The world seems to be losing a precious commodity, unabashed truth-telling. A new CATO national survey finds that self-censorship is on the rise. Nearly 62% of Americans are afraid to speak their minds for fear of losing their job or offending people.
I realized lately that there is nothing more attractive to me than people who speak their truth calmly and clearly. It makes me turn my head. Truth spoken boldly and undiluted makes me wonder, “Who is this well-adjusted person and how did they turn out this way?”
Even more attractive to me is the person who can listen to someone else’s truth with tilted-head curiosity. Curiosity and good humor are wildly underrated. They are probably the best tools on earth for open-minded dialogue and peace.
As someone who is just finding my footing in speaking my truth clearly and calmly, I have learned some things. It is scary at first, jumping-out-of-a-plane kind of scary. But I’ve gotten better at it. I’ve gotten calmer at it. I realize my life doesn’t depend on people agreeing with me. Take me or leave me. It’s all good.
Speaking your truth has its price. You can lose some people. But you also gain some pretty great people. Soulmates rise up out of the woodwork. People I never expected to hear from started texting me. I’m loving it. After speaking my truth, my tribe knows where to find me now and I know where to find them. The best discovery has been my husband. We have never been more spiritually in cahoots. One mind, one heart, one soul. We can’t wait to share the details of our bizarre days with each other and laugh, or cry.
I lost some business, but I also gained some. I noticed something. The new people who have shown up tend to be on the same page as me, and it is a lot less exhausting. Business has a way of taking care of itself.
Speaking my truth also gives me backbone. It sits me upright. Speaking truth fine-tunes the rabbit ears of my soul. I have more clarity and reception. I can pick up messages from the universe with a lot less background noise. Speaking my truth helps me filter other truth when I hear it.
There have been people who disagree with my truth and antagonize me. This is a rough group. I have mastered a new art of self-defense, blocking people. Mr. Miyagi would be proud. It is necessary and preserves sanity. Whenever feedback takes a nasty turn, I stop reading it. It has been a learning curve.
There is another group of people who disagree with me respectfully; these people are a different breed. They make me think. They make me clarify and refine my own ideas. They teach me how to be open to the other side. How to concede when necessary. How to shake hands and walk away as friends who felt heard by each other.
As angry reactions started coming in to the paper, Larry Gordon taught me another valuable lesson. He said, “You don’t have to answer everybody who disagrees with you, it actually weakens your point.” He reminded me of a quote from St. Augustine that I love. “The Truth is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself.”
I would like to share some ideas, some truths I have stumbled across that resonate and inspire my soul. Maybe they can do the same for you.
I have learned that wherever you turn your focus, it tends to magnify and increase. Look out for red cars today, and you will be amazed at how many show up. Whatever you narrow your attention on, more of that will pop into your field of vision. For me, I train my eye on things that make me feel good and optimistic. I want more of that to show up.
Another well-known phenomenon is the law of attraction: whatever mood I am in, that mood becomes my center of gravity. My mood is the most important influence in my life. It is the magnet inside my chest that pulls my reality towards me. Frequency and energy are words often used to describe this law of attraction. They are just different ways of saying mood. We are all mood beings. Without even realizing, we walk around all day broadcasting our current mood. Everyone around us can feel it, especially kids. Your mood either sucks the air out of a room or fills it up. It is either a breath of fresh air or pollution. This is a huge concept. That moment you realize the best gift you give anyone is your reliable good mood. Walking through the front door, smiling.
New age philosophers relate this law of attraction to physics. Channeler Darryl Anka said “Match the frequency (mood) of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality.” If you are miserable, you attract more misery to you from the quantum field. If you feel exhilarated right now, you will draw in to yourself more opportunities to feel that same exhilaration from the quantum field. The universe is constantly scanning for your mood and looking to deliver you more of that. So whatever emotion you want to feel more of, start feeling it right now, for no reason, and the universe will take that as a cue to send you more of it for good reason.
I have a laminated Emotional Scale Chart hanging in my kitchen. It goes from ultra-low emotions like regret, shame, and guilt all the way up to ultra-high emotions like serenity and unconditional love. Every morning I reach for the highest emotion I can on that list because I know my life works better the higher up I am. This work of cultivating emotion inside myself is never one and done. It is every second, of every day. Up and down the scale. I know if I wait for some person, place, or thing outside myself to raise my mood, I will be in for a long wait.
