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This week we talk to Greg Marcus about the spiritual practice of Mussar
Greg Marcus has a BA in Biology from Cornell University, and earned his Ph.D. in biology from MIT. He worked for ten years as a marketer in the Silicon Valley genomics industry, after which he became a stay-at-home dad, writer, life balance coach, and biotech consultant. Greg’s first book, Busting Your Corporate Idol: Self-Help for the Chronically Overworked, is a five star Amazon best seller. His latest book is called The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Mussar
In This Interview, Greg Marcus and I Discuss…
- The One You Feed parable
- His book, The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Mussar
- Mussar: A Thousand Year Old Hebrew Spiritual Practice
- Soul Traits
- That you can be too truthful and it can be counter productive
- That being untruthful to spare yourself embarrassment is not ok
- That being untruthful to spare someone else’s feelings can be ok
- And the intention is the most important determiner of whether or not to tell the truth
- Choice points
- The evil inclination and the good inclination
- Mussar helps us by opening the space between “the match and the fuse”
- That we all have free will but it’s not always accessible to us
- What qualifies as an act of kindness
- Mussar = “Extreme Spiritual Fitness”
- Morning Mantra, Daily observations and practices, Evening journaling
- Mussar helps you specialize and deepen your knowledge and practice of the Soul Traits
- The four assumptions of Mussar:
- We all have a divine spark that is occluded by our baggage
- We all have the same Soul Traits but we have different amounts of each
- We have a conflict between the good inclination and the evil inclination
- We all have free will and it’s not always accessible to us
- That patience is the cure for helplessness
- Mussar: repairing the Soul Traits within us and how it can help the world
Greg Marcus Links
A grandfather is talking with his grandson and he says there are two wolves inside of us which are always at war with each other.
One of them is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred and fear.
The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”
The grandfather quietly replies, the one you feedThe Tale of Two Wolves is often attributed to the Cherokee indians but there seems to be no real proof of this. It has also been attributed to evangelical preacher Billy Graham and Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw. It appears no one knows for sure but this does not diminish the power of the parable.
This parable goes by many names including:
The Tale of Two Wolves
The Parable of the Two Wolves
Two Wolves
Which Wolf Do You Feed
Which Wolf are You Feeding
Which Wolf Will You Feed
It also often features different animals, mainly two dogs.
Chris says
Would love a way to make an occasional donation, as I can’t commit to a monthly Patron fee.