By Rabbi Josh Jacobs-Velde

One of my favorite readings for the High Holy Days, one that we have shared for multiple years at our synagogue, comes from the well-known Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron:

Be grateful to everyone. Others will always show you exactly where you are stuck. They say or do something, and you automatically get hooked into a familiar way of reacting — shutting down, speeding up or getting all worked up. When you react in the habitual way, with anger, greed and so forth, it gives you a chance to see your patterns and work with them honestly and compassionately. Without others provoking you, you remain ignorant of your painful habits and cannot train in transforming them into the path of awakening (from “Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living”).

What I love about this teaching is that it shows us very clearly that even the difficult, frustrating, triggering parts of life can be part of the spiritual path of growth and healing, but it depends on our orientation. In fact, it may precisely be those triggering, difficult situations, those people who are most challenging, where the growth potential is the greatest.

This is a profound teaching to remember as we move deeper into the season of teshuvah at Rosh Hashanah. As many of us know, the word “teshuvah” cannot be easily translated into English. It’s valences of meaning include returning to God, returning to our own deepest guidance, repentance and the repair of our harmful actions. Teshuvah necessitates our growth — spiritually, emotionally and ethically. Embracing teshuvah means not getting hooked into a familiar way of reacting, or at the very least, we consciously see the pattern occurring, even if we may not yet be skillful enough to work with it.

In a Jewish context, in order to work with a teaching like Chodron’s, I have to bring in a little bit of Hasidic theology. Early Hasidic texts love to repeat the spiritual slogan over and over again that “no place is devoid of Divinity.” Or, as Reb Nachman of Breslov taught: “The Blessed Holy One is found in all places, as it says in Psalm 139 — ‘If I ascend to Heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, here You are.’” (Likutei Moharan Tinyana, 13)

What is the great benefit of this approach to life? If God is present in all places, every situation is workable. Every situation is some kind of an opportunity to meet and open to the power that makes for transformation, even the situations that push all of our buttons.

This is not an easy teaching to assimilate, but I have found it helpful even to just hold it as an aspiration. It runs counter to so much of our programming; it often necessitates being uncomfortable. Why would we want to willingly put ourselves in challenging situations? The reality is not that we need to necessarily go searching out challenging situations. We can generally trust that life is going to throw plenty of those our way. The question is: what is our orientation to them? Do we see those triggering people as just annoyances to avoid or do we see them as potential teachers, as another expression of the One that is helping us learn what our ego hang-ups and stucknesses are?

As we enter 5787, may we harness teachings like this to see our patterns and work with them honestly and compassionately as we do the work of teshuvah. May we grow in trust that even there, in the most triggering of situations, Divinity may be found.

Rabbi Josh Jacobs-Velde is the co-rabbi of Reconstructionist synagogue Oseh Shalom in Laurel, Maryland.