Days like Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av are hard for me. The collective emotional frequency of dread and doom kill me. They are the lowest level energy for me, ultra-low. When I am down there, I cannot feel connection to Hashem or to other people. Being surrounded by a whole group of people praying with that energy is rough for me. I know all the ways we have sinned, I know all the ways we have suffered. I know all the bad things that have happened to us. I do not want to wallow in that low energy because it disconnects me from G-d and draws more of that experience towards me.
It is said that the prophets could not receive prophecy unless they were inside a state of joy. Tehillim serves up the entire law of attraction in one neat verse. “Relish in G-d and He will give you the requests of your heart.” (37:4) How are those two things related? Law of attraction.
This ultra-high emotion of relishing in G-d generates a massive gravitational pull. It charges up your magnet. The quantum field reads this energy inside you, of relishing in G-d, and gets to work delivering you the matching experience: the dreams of your heart. Your dreams will start showing up at your doorstep just to keep the feeling going.
I sometimes worry about the law of attraction and the Jewish people. We, the People of the Book, are also inclined to be the People of the Worrying and Kvetching. Why do we do this? Why is this our caricature? Why do we keep singing the same song of oppression? Can we change the lyrics? Change the melody? Can we rewrite our narrative from victimhood to victor? Who needs to sign off on these changes? And do we have to get it notarized?
If we continuously reinforce this stream of Woe Is Us, are we inviting more negativity to show up into our shared reality? By the grace of Hashem, I hope not.
I want to reach higher, feel higher, and invite more exhilarated energy into Judaism. I want to connect to G-d through joy and awe like the prophets did. I want to focus on all the adventures G-d took us on. All the salvations that brought us to this moment. I want to watch movies on Tisha B’Av about Jewish triumph. Have you seen Nancy Spielberg’s movie called “Above and Beyond?” I want more of that high-flying feeling. Maybe the critical mass of good energy required to pull in salvation comes from feeling good about life. Maybe the power for redemption lies in the good mood of the Jews.
I want to float above the collective dirge and misery we seem to have inherited. I no longer want to be associated with the following animals: scapegoat, underdog, or sheep. Can’t we be Lions of Judah already? We have the proof. Look at the flourishing, independent state of Israel. I credit that miraculous reality to one thing. The energy of the dreamers, off the charts. They tapped into peak states of their imaginations and delivered us back our homeland. Law of attraction at its most supreme.
I never speak or post anything with the ominous words “Rise of Antisemitism.” Never do I let those negative words slip out of my mouth. I do not want to feed a single word into that stream. I do not share videos of attacks. I do not want to add one vector of velocity to that momentum. Why perpetuate the conversation of antisemitism if there’s a chance that conversation itself could invite more of it into our shared experience? I won’t even dip my pinky toe into that conversation. I walk away.
I used to think it was my civic duty as a Jew to protest about antisemitism. Then I grew up and realized the more I talk about being a victim, the more that reality persists. We are victors. Period. The more we say it out loud, the more we see it show up. We must remember and honor our history and our ancestors. Let us not get stuck, unconsciously, inside a tale of woe. No one is coming for us. We are coming for them.
Emotions come from behind your eyes. Close them and imagine any experience you desire. The corresponding feeling will swell inside you, all by itself. It will create its own vortex of attraction. What if we all took a minute every day to imagine how majestic the Beit HaMikdash will look, sitting up there on that hill glinting in the sun, just waiting for us to visit. To come experience a quiet afternoon with G-d. The smell of ketores leading our nose down the path. All of us singing and dancing like happy fools along the way. Just imagine it. The euphoria.
The highest spot, the very top of the Emotional Wave Spectrum Chart is reserved for “Merging with the Whole.” I close my eyes and climb myself up to that pinnacle. From way up high, I see all our dissenting opinions fall away and salvation is within reach. From that vantage point, I understand how to get ourselves there. We need to sing a new song, a Shir Chadash. Lyrics with more joy, less oy. We need to sing of gratitude so deep, we feel in our bones as if the redemption has already come. A song that wakes the quantum field.
Once we drop the misery vibe, the quantum field will register our new joyful energy and kick into high gear. G-d will have no choice but to get to work. He will be compelled by His laws of physics, to act on the higher frequency we are emitting and match it up with the only corresponding reality that makes sense: the Beit HaMikdash. Redemption will shake itself off and emerge from the realm of philosophy. It will crank and turn and come to life as physics in motion. Einstein came here and taught us the secret of making it happen. It is a simple formula: feel it as if it already happened. I can feel it. Can you?
Dr. Gila Jedwab has been practicing dentistry for nearly two decades. She graduated from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) in 2000 and completed her residency in general practice at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her dental practice is in Cedarhurst.