Soul Trait Studio: Tammuz 5784

Practice guide for the Soul Trait Studio mussar practice for Tammuz 5784 (07/07/24) focusing on the soul trait of b'lev shalem | wholehearted.

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 for Tamuz 5784 is July 7, 2024 from 3-4:30pm ET on Zoom, registration required - no charge but your time.

Photo by Rhand McCoy on Unsplash

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. But you can support this work by becoming a paying subscriber of the Devotaj Sacred Arts Substack.

Learn More

What is Mussar?

• Devotaj Sacred Arts: Mussar Practice eBook with guides to each soul trait of the year

• Register for this and upcoming sessions: devotaj.com/soultraitstudio

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

• Introduction to Soul Trait of the Month

• Cheshbon HaNefesh

• Text Study

• Incantations

• Embodied Practice

• Mitzvah

• Journal Prompts

• Closing Chant

Opening

OctaviAleinu by Ketzirah

We have lived before.
We will live again.

We will be silk,
Stone,
Mind,
Star.

We will be scattered,
Gathered,
Molded,
Probed.

We will live,
And we will serve life.

We will live,
And we will serve life.

We will shape God 
And God will shape us
Again,
Always again,
Forever more.

All that you touch. 
You Change. 
All that you Change Changes you. 
The only lasting truth
The only lasting truth
The only lasting truth is Change. 

G!d is 
G!d is 
G!d is Change.

—

Melody by Cantor Salomon Sulzer (1804-1890)
Words by Octavia Butler (1947-2016) 
Arrangement by Kohenet Ketzirah Lesser (1973 - )

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A Prayer before Mussar Study

Soul Trait of the Month

The Journey:

• Last month: Sivan | Moon of Receiving | Emet (אמת) Truth | Neviah (נביאה) Prophetess

• Now: Tamuz | Moon of Fullness | B’lev Shalem (בלב שלם) Wholehearted | Immah (אמא) Mother

• Next Month: Av | Moon of Endings & Beginnings | Ometz Lev (אמץ לב) Courage | Chachamah (חכמה) Wise Woman

B’lev Shalem Resources:

B’lev Shalem does not appear in any of Alan Morinis or published books about Mussar as a soul trait, but it is referred to conceptually.

• Mussar Practice eBook with guides to each soul trait of the year (Devotaj.com)

• Week 19: B’lev Shalem (Devotaj Mussar with Me archives)

• Wholeness & Peacefulness | Shleimut (JewishCamp.org)

• With a Lev Shalem (Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel)

• A Hidden Wholeness (Parker J. Palmer)*

• The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown*

*Not a written as mussar texts, but still a wonderful text about living a whole hearted life.

Note: there is another word often translated as “wholehearted” — tamim (תמים), but this term often has connotations of perfection and purity and I believe is better understood as “integrity.”

Cheshbon HaNefesh:

What does b’lev shalem (בלב שלם) Wholehearted mean to you right now.

What does it mean to act with b’lev shalem she’be gevurah?
What does it meant to behave with gevurah she’be b’lev shalem?

Text Study

Partnered text study. One per breakout room.

Explore what the text teaches you about b’lev shalem showing up with your whole heart — flaws, doubts, and all.

Text 1: 

All there is, while things perpetually fall apart, is the possibility of acting from where we are.

Alexis Shotwell from Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times

Text 2: 

We achieve much if we can muster our destructive urges and impulses and our negative qualities to join our higher aspirations in seeking repentance and reconciliation.  Just coming to pray with all our heart, even the flaws and negatives, is an achievement.

 If we were to wait to have a “perfect heart” before doing anything, let alone before praying, we would never be able to pray or to get anything done.  Rabbi Kuk, who was the Chief Rabbi in Eretz Yisrael in the early 20th century, famously observed:  “The enemy of goodness is perfection.”  Many people paralyze themselves from action by deciding not to act until they can do something perfectly, until they have the perfect plan.  In that way, they forfeit precious opportunities to help themselves or others.  True, planning is important, but sometimes we must act immediately and worry about the details of the plan later.  Anyone who has worked in an emergency room or seized a rare opportunity for a business venture or other project knows this well.

 We have all heard Edmund Burke’s saying, “Evil triumphs when good people do nothing.”  We might add that evil triumphs even when people delay doing something for good reasons, like awaiting a better plan.

Excerpted from With a Lev Shalem, Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel

Text 3:

Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.

Brené Brown from The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Text 4

As we grapple with cosmic changes in our past, present, and future — changes that we may not have chosen but propel us forward as a people and as individuals: how do we not retreat, re-wall, cut ourselves off, or become numb?  The answer is engaging with a whole heart, which is scary because it's vulnerable.

Ketzirah haMa’agelet, private writings about B’lev Shalem

Incantations*:

• May each breath brings wholeness. I inhale the Divine and my body returns it to the Divine. Though my breath may I be aligned.

• May I let go of that which holds me back. May I cultivate that which makes me whole. Cultivate that I desire, not focus on that which I lack.

• Nurture is as nurture does. May I give and receive to be embraced in wholehearted love.

*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

Breathing in, I take breath into myself.
Breathing out, I join the web of being.
Breathing in, I rest in the present.
Breathing out, I am part of the past and future.
Breathing in, I honor the shrine of my body.
Breathing out, I honor the shrine of the cosmos.
Breathing in, Presence fills me.
Breathing out, Presence enfolds me.
Breathing in, I witness what is broken.
Breathing out, I bow to what is perfect.
Breathing in, I offer gratitude for what is.
Breathing out, I accept that all changes.
Breathing in, I pray for peace for myself.
Breathing out, I pray for peace for all beings.

~ Seven Breath Meditation by Rav Kohenet Rabbi Jill Hammer

Mitzvah

I translate 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.

From The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown

Journaling Prompts:

• WHAT does b’lev shalem (בלב שלם) mean to you?

  • What does it mean to act with b’lev she’be chesed?

  • What does it meant to behave with chesed she’be b’lev shalem?

• WHAT does engaging with a whole heart mean to you?

• HOW do we engage with a whole heart in times such as these?

• WHAT is the difference between “with a whole heart,” “integrity,” and “without blemish”?

• WHEN might it be important to be able to show up, with all your yeses, nos, and I don’t know… held in your heart?

Closing Chant

OctaviAleinu by Ketzirah

We have lived before.
We will live again.

We will be silk,
Stone,
Mind,
Star.

We will be scattered,
Gathered,
Molded,
Probed.

We will live,
And we will serve life.

We will live,
And we will serve life.

We will shape God 
And God will shape us
Again,
Always again,
Forever more.

All that you touch. 
You Change. 
All that you Change Changes you. 
The only lasting truth
The only lasting truth
The only lasting truth is Change. 

G!d is 
G!d is 
G!d is Change.

As fire is water is life
G!d is change
G!d is change (repeat until you believe it)

—

Melody by Cantor Salomon Sulzer (1804-1890)
Words by Octavia Butler (1947-2016) 
Arrangement by Kohenet Ketzirah Lesser (1973 - )
Final verse by Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson, from Parable of the Sower — the Opera.

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