to distrust our unaided eyes? Or have we become dismissive of what takes no technology but only time and patience to perceive? Attentiveness alone can rival the most powerful magnifying lens.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss
Resource: The Magic of Moss and What It Teaches Us About the Art of Attentiveness to Life at All Scales (The Marginalian)
Incantations*:
Slow to you is fast to me. May I breathe in right pace and breathe out blessed ease.
I am attentive and a-tuned. Holding space for what needs to be, may I unlock pathways of creation unblocking what should be free.
Fast and slow. So on the go. I am where I am, only that I know.
*The term from inherited forms of mussar is “affirmations”. Feel free to think of them this way, if it’s more aligned and/or nourishing for you.
Embodied Practice
Externalization “Patience” as an angel or other being that is your partner.
Whenever you feel like you are losing your patience call it back to you by saying aloud or in your head, “azkirah Achaiyah” (אזכירה אכאיה) I call to mind Achaiyah (the angel of Patience), “yesh savlanut” (יש סבלנות) there’s Patience; or “azkirah savlanut” (אזכירה סבלנות) I call Patience to mind.
Note: Achaiyah is cited as the angel of patience in A Dictionary of Angels by Gustav Penderson. I have not found corroborating Jewish sources and don’t remember where that Hebrew spelling came from.
Mitzvah*
Option 1
Slow down. Practice slowing down to cultivate practice. Intentionally take on activities that require you to act more slowly like:
Walk instead of drive.
Don’t skip past songs…listen to the whole thing.
Don’t jaywalk.
Make a cup of tea.
Take a breath before responding to someone.
Intentionally slow down your speech.
Option 2
When you feel you are growing impatient - make a list of all the benefits of the situation you are in and how long it’s taking to get from point a to point b.
Option 3
When dealing with people who frustrate you and wear on your patience, try putting yourself in their minds and understanding WHY they are behaving the way they are.
Conversely, let yourself think of all the ways the situation is humorous - especially what story you are telling yourself about what else you need to be doing.
*I use the translation mitzvah as “sacred connective action.” In other forms of mussar this part of the practice is often called kabbalot, committed practices to help you take the practice in the world around you.
Journaling Prompts:
WHAT does Savlanut (סבלנות) Patience mean to you?
What does it mean to act with savlanut she’be gevurah?
What does it meant to behave with gevurah she’be savlanut?
WHEN you lose your patience – where does it go? What replaces it?
WHY do you lose your patience?
WHERE do you feel most able to “expand the distance between the match and the fuse?”
Closing Chant
Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and you will receive
Life wants to meet you where you are
Not where you think you should be
A river flows from within you to where you will go
The current carries you home
Let your life unfold
Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and you will be shown
The love that was always lifting you up
You are never alone
A river flows from within you to where you will go
The current carries you home
Let your life unfold
Slow down child, slow down (x4)
Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and listen to the wind
All comes together; all falls apart
Forming anew your beating heart
Slow Down/The Mother’s Response by Kohenet Riv Shapiro
You made it to the end!
At our last Mussar session, you provided the image of the flow of water in a stream as an example of an effective force leading to change. The topic of the session was patience and the image was that of a delicate but unremitting energy source. You may recall that I had difficulty thinking of that image as a willful effort.
A similar beautiful image of flow is presented in Michael Fishbane’s book, Sacred Attunement which I can relate to more and perhaps you and others will also find meaningful:
God passes through all things with the pulse of God’s heart; and insofar as that pulse of life also passes through human beings, the human is an image of God. Many and mysterious are the forms of this image (human and nonhuman), and so diverse are they in their realizations and kinds of fulfillment. For the pulse may live in strength or wither; it may back into molecular channels or struggle in one organic effort or another; it may harvest toxins and consume itself or act with will and consume others. In a unique manner, these forms come to us and are expressed through us; and insofar as we live with awareness of our participation in the reception and transformation of all these images, one may strive toward their enhancement and integration into wholes.
Isn’t that beautiful writing? All I can tritely say is, “May the Force be with us!”
Thank you