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How Crazy Are You?


When Insanity is Greater than Sanity

Do you ever behave irrationally? “Are you kidding me?!” responded one person. “The question is the other way around: Do I ever behave rationally?” Indeed, though most people like to believe that their decisions are rational, studies show that many if not most major life choices are driven by non-rational forces — emotions, impulses, habits, desires, fears, pride, obstinance and so one. You don’t need studies; just observe what drives most of your decisions in life. How often do you act in a way that you know, even while doing it, that your behavior doesn’t make sense. How many times have you been consumed by desire and succumbed to temptation aware all the while that there would be long term consequences and you would regret your behavior, and yet, that was not enough to help you control yourself and your instant gratification? And how many of our day-to-day activities are simply based on mindless routines, patterns and social norms? But regardless whether you agree with the irrationality of most human decisions, none of us are immune from having done something irrational and foolish once or twice in our lives, if not more often.

The question is this: What is the antidote to impulsive, senseless, moronic if not outright destructive behavior? Our intuitive reply would be to either initially avoid falling into the trap of folly, or if we did, simply move on and put it behind us, behaving rationally going forward, learning from the experience. A fascinating insight from an esoteric Chassidic discourse, studied by many this week, offers us a novel and even revolutionary approach to the absurdity of our lives. Instead of just avoiding or ignoring the irrational, it challenges us to enter the inner recesses of our minds and psyches, and ask the biggest question: Are we at heart people of the mind or of beyond the mind? What is consciousness? Is rational behavior more rational than madness? Is the rational rational? What lays beyond intelligence?

Please join Rabbi Jacobson in this fascinating Yud Shevat/ Beshalach workshop and discover the secret of madness, and the mystery of our innermost souls. When we access the true nature of our psyches we learn that the common mind touches only outer dimensions of the reality within, and when we travel inward we uncover new vistas, which when tapped, allow us to transform the irrational into the supra-rational, and the craziness of our impulsive lives into a holy craziness of utter transcendence. And… to come back and tell the tale.


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