A False World or A Beautiful Garden
Two brothers, same family, one is a sweetheart the other is a psychopathic rapist and murderer. How does that happen?
In his book “The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog” the author Bruce Perry, explains that the mother of this family was somewhat stunted in her mental development. The older son was raised surrounded by family, uncles and aunts and thus as a baby and child he received nurture that developed all of the healthy brain wiring needed for productive healthy relationships. Although the mother wasn’t able to provide this fully by herself, her family was able to fill in the gaps that the boy needed. By the time the second son was born, the family had moved away from the close knit extended family environment and the mother who didn’t really have the tools to nurture the newborn on her own, neglected him and he was left without the nurture that he needed to develop healthy connections and relationships.
What medical-neuroscience tells us today is that our thinking and external behaviors are in large part a result of conditioning from childhood. Often times these are affected negatively through trauma, but in all cases it is in large part cause by conditioning. The newborn child prior to conditioning of any sort is pure, a beautiful blank canvas with amazing potential.
The above has a powerful message for us and I share it connection with this Shabbos, the 3rd of the month of Tammuz the 25th anniversary of the passing of the Rebbe.
While we only can judge and need to take action based on what meets the eye, we need to always believe that the essence is pure.
In other words, a person has to face the consequences of their actions and words and as a society and according to Torah we have to meet out punishment accordingly.
That should not however cloud an underlying truth. That truth is that at everyone’s core there is purity.
The Rebbe demonstrated this in his world view and in his interactions with everyone he came in contact with. It is evident in the endless videos and in the thousands of personal correspondence he wrote. In every instance, the Rebbe moves beyond the present and the past shortcomings and focuses on the inner potential of the individual.
The Rebbe in his very first talk as Rebbe in 1951 spoke of the world as a garden; a Garden of Eden. As it is with the pure child prior to becoming conditioned so it is with all of creation and our world. In its essence it is pure. Its negativity is a function of conditioning, the Sin of Adam and Eve and beyond.
Just as we ought to never discount ourselves for our shortcomings, because in our core we are pure, so to we should never write off another person or the world as being too damaged, too hopeless, too beyond repair.
This is the gift that the Rebbe gave us. These are the glasses and lenses the Rebbe empowered us to put on. If we embrace this vision, we will see people and our world in a truly different light and as a result uncover the purity in another and the garden of the world as it was meant to be.
Good Shabbos.
